Sunday, September 27, 2009

Taking the Allakhazam out of... Allakhazam

Founder of Allakhazam, Jeffrey Moyer, is leaving the popular MMO gaming site at the end of this month, per both his own Twitter account and an official confirmation by one of the remaining Administrators of the website.

There has not been a release to a reason why, aside from the termination of Illia, which was also done quite discreetly.

The administrators that have come forward so far have stated that this will not change anything in the day-to-day operation of the website, but it is concerning that the namesake of the site is now on the outside looking in.

As a regular of the site, I wish both Andy and Jeffrey the best in their future endeavors, and I'll be interested to see what you might be up to in the future.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Kupofried's Ring {mine}

This happened a few days ago, but before I vanish into the black hole of my pending vacation, I wanted to post about it.

My wife and I were farming in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, when she sudden gasps. I look at her screen, and she's targetting and clicking on a Mog Tablet. We both absolutely freak out! She was so excited, giggling like a little girl. She headed for Jeuno to collect her reward.

I decided, for the hell of it, to head to Ro'Maeve. I began searching as she reached the moogle in the Gardens to pick up her ring, as well as getting a Noble's Bed. I didn't hold a lot of hope of finding one, so, I turned and headed for the zone when I saw a sparkle in front of me.

I targetted it, and up pops Mog Tablet on the screen, I click, the tablet spins up from the point and flies off. We were both yelling and happy at the unexpected EXP windfall! And right before our vacation together!

So, it is possible to get these rings, you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Pawk's Next Job to 75 is...

...going to be SCH!

O.K., this post is a bit premature. I'm still 74 as of this post, but considering I have only half of a level to go, it's going to happen very soon.

Aside from that, the only recent ding was my birthday yesterday. I was going to post about that, but I decided not to.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Gee... I forgot to make some posts...

Well, I recently reviewed my blog, and realized how much information I have missed entering over the intervening months of my absence of posting.

I can't say I am the best at blogging, I have this massive tendency to wander away from posting unless I see the blog every day, as I did when I used to raid with the Argonauts and my blog was still a part of GuildPortal.

So, I suppose the best way to start would be with the ending of TeamFail, or the sort of ending.

Seminole, the linkshell holder, left the game for a while. Sparkplug moved to Vegas, and Emeryk started frequenting other shells. Sukoti quit. Most of the others have drifted away, since the LS lacked a guiding force. It's now another empty shell in my collection.

With TeamFail empty, I moved full-time into Coast2Coast. The linkshell is not quite the one I need in terms on online times. Sadly, most of the big events are PST. However, as seems to be my lot in this game, I've made close friends with some of the GMT crowd that inhabits the shell during those quiet hours in the morning EST. This will be the second close-knit group of friends I'll have had the pleasure of knowing, the first being Pulsy, Mojava, Moftzu, and utterly cute couple of Phanty and Brero. A part of me really wants to enquire what my old close friends from Europe have in the way of linkshells, because combining these old knowledgeable souls from my past could really help the new gen of friends I have.

Jiriki, Fireballhikari, Leeka and Draiko are all close friends, and appear to have been for some time. I'm closest to Jiri and Fire, since we wind up dragging each other into adventures, very much like I used to do with Pulsy and the gang.

It does make the shell more cozy to have such nice people, although it's a far cry from the wild and raucus comments in TeamFail. I have to say, Coast2Coast come closest to the communal feel of OrderOfTheTaru. It makes me miss my leadership role there, and my old friends from it.

As for my in-game progress, I still have not merited my BST, or purchased all the uber gear I want for it. In the end, I made the decision that placing so much money and effort into a job I originally chose for fun and relaxation was a wasted effort. I would never be able to do the damage I desired as BST. And I would just be lolBST in comparison to Arce, just feeding Gods TP to kill our tanks with.

So I turned to level SAM, reaching 58, but found invites drying up as I approached 60. Bored of soloing SAM slowly, I tried to find a way to get THF to 75. In the end, after a couple short parties and a lot of Campaign, I clawed my way to 69. Frustrated, I abandoned THF for now. It helped that I begged an LS member to join their party as a replacement twice and they rejected me.

During all this, I've finally begun completing some of the many undone things for Pawk. Thanks to Shin, Arce, Jeheritt, Wesleydimple, and Fireballhikari, I now own the dunce cap of accuracy known as the Optical Hat. And thanks to Zalim, Kagenoshi, Ionian, Avatarend, and Ellenzar, I am now a Private Second Class Mercenary and have begun moving through CoP missions together as a sort of static. I don't want to call it a static and jinx it, but we meet every other Sunday when I'm off work to clear missions towards the ultimate goal of Sea access.

