Intro

Good lord, I hate beginnings. Look at me, it took me about 5 minutes just to write this much. Once I get going I’m okay, but this, THIS is torture.

Before I go on, I should mention something right now before you waste a minute of your life reading something you have absolutely no interest in. This is a Final Fantasy XI themed blog. You know, FFXI, that MMORPG that was made in the dark ages of online games, before the light that was World of Warcraft. But more on Warcraft later.

Back in 2004 I bought the original FFXI for the PC. I get home, all excited to install and play my first real MMO. That worked fine and well. Click the shortcut, watch the lovely intro and create a character – a elvaan monk in Windurst. Lo and behold, in something very typical of Windows, I get a blue screen. And I kept getting that blue screen every time I started up the game. My dreams crushed…. hypothetical wrists slashed. IT WAS HORRIBLE.

I went through a dry spell for the next two years, mostly relying on betas (nothing will ever come close to iROSE). Then came Warcraft in 2006. Oh what a glorious time it was. Drawing straws, I ended with a human priest. A human disc/holy priest. Yeah. You can imagine how painful leveling was. I got to level 58 (60 being the cap then) before my credit card privileges were… uh, revoked. There was another dry spell, but then in mid-2007 -one year ago- I got into it again, now with gift cards and the expansion pack. Instead of starting up my under-and outdated-geared priest, I made a undead warlock and had a fan-fucking-tastic time playing it. Affliction, specifically. A rare commodity, lacking the sheer nuking power of a demon or destro lock, but in raids I did just as well as the better geared demon/aff locks.

Then I had to leave the only guild I liked because I didn’t want to fight a boss. Since that happened in March, my interest in the game waned, the only guilds wanting me weren’t even Kara geared yet. I made a dranny hunter seeing as my warlock had to retire indefinitely, but without doing instances, it was hard to hold my interest.

All which brings me back to FFXI. Earlier this week I purchased the game again – the 2008 collection with all the expansion packs. After a bit of trouble with the credit card, I am once again in the world of Vana’diel.

This blog will cover my adventures from the very beginning, if I have any adventures to speak of, that is. Maybe the additional rant and rave as it’s something I very much love to do.

Alnora – Red Mage, Carbuncle.