{My Life} {Where is it?}

Okay so Final Fantasy XIV was released last week.

My life is so screwed.


Cute fluffy [dangerous] things!
Let's put my screwed life aside for a moment and talk about FFXIV.

So CE version retail pre-release (before the 'official' release tomorrow) is finally upon us. The pressure's been on the XIV team for years now so I'm not surprised this got pushed out so quickly with yet so many flaws, bugs, incompletenesses... So yes, FFXIV is incomplete but so was FFXI back in the day. The main difference is that XIV's system/world is so much more complicated thus the amount of negativity and things to complain about are bigger than that of XI by ten fold. Everyone just needs to rant about it (so do I). We'll still keep playing though, no worries there. We just gotta get it out of our system.

But you'd think that they learnt something from FFXI being in service for 8(?) years now. NOPE. WHY IS THAT? Stop trying to make it a completely different game by removing everything that was good! Not saying they should make it the same... but the fact that we see no solution or the feature is missing completely, doesn't make things any better.


Hello, greetings.. tis I. I am actually female this time. For serious.
Here's a list of rants I can think of right now (besides the obvious bugs and glitches)... with bonus profanity, caps, and anger:

• FIX THE CHAT - Give back our hotkeys. Make our lives easier please.
• MENUS - This is effing menu hell. I don't use a controller so STOP IT.
• LAG - Inevitable... but fix it somehow! There's more people coming so why aren't you prepared??
• TARGETING - what is this shit? THERE IS NO REAL TARGETING SYSTEM.
• TARGETING 2 - The targeting keys for mobs and parties system are absent. WHY. Make some soon please.
• CHAT LOG - the visible area is too small and with all this spam it's useless since I can't scroll up easily. where's the easily accessible full chat log reader?
• CHAT CHARACTER LIMIT PER LINE - what is this limit crap? this isn't fucking twitter.
• AH please or at least a retainer bazaar catalog system - none of this stand around in Batallia Downs but 10 floors of it bullshit.
• SEARCH - I swear I'm not a stalker but I would at least like to know where my friends are so I don't have to ask them every time. Also for party forming.
• DEGRADING ARMOUR - Fuck. Make it easier for us to find out which piece needs fixing at least.
• DELIVERY BOX - should be essential.

Of course not everything is bad but negatives always outweigh the positives huh. Positives!

• Multi linkshell conversations (although not even fully functional yet :b)
• We can see the accessories we wear now yay!
• Retainers are cool; they're like slaves. My slave's spankin' gorgeous.
• Instant job change transformation is wunderful~
• There's some voice acting. Not too-too bad.
• Crafting is actually kinda fun
• Guildleves are enjoyable, reoccurring quests that are party-able.. although the cooldown timer is still too long.
• Traveling from crystal to crystal to node is quick.
• Job trait/ability/action sharing across jobs is awesome.
• No penalty when you die?

The strange thing is that I've been playing since closed alpha and it feels the same... just more crowded. Although I didn't play it much back then, I feel more comfortable learning things now than before.

They must be really behind.

Oh well. Now that it's released, they have all the time in the world... until we get fed up and leave.

I will finish this post with a bug.

INVISIBLE SYNTHESIS!

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 2

PAX10 [Day 2]: Saturday - Shooting and Breaking Stuff
Joined the queue line around 9:30 which was already too late. My first stop was attempting at playing Portal 2, but by the time I got there, the line already wrapped around the booth one and a half times. Next door's line for Brink, however, was BEAUTIFUL AND SHORT.

