Warren Castille

I'm actually curious to see how they are tonight in primetimes. I saw people in the same spot crafting for days in a row, unmoved.

Queues have been busted since the first morning of Early Access. Have you gotten to play at all, and have you needed to adjust your sleep schedule to manage it? Not snark, legitimately curious. Every afternoon from EST to late night PST has had 2-4 hour queues and most people I know just don't bother if they show up to a 3200 person line.

No way in hell am i waiting for 3 hours of my 5 hours off work to play a game. You can be sure as hell I'm going to remotely try logging in from work so that I can be greeted by a smaller queue when I get home. FFXIV has a handful of third party launchers. Some of them were to launch the game using WINE on Linux. (Google it.) It goes back to the "I'm still paying for this subscription" mentality. Sure, I could just play on another server, but if I'm not going to be able to socialize with the people I want to socialize with, why am I paying that sub? I might as well just hang out with them in person. XIV is a fun game I like to play. I certainly have other fun games I like playing, but I like them far less. It's pretty poor customer service to tell people "Wait until the no-lifers are done and go back to other things, then you can have your hobby back." I work a full day and have a one hour commute each way, if I can't play the game when I'm available to play the game, I'm not sure why I paid for it.

I'm not done the entire story, but is there any example of them being in Doma proper? Kugane is ostensibly not a part of the nation due to their Swiss-like policy. I was under the impression that they only had jurisdiction and relevance in Kugane (but it's entirely likely I'm wrong). This. Being beholden to a single city is extremely limiting. I'm also slightly concerned that, if Kugane becomes a PVE hub as well as a PVP hub, it'll be excessively trolled. While a lot of people are cool with just shrugging that off, there's probably as many who'll just quit rather than get made fun of.

I'm hoping we get to see more of these guys as things progress through the 4.x series. I think the biggest challenge they'd have when trying to RP is that, since they're basically Kugane cops, it's extremely hard to justify them being anywhere else (and we don't know how much of an RP hub Kugane might be). There's nothing stopping them from traveling to Eorzea proper, but that's basically playing an out-of-jurisdiction cop. There's a lot of ground to cover here, I'm kind of amped to see what the community comes up with.

I'm betting it's designed so that if you have it open when the time runs out, it lets you finish gathering. The node vanishes, but the interface won't.

I thought State of Decay 2 looked pretty good, and actually mistook that for Days Gone yesterday. That bodes poorly for DG, since SoD was super cheap on launch. When people have two similar zombo games and one's sub-40 bucks and one's 60, it's not much of a contest. Guessing at prices, though. IN OTHER NEWS, FUCKING SPIDER-MAN MILES C'MON MILES I'm so amped, this might be the first PS4 game to actually pull me away from my PC and get me to play something. The Sony expo was all around solid, I appreciated that not wasting time on fucking youtuber bullshit and just chaining trailers together.

I'm all about free art because I am a scoundrel promoting growth and practice amongst artists.

The time investment is definitely a thing we're aware of! We went from usually finishing up around 1am to suddenly pushing after 2 and sometimes into 3. Trying to change format at this point is kind of impossible, though. Despite this thread being the "source" there's such a sprawling pool of players that some don't even know the RPC exists, and while I know there are folks active on tumblr who post about us we don't have a page ourselves. I agree with your pains, though (and I suspect a lot of people do!). I think we've all been hunting around for whatever means we can implement that would help snip off the lengthier stuff, but without an outright huge format adjustment we're kind of beholden to the numbers we get. I think the system we use is decent enough but it wasn't designed with this kind of scale in mind.

GRINDSTONE 193: DONE FIGHTERS: 72 WINNER: KEIICHI JEJEICHI HE'S NOT A LALAFELL Thanks to everyone who hung out, all of the folks who shared some tasty tunes, and all of the folks who regularly make this event possible. YES, WE WILL BE HERE NEXT WEEK. EARLY ACCESS WILL NOT STOP THE GRINDSTONE. Come by and show off your new lv60+ skills!

Warren's a big dumb boring Green. Also I have no idea how anyone could be Orange, I don't think Larfleeze is going to share.

Eighty-four people! Holy shit! Grindstone #192 is done! One winner! Beexu Spiritbreaker! GRINDSTONE 200 COMETH. WE'RE HARD AT WORK COMING UP WITH ALL KINDS OF RIDICULOUS SHIT TO MAKE FOR FUN TIMES. BRACE YOURSELF.

