{See you soon!}

After a lot of thought, i've decided to take a month break from FFXI. This will be the first time that i'm deactivating my accounts, in the ~7 years i've played this game.

The biggest reason for me taking a break is just that i've reached a point in the game where there is nothing to do. So many people have quit or taken "breaks" and haven't returned yet, so the number of friends to play with has decreased severely. For the last month, it's been mostly just Anderoc, Falk, Vepion and Janko that have been around. And while there is a decent amount of things we can do when we're all free, its very difficult to find a time when we're all available.

So for the past couple of months, we've worked on the remaining +2's we've needed from the Empyrian gear, as well as the trials for our Empyrian weapons. Myself and Anderoc have finished everything our characters needed. After many a lot of effort, we finally convinced Falk to pursue an Empyrian weapon so that we could have something more to do when it was just the three of us online - so he decided on the Great Axe.

We started making a little progress on this, and managed to find a few other Abyssea related things to do whenever other LS members would login... but still, there seemed to be a lot of time spent just "sitting around" doing nothing because we didn't have enough help available for what we needed to do. And on a number of occasions, i'd find myself alone in the LS so the only thing that I could really do for myself without any help, was farming. This of course got old real fast because when there's no one to keep you company, you get burnt out real quick.

It's really a let down that the recent update had nothing to help the "low-man" groups. I believe the update was mostly focused on Void Watch, which does seem worth getting into (at least once the Japanese players figure out how it all works... because you know, SE doesn't bother to really give the details about the quests/content they add) but unfortunately it doesn't seem at all possible for low-man groups right now. I have heard that a few of the Tier 1 VW NMs are not bad, but if you want to get anything worthwhile you need to progress and that requires a lot more bodies.

And I have no desire to get involved in an endgame shell again. The last one I tried out, quickly died when the main leader had to stop playing for a month. The other leader in charge wasn't really organized and i'm super anal about organization for endgame events.

So at this point, friends need to come back and play more regularily or SE just needs to give out some more Abyssea content. Or make VW possible with 2-3 people. I think i'll be waiting for a long time for any of these things to happen.

And in addition to not having much to do in game, i've lost the ability to "enjoy" logging in. I think this is mostly due to the fact that everytime I login, I get upset because i'm reminded just by checking my friendlist at how certain "friendships" have changed. I've never been one to invest myself into building a relationship with another player only to think of them as "an online identity". But I guess that's how a majority of people that play MMO's are.

If I make a friend in this game, that friendship is the same as it would be in real life. I try to stay in touch with people who have left this game, and I try to keep up with what's going on with them in their life. Unfortunately though, in the years that i've played this game... i've met people that don't feel the same, and have no problem just walking away as if a friendship never existed. And I keep finding myself in situations where people I did consider to be good friends, turned out to not to be that at all. But I guess that's part of life, you encounter that no matter where you go. You just have to find a way to deal with it and move on.

So rather than login and constantly be reminded that people I once thought were friends can go on as if a friendship never existed at all.. I'm going to take a break and distract myself with other things so that hopefully I stop thinking about it altogether. I really don't like the idea that I can get upset to such a degree about things that happen in a video game. A video game is supposed to be fun, and sadly I haven't really been having that at all this past month. So its time to remove myself from what's getting the better of me.

But that being said, it is worth mentioning that I did get to enjoy a "final LS event" just last night. Falk had suggested that we do something fun seeing as this was going to be my last week before I take my break. He suggested that we do a "Dungeon Crawl" (kill everything in a dungeon) and so I managed to grab the majority of the LS members we had left and we set this event up just last night.

So Anderoc, Vepion, Sjoi (Falk), Soulstar, Drimergirl, Janko and myself went to Castle Oztroja [S] and made our way through the entire zone, all the way to the top where we eventually did a BCNM. We all went as the jobs we wanted (go go DRG! lol) and just killed everything in sight. The best part of the event was when we were on the second level and Janko decided to see if he could cast on the campaign mobs below. It worked.

All the yagudo linked including an NM, and as we were all discussing on skype whether or not they would actually de-aggro on the way up to us... we were suddenly bombarded by a massive group of samurai looking crows.

Janko managed to MPK all of us, except for Soulstar and Anderoc who had managed to find some pretty good hiding spots.

So for anyone wondering, yes if you cast on the mobs below they WILL come after you.

We ended up going all the way to the top of the castle and entered a BCNM which we thought would be a piece of cake, considering we had 4 Empryian weapons and we were all lvl 95. And I supposed it could have been easy if we had maybe looked at making a plan before "leeroy jenkin's-ing it". As soon as we got in range of the NM, him and his elementals killed us in what seemed like seconds. So sadly, that BCNM didn't quite happen the way we wanted it to, lol.

And just before those events, we were able to complete Janko's Great Sword lvl 95 Empyrian, as well as Vepion's Hand-to-Hand. We managed to get Standpoint a few +2 items and a win for Abyssea Altep too. So the day felt rather productive, and I would say rather enjoyable.

I think there's some talk about doing some Salvage, or even doing ZNMs again as a "one time a week" event, when I get back from my break. I'm looking forward to having an event every week where I can look forward to playing with friends. And hopefully by that time, SE will have added some better content for us to do that doesn't require having an endgame shell. Seriously why did they take the guy that gave all the good Abyssea stuff???????? UGH!

But until then, its break time for me.