How did I get myself into this mess?

For as long as I can remember I've had an MMORPG itch. For a long time I didn't have the means to get into subscription based games so my forays into the MMO scene were often brief and sporadic. The earliest one I can remember diving into was Runescape back when it was still in its infancy. It didn't last long, but it was fun for the few months I played it back when I was young and foolish. After remaining dormant for a few years I picked up Rubies of Eventide. What looked like a promising free MMO turned out to be unable to capture my attention once it was installed, and so I slumbered for a few years longer. During college I got that old urge to go adventuring once more. This time I found a private server hosting Ragnarok Online. I've never been one to fault a game for its graphics and the gameplay was solid enough to keep me around long enough to meet a few folks. Unfortunately the community wasn't strong enough to compete with the increasing workload, so I was dislodged yet again. I suppose I should probably make mention of the fact that I tried Guild Wars and that it was worse than all the free MMOs. That'll learn me, and so once again the urge to play MMOs went dormant for a time.

At this point you're probably wondering what all of this has to to do with FFXI. See, as much as I've been drawn to MMORPGs over the years, I've never really agreed with the subscription bussiness model. I was used to buying games that for $50 that I would play for literally at least 4 to 5 years. I just couldn't see the sense in paying over $100 for one year of gameplay. Final Fantasy XI managed to break me of my disdain for subscription based games.

It was the summer after graduating from college and I had a lot of free time on my hands and no truly pressing obligations, what better time to start diving back into MMOs? I went through a few titles that summer, but the ones that stood out were Dungeon Runner for being wondefully satirical but ultimately too shallow and Runes of Magic for being the clunkiest game I've had the displeasure of playing. Seriously, I spent a good two nights getting that thing downloaded, but once I got it installed I pitched it after about 20 minutes of very poor interface and game design. Alas it seemed that I would not be finding an MMORPG worth my time and would have to be content with whatever else I could scrounge up. I gave up my search and went back to my old fall back: a huge pile of console and PC games that I needed to get around to finishing.

Then a funny thing happened. One of my friends had been roping me into online gaming excursions for a while now, the most recent being a failed attempt to start turning a profit by drafting M:tG Online. About a week after I had given up hunting down a new MMO my friend came to me with another online gaming scheme. Only this time it involved a proper MMORPG, the kind that came complete with subscriptions and all that jazz. I was reluctant to touch anything of that nature but he managed to coax me into it since we could just try it out on trial accounts for two weeks and see how it went. I was wary, but agreed to give it a go. 2 weeks for free and then I could just cut myself off if it wasn't worthwhile right?

Not so much. I got sucked in hard and haven't been able to escape since.

While we wrestled with getting FFXI installed and trial accounts set up, my friend and I started doing some light homework on what jobs we would take up. We both debated the merits of rolling as Thief in order to play up the cowardly asshattery that we would invariably bring to the game in some form or another, but after a long and thoughtful deliberation my friend decided he'd rather just punch his way through the game and rolled Monk.

Class selection has always been a long and drawn out process for me. It takes me a while to overcome my indecisiveness, and with 20 jobs to choose from in this game there was quite a lot of choices to narrow down. My initial picks were Thief, Blue Mage or Red Mage. I had no real interest in playing a white mage, but with my friend rolling Monk I would need something to fill the gaps. Thief became less and less appealing as I continued to look at it and quickly following that was the realization that Blue Mage as awesome as it sounded, would not be available for quite a while. Even with this in mind I was still unsure of what to roll.

Then it hit me.
Why not go with the job that does everything but does it poorly?

Yeah, let's go with Red Mage and be a master of mediocrity.

At this point I was no longer taking job selection seriously and figured I might as well goof off and have some fun with my free 2 weeks of playtime. Red Mage has traditionally been a class that does a little bit of white magic, black magic and swordplay, but does all of them rather poorly. Since I couldn't really decide what I wanted to be, it made sense to simply choose "all of the above" and be done with it.

You want to know something really funny?
I have a knack for picking out absurdly powerful classes that take a lot of finesse to pull off correctly. I do this without realizing it or even trying.

Well needless to say my friend and I had fun with our two weeks.
Now I'm stuck on one of the most overpowered jobs in the game and I love it to death. I figure if I'm gonna keep at it I may as well make an effort to not suck.

I strive for mediocrity.
(Yes that includes the blog)