Ald Demo

It drives me nuts that Aion is at the top spot as I've grown to really dislike that game and the time i spent playing it.  I believe the game itself lasted me an entire year, which ironically is longer than any MMO has lasted me since.  That's another topic altogether and a rather complex one at that.  It doesn't change the fact that i wish i could have that time back but a silly wish is silly.

The actual top spot should really be Final Fantasy XI which i lived and breathed for way too long.

Unfortunately there was no Raptr back then and i'd only started using Xfire briefly towards the end of my run.  I put a ridiculous 1300 game days played into that game which comes out to something like over 31,000 hours played.  This is the last screenshot i actually have with my play time checked from early 2010 (ignore the terrible spelling of my name due to server transfers screwing it up):

It was a different time back then when we had to be on call 24/7 for world spawns, obviously not counting when we were at work.  That is, unless you had a job where you could play from work, which i didn't.  It was also a time when we never really logged off due to setting up bazaar's to sell goods tax free outside of town.  Let's also not forget the amount of AFK time spent at world spawn camps pretty much just reading forums and gossiping over Vent/TS.  I'd say only a third of that time was actually spent playing the game which would still make it my most played MMO.  

Continuing my journey through the signature quest timeline brought me to Temple of the Faceless advanced solo instance.  While i briefly watched a quick video before entering, i obviously didn't pay any attention to the final boss mechanics!  I enjoyed a few deaths followed by a massive face-palm after i realized what i was doing wrong.  My basic dragon bashing to-do and not to-do list finally came back to me.  It had something to do with it's breath and not standing in it.

Along with the buffs and pet, the quest chain also rewards a few altars to pray at which are placed in your home.  Doing so pulls up an option window to select one of the ten buffs i mentioned earlier.  The final reward is yet another cape which would have been decent at the appropriate level but now goes into my cape collection!  Sorry General Zod, i bow before Anashti.  

Upon hitting 92 and having my fill of Withered Lands, i headed up to Skyshrine for the first time.  I began my experience with the zone by getting my butt whooped almost immediately by a three pack of heroic mobs.  After of few hours of the same stubbornness, i gave up trying to solo and headed back inside the safe zone.  Luckily there were three solo instances to run for gear upgrades, which i probably needed before trying to solo there.

These instances were basically solo versions of the same public map i was trying to solo on but much easier.  In all honesty these are probably way too easy but they seem like a quick way to possibly gear up for other content.  I did manage to die by not knowing what to expect ahead of time mechanics wise but that was half the fun.  Hopefully i didn't embarrass myself!

Also as part of the reward, along with the sword and abilities, came a sword model to toss up on the wall in my house.  Now i need some books to go with all those empty shelves.

Apparently by simply sifting through the Lua scripting that FF14 uses, people were able to figure out a JSON query that would retrieve your character's information from the character database.  Further, any commands you send to the database are simply... not checked at all, and the database just takes the input commands and MODIFIES YOUR DATA DIRECTLY.

That means it was/is possible to simply tell the server "make me level 50 and give me six billion gil" and the server will...happily do it.

you can simply send a javascript request to SE's servers and give yourself billions upon billions of gold.

 You can literally convert any item.  I found a video of someone buying 99 potions from the store, then converting them to 99 Allagan gold pieces and selling them right back.

This has been known about and going on for over a month, since beta phase 4.  People that figured this out obviously exploited the hell out of it to give themselves whatever items and gil they wanted.  They turned around a made bank selling to RMT sites and actual players as well.  Now, most if not all of these players were banned in the recent crackdown, but the damage has been done.  Who knows how much of the economy is basically duped items or gil at this point and since this is still going on, how much worse it'll get before SE decides to do something.

What can actually be done at this point other than a rollback, which would no doubt piss everyone off?  Personally, I'd take that over playing in a world where i don't know what's what anymore.  Either way, SE is in crisis mode.  SE has managed to make the Salvage dupe bans of '09 seem tame in comparison.

My indecision regarding what to do first with my brand new level 85 character only lasted a few days.  The obvious journey would have been to just go and finish the character off to 95.  Where's the fun in that though?  For some inexplicable reason, i decided to start on my epic weapon quest.

Looking over the list of tasks quickly brought me to the realization that i could probably finish the entire quest chain solo and rather quickly.  That was until i saw the faction requirements.  I'd like to take a huge axe to the person that came up with faction grind, i really would.  It really wasn't that bad once i got going though, and with all the repeatables, it went pretty quickly.

I have to say all the running around wasn't too bad, with the exception of all the back and forth nonsense usually associated with this kind of quest.  I had a nice flashback of XI as i ran through underground sewers looking for specific mobs to kill.  Why are these zones extinct in recent MMO's?  I absolutely love and hate them but an MMO is more fun overall with them.

The only bit of trouble that i did have was at around the end of the chain.  One of the parts required clicking of an object while a heroic mob was beating on me, which made it impossible without being interrupted.  Other than that, i rather enjoyed the quest and the weapon as well.  It's a shame that the free weapons everyone received completely blows it out of the water start wise.  The extra effects seem really nice though so hopefully they can somehow make up for them.

I'm sure this is a rather silly quest for any EQ2 vet, but as a somewhat new player i enjoyed it still!  Whether or not I'll actually use it or continue on to the upgraded version is up in the air.  If it's possible without any actual raiding requirements, then I'm all in.

Dreadknight's Stalwart Armor Set
 

Coldain Pegasus