New SP's: So, after all this time, this is what we get...

Haven't said much lately, but the word is finally out on the November 2013 update having the new Special Abilities (the "one-hours").

So, after, what, two years of waiting?, here they are...

WAR:  Blazing Rush:  Increases Double Attack rate.

That's _IT_?  Unless you mean it allows the WAR to bust whatever caps on DA rate that their gear give or something, that's all the WAR gets?

MNK:  Inner Strength:  Increases Max HP

Unless the harder Adoulin stuff is meant to be SO HARD that you literally need a MNK with over 9000 HP...  Not a very promising start.

WHM:  Asylum:  Massive party increase to enfeebling magic and Dispel.

So kinda half-Perfect Defense plus a little bit...  OK, this one makes more sense than the first two.

BLM:  Subtle Sorcery:  Decreases emnity, increases magic accuracy.

That sounds more a Job Ability than a one-hour!!

RDM:  Stymie:  Greatly increases next enfeebling spell.

RDM is _USELESS_!!!

THF:  Larceny:  Steals one positive status effect from the enemy.

Independent of Aura Steal and the like.  OK.  Has it's uses.

PLD:  Intervene:  Shield attack to greatly reduce attack power and accuracy of the enemy.

So an OFFENSIVE PLD 1-hour...  Interesting.

DRK:  Soul Enslavement:  Blood Weapon, except TP this time.

Weapon skill still has to hit.  :)

BST:  Unleash:  Shortens recast timers of Sic and Ready, increases chances of Charm.

Ummm...  No.

BRD:  Clarion Call:  Adds one more song effect that can be given to players.

The more songs, the more you are of worth to a large-scale hyper-game/Adoulin event.

RNG:  Overkill:  Reduces ranged attack delay, increases double and triple shots.

Nice for ranged fights, of which there are at least a few.

SAM:  Yaegasumi:  Evasion of techniques increased, TP bonus as you evade more.

So is this Weapon Skills or something else?

NIN:  Mikage:  Grants bonus number of attacks to main-hand weapon to the number of Utsusemi shadows you have.

So now we finally get Hundredhanded-Whateverhisnameis in Mamook's main effect...

DRG:  Fly High:  Shortens Jump recast.

Ergh.  Could be great, could be terrible.  Hope these SPs work on a different timer.

SMN:  Astral Conduit:  Reduces Blood Pact recasts.

SMN is becoming more and more useless with the Perfect Defense nerf!!  I mean, what, Garuda and spam Predator Claw???

BLU:  N. Wisdom:  More BLU spells become available.

Probably most of the Adoulin stuff and other overpowered stuff.  Which see the JA post-75, I think.

COR:  Cut Cards:  Reduces SP time for party members.

Note:  Doesn't take it to zero, probably.  Probably cuts it by a percentage/half or something.

PUP:  Heady Artifice:  Puppet uses it's SP, SP depends on the type of head.

Probably the list we had before.  One of the few initial survivors, it looks like.

DNC:  Grand Pas:  Flourishes cost nothing.

Isn't that part of Trance?  Ew....

SCH:  Caper Emissarius:  All party emnity goes to the party member of your choice.

Hmmm...

GEO:  Widen Compass:  Geomancer spells now have wider effect.

Again, that seems like a lesser Job Ability.

RUN:  English Name Unknown:  Greatly reduces magic accuracy of enemy.

Yeah, sure, whatever...

God, do most of these suck.

XIV: Oh Shit, The Entire Hospital Might Be Dead On This One

I read a political/economic blog that's about to go down for good that characterizes the US Dollar as having one form of lesser STDs while the rest of the world has a killer virus.

That might be an analog for Final Fantasy XI vs. XIV right now.

Reading a massive BG thread on what might be a game-killing exploit:  Some players figured out how to change the database on player's on the PLAYER SIDE.

This means:  They could be whatever level, with however much gil, items, crafting levels, etc. and so forth and so on.

Word is:  This actually was discovered during the latter stages of the Beta test!!!

We're talking complete hackage of the game here.

And NOW, there's word that characters on XI are being deleted with no cause whatsoever -- the characters are not being banned, hacked, or anything, at least that we know of.  The characters are just... gone!

Basically, players were giving themselves gil, according to the cheaters, and selling them to RMT for ridiculous amounts, probably making a massive penny in the process.

But, as one person so well put it:  The game is fucked.  You rollback again, you're basically now on XIV-3.  You don't, and you basically let everything stand.

Wow.  Just -- fucking -- wow.

ETA:  And, yes, BG:  What they did to get money for the added gil was quite illegal under California Law.  We're talking felonious grand theft here.

It's Official, The Patient Is Dead

It won't be long now.

Not after the pop-event they just did the last almost-72 hours, to end in about six.

Several of the uncommonly-played Kindred Crest/High Kindred Crest Battle Circles were severely augmented this weekend.

How so?

Every boss monster in the BC (and, for the Dragon Scales one in Chamber of Oracles, that meant two sets -- and for the three beastmen KC50s in each of the BC areas just out of towns, that meant four sets) dropped some version of the following:

• A Mog Kupon S (full set of seals for any one +1 Empyrean armor upgrade) -- this sometimes would be a Mog Kupon L (Lumoria Sea Torque drops), and even an A was in there someplace (AV!!!)
• A Monstrosity Mog Garden drop -- either a Monarch Beetle Saliva or a Golden Seed Pouch
• Most of the time (at least until I had the full set), an Ancient Black Magic scroll would drop.This is where the situation often got fun...  Very common substitutes for this included:

1. Phalanx (taking the value from about 1.9M or so on Leviathan and gutting it to basically 0) -- got three before I stopped trying to add to that number
2. Raise III (taking THAT value from about the better part of a million to about 0)
3. Utsusemi:  Ni (same drill)

Give you an idea of how bad those three got:  The FIRST DAY of the event, I got 3 Phalanxes (gave one to an alt of Tohi's boyfriend), and two each of Raise III and Ni.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL

4.  High-end Geomancer spells, both of Black Magic and Geomancy
5.  The two big-ticket Provenance Watcher spells, Arise and Meteor.  Got an Arise on Saturday night.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL

• A crafting item.  This could be anywhere from a Saffron Blossom, to a Scarletite Ingot (the latter WAS 11,000,000 gil on Leviathan, until the undercutting bitches halved the price, possibly permanently).  Yes, I'll have one to hold on to for a bit...
• Often, a food item of some value would drop, usually either Dragon Meat or Hydra Meat (cratering at least the latter's price).
• A +2 Empyrean item/Walk of Echoes drop of some sort.  This could be anywhere from a Card/Coin/Stone/Jewel to a Frayed Pouch.  A Heavy Metal Pouch was claimed to have dropped.

And the event was also a normal Double XP event too!!!

I mean, if this wasn't the...

PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE LOG IN SO WE CAN JUSTIFY THE CONTINUANCE OF FINAL FANTASY XI THROUGH AT LEAST THE END OF THE FISCAL YEAR...

event, I don't know what is.

There have been times that servers on XI have reported under 300 players on -- of course, that would mean about 1 legit player, 50 alts, 200 bots, and about 49 bazaars.

November and the new areas (if we make it that long!!!) can't come fast enough.

So how many legitimate players are there per server? Three or Four??

Someone posted this screenshot to FFXIAH, and I will let it stand without comment, but for the question as to how many legitimate players there are to a server these days...




For the record, I count 26 players in this picture.