Mae

Bit of a necro-bump, sorry >_> As the leading edge of winter storm Ultima swept through a little Connecticut town this afternoon and was already turning the road and sidewalks white, I looked out the window after doing a delivery and saw my first Rita's. And the line of about twenty people at the window, waiting to order. Ah, New England. How I missed this sort of attitude.

For the most part, if I'm RPing having knowledge in something I don't actually have knowledge of (Except for combat. I hand-wave combat stuff because... well, LARP training with a halbred isn't the same as actually knowing how to use a real halbred, and I'm too afraid of ruining my hands to even consider learning how to actually use knives/daggers), I try to put at least a couple hours worth of research into the topic. Some things (the Gardener's plant/herb lore, for example) is stuff that I've had interest and learned about over the majority of my lifetime, and there's other stuff that's just... knowledge I randomly collected.

Has anyone tried something like this? "Shakshouka": Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce, on Toast I keep seeing this recipe on a food blog, and I love a good tomato sauce and I love poached eggs, and I eat eggs more commonly as a savory/lunch-or-dinner item than a sweet breakfast one... and it's something I can make in the rice cooker. I'm just curious if anyone's tried something along these lines already.

I don't remember if CoP required you to clear RotZ first. All I really remember are shitty level caps that required you to keep ALL OF YOUR GEAR FOREVER. Buying CoP didn't give you access to anything except the balls-hard fights required to access the new zones, the new city, the new story and everything that wasn't jobs. Zilart required you to complete everything to unlock Sky. Aht Urghan was different in that regard, opening a lot from the door, but there is a precedent for buying an SE MMO and having it be an empty box save for a pile of IOU: Patch Content notes. I do think there's a difference between buying the expac and immediately having access to the new content, be it in the form of stupidly hard fights, even if I look back on Promyvion's fondly for how cool they were, in some way as opposed to buying the expac and having access to literally nothing until you clear what is basically all of the content from the base game. Bolded because that's exactly how I feel. You didn't have to be level 75, finish a Nation's missions, beat Rise of the Zilart and be partially geared through Dynamis and other HNMs in order to start Chains of Promathia. All you needed to be was level 30 and have some luck to get through the Promyvions. It was possible to have Tavnazia access before you got your AF armor, got your airship pass, and beat the Shadow Lord. There were also zones that were released with CoP and you only needed to have the expansion installed to access -- Bibiki Bay and Carpenter's Landing to name two that I specifically remember bouncing off the zone-line because I didn't have CoP installed, and after installing I could access months before I even attempted my first Promyvion. The ONLY things that were affected by completing RotZ before starting in on CoP? Some minor changes in dialogue, the realization to why Esha'ntarl wouldn't let Nag'molada speak to Kam'lanaut, and the ability to participate in the optional Apocalypse Nigh fight. And even if you finished CoP before RotZ, you STILL went back and finished RotZ because epic cutscenes and that silly earring that's STILL viable gear in some circumstances. These... are actually sentiment that I've been sort of dreading >_> Getting to level 50 is easy for just about anyone. I've got my main who's got -most- jobs to 50, and currently four alts that all have at least one job to 50. But when you have a job that requires you to give up such comforts like in-home plumbing, a proper stove, and stable internet access, doing the group content that requires coordination and strict adherence to stratagy... you can end up sitting on something for months. I personally sat on story-mode Garuda's doorstep for three months. The Castrums and all that stuff in that final 2.0 story stretch took me another four months. Then I sat on King Moogle Mog's doorstep for another three months. I got lucky last week and was able to plow through King Moogle Mog and all the way through Shiva before I ran out of both steam and time to go further... but if I'm understanding what's coming up ahead for me IRL, it can be another six months before I get another chance like that again.. and I -still- have to do HM Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda before I can even pick up the next questline. I may be unique in my specific situation, but I doubt I'm the ONLY player in the whole game who's 50 right now and while they on the surface have access to a lot of playtime, they'll be unable to just walk across a bridge and look around a brand new city because their real-world obligations don't give them enough actual leeway to do the progression fights. I'm not saying I want to have access to the personal airships, or new dungeons, or armor/weapon upgrades before finishing 2.55. Hell, I don't even care if I'm not allowed to attune to the aetheryte, NPCs will not respond to me clicking on them, and I'm unable to view the market board or call retainers in Ishgard until I complete 2.55. I just want to be able to go lean up against a wall in the new city and watch people run around. Right now, the feeling I get from the details of this expansion are "Unless you really want to play the new race (and of course granted that SE didn't gate THAT behind 2.55, too /pessimist), don't bother buying the expansion until you clear 2.55". And I really won't be surprised if that's the sentiment that's picked up by the review sites.

