Today...we celebrate...

...the day before Blow Shit Up day. Appropriately, SE decided to give us updated details on their very own suicidal firecracker...Ninja.

But screw Ninja, I got more important stuff to cover!

Blog

Firstly, the update regularity of this blog has taken a hit. I'm hoping that this will correct itself around the third week of this month. I can't update it every day like I want, but I should be able to update it at least 3-4 times/week depending on my workload.

I'm almost in the process of revamping my Weapon Skill Gear series. After I figure out how to implement a couple more formulas, I'm hoping that I can create a downloadable app (by invite only) for some friends to figure up what their best combination of gear can be.

Deaths

I don't what the hell is going on lately, but in the last few weeks, someone has died daily. It almost seems like Ed McMahon wanted to take everyone with him...at least until Michael Jackson trumped him. Seriously though...I've had two relatives die (none that I was particularly close to) rather suddenly. I've been asked to reschedule various appointments at least half a dozen times due to a 'death in the family'. I think there's been six or seven celebrity deaths in this time frame including Billy Mays.

Bigger point is, when you go out to blow shit up on national Blow Shit Up day, don't qualify anything with "HEY YA'LL WATCH THIS!" given the rash of sudden deaths lately. :)

And since it's the day before Blow Shit Up day...

Douchebag Award (Dr. Q. Tip Us and Thieving Douchebag Twat)

This topic starts out as old, but a recent KI thread put a little lipstick on the pig to freshen it up a bit.

Start with this.

Read this.

So both of the people involved in this issue (Rael and Agana) were in Obsidian at the time it all went down. Needless to say, I banned both accounts instantly and waited for Rael to verify himself before reactivating him.

In my experiences with Rael, he seems to be a genuinely nice guy. Keep in mind that my experiences with him are limited to that of Obsidian. Regardless of how limited my interactions were with him, what he had pulled on him has no excuse whatsoever.

The process of getting into Obsidian involves filling out an application, getting interviewed by the sack assigned to that particular job (in Agana's case, DRG came to me), and then having your name placed up in the leader forum for discussion. When certain notorious members of the community apply, it's rare that the interview step even happens. They're usually insta-rejections. Agana was one of the people who was bound for insta-rejection. Her rep was that of a hard-headed brat hellbent on doing things differently for the sake of being different with a penchant for spamming LS Chat with nonsense. A number of the sacks weren't at all shy at expressing this point.

She had spoken with me prior to filling out the application about wanting to do Einherjar with us. We have a rule that disallows people from joining if they only want to do Einherjar. We want people to do both Dynamis and Einherjar with us, but since we didn't start doing Einherjar until it was already a very well established event in other shells, we didn't work that rule in reverse. Meaning you could just do Dynamis with us and not have to worry about being penalized if you didn't choose to do Einherjar, but you couldn't do Einherjar unless you did Dynamis with us. Agana made it rather clear that she was only interested in doing Einherjar, but once she learned that she had to do Dynamis, she protested a little, then relented and said she'd do it. So she fills out her app...

Her application had listed Mav as a reference.

"Wait...Mav?" was what went through my head when I saw this. Knowing the presence of Agana's app was going to likely get her insta-rejected, I took a bit of a proactive approach to it (not because I gave a shit about Agana in general, but because I try to be fair to every app I see) and sent Mav a tell.

What Mav had to say I knew was going to go against the grain, but if you've been around Mav enough, he's not one that's going to water down his answers. He's been in Obsidian long enough that when he speaks (and it's not often), he's got our attention. Mav didn't give her a ringing endorsement, but the primary concerns we had about Agana were eased somewhat due to his experience with her. And after some debate, we gave her a shot on the notion that we were going to keep our eyes on her a little more intently than we normally would.

This meant things like making sure she wasn't /anon so she wouldn't try to show up as DRG/PLD to an event. For the most part, she behaved. We had to send her back to change her subjob a couple times, but these were things we knew to look out for. She had also come as DRG/DRK to an Einherjar run that we ended up losing thanks to no MP. (I ranted about that in my last post.)

And that brings us up to the time of the first thread. I'm not going to pretend to know everything that happened between the two of them, nor do I care. I just know she stole his shit, more or less wrecked his online life for a couple weeks and showed little to no remorse in doing so.

Now we have her opening her cake hole in that second thread bragging about her in game achievements and trying to justify her actions.

I find it completely comical that someone claiming $700 put them back on the right track in life when they were paying montly fees for this account to begin with. Yeah, $700 is a nice chunk of change and can go a long way towards paying off bills, but if those bills or that car were that important to you to begin with, you wouldn't be paying $11.95/mo. for an MMO.

Right. Being a crummy player = pretty much beating everything in game, and then doing it all over again while low-manning. Being like 70% of the way to a mythic, and having perfect gear aside from a mythic/relic. And whether people admit it or not, I was one of the best BLU to ever be. I broke boundaries of the game, I could've revolutionized the way it were played, with enough followers. What BLU do you know main tanked Alexander? How many BLU do you know carried pick up ks99 Wyrms, like I did...Main healing and tanking the flying portion.

