Everyone leaves

So many people leaving FFXI these days...

Life goes on, things happen. People get bored of the game, or for whatever reason they can't play. It's understandable, but still it's sad. I'm losing more and more of my friends.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm still doing here. I've been playing FFXI since the NA release - That's a long time. I've seen a lot of friends come and go. As I've said before, once I had a ton. Now... not so much. I still enjoy the game, but much less than I used to. Much, much less. Should I move on? I don't know. It is true that I want to play FFXIV, so even if I do quit you'd prolly see me there, but.... Right now it's late and I need to sleep. I don't know what I'm going to do; I'll think about this more tomorrow.

As for the rest of you: If you do plan on quitting, contact me. I want to stay in touch with people.

Moviebob / The Gameoverthinker

Moviebob (a.k.a. The Game Overthinker) is someone I've been listening to lately. He does a bunch of movie reviews, not all of which I agree with. But what I'm more interested in are his videos on games. He talks a lot about issues surrounding gaming culture. Again, I don't agree with everything he says, but he often does make some good points. Worth checking out.

Plus sometimes he does weird stuff like this:

Matial Arts

You might have been able to guess from my sword posts, but I'm also into martial arts. I've taken a couple classes in various kung fu styles, hapkido, judo, aikido, and I have a black belt in karate, though to be fair I'm also a bit out of practice. Currently I'm studying Eagle Claw kung fu.

Why karate? Well frankly, that's the easiest thing to find classes for. It's also very effective, as it teaches strikes, throws and holds. Of course, so do most kung fu styles. Aikido focuses on counter attacks, judo on throws and holds, and hapkido on both. I would say no style is more effective than another, though some are easier to learn. Huo Yuan Jia would agree with me, so I guess that makes me right :D The best martial artists incorporate moves from a variety of styles, anyhow.

Anyhow, karate is pretty easy to learn. Most maneuvers are straight forward, unlike say many kung fu styles, which while effective can get pretty complex. Just watch any kung fu movie; most of them do use real kung fu.

But what I really want to talk about are Western martial arts. When most people think of martial arts, they think of Asia. China, Japan, maybe Korea or Thailand. But not many people think of Europe.

Yet Martial Arts have existed in Europe for thousands of years. I'm sure everyone knows boxing, but what about a little something called Pankration? That's right, it's not really the name of an arena where a bunch of monsters fight. It's actually a form of Greek wrestling and boxing, and one of, if not the, oldest martial arts styles in the world. It involved fist fighting, holds, chokes, take downs. Alexander the Great had his phalanxes learn it, and for a while the Romans adopted it, but later abolished it. Pankration practitioners sometimes wore cesti. Y'know, like the FFXI weapon? Only they were battle gloves, not hand held knuckles.

The Italian school of rapier fencing actually taught hand to hand maneuvers for when fighters got too close to use their swords. Mostly these were grappling and disarming techniques.

Then there's Savate, a French martial art that emphasizes high kicks, open handed slaps, swordsmanship and stick fighting. Unarmed fighting can be comparable to kick boxing, albeit without knee strikes. Open handed slaps comes from the fact that a closed fist was considered a deadly weapon, and an open handed attack would be lighter on the legal penalties. Later, though, when a Savate fighter lost to a karate practitioner, he refined the style to use closed fists as well. Stick fighting comes from the use of a gentleman's cane, which was a commonly carried item in the 1700s-1800s.

Savate is interesting because it shows that the Western world did have martial arts comparable to the East. So why isn't it more well known? Honestly, I have no idea, though I'd hazard a guess that Bruce Lee and the Karate Kid had something to do with it.

I've never tried any of these martial arts (though I have done boxing), but I would like to look into savate. Too bad I can't find a place that teaches it. But I'll keep my eyes out for one.

Project D

Something I stumbled across. A guy gives a kid raised on modern games several NES games to play, then asks him what he thinks of them. It's kind of interesting.