For the most part, it's considered polite to not discuss MSQ things in open company. Various people/groups regard MSQ differently. Some people disregard the 2.0 storyline entirely, some regard it as being in the past, a few do RP it so where-ever they are in MSQ it's 'current time'. The 2.1+ stuff is handled similarly. So, again, it's generally considered polite to not discuss it in open company. (For the record, I am in a group that RPs MSQ. We keep things open enough that it's not hard for others to join us if they want and part of our group's canon is that there's no reason why Minfilia, or whoever is 'sending us out', wouldn't be deploying multiple teams on a task. Not putting all one's eggs in one basket and so-forth.) Free Company RP varies a lot, from being military organizations to schools to businesses to people who run a bar to just a group of friends. It just depends on the group. Grand Company RP, I guess I guess if it's a reasonable position/job in the ranks then anything goes. Similar thing to MSQ events and MSQ-RP. Some people don't acknowledge it, some people do in the sense that unnamed adventurers took care of the whole business, some people RP as having done it, so it's generally polite to refrain from mentioning in open RP. Some people also go with the theory that Primals are being summoned all. the. time. Well, maybe ALL all the time, but certainly often enough that they're a nuisance and adventurers of all stripes -should- be learning how to fight a Primal, just in case they're in the area when one rears it's ugly head.

... Sorry to break this to you, but it's not a glitch with Lodestone or SE holding onto a name... I actually saw this character just about a week ago while I was running up to Maelstrom Command on Mallow. I even stopped to make a few random emotes at 'you'... I didn't even think twice about it, I just assumed that maybe you had gone and name-changed back for some reason and that you hadn't leveled Marauder/Warrior yet. Oh, and the character WAS wearing clothes while she was standing in the Drowning Wench. I don't know what's happened to them since. ... Think positive for now, maybe? It could be the work of someone who's friendly to you and was nervous that someone was about to take your old name and drag it through the mud (seen it happen...)