Oh, what about blood tanking Charybdis, or solo'ing campaign NMs like it was
easy.

If this is your in-game resume, I'm sorry, I would have remained mute. I saw you play BLU personally and pretty much every BLU that's in Obsidian currently had you bested. There was nothing revolutionary about your play style, just the need to feel and be different from everyone else who was working within the boundaries defined by SE. You broke these boundaries? How? By showing up to tank with a subjob that was good for tanking? By showing up up to DD with a subjob that was good for dealing damage? Please. The only boundaries you broke were the ones that generally encompass common sense and practical teamwork...and not in a good way. Case and point: "with enough followers". There's a reason you didn't have enough "followers" and some self-introspection would likely show you the answer the rest of us already know.

Perfect gear? Parse results said otherwise with you barely clearing 5% of the damage totals in any of the Einherjar runs you attended as DRG. Just because you have decent gear doesn't make you great.

I've blood-tanked Charbybdis and solo'd campaign NMs as DRG/WHM perfectly fine. Pick up KS99s consisting mostly of people from various shells you were members of aren't exactly "pick up" at all considering most of the KS99s can be taken down with 6-10 people with moderate difficulty. You've done nothing new and most certainly nothing to brag about. Know what else I've done?

Who cares.

Those achievements mean shit. Bragging about them doesn't make you a better player or person.

After you quit, you won't talk to any of them, none of them know you, besides the facade you put on in the game. It's been about 5 months since I quit, and I have a decent full time job with benefits, a working car, going to school full time, and have a boyfriend. So yes, I am doing a lot better. Thanks for caring so much

I beg to differ entirely. What you fail to understand is that if you're real with people, they tend to be real with you. Sure there are some in game that you'll never speak to outside of the game, but it doesn't take away from the fact that there are some online friendships that eventually transcend the pixels and the macro-mashing into the genuine deal.

What you signed up for in "dating" Rael was for this to eventually happen. The whole point of falling for someone is to get to know someone and eventually do that whole "til death do us part" bit at the altar. You failed to understand it and when it finally dawned on you (for whatever reason...), you took the childish approach.

Congrats for doing "better"...you has a car, a job and a boyfriend. I'll contend that your current situation is probably a lot more fake than you believed your online situation to be considering it took you essentially robbing someone to make your life "better". That's no "better" than the guy robbing the Circle K to make his life "better" or the homeless guy begging for money to buy booze to make his life "better". Every single one of those things were things you could have achieved on your own if you had correct priorities, but you had to rack up a list of video game achievements first, then take the easy way out by robbing someone to put your life on a "better" course.

Why would anyone believe what you had to say at this point though? You have a car you fixed with that $700 so you could get a job to pay for school. That's a nice logical sequence of things except for the fact that there's this service called...taxis. There's also these things called friends...and friends usually have cars. You also lived with your parents...who likely have cars as well. I don't buy that excuse one bit.

I know what I did was wrong, and I tried to make up for it, but was denied. If he wants me to buy him 5m then he would've already asked me to, but he didn't.

I don't blame him one fkn bit. Oh hey...I just robbed you and made money off your shit. I know you got most of it rolled back through SE's account services and all, but I'll BUY you gil with the money I made off YOUR stuff.

Translation: I'll try to clean up my unethical online crime with another unethical online crime.

Oh and...I'm fucking someone else now thanks to the fresh start the stuff I stole from you gave me.

And you wonder why he didn't accept on top of the rather obvious reasons. Try harder. Maybe you'll fail less.

Bottom line: Thank god she's gone. I won't say she was a huge troublemaker in Obsidian during her time there prior to all of this going down, but I won't say she was a model member either. Reading her logic on the whole scenario was a rather entertaining read, but really points out just how much of a douchebag she really is. And because of the colossal proportions of her douchebaggery...she gets the inaugural Douchebag Award from my blog.

This has been Dr. Q. Tip Us and I'm glad I could help.

More Blow Shit Up day stuff...

I blew up Dynamis-Jeuno this past Wednesday. Was the first time in a while I've been able to sit back in the melee alliance and just blow shit up. Old Man was parsing the run and between Tentacle, Old Man and myself, we were racking up nearly 35% of the total damage. Three of us...out of 37ish people. At one point, I was about 14.5% of the total damage by myself.

Einherjar was what it was. Rather mundane T2. I did not get to blow shit up in there as I was on PLD and doing the pulling with my slightly gimp RDM subjob. PLD75/RDM36 ftw!

Bhaflau Remnants was what it was too with the exception of Samuraisoldier had apparently never seen what I do to gears in there. Bhaflau tends to make any DD numbers look cartoonish in comparison to the other zones, but it's still fun to go romp through the zone and blow shit up.

Hoping to get a few Splitting Heirs runs in to blow up Darkheir's shit, but not entirely sure that's going to happen. Most people will likely be out literally blowing shit up on Saturday and well...Sunday morning will likely mark the end of the chances for at least a week. Might get a couple runs in today, but I'm anticipating that the zone will be overcrowded.

Next week is officially Drive Shit Up week. I'll be on the road from the 7th-14th and only logging in for Einherjar, so don't expect many posts except for maybe on Monday.