Cycopl

hot ffxi action

I'm gonna make this short and sweet. I like ffxi a lot. It's really hard and requires a LOT of time and patience to progress, but I like it. Also, nick pointed out to me that sending messages while I'm healing is a good way to kill time, so I do that a lot now too. Josh and nick may notice that they have a bunch of messages waiting for them when they log on. Do you know who sent them? PROBABLY ME BECAUSE I SEND A LOT OF MESSAGES.

I joined a linkshell. Some japanese guy walked up to me and said something like "i going to give gift open trade ok?" and I was like "okay" because free stuff is always awesome. So I opened up my trade and it was a brown linkpearl, and he was like "ok?" and I clicked ok on the trade window. Then he said "ok?" and I was like "thanks", then I activated the linkpearl and he was like "ctrl L" so I hit ctrl+L and it popped up /linkshell, so I could talk to people. I think the linkshell is called "Chocolate", or it might just be the color of the linkshell, cause it was a brown linkshell. But I'm going to call it the chocolate linkshell from now on. Everybody that's worried about the linkshell we're going to start, don't worry. It looks like we're allowed to be in more than one linkshell, but we can only have one linkshell "equipped" at a certain time. Right now my chocolate linkshell is equipped. When we start our own, I'll just equip the new one. Yay!

I changed my class to white mage today, and I like it a lot more than playing warrior. I made it to level 6 in about half the time it took me to get to level 6 as a warrior. I guess taru's are just naturally supposed to play mage characters, they're much more effective that way. Anyway, the Dragoon/Samurai thing can wait, I"m either gonna be a Blackmage/Whitemage (which is what I originally planned), or a Bard/Whitemage (the ULTIMATE support class). People might think OH MAN BARD IS GAY but guess what, if I ever become a bard I'll be the coolest bard ever. I'll sing songs and stuff and people will get STRONGER because I sing songs. And then when people are getting stronger from my songs getting sung, I'll cast CURE on them and make their life go up. That sounds pretty cool to me.

Well, I guess it wasn't really short and sweet...

About FFXI

Well, I got FFXI, finally. This is what I've been waiting for, this is basically what I got the new computer for. And I'm extremely impressed. I haven't even made it past level 5 yet, but there's something about the game... There's just so much stuff to explore. I ran around aimlessly for an hour before getting hit for 260 by a cactuar, but I was having fun just running by the giant bad guys and looking at the environments. It's a really nice looking game.

The PlayOnline interface kind of scared me at first. It seemed like just an overcomplicated gateway into the game. Kind of like Microsoft's ZONE client with Asheron's Call. But I eventually realized that the Playonline client is more than just a gateway to the game, it's a message center and email center and subscription center all rolled up into one. It adds a new level of interactivity to the game, because friends that you add in your playonline client are added within the game as well. When you log out of the game, you can send your friends messages through the playonline client, or email through their playonline email address that's created when you register. Mine's cycopl@pol.com, go ahead and email me. It really seems to me like a revolutionary step in the MMORPG genre. Future games should definitely learn from this.

I started a Taru warrior... and I'm pretty happy with it, even though he's pretty weak at the moment. I'm hoping that he'll get much beefier when I gain him some levels. I've got it all planned out though, I want to play warrior until level 30. Then I'll do the samurai quest, and make samurai my main class and warrior my sub-class. Then, once I get samurai to 30, I'm going to do the dragoon quest, and make dragoon my main class and samurai my subclass. This might take a long long time, and I might not even go through it like that, but this is currently what I have in mind. Leveling to 30 as warrior so I can have a good subclass for samurai once I switch, and also so I have a good sword skill when I switch to samurai. That'll make the early samurai levels MUCH easier. Dragoon is a different story altogether though, because I'll have to switch to polearm weapons. I'm assuming it'll almost be like starting over completely, except I'll have high skills in stuff like evade and parry, so it'll be a little easier.

So yeah. I like FFXI. People should put suggestions for Linkshell names in the comments.

FFanXIety

Hurry up fedex :(

Yay for new computer

man, my new computer rocks. I love it so much, I really wish I didn't have to work tomorrow. God dammit, I wanna stay home with my new computer.

