Well, that's another expansion done. In a couple of hours, the game will be taken offline for a 48 hour maintenance, and Dawntrail early access will begin when this is completed. I was going to make a Twitter post but I haven't updated this blog in a while and I have far too much to say to fit in a tweet or two.
Endwalker was an expansion of many downs and some ups for me. So much went wrong, and it's easily the expansion where I feel like I accomplished the least. There were also many things wrong with the expansion that made it feel boring to play. Job rotations were simplified even further and nearly every cooldown was changed to two minutes, making you being able to express your skill even harder. There was also a severe content shortage and it felt like there was nothing to do.
The expansion started on a high for me.The story was pretty good, I got my first week 1 savage clear in Asphedelos, and I did so by playing on a new job for a change (Reaper). Things were looking good, and I was excited for 6.1 for DSR.
However this was short lived. As I have mentioned in a previous post, my group disbanded a couple of months after this. There were disagreements on what we wanted to do to fill the time between savage and ultimate, and opinions were very split to the point where a couple of people wanted to leave, and this ultimately resulted in the raid leader deciding he wanted to take a break from the game as we had been struggling to recruit, and keep a solid 8th member after kicking someone and this made my raid leader tired of having to recruit. Plus he had real life commitments upcoming.
At this point I comtemplated just quitting. But I was invited to do DSR with some people my friend knew. We did eventually clear the fight, but it took 1500 pulls, a fair bit of drama, and a lot of mental sanity to do so. I also only got 2 weapons from the fight, which was somewhat disappointing, as I'm used to getting all of them from my previous group. But overall they were a good group of people and I hope they're doing well.
6.1 was also the release of the new PvP mode Crystalline Conflict. And while it is fun to play and very competitive, the lack of T100 rewards and something to aim and work towards ultimately put me off of playing it consistently. I did eventually decide to return and give it another try, but at this point people who had been playing it actively since it's release had gotten so good, that I felt vastly outskilled and not really being in the mood to put in the effort to try and get back to my prime.
I then transferred to NA as a friends group needed a melee, but again this eventually fell apart due to scheduling issues. At this point, I conceded that things were just not going my way and I needed to take a break. I had been playing the game for 10 years without taking any long breaks, so it was long overdue.I therefore skipped TOP ultimate, the last tier of savage, and most PvE related content.
And what a difference this has made. It's been over a year now, and I feel eager to play regularly again and tackle the hardest content the game has to offer.
And the best part is, my group is back!
I'm still very good friends with my original group, one of them was my flatmate for 5 years, I've met 2 of them IRL, and the others I have gamed with for years now. We've continued to play other games together or hang out. There's no hard feelings about what happened in 6.0, and 7 of us agreed we want to go back in Dawntrail and pick things up again where we left off (the 8th continued to play after we disbanded so we couldn't get him back sadly.). We also quickly got an 8th member who most of us know quite well, and who we know is capable. We have agreed to limited savage to reclears after we clear the tier, and focus on catching up on DSR and TOP, Plus we also have 2 new ultimates to look forward to.
So I'm fucking hyped to say the least. I have 2 weeks booked off. Energy drinks have been ordered, and I'm determined to make this expansion the best one yet in terms of accomplishments.
Looking back on Endwalker, it was not all doom and gloom. I actually did accomplish a fair bit despite not actively playing for over half of the expansion. As already mentioned, I got my first week 1 savage clear, I cleared DSR on patch, which again was a first for an ultimate for me,and the hardest ultimate released to date at the time. I've made many new friends in the PvP community who have really got into CC, and I'm now part of multiple community discords for Frontlines which I have really enjoyed playing. I also competed in the fanfest tournament for CC and although we did not qualify, we certainly were no pushovers for a bunch of old veterans who had barely touched CC since season one.The PvP community has been nothing but kind to me despite me falling behind and I'm determined to make an effort to compete at a high level again in ranked.
My plan is to level DRG > VPR > NIN > RPR > MNK with the intention of raiding on either DRG or VPR, I would like a break from NIN as I end up playing it for most progs and I would like to try and be able to play multiple melee efficiently.
So while Endwalker was my worst expansion yet, and I'm happy to see the back of it. I'm positive about what's to come, and I'm very much looking forward to it.
I hope everyone has a good expansion launch. Let's fucking do this.
-Aud/Dom.
(P.S, apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes, It's 2AM for me and I'm tired AF).
