Freeday

Happy Friday, everyone!

Because I am a generous God and I have the day off work, I have decided to bestow upon you a Friday Insider Edition. I know I've been slacking on them (read: haven't been doing them at all), so I will give you, the readers, what you come here for. But on this very special FIE, there will be very little bitching.

You read that correctly. A post with only a few grams of bitching.

You're welcome.

So, the past few days I have been playing this game on ps4 called Warframe. And it's honestly been pretty fun. It's a sci-fi murdering game, two things I love. You start off by picking one of three classes, then go through the tutorial that teaches you many ways to murder shit, along with giving you base weapons to murder said shit.

I chose to shoot everything in the face. It's what I do.

It's a very simple game, populated by twelve-year-olds who like to sing Smashmouth while you're trying to complete mission objectives, such as shooting someone in the face, or getting a special item from a guy you just shot in the face. Good times.

In its simplicity, I have noticed a similarity to Phantasy Star Online. For one, it's a sci-fi game where you go on a planet and holocaust the inhabitants while looking for a new gun. It also has a central hub like PSO. Pick a mission, go to the planet, beam back up. Rinse repeat.

There are robotic spells, rifles, melee weapons, and little buddies that fly over your shoulder like MAGs. It's very reminiscent of when I was a shit murdering hunter back on Ragol.

I was having a blast.

Then I got to thinkin' with my brain. It hurt.

Sega, if you're reading this, (and I know you do, guys. You can't hide from me) if you want to make money right this second, re-release oldschool PSO with updated graphics. Change nothing except the polygons and you will make money from nostalgia.

You could probably get away with not even updating the maps. Just have a really high-rendered character running around 480p environments.

Also throw in some new weapons, or something. It would be awesome if you did, guys.

As much fun as PSO2 was, I don't see myself playing it more than once an equinox. The reason is, and I don't want to describe it with the word "Japanese", but it's... Really fucking Japanese. Kawaii desu-ne to the max.

Which might be your thing. It's ok. You might be one of the guys that mod Skyrim to have anime-schoolgirl-dragon-chimera running amok. And that's ok. Weird, but ok.

But me, I like my shit-murdering face-shooting fun to be as bland as possible. It's the American way.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a 5:00 appointment to listen to some kid sing Backstreet Boys songs to the rhythm of a machine gun.

A usual Friday for me.

MEME

So, there's been a meme going around the interwebs that is basically "Post a gif of X".

Most of them have not been funny.

I am here to bring you the funny.

Here is

ASRAIL'S FFXI JOB MEME FUNNY POST GOOD TIME™

(Due to the volume of gifs, this may cause lag and/or crash the entire internet. Use them to impress your friends or land that dream job you've always wanted. I have omitted Geomancer and Rune Fencer because they are stupid and unclean.)

Bard: 

Beastmaster:

Black Mage:

Blue Mage:

Corsair:

Dancer:

Dark Knight:

Dragoon:

Monk:

Ninja:

Paladin:

Puppetmaster:

Ranger:

Red Mage:

Samurai:

Scholar:

Summoner:

Thief:

Warrior:

White Mage:

The Parser Problem

I'm going to say something because I believe it needs to be said. This is really important and must be shouted from the rooftops. Crowds must chant en masse for the world to comprehend and finally do something about this rampant problem plaguing our MMORPG society. I'm going to cut right to the chase:

Shove your goddamn parser up your fucking ass.

No matter how much you think you might be helping. Before you even start to explain your parser readout. Before you even mention you are using a parser. Before you even think about the word "parser".

Firmly place it betwixt thine buttocks and sit down for a fortnight.

No one cares. The only one who gives a shit about weather or not the Bard is doing more damage than the Summoner is you. And generally speaking, no one cares about you either.

I know this is not just a FFXIV issue. I have seen screenshots of people being kicked from whatever WoW does for not parsing high DPS. Out of the 12 people who still play WoW, one of them is not parsing well. Not parsing well at all. Steve.

Personally, I don't give a shit if you're using a parser to check your e-peen while you tank. That's fine. But don't belittle someone else because your parser says they're doing poor. And for the love of Rahlgr, don't kick them from the party. It only makes you look like an asshat when you walk around like some sort of DPS gestapo.

Asshat.

Recently, I had turned from a shit-murderer into a shit-mender. My white mage is level 70, geared, and ready for raids. While farming tomestones, I was forced into a party where the Paladin tank refused to use his shield oath because he wanted to parse high dps.