I WILL CRY FOR JESUS

man my computer piecesr ARE so cool that it makes me want to CRY FOR JESUS, lik emy case is reall shiny and lacquered on the outside, it looks nothing like the newegg screenshot that they gave to me when i looked at the case on their website, and the antec cobra cable actualy LOOKS LIKE A COBRA! too bdad my case doesnt have a window in the side of it because you cant see my antec cobra ide cables that look so much like a real cobra that you would lookin side of it and be like WHOA JOE YOU KNOWYOU HAVE SNAKES IN SIDE OF YOUR COMPUTER! and I would go HA HA YOU STUPID THAT IS NOT SNAKE, THAT IS MY ANTEC COBRA IDE CABLE HA HA IT DEFINTELY FOOLED YOU, HAH HA HAH!~ and we would all laugh

today is coool

Comp pieces are in tulsa, on a Fedex delivery truck. This is COOL, I'm gonna have a new computer today. It might not be a fully assembled or functional new computer, but it'll be here. Let's all just hope that none of the pieces are defective, that would really suck.

I have to work from noon to 9:30pm today, with an hour break. Out of all days, it's gotta be today. Oh well, it'll make time go by a lot faster before I actually get to check out my new stuff.

soooo impatient

Time has been going by extremely slow ever since I deposited that check. I think just knowing that I had enough money to buy my pieces but not being able to was bad enough, but now it seems like I've been waiting even longer for the pieces to get here. It's been a day.

I'm not going to look at the fedex trackers anymore, because they just make me mad. Well, I'll probably look at them anyway, but they still make me mad. Apparently, my pieces left the sort facility in Newark, New Jersey last night at about 10:30pm, and then today at 9:30am they arrived at the SAME SORT FACILITY (according to the fedex tracker). I can only assume this is wrong. I really, really hope this is wrong.

And then, there's Final Fantasy XI. I know I'll have my new comp before this comes out, but just like every other MMORPG that I've obsessed over before release, I can't stop reading about this game. I'm trying to learn as much about it as I possibly can, because Square decided to go ahead and not let me into beta because they are dumb fags. Fucking dicks.

pieces = ordered

Even though I posted it in the comments of my last post, I think this event deserves its own entry.

I went to sleep last night annoyed at bank of oklahoma because they hadn't processed my deposit yet, but I woke up today to a balance of 482 bucks, which is a LOT OF MONEY FOR ME! I bought FFXI and that hasn't registered yet so I should really have 432 bucks, but my newegg order only cost me 403 bucks. Originally it would have been about 415 bucks, but there's the case sale and there's also a TWO DOLLAR REBATE on the motherboard I bought. YAY FOR ME!

hurry up bok :(

hurry up and process my damn deposit so I can order my comp parts :(

the money spending begins

I preordered FFXI tonight. Free overnight shipping and a free mouse pad is too good of a deal to pass up. I hope it's a soft fabric mouse pad and not a plastic mouse pad, because I hate plastic mouse pads. So that's fifty bucks dead, now I gotta wait for my deposits to register and then I'll spend about 400 bucks on computer pieces. Hopefully I'll get them all by Friday, but I doubt that I will because newegg has always disappointed me on shipping times. I usually just expect stuff sooner than it gets there, and when it doesn't come when expected I get pissed off.

stuff

I read penny arcade tonight, and gabe's review on Max Payne 2. I think normally I would be offended when he slams a game as hard as he does, but he's right. Max Payne 2 is the exact same game as the first, except with a new "slow motion" bullet time feature that makes Max spin around and do a pretty pose if you kill a certain amount of badguys while under bullet time. Other than that, it's exactly the same as the first. Even the boss of the game requires almost exactly the same strategy as the first one. The difference between me and gabe was, I played through the first game about six or seven times, I loved the hell out of it. I just wanted more, and with Max Payne 2 I got more. So even though I like Max Payne 2, I agree with gabe also.

So, after I get my paycheck monday I should have enough money to start ordering computer pieces. I might have to wait a few days though, for the deposit to actually "register". I don't really know how that works, but I doubt I could deposit the check monday and then order close to $400 dollars in computer pieces the same day, I assume I would get some kind of error or something. I found out that my checking account has no minimum required balance, so I'm not worried about going under 100 dollars anymore, but after I buy this comp I'm still gonna try to keep it over 100 dollars. But this is important, I need a new computer before XI comes out. This is imperative.

