The End of an Era

Venn, the founder of TheUltimates and its sister shells, has quit FFXI. He'd been pulling back significantly over the past school year, as it was his first year in law school, but finally decided it was best for him to leave the game entirely. Some of us knew he was thinking of quitting, but most just thought he was taking a break for finals in April/May. However, I don't think his departure came as a huge shock to anyone. Fortunately for the shells, Venn put a good team of sackholders in place, and we'll continue to run things as we have been. Allia will get the dubious honor of being the shell owner when we re-pearl, so she'll get to head up the Complaints Department. Lucky girl!

I know he didn't have the best reputation with some people, but I was fond of our emo DRG leader. He had his ideals, and he stuck to them. His wild mood swings were even entertaining at times! Venn, if you're out there reading this, here's a /salute from one of your lieutenants. Best wishes for your life's endeavors!

Hmmm... I guess this as good a place as any for a quick update on Dynamis. The shell has been doing well lately, which is really nice. We seem to have the right combinations of jobs and players, and are beating the zones that have sometimes proven troublesome, like Qufim and Xarcabard. It's always so sad to wipe when the Dynamis Lord has just a sliver of health left. It's much more fun when we win. Even if he doesn't drop lovely Shadow items.

We're routinely going after the attestation mobs now every time in the Glacier, which provides a bit of a diversion from the normal exploratory or flag runs. I really dislike the PLD/WAR/RDM one, Goublefaupe. He uses Mighty Strikes when the sac puller aggros him, so I get beat on with huge critical hits as I drag him back to camp, usually dying just short of camp since Sentinel wears off before I get there. I used Invincible once on the pull, and that at least got me back to camp safely.

The tank pool is currently in good shape too, after a couple of months where Thom and I might be the only two tanks in attendance on a run. Lumikumi's back after a 2 month break for real life, and we've had a couple new PLDs join: Synne (our first Mithra PLD!), and Lobster. Elide is also back now one another character (Azadan), and he can come as either PLD or NIN.

One recent disappointment was not getting to do Tavnazia again. We had it scheduled for May 24, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, but not enough people signed up for it. I don't know if that's because a lot of the people with access were away for the weekend, or if people just don't want to do it. I really want to do that again. However, we ended up doing a terrific Qufim run instead, and got some more people access in the process.