Finally returned home...

....and I am loving it!

After a week of hedging left and right to return, I began the install, jimmy rigged my PlayOnline to trick it into updating FFXI without an account, and after repairing, 2 days of updates, and then another slew of updates following this, I was faced with remembering my old PoL ID and Password. 3 days later, following 3 excellent customer support experiences, I have my PoL ID attached to my SE account, with my old Authenticator still working, I have the game installed fully, and with the 12€ Ultimate Edition in the Steam Sale, topped up my account with the missing Abyssea expansions and logged in.

My heart ached at the sound of the Whitegate theme, giving me instant nostalgia to days gone by... but then it dropped into the pits of my stomach at seeing no one outside the mog house where I logged out over a year ago. A quick /sea showed the zone to be completely empty, except for my lonely little Red Mage. Had the game I once loved so much died completely? Was Aht Uhrgan completely defunct now? Was I standing alone in a dead world with a wasted chunk of cash dropped?

Just before I gave up, thinking I had wasted my time, due to my flag being up from my last logout, someone whispered me, 25 levels lower and asked if I wanted to exp. Confused, disappointed and bewildered, he explained we now exp in alliances and level is really not an issue anymore, so switched to RDM/WHM and teleported to Holla, jumped on a Chocobo and headed up to North San'doria, passing a new Cavernous Maw on the way. Noted in my mind to see what that was later.

Mind racing, and music rushing memories back, I lolloped through Ronfaure and into the bagpipe infested dhalmel farm that is San d'oria. Still not many, if any people around, but there seemed to be 2000+ people online total in a search, but where the heck were they?!

Thankfully, when I played before, I played alot, and obsessively collected all maps, outpost warps and completed all the expansions so I was well versed in how to get about, if a little unsure of where things were. Got down into the basement of the Oubliette and gained 10 merits in under an hour. This was a little shocking, but went with it, and realised that the game had indeed changed... for the better? Still remained to be seen.

After the party, I was still capped at 75, so went to visit the Nomad Moogle in Ru'lude Gardens to find out what the crack was, he uncapped me after nicking some seals, and I then grinded out another 5 levels in just over an hour, to uncap again and continue. I then found the games population, in Port Jeuno! Turns out this is where everyone hubs now, as this is where the Abyssea stuff begins, so I got my expansion content started, hit the maw I mental noted in La Theine earlier, went back to the NPC and got introduced to a very confusing road ahead, and he began generating my stones for me. Went up to the Voidwatch guy too and it turns out I have nearly 100k points to use, but no idea what they are for, or how I go about using them yet, im sure I will work that one out though.

So here I am, with my RDM80, having made a slew of new friends already, been pulled into a very friendly LS, and being given nearly triple inventory space on talking with various NPC's around the world, and various gifts and such for adding expansion content etc, and I must say, while it is not the game I left behind just before the 75-80 cap increase, it seems its alot more casual friendly, instead of the job it used to be, so im going to start working on soloing some Dynamis, getting me some relics unlocked, and see how I feel in a month or so about the world that once captivated me to the point of obsession.

Side note: To the developer that came up with the storing and recalling macros, you deserve a kudos burger. What I count to be around 400 macros all fully recovered. That was something I was not looking forwards to redoing :D