The part that makes me ill though is leaving behind Bratia and Anyka. I wanted them to come with me on these missions, but I know Bratia doesn't have the same level of interest in Sea. I don't know about Anyka's interest in Sea, or if she even knows really what Sea access implies. End game is not something I've really talked with her about, aside from mentions of Dynamis and Sky events. Eventually I'll just have to straight out ask her about it. For now, she's level 70, and has defeated Maat. Her cooking is 99, far outstripping any craft I've done.

Beyond that, I've been leveling with Bratia, oddly her WHM is slowly approaching level 50 WHM, and her MNK has now made it to 70. My previous post covers my other major activity on the game so far.

I'll try to post more often from here on out. I doubt that will hold true, but who knows!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Gettin' me sum book lernin'

So I'm a mage again.

I know, you're shocked. By you, I mean the fictitious you that reads this blog on any form of regular basis.

In recent months I've been spending time leveling THF (acheiving 69), SAM (reaching 58), and farming for the eventual equipment that I will "need" for endgame. However, SCH has slowly but surely taken over more and more of my time. I can't help it, the job is fascinating to me.

I started leveling SCH pre-Level Sync as a healer for one of Bratia's melee jobs. I can't recall which, to be honest. I found the job to be more or less a gimped WHM. However, as time went on, I duo'd it with my wife's BLM, and solo'd it as well. I began to see the possibilities of the job.

This morning, I hit 55, and I am wishing this job was available 5 years ago when I started. For those unfamiliar with the job, it's similar to RDM in that it borrows the spells from White and Black Magic schools already in existance. Two places where it deviates are what makes the job so unique, and sometimes frustrating.

The first is that it lacks many of the standard debuffs and buffs. This means no Paralyze or Slow, no Haste or Refresh, and no AoE spells of either school. They do receive Protect/Shell up to tier 4, as well as status removals (more on that in a minute), but instead they receive unique buffs and debuffs.

You see, SCH is the answer for the cries of adding a Geomancer to the game. Geomancers, in previous incarnations, used the elements around them to cause damage and status effects. Since they did not want to replace WHM or RDM with unique debuffs replicating the effects of the standard spells, they instead gave SCHs Helixes and Storms.

Helixes are a DoT effect that weakens a mob to an element. Storms create a localized weather effect on a friendly player, activating any latent weather effect equipment they are wearing.

To be honest, I have not seen too much effect in relation to these abilities. I've yet to level into my first Helix, and the Storms don't do much for me yet, since I lack the Elemental Obis and since the spell to guarantee effectiveness of a storm, Klimaform, is not really that useful yet.

No, the power comes from the second difference: The reliance on the Grimoire of Magic.

That's the conceit of how SCH works. They use their book of magic to cast their spells. But, that's not all it does. The book can be used to enhance the spells they cast. Here's where SCH gets interesting. They can turn many single target spells into AoE spells, lower the cost of spells, reduce their cast and recast times, or increase the power of their spells.

These effects can also be stacked, as well as combined with other job abilities like Divine Seal and Elemental Seal.

Yea, it's pretty damned awesome. It's even more so when you add into that the ability of these effects to be applied to spells reserved for self-targetting (Stoneskin and Phalanx most notably).

It has honestly left me torn as to how to proceed with gearing up for endgame. Do I save for all the awesome melee gear I'll want for SAM & THF, or do I leave behind meleeing for now to refocus on mage gear once again? It will be a question to face as my small fortune slowly creeps near 1 million gil...

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Memories - The Rough Cut

So I was digging through some old DVDs I burned, and found a collection of early videos I thought I had lost. I compiled some into a video and posted it on YouTube.

Since there is some stories behind the videos, I figured I'd post about it here, and link it in the description.

The first part is the very first recording I ever made. It lagged me so much that I had to stop recording and adjust my settings on FRAPs.

The second recording was a group of my old friends as lowbies just being silly on the Selbina ferry.

The third is my first and last party in the Dunes. In one party, Bratia and I went from I think level 12 to 20. Raexn, my old THF friend, was puller in the party, it was when we first met!

The next is a random fishing expedition, just tossed that in. Notice the lack of hunters and the mini game.

The following clip was the original LS I joined with, RPGElite, and the leader, Dstln, was leaving ; ; Miss those guys.

The Halloween parade comes next, it was such a totally random thing. I started walking down Lower Jeuno with Bratia on follow. And people started following us. Soon we had this huge parade going.

The last video segment is when my static completed GK3. Not such a big accomplishment these days, but we did it as a static, all 6 of us. It was rough, being too low to kill the NMs. And this was pre-despawn days, so if you caught aggro, it trained to the zone.

Funniest part was Ohtar misunderstood where to go, and wound up on the stairs, missing the ??? completely. We had to rescue him from up there, slowly tractoring him down while dodging mobs.

Ahh... the memories...