• Brink - After a year and we only get a playable demo... not that I'm complaining. You got to play in a team of eight (but there was only 4 real people per team for the demo), each player picked one of the four jobs (the usual: infiltrator, engineer, medic, sniper.. whatever the actual names were) and you are given a mission (either offense or defense, in the multiplayer mode we were playing). I'm proud to say that I scored the most points out of the eight as a real human player, only to be beaten by the 4 NPCs of the opposing team. ETA Spring 2010.
• Infamous 2 - Played the game for my brother as he wanted the t-shirt. The guy was nice enough to give me a small too. ;>
• End of Nations - Tried it just because it was right beside Rift. I didn't really get it.
• Halo Reach - Never played a Halo before so I thought I'd check it out. Too late into the franchise to understand the hype. :|
• Dead Rising 2 - The shortest yet longest waiting line EVER. Funny thing was, all the three girls who were part of the same queue ended up choosing the three PS3s, me included. Kill over 200 zombies in ~15 minutes, get a bobble head = GET. (Killed around 280)
• Epic Mickey - Removing and/or putting back objects/structures to solve puzzles. Mickey's such a troublemaker. :|

Went to Weekend Confirmed (Hi! It's you again, Shane!), Totally Rad Show (disappointed.), and the Bonus Round where the live video recording was quite interesting and complicated. Insomniac's Behind the Scenes with their PS3 game was pretty neat though I didn't expect Ratchet and Clank at all.

First/Last meal of the day followed at Benihana for teppanyaki where we had a table of 13 people. Conversation was a bit difficult but even that size of a dinner's still pretty fun. We had a real(?) Japanese chef do the food dancing which was nicer than the not-so Japanese ones that did the other tables. Felt more authentic at least!


After satisfying the tummy, we visited the Console Freeplay for some SSBM but found out that they didn't have any GameCubes. :| We settled for the next best thing - Super Smash Brothers, the first. It was weird playing with a N64 controller again and trying to remember that all the yellow buttons did the same damn thing!

PAX10 [Day 3]: Sunday - The Last But Not Least Bit
Again, 9:30. Wasn't going to bother trying for Portal 2.

• Killzone 3 - I hovered around 3rd place... got shot down plenty by giant machines.
• Tera - Since the podcasters mentioned it, I thought I'd give it a try. Expected no less from the Koreans as the graphics were nothing but beautiful. The whole fighting direction and having to swing your camera around 360 with the mouse was rather frustrating though.
• Eve Online - Didn't really play it, but I got the lowdown on the game just so I have an idea of what it's all about.
• FireFall - Wasn't exactly playable but they did a live demo. While they were demoing, I couldn't help but listen in on the Dragon Age II talk that was happening next door. Side note: Hawke doesn't seem like a very fantasy last name.
• FFXIV - Yeaaaaaaaah, I wanted the FFXIV-branded USB stick. Fuck the girl who took 15 minutes to create her character. It's even more frustrating knowing they let her take her time and then gave her additional time on top of it just to play some of the story. Ended up not getting the USB stick as they ran out moments before. My time would've been better spent at the Gearbox panel or something.. which I should've gone to.

After that frustration, I settled down at the PC Freeplay to pass the time before ToFu decided to leave the BYOC room... and PAX for good.

The chalk artist was here again this year and drew this:


We had Dick's for an early dinner (well, first and last meal of the day) and chilled at Rift's place for the rest of the evening. Tried to force him to finish Ar Tonelico 2 - no good. We left his place around 10 for late night cheap bowling with PZAG at the Garage. So. Beer and bowling. It was 4v3, winner by team average and us 4 literally fell into the gutter the longer we played. By the end of three rounds and three pitchers, it was butt-ugly.

The drive back was me trying to sleep off the headache. Drunk shopping at Walmart was mightily strange too...

A look at some of my hard work:


I would've tried at the League of Legends tourny if it didn't take up 5 hours of the day. There was also the Tetris DS tourny but it was during Giant Bombcast. :( Somehow the schedule felt a lot more busier this year, not to mention the lines were longer, thus taking up more time. They also had us work for our swag by either playing the game (usually the case) or doing a survey. The untouchables were definitely Duke Nukem Forever, Portal 2, and Dragon Age II. Even Rock Band and Dance Central had to use a ticketing system.

So this year the venue "expanded" by extending the event to other buildings and the exhibitor's hall was able to take up a whole floor. Unfortunately, due to the amount of people at a sold out event though, things only got worse (crowd control! wait times! not enough swag to go around!). Not exactly sure how that would be remedied for the next year. Even so, I wasn't at all disappointed at PAX. It /does/ feel a lot more fancier with the new main theatre and extra large helping of big companies and games... I hope they're able to maintain this ratio of fans/community vs commercialism.