I scoffed and let him die, because I am God.

You are a tank. Do not parse anything except talons to the face. That is your job. As a healer, I throw out DPS when I can and heal your sorry ass so you do not die.. As a tank, you are expected to keep said ass in tank stance and hold hate so I do not die. If I die, everyone dies. As mentioned before, I am God.

We never EVER had this problem back in FFXI. I'm not sure about these days, but parsers were virtually nonexistent back in the golden days. I remember the only time I even heard someone mention a parser. I was in Sky on Samurai farming with my LS. We were killing adds for Despot to spawn, and someone sent me a tell saying he was impressed because I was doing 75% of the entire damage output of the party. I asked him how he knew, and he explained what a parser was. I said "cool", we both went about our business. Possibly him with an erection because of my amazing Samurai skills. Me with a definite erection.

See what happened there? Aside from the mutual boners, a parser was mentioned, then never spoke of again. That is how it should be. And do not ever shirk your role in order to increase some magical number. Healers do not like that. If you're in my party and you mention a parser, I'm going to let you die. End of story.

My Private.s

I couldn't think of a better title for this entry,  so here goes. I'm going to talk about my private.s.

Private.Server. See what I did there?

Genitalia.

So during the wait for Stormblood to be early released for beta testing, a friend of mine got me into a FFXI private server. This particular server had the feel of Vana'diel circa 2009. I can only describe this as stepping into a time machine and emerging in some sort a parallel universe where things aren't... Quite right.

What do I mean? Let's dive in.

For starters, a private server is an awesome idea. In theory. You get to play a game you love for free. And that's where the list of 'pros' ends.

Imagine me pulling out a large, Renaissance-esque scroll that tumbles to the floor, rolling across the carpet, knocking over several scantily clad servants until it hits a wall, knocking a framed picture of me to the ground.

Now imagine the word 'Cons' at the top of the scroll.

For starters, EVERYTHING was broken. NPCs, quests, monsters, fuckin' zones. How you do break an area that you didn't have to create? It was already in the game, you just had to... Gigabyte it, or something. I'm not sure how private servers are run.

But it becomes impossible to play when you're trying to unlock a job and it becomes broken because of people trading items.

You heard me right.

On this server, if someone traded an item, then decided to back out of the trade, it would break everything and the server would have to be reset.

Yep. Good times.

Also backing out of an auction house transaction would cause the server to lag, as well as sending items via the delivery Moogle. So, this server really had its shit together.

Most of the more recent NPCs were broken. Crystalline Prophecy, Kupo d'Etat and Ascension NPCs did nothing, Abyssea NPCs were there, but nothing happened. ToAU missions only went up to 5 or 6 I think before it broke your character. There was, in fact, nothing to do in the ToAU areas aside from flagging Corsair and Blue Mage, which you would actually finish in the old areas for some reason.

Puppetmaster didn't exist, but no one cared.

Then we get into the issue all private servers have. There's, at most, 20 people on every day. And if they're busy, then you can forget about that perfect party formation, because there were only about two dedicated healers on the entire server. Everyone else was a weebu Samurai.

What a bunch of losers.

The whole party thing didn't really bother me too much. Exp came easy and cheap, like a hooker made of McDonald's fries. Fields of Valor made leveling a breeze. The server had  monsters of the month, which would grant broken amounts of exp. Then you hit level 50.

Everyone just had flashbacks. And probably peed a little. I know I did.

For those uneducated few of you, once you reach level 50 you must do a Limit Break quest in order to continue leveling past 50.

And guess what everyone was either too busy to do or didn't have a proper party?

Fuck you.

There my character stays. Perpetually level 50. Sure, I could go level up all the non-broken jobs. But in the end, what's the point?

Private servers are nice and all, and it was a nostalgia trip to go back and see what the game used to be like before it turned into a giant labia.

But don't expect the same magic. I got bored constantly and there was nothing to do aside from leveling or crafting. And staring at mithra butts. That never gets old.

The moral of this story? Leave the past in the past. Move on. Go play Stormblood, because eventually, this will be the past, and everyone will wish they could go back in time to relive the magic.

Also they're probably going to nerf Samurai soon, so play it while it's OP.

Back in Action

Let's cut right to the chase.

Yes, I have been neglecting this blog. You know why?

Stormblood. That's why.