G.I. Joe

I went to see the movie because I have fond memories of the old cartoon, but I didn't expect much. So I was surprised to find out that it was actually a really good movie. Ok, it doesn't have the most amazing plot ever, but as an action movie it kicks ass. One of the best movies I've seen in a while, and I'd definitely recommend it.

And to celebrate the fact that it was much, much better than I expected, here's a little something:

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Best bit starts at 2:48.

Sigh

So I went ahead and got a new credit card, solely for the purpose of paying for FFXI. This whole thing still pisses me off. Why is my credit card suddenly no good? It worked fine for them for the past 7 years.

I do have another credit card, but I really felt uncomfortable with using it for POL. I got it solely for emergencies, so I didn't want to use it. And I've got a debit card, but I'm not comfortable with using that for POL either.

Soooo... yeah, I've got a new credit card on the way, which I'll probably never use beyond paying for FFXI and probably FFXIV. Thanks SE. Thanks a lot.

Moogle Kupo d'Etat

So I finally finished this thing last night. It took 3 tries to beat the final boss. I've noticed a pattern: On his third phase, whenever he hits 50%, he always does a stun move at the exact time he summons his allies. Twice, I lost because the blms got stunned and couldn't sleep the henchmoogles. The third time it almost happened again, but luckily Brizzy was out of range of the stun move. The fight otherwise went smoothly.

Dark Knight is really good for this mission. Any melee will do, but DRK is the best. magic and weapon skills do double damage to these guys, meaning drain and drain II will keep a drk standing when the mages are too busy to cure. Absorb-TP works well; the mobs don't seem to have any defense against dark magic. And of course, stun is nice for the henchmen.

The first time through, I was able to take the boss from 50% to 20% solo, after damn near everyone else in the party was dead and those who weren't were busy with the henchmen. I still believe I would have had a good chance at finishing him, too, except I kept getting stunned and knocked back, which kept my drains from going off. If I ever wind up in that situation again, I'll fight with my back to the wall. But now that I know the trick, I think it's unlikely for everyone but me to wipe.

I don't know what to get for a prize. The fact is, I've got homam, askar and denali headgear, so all of my jobs except mages are pretty much set, and I don't use my mages much, so it's not like I have to worry about them. At the same time, the mage hat is the only one that doesn't look ugly. Dunno what to do....

The most longed-for sequel

1992:



Coming soon, 2009:

Thinking

This sudden news about my credit card issues has got me thinking. Maybe it's time I left the game.

I started playing back when FFXI was first released in the U.S. Oct.... 2002? I think... Not really sure. But not important.

What is important is this: my friends. Or lack thereof. I used to carry around 6-7 linkshells. I had tons of friends, so many that I ran into problems when my friendslist hit the 200 person maximum. Every time I logged on, there would always be at least one person to talk to, and sometimes I'd be juggling two or three conversations at once.

But that was then. Most of those friends have since quit the game or moved to different servers. Sure, I keep up with a lot of them through email and AIM, but that's different from the game. I now have about 20 people on flist who still log in and play on Odin. Many of those live in different countries, so when it's evening for them and they want to do events, it's night time for me and I need to sleep. Plus, whenever something's going on, I'm usually not invited unless I ask if I could come, and that makes me feel sad. Plus another one announced he's quitting at the end of the month.

Ironically, the last person who talked to me a lot and invited me to stuff was Agana. She would always invite me to ISNM or ZNM or stuff. I think once I did Salvage with her, too. This was before I knew what sort of person she really was. That's why I still feel hurt by what she did, even though I wasn't involved in what happened. It's hard to find out one of your friends was a horrible person.

It's not like I have much time to play anymore, either. Just a few hours a night. Maybe I should quit until 14 comes out. In the meantime, I could finally play SMT Imagine, instead. I love SMT and I downloaded the MMO months ago, but I still haven't played it. Maybe now's the time.

Credit card troubles

So... SE instituted a new policy where all credit cards have to have some kind of new security feature or they can't be used.

My card is apparently inelligible for said feature.

Thanks SE. Thanks a lot for this BS.

So I get one month to solve the problem, or that's goodbye to FFXI for me.