Tyranny of Heaven [ToH]

I haven't blogged here in a while. In fact, I haven't blogged anywhere in general for a while. But today feels somewhat significant because after some 3.5-4 years of playing WoW, I finally let my subscription lapse.

I preordered Hellgate: London some time ago. (And was subsequently able to participate in its beta.) Anyway, the game went live on Halloween. I started installing it shortly after coming home from work, and when it was done, I went to create my first online character — Amelante the Summoner.

My chocobo egg finally hatched! I haven't named him yet, but here's a picture of me taking him out for a walk:

FFXI is having another “Return to Vana'diel” event starting today, so I re-installed FFXI last night and quickly registered. (Thanks to Cymry for letting me know!) Much to my joy, I found that all my FFXI characters were recoverable — including the original Amelante. The last time I logged in was summer 2005. I even recovered one of my mules, Ayachaacha the tarutaru.

The old GM of Illuminati, Haon, decided to reclaim the guild (at least in name) yesterday. He also opened up the forums and invited all former members to sign up, so we could keep in touch. I can certainly relate. It is, after all, why I keep the ToH FFXI forum around. (It also serves as a monument to our once great Linkshell.)

So long, Illuminati...

Great guild, great bunch of people. The time I spent there was truly my Golden Age of WoW. So many memories...

My character profile at Blizzard's new Armory.

At least I don't have to do this manually anymore. :)

A few days old, but ding! on level 70. And I've actually begun to replace my tier 2.5/tier 3 epics with blue items. It makes me sad... But, eh... Socketed armor are the "in" thing nowadays.

So what now?

I'll probably be grinding rep and working on my attunements/keys. And also saving for my epic flying mount.

However, I was able to immediately by a regular flying mount. Yeeeeah! Just think Peter Griffin doing Neverending Story.

Just can't escape from it, it seems.

As I had mentioned previously, whenever people leave a clan/guild, it tends to shake things up. Three members just upped and left at the start of our raid on Tuesday, two of them officers. (Another one left later that night and we will probably be losing yet another...) One can't help but feel betrayed. They left us for greener pastures, apparently, immediately joining the guild-that-I-will-not-name. You know them. They have a reputation for being asshats on our server. And apparently, they take glee from poaching our members.

First of all, ding! again on my 2nd WoW 60. When I'm not raiding with my guild, I'll be working on getting Alydia equipped and attuned. I've begun to notice that Alydia is quite the damage dealer (even when I don't bother with the usual hunter tricks)... it's kind of a nice change. I've decided my next leveling alt will be Oski, the feral bear druid. Props to people who get the reference. :)

I found this pretty interesting. When I last mentioned it, Husker and I joined Wandering Brotherhood. And basically, that was my guild from low-teens to 60. Shortly before hitting 60, the guild master stepped down (to join a raiding guild). And shortly after 60, the new guild master decided to merge. I was happy in the larger guild until I started to consistently miss raids because their weekday times favored east coasters. That was when I joined Ritual and sadly left those I knew from WB behind...