“Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”
– Greg Anderson

Suquamish is officially a level 75 Paladin. Level seventy-five did not come roaring in after an epic battle with a beast. Instead, Suquamish reached the level cap in Final Fantasy XI in a Campaign battle working for another bit of Iron Ram gear, solo’ing one of the standard enemy soldiers.

The feeling about reaching level cap was mixed.  Relief and a fair amount of pride in saying I went the distance in a MMO known for it’s grind.  However, there was that small amount of remorse.  As the quote says, it’s the journey, not the destination.

It was serendipity that 75 came with the Campaign battle that allowed the purchase of the Iron Ram hose so there was a small bit of celebration to have.  Without further ado, here’s Suquamish — 75 Paladin:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

– Robert Frost

I’ve never been one to follow the standard XP route, if I can avoid it. Most of the time I prefer not to play on Easy Mode.  I often go for locations that are off the beaten path, and for prey that aren’t normal squishy, soft hitting wusses.

As such, I don’t expect every player to want to join my parties.  When they do, the expressions uttered are usually appreciative.  For being able to see some scenery creating by the artists at Square Enix while they were inspired.  For being able to listen some music that usually never gets heard because because players never travel to these areas.  For simply doing something that they’ve haven’t done a countless times before.

I also don’t expect a player to go out of their way to explain why they think my location and/or target is a bad idea.  My spots, while not wildly unconventional, usually don’t match the most popular spots for convenience.  But tonight, while assembling an XP party as a Bard, I had one player decide to that.  I sent a tell asking if he wanted to join my party in Sauromugue Champaign with the target being Evil Weapons.  This player responded with “ur joking or a noob.”  The rest of conversation doesn’t really matter.  It was semi-polite, but he explained at length that it’s impossible XP of Evil Weapons in S.Champaign because they’re too hard.  So I looked for another White Mage, and picked up a very nice Japanese player willing to level synch down a couple levels.

With a complete team, we went to work, and 2 hours later I had picked up 3 levels (28-31).  More importantly, we had no competition, we had a blast going after prey most people don’t, and gelled as a team going up against opponents that actually fought back.

In the end, I remember Beermepunk, Medea, Hina, Yurii, and Tyberius as my team members who blazed through chain six, and who all worked together to survive when a duo of Evil Weapons came back to camp hell bent on making us pay for our insolence.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.

– John Updike

Sometimes I wonder if people that log into MMO chat rooms are unable to read the the stuff they type/say.  Like there’s some sort of strange polarized glass that they hang over their monitors that prevents them from actually being able to read what they’ve just typed.

One of the most irksome things that happens all to often is someone logs in and immediately declares “I’m bored!”

Although it’s been said more eloquently by others, Harvey Danger said it most succinctly in their song Where have all the merry makers gone? “If you’re bored then your boring.”

Closely following the “I’m bored” is the person who decides to log into the game to explain that because they’ve played for multiple years (usually longer than the game has actually been out) they’re the expert to explain why the game sucks so much.  I mean, I guess the only response to these people is “Let me guess.  You’re bored?”