Anyway, final thoughts:

• Missed: King-Fu LIVE
• Forgot: Front Mission Evolved, Deathspank
• Favourite: Brink
• Would've been nice: Portal 2
• Wondered about: Medal of Honor, Sonic Colors
• Missing: EFFING DIABLO III. (BLIZZCON ANNOUNCEMENTS BETTER BE GOOD.)
• Still around?: Fallen Earth
• Tempted: MTGO
• Favourite Swag: Pens Garnier Shampoo Sample Torchlight 2 t-shirt
• Where art thou?: Bamco

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 1

I've returned... PAX flu free!

Pre-PAX: Thursday - The Journey Across the Border
Made my way across the border with PZAG right after work. Delays included taking our time, plenty of road construction, and a bit of border waiting... but besides those, it was pretty smooth sailing. I photoraped Paul, for the record.

Got to Jerry's place around 10pm, cooked and ate delicious Costco steak (yeah just steak) and drank Session. My real rock beat everyone's scissors and papers.


For the rest of the night, we watched Gamer (wut) and visited Jerry's workplace (yes, in the middle of the night) where all the floors were integers (Ground = -1, Basement = -2).

PAX10 [Day 1]: Friday - The Wanderer
Had Voula's Offshore Cafe for breakfast. Had us waiting for a good 45mins but it was DELICIOUS.


Due to the long breakfast wait, we ended up getting to the convention at 11pm. :|

Regardless, there was still a long day ahead of us!

• The Duke Nukem Forever line was loooooooong. Much like for Portal 2. Both were out of the question.
• Rift: Planes of Telara - Geez, played this game for well over an hour (and a half?)... not that it was that special either. It was an MMO that felt very WAR and made leveling up and logging out really dramatic. Did about the first dozen or so quests before realizing that too much time was spent on this one game. Managed to break the game a few times too.
• Torchlight 2 - Ended up breaking this game once too. I demoed the Railman and strayed off the main path to some cave. Found a boss and destroyed it with my spam of jump-smashes. The developer guy remembered me for it when I went back the next day to nab myself a t-shirt. :D
• Civ 5 - In 3D! Because it's a stupid idea. It was headachy so it didn't last very long.
• Bangai-O - It was cool so I thought I'd mention it. It's hard. :|
• Donkey Kong Wii - Oh, Wii. Co-op was neat but the waggling was not.
• Super Scribblenauts - Never actually played the first one so why now?... They had a game where you had to find other PAXers with the same matching badge as you to win stuff. Never actually managed to even find one. If you somehow found 10 people, then all 10 people would win a DSi. At least I got the cool ninja badge as a souviner.

• Plants vs Zombies - They had a special room on the panels floor for tattoos and face painting. Walk away with a pylon on your head and you had a chance to win an iPad. Yep, lots of pylon heads. The things people would do to get stuff. :3
• UT3 - Didn't exactly "demo" this game but I joined in on a spur of the moment tourny. For some reason most of the guys that were playing weren't that good. I ended up being in the top 3 but didn't win anything. A friend played TF2 and won something for being on the winning team. Playing FFA is obviously not beneficial.

• Square-Enix panel - First half was dedicated to FFXIV where they took us through Gridania. The NPC lady had RED LEG ARMOUR. Seriously, what? Didn't help that the Lalafell NPC's voice was painfully annoying. I must say though, the brigade of people at the end of the scene looked cool... especially the cute leader *wink*. The second half was Deux Ex which actually looked pretty impressive. It glitched out pretty badly at one point but the battle demo was cool enough to make up for it.

Played half a round of Settlers before heading to Giant Bombcast Live. The surprise guest panel was awesome. :3 Food followed after at Palomino where we had fries and 6 pizzas including the Giant Bombcast mentioned Incredible Pepperoni Pizza.

[insert incredible pepperoni pizza that wasn't as incredible as it says it is]

TBC... in Part 2