Rude Awakening (and not the type most of the BG Brigade would want)...

Tohihroyu and I often used to do Dynamis, in a group I informally called Dynamis Tonight.

She got me and her boyfriend and we decided to go to Dynamis-Xarcabard and hope we could get a camp.

We, largely, couldn't, but that's not the gist of this post.

What we did fight went down far too quickly for us to even proc most of the time.

So we decided to go farm some Animated Weapons.

We got the sword pop, then I decided, "What the hey?"

75-90 seconds later, one dead Animated Longsword.

As time was running down in our run, we did the Claymores next.

Once we got a pop and got full, maybe 90 seconds, goodbye Animated Claymore.

So then I decide to get brave (read that as:  Stupid) and try to get the Scythe, remembering how much of a bear it was to get Tohihroyu her item for her scythe.

4 minutes to go in the run, we pop the Animated Scythe.

2 minutes, it's dead.  Easy.  None of us got hit, my pet maybe twice.  Would've been probably a minute and 15 seconds if not for Phalanx by the enemy.

Where am I going with this?

I pretty much now have to retire from Dynamis, save work for the other two.

It got so sick that, had we 20 more minutes and the pop, I might've tried the Dynamis Lord himself!  (To wit I almost WISH we would've wiped.)

I'm, literally, way too powerful with a Delve axe/Wildskeeper Axe combo, full merits on Beast Affinity (which makes my pets, what, Level 123?), and most of the Delve armor for BST or DRG.  (Steelflash combo for earrings, Haste belt from plasm...)

Just, wow.  I feel sad.  After getting my fourth Wildskeeper KI by finally winning Foret (only one left is Yorcia), I now have both my Mandau and my Gungnir in storage.

I know there are other things to do.  More plasm to farm, etc.  But Dynamis was good to me -- VERY GOOD.

Another dupe-fest going on? Wouldn't shock me in the slightest...

With only ten minutes warning (and much to the chagrin of any Dynamis, Wildskeeper Reive, etc. people), Square-Enix took the game down about 12:30 PDT this afternoon.

It's almost 4 as I type this.  The game is still down.

The longer it's down, the more I think we've got another exploit-fest on our hands.

The reason is in the follow-up that was posted about 30 minutes later.  "Unimplemented items" have been dropping in certain battlefields.

That's either a fire-able fuck-up (either the coder or someone in QA), or we've got another STF problem on our hands.

And given a lot of the gear that's already been announced (and the scruples of much of the NA playerbase), I wouldn't put it past anybody to start duping the shit out of these +188 weapons to break the game completely.

The thing is, this isn't just some small situation.  This is either a major code fuck-up or a straight-up exploit.

My money's on the latter.

Could SE finally be waking up, or is there something else at play here?

Been noticing a couple of heartening developments that the GMs appear to be doing:

The first is that it appears that a single GM has been scouting Empyreal Paradoxes (or, more, the lobbies for the Shinryu Abyssea boss fights) for bot-skillers -- those people outside every...  damned....  possible...  area who repeatedly use spells or the like to bot themselves silly, or so it often seems.

Well, somebody's been looking for them in some of the more out-of-the-way places.

Also, a report from FFXIAH stating that a PLD was caught flee-hacking to sac in Delve.  (Geez, you fuckers too cheap for Mazurka???)

Reactions have been predictable, but there is one ominous overtone I do need to make note of:

It is not much of a secret that it really does appear, Adoulin notwithstanding, that the absolute future of the MMO division of Square-Enix is whether they can get Final Fantasy XIV off the ground again.

It should also be no secret that the real word about that Square-Enix was going to start de-emphasizing Final Fantasy XI into what was then called "Rapture" (think of how that term is used!) came about just after the largely-North American Salvage bans of January 22, 2009.

It is widely believed that Square-Enix is deliberately attempting to kill Final Fantasy XI.

Frankly put, the easiest way to do it is also the one thing that Square-Enix needs to do if they are going to have an MMO division at all -- enforce their damned rules.

Conservative estimates are putting it at 80% of the North American playerbase which would have to be removed if the rules were enforced.

Keep all this in mind as the Mog Resort and three new areas are opened this week.

So it's July 1st, 2013. Let's rack up the evidence that Square-Enix wants us all to play Final Fantasy XIV this fall...

• Seekers of Adoulin has been out for three months.  Zero storyline updates, with the biggest update being a single mechanism which has effectively obsoleted everything else in the system.  (So much so, I end up bored to tears if I can't find a Delve plasm shout.  (Have three weapons and three armor pieces now.))
• The game is rapidly devolving to where a F2P model would actually be preferable to what we have now.  If things are allowed to continue as they have been for the last three months, you are looking at about 4-6 players controlling the server with RMT tactics and basically all control and access to meaningful content.
• It has been eleven months since the new SP 1-hours began on the server.  They appear to be nowhere close to implementation.
• Cait Sith?  (or any reasoned explanation to play SMN at level 99 other than game abuse)  Nowhere to be found.
• Only reason to even THINK of RDM is as a solo Refresh-monkey.  (And as a subjob.)
• Most Colonization is now blocked off.  Unless someone has to work their way through (and, often, that's a one-shot deal -- which see if you want to go to the Morimar Wildskeeper Reive), they basically can't do many assignments, can't do some of the quests, and are basically at the mercy of an, at best, ambivalent server.
• Relics, Mythics, and Empyreans are largely worthless, sans entry pieces to current content.
• No address/mass bans to any of the real problems in the game (Fell Cleave illegalities, mega-box botting, Windower).  Nothing's been addressed.
• Whether it's simply the mega-boxers or a deterioration of the casual player, the player-base is degenerating back to a closed-minded bunch of pieces of shit.