Some Knowledge...

Alright folks, incoming knowledge.

First and foremost, alot of things have changed since my last entry. For starters, I no longer play Final Fantasy XI. I don't plan on returning to it and so any series related to it have ended. I also do not play Star Wars Galaxies anymore so the same thing goes for any related series to that.


(Of course, if it ever did make some kind of awesome comeback to rival Star Wars: The Old Republic then I would totally jump back in, it's a pretty good game.)


I forget if I had any other series started up, but for the most part I'm coming back fresh.


As far as my current gaming life goes, my dearest ZEAL 2.0, if that's what I called her, has shown signs of aging and no longer functions as reliably as she once did. Of course, due to a recent bet that I totally won, I may be able to make affordable, yet powerful, upgrades to the old girl... so expect more news on that front.


For those of you who are wondering, and I'm pretty sure my family never wants me to talk about the more personal things that go on in our lives, FSSG is no longer in action. Which is to say our lives have become infinitely more peaceful so I doubt you'll read anything more about pointless drama within my personal life. On the flip side.. I'm looking for a job so there may be more power ups to ZEAL than one might expect.


Back to gaming life.. I haven't really done anything hardcore as of late aside from Dead Rising 2 and Dragonball Raging Blast, and more recently, Dragonball Raging Blast 2. They're both loads of fun and I enjoy them immensely, but I look forward to the possibility of returning to the next topic...


Final Fantasy XIV...

This is a bit of a story, but I want to tell it anyways.

Ok, so to make things shorter for everyone, I joined in with one of the May waves of testers for the alpha testing for the game and have been involved, in one way or another, with the game since that time.

The game is great, it had a somewhat rough launch, but nothing that it couldn't bounce back from. It's even greater now due to recent updates and the like.. but there's one reason, above all others, why it is that I'm not playing it these days...

No, not because of my PC.

It's because my established name of 8 years+ is unexplicably unavailable to me there. Which is to say, Seritle started ages back when BYOND was my main source of entertainment... before Final Fantasy XI.. (that's a long time ago, Hoss). In fact, the very first existence of Seritle in any pay to play game was Final Fantasy XI, and I'm still damned proud of it. The surname of Zeales arose a couple years after in response to Guild Wars as a surname was required there. From there on, Seritle Zeales became my main personality and identification in the world of online. User names, email addresses, character names, they all start with that very name and only ever build out to established family members of the House of Zeales as needed when new characters are made to accompany Seritle.

Now that you have a bit of history on the name, you may come to understand why it is that I find it somewhat distressing that the staple of my alternate personality, the name of course, is unexplicably denied use.

I've done "battle" with customer service numerous times over at Square Enix on the matter, only to finally discover, through unpleasant means, that they are literally unable to assist with any in-game issues at the support center. Furthermore, the only people that can help me are the damned GM's (that's Game Masters). Only problem with that is that GM's are quicker to shrug people off with preloaded company policy messages than the Support Center is.

So it comes to this... The "powering up" of my system is step one in taking this battle to the GMs. Some of you may be wondering, "What if they can't do anything either?" Well I'll tell you right now that you couldn't convince me that the developers would actually incorporate an element of the game that is utterly beyond their control to alter. Now... keep in mind that this is a damned name we're talking about, not a whole system of the game. I mean this most likely is a simple change of a variable assigned to my character data such as the following (rough and most likely inaccurate) example...

User18924BA2CE == "Varone Zeales"

Me, "Can I get the name that I want that isn't against the posted rules and regulations that was denied to me by some anamolous system error or unusual programming case?"

GM, "Sure thing!"

User18924BA2CE == "Seritle Zeales"

**done**

Despite the fact that such a change simply cannot be beyond the power of a Game Master (who is basically capable of one feat such as restoring items or teleporting your character to different locations). Honestly, if it's anything like reassigning the value of a variable coded to my character's data, then I shouldn't have to put up with company policy or some "just choose another name" response. I mean it would make sense to give that response if the situation wasn't as f***ed as it is. Like if I put my name and then decided I wanted a different one, sure.. but if I am ignored on the issue of that the name I want is unavailable for reasons that literally NO ONE can explain or even know of themselves and had to choose a name that I didn't want in the first place, then you better believe I expect someone to drop the policy act and just change my damned name. Terms of Service or not, a paying customer should be given what they deserve, within reason of course, and not some horse**** answer.



So there you have it.. that's about the jist of what's shaking at the moment. Of course, it's getting pretty late, so I'm just going to post this entry in the mess that it's in. I promise that next time I will make sure to spend some time at prettying up my entry and make it functional in every aspect.



My thanks for your time in reading this and I hope it brought you some kind of pleasure.


See you again soon!