You guys probably think that I don't like the game or something because of my update a few days back. This isn't true, I still think that it's going to be the best game out there for a while... until WoW comes out. I trust Blizzard to make a great online multiplayer game *way* more than Squaresoft. Blizzard has infinite experience over Square when it comes to online gaming. Even if it's with stuff like battle.net, they have the concept of game balance and adding new content down. WoW will be adding new content every month just like AC did. This makes me very happy. Companies like Verant (see Everquest) fix bugs and stuff with their updates, and release all of their new content in expansion packs. This is why they release expansion packs every five months or so. How many do they have now? Six? Seven? I don't know. I never even bought the FIRST expansion pack when I had Everquest. What's funny is, these guys shit in peoples' mouths, and then the people smile and say, "I can't wait until you do it again!". Notice the ongoing trend? I hate Everquest.

I think I'm gonna use my "extended entry" option on this post, because it'll be really long if I don't.

There's other online games that have caught my attention but I've pretty much shrugged off. There's Lineage 2, which I've never been really interested in. I DID notice, however, how much it looks like FFXI. I mean, look at it. The character designs look frighteningly similar to FFXI's character designs. I hear that the Koreans are crazy for this game, and the first Lineage game. Crazy to the point where somebody was killed in real life over an ingame occurrence. Apparently these Korean kids play the game at internet cafes and stuff over there (they don't have computers in Korea, silly), and something happened ingame and this kid got killed over it. I guess they take their games pretty seriously over there.

Then there's Mythica, which I'm seriously gonna try to check it out. First of all, it's made by Microsoft. Lots of "elite" people are like "OMG KILL MIRCOSOFT BILL GATES IS SATEN" while typing on their Windows XP machines, but to me, Microsoft is responsible for the best MMORPG and one of the best games I have ever played, Asheron's Call. Well, technically, Turbine is responsible for them... But Mythica just LOOKS like whast Asheron's Call 2 should have looked like. I think you all know my opinion on AC2 (flaming pile of shit), but I think Mythica looks like it's gonna be great. The screenies look beautiful, and the FAQ makes me even more excited, especially the combat part.

The fundamental goal of combat is to provide players the sense of being Immortal. Combat pacing is much different than other MMPs. An Immortal doesn’t take forever to whittle away his foe, nor does it take an entire Immortal party to defeat a common monster.

I can only hope that the combat will be similar to AC. The combat in Asheron's Call was unique because it was much faster paced than any other MMORPG, including FFXI. Being a mage actually required some skill, because you needed to know how to maintain your health, stamina, and mana, all while fighting enemies. In most MMORPG's (including FFXI), a mage runs outside, spends all of his mana fighting stuff, and then sits down and waits for it to come back. In AC, mages can either drain mana from monsters, or drain stamina from monsters and convert it to mana. They can also convert health to mana, but it's usually not a good idea to cut your health in half while fighting unless you're extremely desperate for mana and have healing kits in hand and a decent healing skill.

Back to MMORPG's though.

Middle Earth Online is also something I want to try out. The main reason is, because it's made by Turbine. Something deep inside me really really yearns for another game like Asheron's Call to come out, something that plays remotely the same but has improved graphics and features. I think Middle Earth Online has great potential to be the next game I play, but I'm afraid that *EVERYBODY* will be an elf. I'm pretty sure you can only choose from the "light" LOTR races, like dwarves, elves, hobbits, and humans. I'm convinced that everybody will make an elf, and try to name him "Legolas" or a variation of the name. I've seen tons of variations of the name since I started playing MMORPGs. Legolias. Legolas II. Lego-Las. Legalas. Legolos. Legalos. I'VE SEEN THEM ALL! Honestly though, I think Mythica is gonna be better than this game. Turbine dropped the ball with Asheron's Call 2, and I doubt they're going to go back to the Asheron's Call style of game play, even though Asheron's Call was more successful than AC2.

And finally, Everquest 2. Looks pretty. Not interested whatsoever, though.

