Voices in My Head

Goldfish set up a Ventrilo server for TheUltimates this week, and a few of us used it last night on a Dynamis-Bastok run. This should prove to be extremely useful for situations where it's not really very convenient to remove one's hands from one's controller to quickly type an urgent question/command/confirmation. On certain pulls, like the NM trios in Xarcabard, we usually have a small group of people that all need to be ready at the same time, but by the very act of moving my hands to the keyboard to type something as simple as "/s /" to say I'm ready, I'm not actually ready.

It's odd to have real voices to associate with these characters I've been playing with for months and months, but it's nice as well, since it humanizes us, and reminds us that there are indeed real people behind the pixels. It also interesting to see how other people pronounce some of the game terms. Lumikumi says "tar-oo-tar-oo", while we've always said it more like "tare-oo-tare-oo" (yet we say "paw-sta" while a lot of Canadians say "pass-ta" for pasta). I can't remember how he said Xarcabard, but it was quite different from our "zark-a-bard" (with the X like the first one in Xerox). And Goldfish says "die-NAM-is", while it's always been "DIE-na-mis" to me. Meshe has some interesting inflections on non-game words, but that's to be expected from people who aren't native English speakers! People didn't talk a lot, so I'm not sure I could pick either Albany or Morgoth out in a crowd, but I'm sure we'll get more used to it as time passes. Amy was on vent at the beginning of the run, but I think she took off her headset quite early, just before Goldfish turned off the Monty Python recording he'd been playing for us.

Dynamis has been going pretty well, with a decent mix of cities, Northlands, and CoP zones. We've even had some long farming runs in Dynamis-Beaucedine, which was a nice change from our usual "we're getting the flag for one person" runs. We've had a few new members join, and with prompting from the sackholders, Venn's resolved to face the Dynamis Lord every time we enter Dynamis-Xarcabard, since if we don't try, we can't refine our strategy and bring the big guy down. Can't win if you don't play! We've had a bit of crankiness and flaring tempers on different runs in the past month, but rather than let it tear apart the shell, people actually discussed issues and we're probably better off for the conflict. As with any endeavor that requires a large group of people, we will have personality conflicts and hurt feelings, but if people don't let resentment fester and actually get things out in the open, we can hopefully move forward.

We have a few new PLDs, either main or with other jobs also at 75, so we've got plenty of fodder for the tank party now, but there are still runs where we end up a bit short and have to make Thom and/or Phelan bring their PLD. Lumikumi can even bring his MNK once in awhile if he wants to, now that it's 74/75. One of our newer PLDs missed out on two pairs of Valor Leggings that dropped to PLD40+ during our post-boss farming in Dynamis-Windurst. He mistakenly thought we were done after we'd killed the Mega Boss and he got his flag. Other people were leaving early, so he thought we were done and dropped his glass. This probably stemmed from the Jeuno run we'd done the week before - we don't farm Jeuno after the Mega Boss. We could have sent someone out to get him a new glass for the post-boss farming, but he decided he was tired anyway. At least it's a common drop for us there, so he'll get his boots some time soon.

We regularly have to play "musical zones", what with all the different Dynamis linkshells wanting to do certain zones at pretty much the same time. Usually this is just on Saturday evenings, when we have conflicts with early Sunday morning Japanese linkshells. There are no websites for "reserving" areas (and no in-game mechanism) that are used by both North American and Japanese linkshells, so it's pretty much whoever gets there first. Since our Wednesday runs usually start at 9pm, we can't enter Dynamis on Saturday until 9pm, so it's not like we could gather early and jump into a zone as soon as we have enough people. On Wednesday nights, most of the linkshells use the Rusty Buckets calendar, but every once in awhile we'll get bumped to another zone than the one we intended to do. The night of the Windurst run I mentioned, we were supposed to do Beaucedine, but a group that had been bumped from Xarcabard decided to jump in Beaucedine ahead of us. They only had 7-11 people for a quick farming run, and I'm pretty sure they were out of there about the time we entered Windurst. It just takes so long to decide where to go (and what zones are available), and then for everyone to travel there. In this case, we would have been better off staying put, but we did get the Windurst flag (and Beaucedine access) for at least one person, and 2 100s for the shell and a bunch of relic for our members, so it's all good!