I worked for , and when I wasn't out in the garden center, my preferred station in the building was the returns desk. Which for anyone who's worked retail, might see that as a sign that I might not be quite right in the head. I wish I had made these stories up. But I didn't. I promise you, they're all true. ---- During my first week doing returns solo, a man came into the building, carrying one of the largest/heaviest log-splitting mauls we stocked. He was a big guy, as in tall and broad-shouldered, and walked right up to the returns desk, put the maul on the counter, and said in a -very- thick Eastern European accent: "I would like to return ax, it does not fit in suitcase." ---- The scene: mid-afternoon on a Saturday about two weeks after a major ice storm had gone through the area, leaving a large portion of the population without power. A man arrives to the store, and he is irate -- I can hear him ranting and raving, and he hasn't even entered the building yet. He finally enters, carrying a door, and he practically throws the thing at me and starts screaming about how his house had gotten broken into just before the storm, he had come in and bought a door to replace the one that had been damaged and then had to seek shelter elsewhere because of the storm, and that he had finally returned home after power had been restored to his neighbourhood to find that because we sold him a defective door all the pipes in his house had frozen and burst, and that he was going to sue the company for damages and repairs. He finally stops to catch his breath, and I ask him what's wrong with the door. "The f---ing thing is defective! It let in a draft!" I look at the door, then at him, and nod and enter that into the computer. And since the customer's reason for returning was defective, I have to tag the item as defective. He gets his money back, I pass him off to the manager who's been watching in disbelief the whole time, and I go about taking care of the next customer. A little while later, a co-worker who deals with the vendor returns comes up. "... What's up with this door that just popped up in my system?" I point at the door. "... What's wrong with it?" "It lets in a draft." She stares at it, then at me. "You're -kidding-, right? It's a screen door!" ---- Late night, about twenty minutes to closing, woman comes in and up to the desk to pay off part of her credit card bill. She hands me the most recent statement, I scan it in, and she hands me a cheque. Standard procedure, I need to verify a few things on the cheque before I try to process it... and I notice that the printed name on the cheque is 1) for a man and 2) the bottom is signed with a woman's name that doesn't share the last name on the top... and neither names match the man's name that is on the credit account. Now... normally we don't really nitpick about the name on the account matching the name used on the payment method as long as the payment method matches whoever is presenting it at the counter, but at this point I have three different names and I'm smelling something strange. Policy is that the name on the top of the cheque must match the signed name at the bottom, and that the only time I can take a cheque as payment that doesn't belong to the person presenting it is if the name on it matches the credit account it's paying off. So, at this point, I try to politely reject the cheque. Holy crap, wrong move. Woman goes into rant mode. About how she's trying to pay off her credit account and that the law says if I reject payment then she is no longer responsible for the balance. I attempt to politely point out that the name on the account is a man's name, and that if she shows me some ID I can gladly make sure she's on the account and from there we can discuss her using payment that I can legally accept. She tosses an ID on the counter... and now I have four different names, and her name is not on the account. I tell her that her name isn't on the account... she goes into her purse, and pulls out another ID... with a completely different name. That's FIVE names now, folks. None match, and both the ID's have her picture on them. So... I call my supervisor up, and very quietly (though not as discreetly as I'd like, cause the crazy woman on the other side of the counter is leaning over it so far that I'm thinking she's about to climb over it to join us) tell her of the situation. Supervisor turns to the crazy woman and informs her that both company and bank policy is that we cannot accept cheques for any sort of payment if the names do not match. Crazy mode starts again. Now we're being treated to a rant about how rejecting the payment because of names not matching is proof that the government has gotten to us and begun to genetically mutate us into real sheep-people and that the president is a lizard-man from the center of the earth and the genetic mutations are part of a plan where the other lizard-men turn us into a food source and that they're about to move to the surface and take over. Forty-five minutes after the store closes, we finally get the woman out of the building under threat of police intervention, account still unpaid. ---- Before working at , I worked for a regional chain of convenience stores/gas stations. The company prided itself on having above-state-requirements when it came to ID checking and alcohol/tobacco/tobacco paraphernalia sales, including requiring employees to attend classes and be certified by the state in these matters. So, I'm at the register, the store manager at the manager's desk which is nearby and behind some shelving so she isn't seen by customers. The manager and I do -not- get along, but she's unwilling to fire me because I willingly take some of the shifts that are normally considered to be REALLY crappy ones. Kid comes in, stops as he approaches the counter, then sighs and steps up and asks for a pack of cigarettes. I don't even bother asking to see his ID, I tell him no and to get out. Manager pops up from the desk, signs onto the backup register, and tells the kid to come over to her, she'll sell him the cigarettes. Me: "... You.. can't do that. I already denied him a sale, company policy is that if a customer is denied by one employee, none of the other employees can override." Boss: "I'm not an employee. I'm the manager." She rings in the ciggs, and overrides the check ID prompt. Me: "... You might want to check his ID..." Boss: "He's old enough." Me: "How can you tell?" Boss: "Look, when you've been doing this as long as I have, you can accurately gauge the age of anyone who comes in." She finishes the sale, hands the kid his receipt, and he heads out the door, pausing just long enough to mumble 'sorry' to me before he leaves. Store is empty now, and the manager is informing me that she's writing me up for insubordination and starts grabbing the paperwork. I'm not really paying much attention to her, as I watch the kid return to the rather official looking navy-blue Crown Victoria I had seen him get out. From where I'm standing, I can clearly see him handing over both the cigarettes and the receipt to the driver. Driver gets out of the car and comes into the building. The lapel on his windbreaker identifies him as a member of the state's Tobacco and Alcohol Commission. Official: "So! Which of you ladies wants to take responsibility for selling these cigarettes to a minor?" Boss: *looks a bit panicked, then points at me* "She did it." Me: "Ah, no? I denied the sale, you overrode me and didn't even bother to check his ID." Boss: "Don't you dare try to pin this on me." Official: *looks at the receipt, then at my nametag* "Well, according to the receipt... she's not the one who sold it. And according to the kid I sent in here, she did deny the sale and you overrode her. So, she's not in trouble." He writes out the citation, the manager signs it, and he goes to leave and stops. He turns, looks at me, and tilts his head. Official: "Y'know, the kid said you flat-out refused him without checking his ID. That is within your power according to the State, but why did you do it?" Me: "Next time, you shouldn't send in my sixteen-year-old brother."