Max Payne 2

Beat Max Payne 2 like an hour ago... It's pretty damn hard sometimes but it's too short. There's a LOT of parts where I wanna just punch myself in the face really really hard, it's THAT frustrating. There's a couple parts in the game where you have to protect certain people, and if they die you have to start over. The problem is, they're fucking STUPID and run out and get killed ALL THE TIME. And every single time it happens, I yell "WHAT THE FUCK" like I'm surprised it happened, even though the exact same thing happened 14 seconds before that, and then another 19 seconds before that, and then another 16 seconds before that. If it wasn't for quicksave/quickload, I would have probably hung myself from my ceiling fan with a Playstation 2 controller by now.

FFXI... maybe not.

I'm having serious doubts on getting FFXI. I've played FFXI and it's a great game, but even while playing it I had doubts about the combat system and how long it would last before getting immensely boring. It happens to EVERY MMORPG out there, it's great at first, but then gets immensely boring. And the combat system in FFXI doesn't help, because it's basically a glorified version of Everquest combat. You walk up, start attacking (game auto-attacks for you after that), and then launch spells or special attacks whenever they become available. This is Everquest combat. It is also what made me quit Everquest and stick with Asheron's Call for close to four years.

The zoning system, also, is annoying. There's nothing I hate more than long loading times between areas, and FFXI has them. When you're walking out of town to the field outside, there's a "Loading, please wait" message, and it stops. Then you wait for a minute, then you appear. Everquest.

Then there's the fact that you can only have one character and the worldpass thing. This is bad. Nick, you can leave a comment saying "There's no reason to have more than one character!", but guess what, there IS a reason to have more than one character. It's called diversity in play style, to keep the game from becoming incredibly stale. Every time I would think of this, I would try to suppress it by convincing myself that there's no point to needing more than one character. But I'm not going to fool myself any longer. Multiple characters isn't something you should pay extra for, it should be a PART OF THE GAME FROM THE START. Square's already ripping you off enough charging 13 bucks a month, but then they have the fucking balls to charge extra money for something that's free in every other game of the same genre to ever come out.

Also, the fact that stuff cannot be dropped on the ground. If you drop something, it disappears completely. This is a major turn-off for me, because it doesn't make me feel like I'm a character in a world. It makes me feel like I'm a virtual character in a virtual world, and that's not something I like in a MMORPG. I liked AC a lot, because if you shot an arrow at something and missed, the arrow would stick in the ground. You could go up to that individual arrow and pick it up, put it in your quiver, and have another arrow. If you dropped a piece of armor, that piece of armor would lay on the ground. Drop a sword, that sword lies on the ground. Come on Square. Why are you charging 13 dollars a month? Don't even say it's to maintain your servers efficiently, because compared to games like AC (10 dollars a month), your servers are underworked because of the lack of ANYTHING in the world but characters, monsters, and the levels they walk around in.

All of that aside though, FFXI is going to be the best game out there for a while... until WoW comes out.

stupid sleep

I fell asleep on the couch yesterday because I was tired, and I ended up waking up at like 10PM and I've been up since then (it's 6am now).

I decided to go ahead and watch Scarface since I hadn't seen it before. What a great movie*. I kind of wish I had seen it before GTA3 and Vice City came out, just so I would have known how much the games actually stole from that movie. Tommy Vercetti's mansion in Vice City is EXACTLY the same as Tony Montana's mansion in Scarface... Obviously meant to look the same. Even the storyline in Vice City strongly borrows from Scarface's storyline.

So yeah, I'm gonna have to force myself to go to sleep now, I'm not even really tired. I need to get some more hours in before work at noon later today.

*Kill Bill is still better.

blood sprinklers

made of peoples' necks and stumpy arms and legs

Would I suck Quentin Tarantino's penis to see Kill Bill part 2 right now? Well let me think abyes.

ANON is my hero

It's really hip and cool to act like you're against piracy nowadays. Whereas a couple years ago, downloading music was wonderful and awesome, nowadays downloading music destroys the music industry and also makes baby jesus cry.

The same goes for games. If you download games, you're a scumbag thief who deserves to be punished beyond the boundaries of the law. I strongly disagree with both though, if I agreed I would be a hypocrite. I honestly don't know anybody who downloads more illegal music or games than I.