In case you are living under a rock clipping through a tree in South Gustaberg, Stormblood is the new XIV expansion that gave us Samurai and Red Mage. It came out officially on the 20th, but I got to play early access because I'm special and I preordered it a day before early access started :)

As usual, Square Enix took a look back at what made Heavensward a major lag-fest when it first came out, taking into account the amount of people who would be logging on at once, and put special measures into place to ensure a wonderful gaming experience. Stormblood was opened to early access accounts on the 16th and went off without a hitch, no problems whatsoevHAHAHAHAHAHAHA sorry, I couldn't keep that up with a straight face. Fuck you, SE. Fuck you in your dick.

For those of you who don't know, Stormblood has been the WORST expansion release of any game I've ever seen. You'd think a company as big as this behemoth would take numbers into account and provide at least temporary servers to help with the traffic. It's not like the number of people about to jump in was a fucking mystery. They literally have the numbers because they sold the game.

So, that faithful morning of the 16th, which was a Friday, mind you, I woke up exactly two hours before I had to go to work in order to jump on and explore. The queue times weren't that bad. Only about 300 people in front of me, and that was probably due to the fact that I was hovering over my keyboard like a crack addict, waiting for that Play button to light up.

I started doing main story quests because I'll be damned if I'm gonna lag behind in that shit again. After a few missions, I went to Ul'dah and got Samurai. And I had a fucking blast. Samurai is everything that it should be, minus the gay bathrobes. The damage output is incredible, the skills are flashy, and the sword is right good at stabbing.

So after a bit of leveling, I started to go back on story quests, when I started seeing people shouting that stuff wasn't working correctly. Hmmm. Probably bug due to the overflow of people. Oh well, I'll do some main story quests after work.

I worked a long day that Friday. It was long, hot, hard, and sexual innuendo. I was dripping wet when I got home, and all I wanted was some warm meat inside me. 

So I logged back on, and the queue times were even more fucked up. 2,000 people ahead of me. Ok, I'll take a shower while the queue goes down.

Disconnected.

3,000 people in queue.

Ok, then. I'll do-

Disconnected.

4,000 people in queue.

Ok, seriously, what the fuck, SE?

When I finally got in, there was a large commotion about a story quest NPC that wasn't working. Apparently there were so many people trying to get to this NPC that he broke, and was only letting one person talk to him at a time. So you know what I did? I played it smart. I fucked off and leveled Samurai hardcore while people were bitching about the MSQ.

I's smart.

So over this entire "early access" period, I was leveling Samurai because no one was progressing in the story. I was forced to do FATEs because the duty finder was broken as well due to people spamming Palace of the Dead. Let me rephrase that. EVERYONE was forced to do FATEs.

So just to make this perfectly clear, here is a TL;DR of the Stormblood early access experience:

Log on, wait in queue.

Do story quest until bugged NPC..

Level in FATES, duty finder broken.

Duty finder fixed, 2hr+ wait times because both new classes are DPS.

Disconnect.

Repeat.

So if you didn't preorder Stormblood and were worried about others getting a head start, please find the nearest door and slam your testicles in it repeatedly. It's the same experience, really.

And to top everything off, I'm playing on PS4, and guess what? There's a funny little glitch where if the power goes off, even for a split second, the launcher thinks you could do with a little break, and makes you re-download everything.

That's right.

Re-downloading 22.7gb of data is fun. I should know. It's happened to me twice since Stormblood because I live in the south, and our main exports are racism and thunderstorms.

Fuck me in the nipple with raw spaghetti.

Now, it isn't all bad. Stormblood is a beautiful expansion. The areas are diverse, the stories are amazing, the gameplay adjustments make everything more enjoyable, and it's all around a good addition to XIV. The new weeaboo city is fun and flashy, the swimming mechanic is cool, and Samurai is bad ass.

But that doesn't erase the fact that SE really dropped the ball when it came to the launch. Early access felt like closed beta testing. Even to this day, I still have to sit in queue because people log on and refuse to log off, even while they're sleeping or pooping, or pooping while they're sleeping. And you know what SE's answer to the congestion is?

Kick everyone off for 10 minutes.

Yep.

Every day, they disconnect everyone for 10 minutes to get everyone who is afk off the game and allow people who actually want to play back on. But you know what the problem with that is?

You have several thousand players trying to log back in AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME.

SE, I love you guys, I really do. But fuck your asses with a spoon. Heavensward didn't teach you shit, and you should be ashamed.

As for me, I'll be posting more. I know I keep saying that, but fuck you. I have this up on my desktop, so expect more to come.

If you'll excuse me, I gotta go level Samurai.