As long as I'm not having to go outside at a truck stop... I guess all of them? >__>; Then again, my definition of underwear occasionally defers from others -- I've gone and gotten the mail in my underwear before, and no-one in the building batted an eye at me. NOPE NOPE NOPE Kitchen accidents are my triggger god damn... I cook and bake a lot, I did it for a living too. For me, the risks of cooking at home are the same as in a professional kitchen. The thought of accidentally spilling/splashing boiling liquid, making skin contact with a hot tray, getting hit with roux, being hit with steam, popping oil, burst of flame is a nightmare. Burns are not fun or sexy :cry: This is why we invented aprons..!

I have two reoccurring weird dreams... The first one has to do with... moving stuff. Sometimes something very small, sometimes something impossibly big. Sometimes stuff that's easy to handle/stack (like a couple small boxes) or stuff that's like "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BALANCE THIS CRAP?!". And sometimes it's for short distances, other times several miles. And sometimes it's perfectly flat terrain, and sometimes it's painfully jagged, or impossibly steep, or filled with chasms. I'm always barefoot, and everything except me is always this shade of cantaloupe-pink (which sort of makes sense, since that was the colour my childhood bedroom was painted). And that's all the dream was about. Moving random things through this random space, over and over. Pick something up, move it however far, put it down, pick something else up, move it however far, put it down. The other one is about doing cartwheels... again in a cantaloupe-pink space. Sometimes the space was really small and I couldn't even do one without hitting a wall, other times I could keep going for what seemed forever.

Guess it depends on where in the north you are >_> I grew up on sugar-snow (snow that gets drizzled in maple sap that's been boiled to the point it crystallizes) and snow-cream (snow that gets mixed with cream/milk, a bit of sugar, and some flavorings). What better way to combat 6 feet of snow than to eat it?! Anyways. "Italian ice", you can find as options at some ice cream shops back home (Maine and New Hampshire), but I honestly see more sno-cone stands and shaved ice carts. We had a large Korean population in the area I lived in in New Hampshire, so even the "shaved ice topped with soft serve ice cream and red bean paste and a ton of fruit" option was available. And is delicious.

... Heh... well... if I'm going to show my 'room', might as well show the whole 'house'. This is my bedroom/office/where I spend 95% of my day. I share that little bed with my husband. There -is- a top bunk, but that's used for clothes storage and you really don't need to see the plastic bin where my underwear is stored. That cargo net is part of a safety restraint system. It's not for some weird kink/fetish, it's there for legal reasons. Turn 90 degrees... there's this cupboard. Upper one is food storage, the open cubby houses whatever I've recently shoved into it (time this pic was taken, I think the TV and DVD collection was in there along with appears to be a wristwarmer/fingerless glove). The pull-out desk/drawer is for electronics and my cooking space. Lower cupboard houses paperwork and cleaning supplies. This is 90 degrees in the other direction from the bed. The microwave is long-gone... couldn't run it without overloading the APU. That cubby currently houses medical supplies/personal care stuff, along with whatever stuff I have to cram in there. Black thing is the fridge, cupboard under it holds bottled water/bulk drinks. Aaaaaand... this is the 'front room'. I took this while sitting on the top bunk. Don't ask me what all the buttons and gauges do, I only know which one turns on the hazards, which one works the interior dome light, and the red round button next to the warning panel is not to be touched unless there is a Major Emergency. Yes, I live in a 7x7 space. Aaaand, here's the outside: Or... at least that's the outside for a few more days. Husband is changing divisions, so we're getting a new truck.

You may call it a mess. I call it organized chaos.