But anyway, on the topic of games, ANON is following up on his word, and I love him for it. Remember two updates ago, when I posted parts of that nfo file, with ANON threatening to release more stuff? Well he released more stuff, and also came out with a couple surprises that make me very very happy.

"Well, this one here is Half-Life and Counter-Strike for Half-Life 2, so there already is something to play with and try to get working in multiplayer. Hurry, I wanna play :P"

- Anonymous leaker aka. Osama bin Leaker

Yes, you read that correctly. Half-Life AND Counter-Strike for Half-Life 2. These must have been planned to be bundled in with HL2, but it was probably meant to be a surprise.

Here's a screenie that I found of CS through the HL2 engine. Looks real enough to me, I don't really have any reason to doubt it's validity anyway.

Here's a screenie of HL1 being run through the HL2 engine. Nothing extremely different, but the water will look all purdy like in the CS screenie, and there's also some other stuff like shadows, reflective surfaces, etc.

Anyway, yeah. Apparently, ANON also leaked Condition Zero, but I could be wrong and it could be some other group. Either way, this has nothing to do with HL2 but I will be looking for this as well.

is half the effing internet down or something? :(

I can't see a bunch of websites... Rpgamer, where are you? Oh, my sweet Penny Arcade. Where have you gone? My heart dies a little bit every day without you. Well maybe not.

Hey, who likes Half Life 2 screenshots that show exactly how full of shit Valve was during the E3 demo? Ohh, I know I do!

So yeah, this is part of the AI demo being acted out right in front of me. The only problem is, I'm not in that room. I'm standing there right next to them. What kind of AI is this?

I think I care too much about this game... I need some sleep...

I really hate it

I really hate it when bands put 10 minute gaps of silence after the last song on their album for a "hidden song". HEY, IT WAS COOL THE FIRST TIME, NOW IT IS NOT COOL, STOP FUCKING UP MY SHUFFLE WITH YOUR LONG PERIODS OF SILENCE THANKS.

I also hate it when CD/DVD cases hold the fucking CD in there so tight that you have to damn near snap the CD in half to get the fucking thing out of there. I know this isn't Primus' fault because they can do no wrong but I feel like I almost snapped my Primus DVD in half taking it out of the fucking case. WHY MUST Y OU DO THIS STUPID CD CASE MAKING COMPANIES? IS IT SOME KIND OF CONSPIRACY WITH THE MUSIC COMPANIES TO GET PEOPLE TO BUY MORE CD'S BECAUSE THEY SNAPPED THE ORIGINAL ONE IN HALF? FUCKING KILL YOURSLEVES THANKS.

I downloaded the Halflife 2 alpha and it's pretty awesome, except for the fact that it's really not a game at all but rather a first person level exploration tool with monsters included. Monsters that don't attack you but are scary as fuck when they run around anyway. There's some new kind of headcrab that has longer legs and makes the people it infects run around like CHEETAHS whenever you shoot them. It's fucking scary, even with the missing textures that are replaced with ultra contrasting purple and black checkerboard planes and physics that get you stuck inside of everything that's not a wall.

I can understand why Valve delayed the game until Christmas, and then once again in an act of irresponsibility delayed the game until April 2004. The game's not near complete. Sure, they've got tons of shit, but this game is not close to done, and they knew this on September 24 when they delayed the game til Xmas, and they knew this a few days ago when they conveniently blamed the hackers for another delay until April.

On top of that, today there was a patch released for the leaked HL2 alpha. I haven't gotten ahold of it yet, but I read the .nfo file for it and I thought it was really funny. I believe every word it says.

Here are a few words from it:

"To all those saying HL2 was delayed because of the hacking action, ill just remind you that what was leaked is what Valve has, nothing more and nothing less, so its pretty good to understand it wasnt finished yet."

"Also I'd like to point out the E3 was one big fake by Valve. Ever tried to kill that soldier in physicstown ? Notice the door will still get kicked? No scripted sequences?"

"To everyone saying this is no Beta: I'd like to point out that THIS is what you wanted Valve to release on 9/30/03, theres no such thing as a much better release in Valves network!"

"To Valve: I suggest you stop lying to your customers about how much was stolen/compromised, or I'll have to release everything just to prove my point. And you know what you got, as I do."

Was I right or was I right?