I’m quite happy with my Mudpie minion, pictured above — I’ve only seen it drop once and got the lucky roll to win it! Usually, I have no luck in rolling on minions, so I was stoked when I managed to snag this fellow.
A perfectly messy minion to talk about coming clean. Well, not that I actually have hidden my side-blog activity. I’ve actually linked to my RP Tumblr and discussed my move to the RP server and all the motivations behind it several times before.
But still, I feel a little guilty that this blog, which I’ve maintained for years, has slowly seen a decrease in content as a lot of my attention has gone towards my RP and creative endeavors. I have to admit that part of this is that due to whatever fluke, the response to my Tumblr writing has been quite strong.
In fact, since I first started seriously RP blogging in the last week of July, I’ve earned more followers there than I have all the years of WordPress blogging here.
Also, given that this blog has exactly 1,440 posts over its lifetime, it’s crazy to think that in just a matter of a few months, my RP Tumblr has 1,338 posts. Granted, what I write here is generally longer and more in-depth in terms of content, and some of the Tumblr content is just silly stuff, images or reblogs. But I’ve also posted some lengthy fiction pieces there, as well.
The Conundrum
The interesting thing is, I’m playing far more FFXIV since I got involved with my RP alt and I’m having a lot more fun doing it. Yet, I’m blogging about it less here, mostly because I don’t know if this kind of content belongs on this blog.
I feel like folks who read this blog might not be interested in RP fiction and think the whole thing is silly. Maybe I’m wrong about that, though. I mean, we do all roll up digital avatars in fantastical worlds as a fun pass time, right?
I’ve also just found myself playing my alt, Amon, more than my main. I’ve come to view my main as a progression character — the one who has all the stuff cleared and unlocked and is doing Expert runs for Tomes. She’s maxed out on leveling crafting and gathering and I’m slowly nudging her battle jobs up to 70.
But really, I’m still quite burned out on raids and dungeons in FFXIV. Gear progression doesn’t interest me much since it just gets reset every patch and washed away come the expansion. So as long as I have the ilvl to get things done, I don’t feel the need to work on gear. As much as I would have liked to try Eureka, I didn’t jump on the early train there, and I’m still only level 4… so the whole grind for the weapons and gear there passed me by this expansion.
While I have a few things I want to work on with my main, really, I have so much more I want to do with my alt.
For one thing, I ensured that Amon didn’t unlock anything I didn’t want to play. This means most unrequired dungeons will never be unlocked unless there’s glamour I want. It also means I’ll never unlock anything beyond Void Ark for Alliance because I still have no desire to run Weeping City or anything beyond.
Instead, I’m leveling gathering, and eventually crafting, all over again. I know that seems pointless, but I’m having fun doing it. I get to work through Namazu tribe quests again, something I didn’t do on my gatherers, and eventually other beast tribes as a whole.
The bottom line… I get to cherry pick only the content I have any interest in and throw the rest of it out the window. No raids. No unwanted dungeon runs. And instead, I can focus on things like housing, glamour, performing music, lore, connecting with the RP folks who want to write with me, and doing much more creative stuff.
I’ve been so much more inspired and have enjoyed the game immensely once I’ve broken away from the run-run-run mindset. Sure, I still do my share of roulettes, even on Amon. But I also know that there’s an ending point for him.
Once I’ve got the jobs I want leveled on him and he’s cleared MSQ… and maybe cleaned up a lot of the quests he’s outleveled (I hate leaving quest markers everywhere on the map)… Then he’s free to just be a creative outlet for me without the worry of needing to progress. And if I do choose to progress something else on him, well, it’s because I wanted to.. not because I felt pressured to keep up with anything.
There’s a certain freedom in that that I’ve been missing in FFXIV for many years.
So What Happens Here?
But that leaves the question of what I’m writing on this blog.
Doing less on my main means having nothing of real interest to share here. And while I’d never directly post RP on this blog (that really wouldn’t fit), I’m not sure if some crossover posts (such as links to the RP fiction) would be welcome?