From humble beginnings...!

Changing Oaths takes 50 points, looks like a cap of 100. Gauge fills by doing Sword Oath Damage or Blocking Attacks. I mean, I still think Bulwark is trash but at least it's going to serve to help speed the process along despite being completely inferior to Passage of Arms come level 70, due to it's better block rate / cooldown / duration but there's still time to adjust it! RIP Stance Dancing.

If stupidly no one else has taken you up on this, yes. I can gift it to you right now if that's cool!

Grindstone #191 is in the books and it was a doozy! We had an astonishing 83 people line up for fun and games - which is actually just one person shy of matching our highest-fighter total set back in February! It also means we had more people playing our sub-game inside of an MMO than Battleborn had tonight at the same time. When all was said and done, our newest champ is a repeat customer: Congratulations to Berrod Armstrong on his victory! Be sure to watch out for Talman's scoop in the Crystal Chronicle for more details! There's only eight Grindstones left until our big #200 part at the end of July!

SE's done a piss-poor job introducing things to their setting in Heavensward; The lore will be what the lore is, logic or precedent be damned. Set your bars low, be pleasantly surprised, and be ready to exist in grey areas if SE doesn't explain anything. Red Mage's lore is something that bugs the shit out of me.

Grindstone 189 is in the books! 67 fighters, 4 hours of fun, and one winner! W'chaza Yheli!

Warren can't read and shouldn't post things at 3am.

Grindstone #188 is in the books! Tonight say 62 fighters turn up to prove themselves the best in the land, and after several hours of combat only one person was left standing! Congratulations to Rhuketar Sel'rybaen aka The Onion Knight! Grindstone #200 approaches. What surprises will be in store? Who knows?!

Congratulations to tonight's winner, Aysa Farland! Crowning a mod means I get all kinds of powers right?] Tonight marks Grindstone #187! Anyone watching the spreadsheet might have noticed that there's suddenly entries leading up to #200, taking place on July 29... The next Grindstone Special will be taking place on July 29th! Look forward to various contests, prizes and excitement!

His world building and rules for magic are spot-on. If you're going to have a magic system, it has to be well enough devised that people don't feel like you're using it to asspull or deus ex machina out of a situation if you hadn't already established something. XIV does a fuck-awful job of this, for example. I've vented before about how dumb the teleporting mechanic is and I maintain that; We can use it in the plot when things are convenient, but never any other time. Healing magic, too, isn't particularly well handled between in-game and in-lore situations (looking at you, every major NPC death in the MSQ!). If you're going to allow supernatural powers into your setting, you have to let them perform as you'd expect unless you've got extremely specific reasons why those things don't work. I can also recommend Sanderson's takes on world-building (and his books if you're not reading them) since he does a very good job of following rules through, barring a few half-retcons in a number of situations.

Tonight's Grindstone pitted 50? fighters against one another, and after four? hours there was only one person left standing! Congratulations to Eshyn Veneanar on winning the Grindstone in their debut fight!

You are welcome here. Stay a while, and listen.

I hate to correct you, but several NPCs with the Echo recuited the Scions are still alive (even after the spoiler event). The Roe that does squats still, and his elezen buddy are still kicking and specifically talk about being expected to take on Ifrit in the WoL absence dealing with other things as reasons for continuing their tough training schedule. Both have the Echo. The Sea Wolf Fem-roe Salfswys in waking sands talked about her awkwardness adjusting to having the Echo is also still there. Heck, the lore book even states clearly that she was also at Cartenau which could make her a plural WoL candidate. The point is plenty of Echo holders recruited by the Scions/Path of the Twelve/Circle of Knowing over the years are still alive and kicking. We are even attracting more, like Krile. While I personally think it is a long shot in the dark, we may even run into our old path companion again or hear some sort of nod to their fate in Stormblood. They were Ala Mhigan resistance, after all. Yar. If I remember correctly, though, the people who are still around weren't there for the spoiler event: I thought everyone who existed prior gets caught up in the dramatic incident. I'm happy to be wrong, but I was operating under the assumption that 2.0 neatly wraps up vast majority of the MSQ 1.x roleplayers.