So instead of writing some biting criticisim of people's fundamental views, or attacking the ethics of several groups of people, I'm going to write about my efforts to get my Race Specific Equipment (RSE) in Final Fantasy XI. ^.^;;;
For those of you who don't know, the RSE quests are different than most quests in the FFXI world. Normally, it's get 'this' item (ususally by killing some nutorious monster or by going through a "Big Goron Sword" kind of trade) and then walking some enormous distance to deliver it to someone. The RSE however adds a twist. Each race is given a 1 week (FFXI Time) window of oppertunity to open a chest in one of three zones. Which race can open the chest, and where, cycles every FFXI week. Now each week is 8 Vanadiel days long. Now Vanadiel time runs faster than earth time (25 times faster,) meaning that each Vanadiel day is about 57 minutes long (Actually it's a fraction more than this, but that's close enough). There are 8 races, meaning that each oppertunity comes around every 64 Vanadiel days. What this all means is that in the real world, your oppertunity is right about 7.68 hours long and comes around once every 2.56 or so days.
Now for the dedicated players this isn't a problem, they can get their whole set in 8 hours easy (There's 4 peices, and you really need 2 hours per peice to find the key , then find the chest, warp back to Jeuno, talk to the gobbie, and then get back) Worst case they have to wait for another oppertunity to roll around in 2 and a half days. For us casual players, we have a much larger problem. See the fact that the oppertunity comes around just over two and a half days from the last one, this means that our actual usuable windows only come around every couple of earth weeks. And last for 2 weeks, giving about 3 chances in that time. In my case, for example, the next oppertunity taht lands in my 5 pm - 10 pm usuable window will roll around on the 11th, three days from now, and every second oppertinity after that will be usable for the next 2 weeks. However, this comes just after the two week bad period, where there are no real oppertunities.
But that's not why I'm writing.See... I tried to push the edge of a window that really didn't line up properly with my schedule. I came home with 70 or so minutes left in the window and tried to get my last peice. Well, Tander and I wandered around the Shakrimi Maze killing Wights and Scorpions. It took us 45 minutes to find the key, so we started sprinting around the maze looking for the chest, we searched and searched. Finally in the first place we looked (or overlooked as the case seems to have been) we found the chest with only a couple of Vanadiel minutes to spare (So we're talking earth seconds). Well, unfortunately, in my haste to find the chest, I hadn't payed a whole lot of attention to my safety, and had wrecklessly trained a vary large number of mobs with me. Then, in the process of trying to give the chest the key, I stumbeled (twice) and didn't trade. On the third try, at 23:53 Vanadiel time on Darkday (The last day of the 8 day Vanadiel week) I had gotten my trade window up, my key selected, and was moving to click the trade button when the horde finally managed to finish me off.
*sigh*
After getting a raise from the guy who was supposed to be making sure that the horde didn't kill me in the first place (who I had thuroughly outrun ^^) I took the key, which was now useless, and open the chest to claim my totally worthless 500 gil prize. I had spent the last hour taking great risks, and loosing 1500XP to try and get the RSE that I missed by a matter of seconds. I was seriously disapointed.
But the rule is, "If the oompa-loompa's get you, level up, and go stick it to them" so I'll be back, in a better window. And I WILL get my RSE body peice. -.-
Only three more days till my next attempt...
Mood: Depressed, Frustrated, and Driven