Would progress posts on Amon be welcome? Or would it be boring to see me retreading the same ground on a second character?
I suppose I could talk about the face of RP as it stands in game and on Tumblr. But I don’t know if that is interesting to anyone, either.
If anyone has suggestions or feedback, I’m happy to listen! I really don’t want to see this blog go inactive, but I’m a poor judge of how much of the creative content would be acceptable to cross-post here.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind a progress report on Amon. You feel it would just be a rethread on topics you already wrote about but the way I see it you have far more experience with the content now than you did when you first wrote about it. This could give a different perspective.
There may also be content you wrote about but I wasn’t reading your blog when you did. And as much as I love your writing I rather not go digging through the archives to read everything, no offense intended. With that in mind, it would be like new content for someone like me.
These are my 2 coppers on the subject.
No offense taken — that makes perfect sense. That’s also really good to know.
While Amon is almost done with MSQ, so there’s nothing story-wise to talk about with him, I have noticed some differences when it comes to the progress of things like leveling crafting and gathering as I’ve gone back to do these things again. I’m sure there’s other things I could think up that were quite different, especially since some of this content I haven’t touched in 4 years until now.
Thanks for your feedback! It’s good to hear there might be some content I can write about after all! 🙂
I come here to read about what you’ve been up to and what you think about it, so if that happens to involve a different character or community in game then that’s cool. : )
And seconding what Rakuno said, I wouldn’t be too worried about it feeling rehashed.
Aw, thank you so much! Your interest in my humble ramblings means a lot to me! 😀
It’s good to know other characters will do — I have a server full up to cap on them and they’re all at various stages of existing. I’m sure I can find something to write about them.
Thanks again!
To be honest I’m happy to read anything XIV related 😀 In my life it’s rare to find people into it so I feel like I can only discuss it/read stuff about it online 🙂
I’m the same way — no one I know nearby plays. I can only talk about it with folks online — thankfully, some of my closest online friends play!
I’m happy you read my FFXIV posts — thank you so much for your feedback on how you feel! I, too, want to keep writing about FFXIV because it doesn’t always get a whole lot of attention from bloggers. It’s one of those solid, consistent MMOs, but it doesn’t often make too many waves. That’s ok with me, though!
If you’re interested, I wrote about a blog post about how much I love it 🙂 The link is here https://feddybear.wordpress.com/2018/08/14/my-love-for-final-fantasy-xiv/ I’m with you that it doesn’t get a massive amount of attention but I’m also okay with it. It gets love from the people who like it most 😊
I never really thought of this as an exclusively FFXIV blog. I think when I first came here you were mostly writing about The Sims. If you want to start posting about RP stuff – or indeed posting RP stories here – that’s fine by me. It’s your blog, you can post anything you want!
Yeah, I jump topics depending on whatever game I’m focused on, so it’s not intended to be a fully FFXIV blog. Lately, though, I’ve been spending all my gaming time on FFXIV, and just not writing about it here.
I guess the overall feedback I’m seeing is “Do what you want!” which would probably be my answer for someone asking a similar question. Thanks for your thoughts! 🙂
I have enjoyed reading your musings for many years with much enjoyment. I don’t mind if you cross post some items here at all. Thanks for all the blog entries over these years. I don’t play FFXV (too many games) but like reading about it.
Aw, you’re very welcome! Thanks so much for reading my ramblings! It means a ton to me! 🙂
The fun it sounds like you are having reminds me of what it was like in the early days of MMOs, back when they were called MMORPGs. RP folks were a minority back then but man, it was fun. Then somehow the content kept revolving around grinding. Would appreciate hearing more about it.
Even the whole RP environment has changed drastically from what I remember back in the day. While these unofficial RP servers offer an opportunity to RP, even they are mostly OOC. FFXIV has an interesting feature where you can flag yourself as being RP, which is what people do to indicated they’re In Character. I suppose I’ll have to write up something about it sometime. But it’s definitely different from the RP servers I remember from other MMOs.