That makes me superior to the rest of you. What have YOU accomplished in FFXI? You are all inferior to me, because I was the first level 80.

That feeling is pretty much how I feel about Astral Burning.

My First Job has always been Paladin. Nonetheless, I took a certain amount of egotistical pride when I leveled Warrior. You can probably look back at some of chronicles in this blog about doing so. I had hated leveling the job to 30 as a subjob for PLD, and I hated it even more when I leveled it to 37. So when I was told that PLDs don’t get invited to merit parties, I was furious. What did they expect me to do, level another job? Even more harrowing was the suggestion that I should level WAR to 75 because of the gear overlap with PLD. Warrior? Are you fucking kidding me? Nobody takes that job to 75! It’s a subjob-only job!

As I leveled it, though, I fell in love with the job. I loved dual-wielding, and I loved Rampage (THE weaponskill of choice for axe users). I loved calculating how long my attack round was between how much dual-wield trait I had and the amount of haste I would get. I loved leveling it with my friend, who was leveling corsair at the time, and having amazing 15k/hr exp parties, which were unheard of at the time. It was truly great.

Nothing lasts forever, though, and my love of dual-wielding was replaced with a need for using a great axe, ruined by a bunch of crybaby Dark Knights and Samurai who felt that they didn’t do enough damage. Suddenly, my swift dual-wielding and Rampage spamming was replaced with a dulled need to try and manage a six-hit build. Even then, I took pride in trying to understand game mechanics, figuring out what was the best combination of Store TP, Double Attack, and Haste.

These days, shit like that doesn’t even matter. There is no need to take pride in any job you level, or even care about how something might affect something else. Now you just sit in Korroloka Tunnel, gather all the mobs, sync to level 15, and let the Astral Flow fly. People are winning Earthen Abjuration: Body abjurations without even having any of the necessary weapons skilled up, just because they Astral Burned their job to 75. In fact, many of them are now better warriors than I because they have leftover gear from other jobs they can use on WAR; gear that I don’t have. Then, once you get bored of the job, then you just level up another job and reloot all kinds of new shinies. And why wouldn’t you? EXPing has never been easier. 40,000EXP for 45 minutes of work. You can’t beat that rate.

Granted, part of the problem is how utterly formulaic and predictable the game has become. Nonetheless, that might just be a testament to how archaic the game is in 2010. I doubt a level increase to 80, and eventually 99, will alter the predictability of the game.

Nonetheless, the real cause is the playerbase itself. The desire for the adventure will always lose out to the desire to Get Shit. These days, it’s never been easier to Get Shit, and quality of the player matters even less.

When building a zerg alliance, having to deal with fifteen level 99 SAMs, with three level 75 BRDs.