Wot in an Oppressed Nation

Yeah, I was with CWA in the early 90s and the SAG/AFTRA a few years later. Honestly the latter seemed only to exist to keep non-union people from finding work, but the former was instrumental in keeping AT&T honest in regard to how it treated its workforce. There was a near-strike in 1991 I think it was - negotiations went into extra innings but the union pulled through and the executive board relented.

Only way ta stop an irresistable force is with an immovable object, otherwise ya just get flattened.

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One of the biggest gripes about FFXIV is the GCD until you’re level 50. It can be very slow, but I feel it enriches the experience where we’re so obsessed with getting to endgame mega fast cause we’ve done it a hundred times before, whereas in FFXIV there’s a reason to slow down and make it meaningful.

You also revisit the same areas over and over again so each area is never obsolete. There’s always a reason to visit as your level and abilities scale to the zone and not the other way around. So it’s actually balanced.

My Hellsguard is Deep Hurting.

Also, relating to PvP in FFXIV, it’s a strange beast. You are given a much slimmer, simpler ability set as opposed to your full breadth of skills, and choose a few active and passive abilities. All Roles have the same base hp/mp and abilites/passives to choose from, and you build your Adrenaline (Limit Break) solo, as opposed to one for the whole group.

It’s a very dividing activity in FF, some folks love it (I enjoy it when I feel like popping into a Frontline), some think it’s absolutely awful. There’s also The Feast, which is basically 8-man Arenas. I think it’s worth testing out the waters at least, if you’ve ever had an interest in PvP. You are rewarded with seals to spend on gear, minions, etc, and you can earn Titles through achievements.

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FFXIV does PvP without ruining its story.

Blizzard. Looking at you.

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Let’s be honest, most MMOs do pvp without ruining their story.

Blizzard is just exceptionally bad at it.

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I’m in finally as “Shangri Ladeeda” the giant dude bard

Currently trying to remember how to play this game.

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Was playing through some of the Glenumbra (first real Daggerfall Covenant) zone for the first time (I was a bad dungeon monkey the first time I played ESO and skipped a lot of questing) and the amount of times I was asked to make a hard decision that actually affected proceeding quests and had things like new NPCs being created, quests being made harder/more difficult, and in some places small content lines being closed off was honestly staggering.

This was one of the first zones they ever made back in 2014. Four and a half years later Blizzard introduces one choice for one quest for one faction and receives a partial standing ovation.

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This is hands down my favorite thing about ESO, and it’s not just big overarching quests either. Sometimes the smallest side quest had me sitting in a dialogue completely unsure of what choice to make.

One of my favorite instances where you are given a choice of how to proceed were between a vampiric father and son and who to support.

I picked up a crafting job in FF14 before leaving and I don’t remember how it works, at all. I can’t even figure out how to open the crafting interface now.

you craft for the crafting log which is N by default

but i’d honestly recommend waiting until you get some gil and level all the crafting jobs at the same time because XIV’s crafting is a whole endgame itself

That’s wild! I’ve admittedly never played a single-player RPG past the SNES, but getting some of those elements in a MMO is always neat. And this sounds more robust than SWTOR’s choices, which I already liked a lot.

Whoever just whispered me for an invite to that linkshell: Sorry, I wasn’t ignoring you! You caught me in a cutscene, and then you were gone and I discovered I can’t send tells because I still have the free trial version.

Also, I’m not in the thing myself yet, because apparently that is also not available to free trials. At any rate, the function for linkshells is grayed out in my interface.

Choices in ESO are definitely not as prevalent as in SWTOR but I always feel like they’re more impactful that SWTOR.

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Save for a couple small instances, WoW’s PvP is wholly reliant on us vs them on a faction level, which they could do without ruining the story overall but they never have quite managed, in no small part because even when we’re supposed to be working together we’re still forced apart.

In the meantime, over in FF, I can go do stuff with anyone from the other grand companies, my boyfriend currently being with the Serpents and me being a Flames man (Raubahn is just too cool) doesn’t remotely interfere with us doing duties and grinding fates and grouping. Between that and him getting scaled down to the content that’s at-level for me, I’m not stuck doing my at-level content without company.

Also: people are generally way nicer in duties? I’ve gotten two different people giving me helpful input on my tanking? Like I’ve died and contributed unintentionally to wipes and nobody’s gotten angry at me.

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The duty roulette and dungeons in general have actually been pretty neat for me. I don’t know if it’s because of the culture or what but I’ve had similar circumstances. I think if you’re ‘new’ to a duty other people are actually rewarded for it so that’s something interesting that I like. One guy was like “Woo, someone hasn’t done this before, follow me fam to glory and extra riches!”

Part of it could be fishing for commendations also but… SHUT UP AND TAKE MY COMMENDATION YOU’VE MANIPULATED MY COLD BLACK HEART.

Yeah, like, only one person has been a jerk and that was by zoning in, getting told the other three of us were new, going “oof” and immediately leaving, meaning we got to get a new person who evidently did not mind three sprouts that were new to the whole thing.

If I keep this up I might eventually not be as anxious about dungeons in WoW… then again, WoW’s dungeon culture is very different and chock full of vocal gits.

Do I have to actually wear the feather hat to get the exp bonus or do I get the exp just by having it in my bag?

One wears the hat and then clicks off the show hat to obtain xp.

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You have to wear it, but you can glamour over it or hide it however you like.

b-but what about the five armor I get from wearing a leather bowl!