I don't think I'll ever bake a cake in the oven again. My husband and I have been in a hotel room for just under a week now while we wait for a new truck, so we've been able to do a lot more when it comes to cooking than normal. Last night we were both in a mood for cake, but 1) it was late at night and 2) the good bakeries in town are in places we can't get to with a bobtail semi. This morning, he saw something on Facebook in a trucker-related group about cooking banana bread in lunchbox ovens and rice cookers, and asked me if I thought I could do the same with a cake. So, I gave it a try with a basic cake mix that I was able to pick up at Walmart. The downside: It takes a while, and you have to keep turning on the rice cooker. The FB group said to cook the banana bread on "Steam" mode in a rice cooker, but the steam mode on mine only works for five or so minutes at a time. So I switched to "White Rice". This took just about three cycles to do (almost an hour and a half once I realized that steam mode wouldn't work), the FB group warned that it could take up to five cycles on steam mode so I think this was an improvement. The upside: Ohmygodsit'ssomoistanddense..! The end result is very similar to what I remember my great-grandparent's steamed puddings to be like. My husband described it at "sponge-y", and actually said the frosting was unnecessary -- he would've been happy with just a bit of powdered sugar. Method: -- Prepare cake batter (again, I used a basic chocolate mix from Walmart). -- Spray the inside of the interior pan with non-stick spray (possibly unnecessary if the interior pan is already non-stick, I just didn't want to chance a mess). Do not flour. -- Pour in batter. The cake will rise a lot, so you want to fill the pan no more than halfway. -- Place interior pan into cooker, and turn on the cooker. If you have multiple settings, use "White Rice". -- Allow cooker to finish first cycle, open to check for done-ness. Likely they won't be done, but check anyways. It'll likely be puffed up, but still rather liquid-y. -- Reset cooker, and let it run for another cycle. Check again, though again likely won't be done yet. Mine started looking a little set around the sides at this point. -- Reset cooker again. About halfway through the cycle, check. This is when mine started really looking cooked around the edges, but the middle was still very liquid. I checked again at five minutes before the cycle ended, and at this point the center was set and sprung back when touched. -- If needed, reset cooker yet again. Check every five or so minutes; you only want to cook until the center sets and springs back -- Remove interior pan, let it cool on the counter for fifteen-twenty minutes before taking it out of the pan. Getting it out of the pan should be easy-easy, just tip it upside down and the cake should slide right out. When I get off the truck in a few months, I'm totally trying this again with a homemade cake batter recipe. Vanilla cake with strawberries and peaches... and some whipped cream...

Skin tones would... probably be somewhere in the fourth palette for brown shown on this site. Sea Wolves tend to be more of the second palette, while Hellsguard are more of the sixth.

I actually sort of assumed that some degree of elemental affinity was not only Lore, but common. At the very least, during character creation you choose your patron deity, and this does affect your elemental attributes. I don't know about the raiding scene (I'm not a raider) but I haven't experienced a part of the game where players --NEED-- to beef up elemental resists with materia for content, so it seems (to me) that the patron deity affecting elemental attributes is more of an RP/immersion thing. Anyways. Kara's got a higher affinity to fire and earth. She's got a minor affinity to air, neutral to lightning, weak to water, and -really- weak to ice. It's not exact to someone who's patron is Azeyma, but I think it's appropriate for someone who's very much a desert dweller.

When I create a character, I give them an 'ultimate goal' and a really loose timeline of things I really want to happen to the character. Everything else that can and does happen between creation and the possible achievement of that ultimate goal, if it's for the good of the story (mine, someone else who I'm OOCly or ICly friendly with, or with a group I hold in high regard), I'll at least put a lot of consideration into doing something drastic for the good of a story. I had a character in another game that got stabbed, broken, burned, put in a coma, left for dead, branded, cut up, temporarily blinded, enthralled, kidnapped, tortured, mentally tortured, and cut open so things could be hidden in her (mule for illegal arcane goods), all for the sake of "making a better story". Sometimes these things would sideline me for a few weeks/couple months from major action, but only once -- and that would be the blinding incident -- was I OOCly unhappy with the whole thing. Now... breaking character for the sake of story... I try to make characters that have enough flex in any direction that I don't have to break character. There is one exception to this, though: I have another RP group I run with, in another game. I like the people in that group, save one person who... I think we all just feel so sorry for the guy, that we can't bring ourselves to kick him out. We suspect that he might have a bit of a handicap, but we can't confirm because it seems that not only does he hold a regular job without an advocate/assistant, he has a driver's license and is the caretaker for his elderly parents. Responses from him take a very long time (he will sometimes just go unresponsive for up to a few hours in the middle of a conversation), and he seems... unable to understand the consequences of his IC actions. My character, specifically, hates his character. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hates his. She also holds him in the highest suspicion, and thinks he's useless and a coward. Granted, my character's default setting when it comes to men is that she hates them, but they do have every opportunity to get in her better graces. This was explained to him OOCly when he first joined the group, and several times since then. He and I have had several conversations (at his request) on how to get his character into her better graces. I've even told him exactly what to do, but he constantly immediately backs up these actions with his character saying or doing something that puts him in an even worse place than where he was before -- it's always one step forward, two steps back with him. It's to the point where for the sake of the group's RP, I HAVE to ignore him ICly or it'd just be neverending IC bickering. If my character ever gets turned into a monster, she's turning into a Tonberry... and "Everyone's Grudge" is going to one-hit KO him. Similarly, he gets a lot of... well... what I'd call 'pity RP' from me. It's not stuff that is for the better of the story, it's just stuff so that he's not sitting in the corner doing nothing on slow days, and that I sort of retcon in my own mind to not really have happened because... it wouldn't have happened. Stuff that breaks the 'mechanics' of how my character works/interacts with the setting's environment. Or just how she interacts with other people. Someone is not going to sneak up absolutely silently on her while they're wearing plate armor and coming from the direction she's already looking and they're not using a sneak or invisible spell/ability. Or pick her up with one arm and run with her like she's a football when she weighs 100lbs more than what they say their max lift/carry ability is. Or for her to stay seated at a bar next to someone she hates and have a polite conversation with. ... I'm tired and rambling, going to shut up now and take a nap...

I started having interest in RP back in... geez... early highschool... so '98? Many of my friends were into D&D, but the whole thing was intimidating to me because of all the math -- my brain isn't wired for math beyond the most basic skills and (perhaps oddly) fractions/percents -- so I watched from the sidelines a lot and whenever a couple few friends were DM'ing they'd have me do voices/bit parts for NPCs, or help them write scenarios. Later part of highschool ('00-'01-ish) someone in our circle discovered the WhiteWolf games (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Mage the Ascension, etc), which is based off of a d10/percentile system, which I could understand. Finally, I got to join as an actual player and not just the voice of the automated telephone operator. My first character was a... Stargazer Werewolf, I think... I don't remember much about her, to be totally honest. Later we adapted the Mage module for a Matrix-themed campaign, and I remember my character there had "CTRL+C/CTRL+V" as her signature ability... soo much fun to use, but would earn me so much Paradox that would alert Agents really quickly to our presence. Right around the same time, I got into LARPing. There was a couple leagues in the area, and while I wasn't able to go to many of the Official league events for health/legal reasons (the State was involved with my "health and welfare", and they had some really strange notions of what I was and wasn't capable of at age 16/17), I could typically make the house events and practices with my friends. After graduating, between most of my circle of friends being scattered by college and my health hitting a major snag that kept me from being even a third as physically active as I used to be, I started getting into videogames and online stuff. I was playing Phantasy Star Online and did some RP both there and on the Sega of America forums (mostly on the Sega forums... anyone who played PSO knows that the chat system there wasn't the best medium). I started branching out into other types of forum and IM-based RP after that. I started playing FFXI soon after the NA release, but it was about another two or so years before I discovered that the server I was on had a couple RP communities. I joined up with them and... well, I made some friends, I made some enemies, I made some mistakes. Looking back, the communities there weren't horribly lore-abiding, and there was a lot of weirdness going on that I unfortunately picked up and adopted. Towards the end of this time in XI, some old friends from highschool and I had begun to reconnect, and we broke out the old WhiteWolf books. Our schedules all seemed to perfectly match up, and we had Game Nights two to three times a week for several months. Had a really kickass Vampire/Werewolf campaign going on, in which a character very dear to my heart, 'Emma', was born from and actually is the original inspiration for part of the modern-day fantasy writing project I have. Unpleasant Life stuff happened at some point. Situations being what they were, I had to give up on playing (and by proxy, RPing) XI because I just didn't have the time, and -anyone- who's ever played XI before Abyssea and all the updates to make soloing possible knows that the game was both difficult and a major time sink -- it took HOURS to just get an EXP party going, only to spend two hours killing monsters before the party broke up and you walk away with only 10k more EXP than when you started with. Remember folks, XI used to be a game where the Dev's idea of nerfing was "knocking 3 hours worth of HP off an NM, therefore making the fight only 6 hours long now" and they pit level 60 players against level 75 mobs for their level 60 armor. Also, stuff had apparently happened with the RP groups, so even when I started getting time back to just log in to RP, my enthusiasm to do so really, REALLY badly suffered. Eventually, I gave up on XI... and I moved on to World of Warcraft in '07. Judge if you want. The first appeal to WoW for me was that I could play for an hour or so at a time and feel like I actually accomplished things, which was super important because at the time that's all I had. The second appeal was that I landed on Steamwheedle Cartel, which was a really, REALLY good RP server. A lot of people, when they hear about RP in Warcraft, they immediately associate it with Moonguard and the rampant ERP. Not the case with Steamwheedle. Not to say that ERP never happened, but I think in the years I played on that server I only actually saw it once, and never encountered actual RPers soliciting (LOLRPtrolls, not Troll-race Trolls, were a different matter of course). Horde-side, the RP atmosphere was almost militaristic and was the favorite pass-time of many of the Big Name Raiders/Endgamers. It was -fantastic-, the community (which spanned both Horde and Alliance) was -fantastic-. I feel I can safely say that these are the people who really taught me how to RP, how to research and respect Lore while still being creative, and that cliche is perfectly acceptable (especially if the lore heavily supports the cliche) as long as one approaches the cliche from the correct angle and embraces it properly, and when in doubt or when the Lore is too vague to be useful, pull from Real-World equivalents and build theory off of that before going "it's magic". 2010 rolls around. Various reasons, left Warcraft behind and I wandered the 'net for a while, searching for something new for RP. Tried Champions Online... RP scared me there. There's another game I tried... I honestly can't even remember the name of it, I was in and out in a few da-- LOTRO. It was LOTRO. I hated it. And there was a parade of Free-to-Play games that a roommate kept pressing me into because "Oh, you'll love this! This is exactly what you want in a game!". Except I hated them all. Eventually, a co-worker talked me into resubbing to WoW and moving to his server, where he was in an RP guild. And it was... fine, I suppose. Had some fun for a couple months, but the appeal died quickly. Aaaand then, FFXIV 1.0 was released. I was SO excited, this was the "Project: Rapture" that had been whispered and hinted about since end of Chains of Promathia/beginning of Treasures of Aht Urghan. And it looked soooo pretty, and in lurking on old XI RP sites, I saw people were stirring and talking about the server the Beta community had claimed for RP. ... Except, in trying to play it, it nearly fried the four-month-old gaming rig that we put the disk into. The computer's specs were more than adequate, the game just kept crashing and sending up errors. Eventually we gave up, especially when we had learned that it was apparently easier to cancel one's account than it was to equip a hat. A couple months later the friend who I have been doing MMO's and forum RP with since back in the days of PSO and the Sega forums (he once joked that he is my Official Stalker) suggested that we try FFXI again, and that he had found a possible candidate for an RP group to join and from all accounts, the game had become solo-friendly. I'll be totally honest. I was skeptical. Really, REALLY skeptical. But he eventually talked me into it. And while his interest eventually waned and he unsubbed, I'm still playing XI and RPing with that group. Yes, the group is small (and has gotten even smaller as some people completely jumped ship to XIV after 2.0 was released), but we still have fun. Which now brings me to the release of ARR. When the XI group started talking about doing RP in XIV, I was very much against it. My limited experience with 1.0 had left a bad taste in my mouth, but not only that... I was on a big-rig truck, with only a $200 Wal-Mart special Acer Netbook for a computer (which actually handled XI just fine), and a mobile data connection from AT&T that majorly disliked cows, rainy weather, trees, other trucks, and the whole states of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and just about everywhere west of Missouri. Buuuut then my husband got me a better laptop, and we switched our phone/data plan to a service that actually worked in 90% of the country. Obviously, I was eventually talked into trying ARR. And I'm still here.

Console healing is considered 'slower' because you can't 'queue up' your next cast like you can on PC -- on PC, you have like 1/4-1/2 of a second before the global cooldown is over where you can hit your next cast and the system will accept the command and begin casting the same moment the global cooldown is over, whereas I understand on console you MUST wait for the global cooldown to finish before you can hit your next cast and the system will accept your next command. It's sort of the trade-off for the ease that's console/controller movements. Basically: PC: Cast spell --> global cooldown at .2 remaining, hit next spell --> global cooldown finishes, already casting next spell Console: Cast spell --> global cooldown finishes --> hit next spell --> begin casting As for queues, I don't endgame often (... almost ever...), but I know during the leveling grind your queue for dungeons is only limited to how often a tank queues. I think the longest I ever sat as a WHM was five minutes, because 'absolutely no tanks in queue, including Roulette'.

Kara's regular Ride-a-'bo is Dumpling. I don't think I have a real reason for the name... maybe I was thinking about chinese food at the time >_>; Her racer is Outlaw Prince. Let's see... Gardener has Alcea, Luc'a has Spindle, Tinne has Jolly, has Pearl... I think that's all I have right now who have 'bo's.

I'd like to think there's enough variance in all of them that you can find one you enjoy doing to get those delicious MGP... but I'm sure someone will do the math eventually and say which one gives the highest constant reward for the least amount of effort. Like, finding out how to cheese the strength machine or something. That's kind of a depressing thought, actually. If the game can be boiled down to something you could macro and then you just "push buttan, get MGP" while you watch a movie or something. On the other hand, it'd be nice to know if you just want to get to that 1M for the Fenrir mount. So far, the GATEs, chocobo racing, and challenging other players to Triple Triad seem to be the best. The minigame-minigames only get you a max of 5 MGP for best scores. Challenging other players to Triple Triad (at least with what little I've encountered so far) doesn't have a MGP fee like challenging NPCs does, so even if you lose you come out ahead. You can only challenge someone so many times, though, before your winnings gets cut down drastically (180 MGP to the winner down to 25 to the winner)... currently testing to see how long that cap lasts. [[EDIT: Can only get the 180 five times per day... bummer...]] GATEs, the only one I've managed to finish to the end (mainly because I keep getting called away for work), I got over 400MGP for. They can be a -bit- tricky because how busy the zone is and lag issues. I think they pop about every... half-hour or so? I'm horrible with keyboard controls, but I was doing okay with Chocobo Racing. I placed 4th or better in four of the five races I did a little while ago. I wasn't getting SUPER AWESOME earnings through that, but I was at least coming out ahead.

There's one in Coerthas, in the First Dicasterial... Really Long Name Place.

While I'm soooo much more interested in the Ul'dah clothing... I'm also hoping that (if this all does end up to be gender-divided) the Limsa stuff is a separated top and skirt.

One hour! Think of the orphans..!

~I will buuuuuuuuuuurrrrn my brrrreeeaaaaaadddd drrrrrrrreeeeaaaaaaaad~! My intro to the Persona series was P3P, with the Female Main Character (FeMC), after months and months (... years...) of insistence from a friend. I regretted not picking it up sooner. The story is good. There is filler content (pop-quizes, mid-terms and finals, anyone?), but that can and does have an effect on things you can get and your social skills. While some of the characters can be a bit... cliche... the relationships (Social Links) you build do a really good job of getting you to care for characters. The story is good. Humor. Akihiko is adorkable. Doesn't matter if you're male or female IRL, you'll find him adorkable. The story is good. There is a LOT of stuff to do, and unless you're playing with a guide next to you the whole time, you're not going to get everything done the first run through. So lots of replay value (I think my current save is for my fifth play-through, and I'm still not 100% on my compendium or Theo's requests). Now... P4, it was good. I won't ever deny it. I think P4 has more humor and it really did a good job with the Social Links and making it really obvious that your bonds with your team-mates made a difference. To be totally honest, though, I only did one play-through using my husband's New Game Plus just so I could get the story, and that was enough for me. I just really, REALLY like P3 better.

I'd like to point out that I said 'one Nunh to a population' (meaning a group living in a general area, or community), not per Tribe. I'm fully in the camp that there should be multiple populations/communities per Tribe with Tias traveling to/being exchanged to new communities; overall population and genetic diversity being two reasons for this. If we only have one Nunh per Tribe, and 20-50 females to a Nunh, we'd possibly be looking at a total (traditional) population of around 1300, maximum. And if there's not a lot of breeding between Tribes, we would be then dealing with 26 pockets of potentially genetically-unstable humanoids -- Miqo'te aren't cheetahs, after all. I'm not understanding why a Nunh wouldn't have a decent, fathering presence in his offspring's lives. Female Seekers are busy; they are the providers and are active in the day-to-day affairs of the community, which the Nunh has little-to-no involvement in. So, unless there is need to expand or defend territory or there is a female that is demanding to get pregnant Right Now, the Nunh would have more than ample time to devote to his offspring -- possibly even be the primary educator for the younger children. Tias would likely help with educating, too, but they seem to have other responsibilities to the community. Note: I'm going off the assumption that female Seekers aren't baby-crazy and the Nunh isn't being required by the females to keep them all constantly pregnant and presenting him with 20-50 babies a year; in a culture where females are the providers, everyone being pregnant all the time would doom the community. Five or so babies a year would be much more reasonable. Also... I wouldn't get too worked up about the use of the word harem. Despite what Western culture and anime genres make it seem (and granted probably how most people use it these days...), a harem was originally just the part of the house/household where the women lived. Yes, it was often secluded/forbidden for anyone but the man of the house to enter. Yes, there were wives and concubines housed in there. But not every woman in there had some sort of romantic/sexual link to the man of the house -- the female relatives (mother/in-law, aunts, sisters) of both his and his wives that he was responsible for lived in there too, along with his children, and the slaves/attendants that serviced them all.