WoW has proven a good choice thus far. Athos, Sandman, and myself are still questing our lower jobs and working on our higher jobs when we can't all be on to quest. Though as of late with my schedule there has been a lot more time for the higher jobs rather than all questing together. Regardless, it's been an entertaining escape from reality, and I haven't regretted giving it another try yet.

As for other games, I picked up Super Mario Galaxy a few weeks back. Much as with Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine before it, I found it fairly enjoyable, but there's nothing terribly exciting about it. I've been hoping to give Mass Effect a try, but I'll be waiting until I have a little more free time before I decide to rent it. Other than that, it's pretty much been Halo 3 via Live. I'm still not a big fan of the ranking system, or its complete inaccuracy for matching players of even skill, but I've gotten plenty of time out of Live co-op. It's about time they added it in.

The initial drama made me start to consider taking a break from FFXI, and going back to WoW as I had always planned to do when Burning Crusade came out. However when BC finally hit shelves, I was hip deep in XI static's. Why leave XI if I have friends to hang with, and fun stuff to do? However a disagreement among Outcast members ended with 75% of the member's deciding to quit the game, and me left standing there wondering what the hell had happened. You see, I wasn't actual present when the 'shit hit the fan.' Neither was Athos or Sandman. So when we returned to find an empty Linkshell, it was somewhat of a surprise.

It was at this point that Athos, Sandman, and I began discussing a possible return to WoW. There is little you can accomplish with three people in XI, but in WoW we could accomplish quite a bit (excluding endgame). We decided to think about it for a while and see how things played out on XI before we made any final decisions.

Then the other thing happened. The one I'm not going into specifics about. It was at this point where my desire to play XI at all came to an abrupt end. Whether or not we planned to go to WoW, I was not continuing on XI. I don't know if that's a permanent decision yet, or if I'll just take a break for a few months, but as of right now, I don't care if I never play it again. And thus the ultimate decision to give WoW a go again was made.

So Outcast effectively moved. Magus, Sandman and myself all switched over last Friday back to Garona server (Alliance side of course). We picked up our old character we had before, and all started new ones to quest together on. A few days later a few other member's of Outcast decided to give WoW a go as well. Unfortunately the guild name "Outcasts" was taken on Garona, so we settled for our second choice "Blackwind." Magus was always a fan of the Chrono Trigger references. We currently have five old members from Outcast that have come over, with a possible sixth thinking about it. It would be nice to get to play with people we already know.

Going back to WoW was a little overwhelming at first. Being gone for over 2 years, I couldn't even remember how to pull up the map at first. We weren't online for longer than 15 minutes before Magus said to me, "The noobs in WoW wouldn't last 5 minutes on FFXI." I couldn't agree with him more. There is something about WoW that seems to retard the minds of anybody who plays. I can't describe what it is, but it is easily visible in any city at any time of the day. Thankfully, since I've already got a full party of friends, my interaction with the masses is somewhat limited.

My first goal now that I'm back on WoW is simply to get the epic mount I never got before I quit. Since I'm more or less waiting on Magus and Sandman to catch my 60 Paladin so we can play together, I don't quest a whole lot on him. What time I do play on him not helping Magus and Sandman with quests is spent mining for gold for the mount. At the current rate I seem to be gaining gold, it probably won't take more than a few days to raise the required money. After that I'll likely be focusing on my 15 Warrior.

All in all, it's nice to be back on WoW. Actually it's probably just nice to have a change of pace from FFXI. Either way I'm enjoying myself so I guess that's what counts.

Starting early I did manage to get all of Tuesday off to play Halo 3. I was out in line at the local Ebgames store an hour in advance, and at 12:08am I was walking to my truck to head back to the apartment to play. Six hours later, I was watching the credits. Now I spent a couple nights over the summer replaying through campaign on both 1 and 2, and of the two, 1 took the least amount of time at about 8 hours, and that's knowing where everything was. Halo 3 taking six hours when I had never played it before seems a little short to me. Furthermore, some of the new weapons and vehicles are rarely seen in campaign, and when you do, its more like they were put in there by the developers to say "Hey check out this new gun. If you want to play with it, turn off campaign and go play multiplayer like everybody else." All of that aside, the story does finally answer a number of questions regarding the Forerunner, Halos, the Ark, and the Flood. Additionally the amount of story that was pulled from the first Halo book was a welcomed surprise. It's about time Bungie acknowledged the books existing at all. Other than the short campaign, I am relatively pleased with the stories end.

I went home for the weekend to play Halo 3 with everybody. Sandman bought a 360 a few weeks before Halo 3 launched, so he brought it over and we tried the new four-player co-op. After the first level we realized we were blowing through everything in our path with relative ease on Normal, and moved up to Legendary instead. Even Legendary mode with four players is simplistic compared to either of the previous titles Legendary settings.

After everybody got a chance to see how the story played out we switched over to multiplayer to try out the new Forge editor. The amount of pre-game options alone kept us from an actual game for almost 45 minutes. After playing around with different setting across multiple games, we ended up in an hour-long grenade throwing contest with half gravity and 300% speed.

I also tried out the Live multiplayer while I was at home, and it seems the same problems persist in 3 from 2. That being that the ranking system is wholly inadequate at determining equal teams. Every game I played was one sided. Whether I was on the winning or losing side, the winners always won by a landslide. I don't exactly have a solution to the problem, but I do know what not working. I can only hope that after time the ranks will get more spread out so the higher skilled players will start rising to the top and stop getting paired with players of almost no skill at all.

I think its safe to say I'm fairly pleased with the new Halo game. It has some faults, but nothing game destroying. Plus there's nothing more satisfying than killing three guys riding in a Warthog with a Spartan Laser Cannon.

I picked up Metroid Prime 3 last week, and pretty much didn't put it down until I was finished. If that didn't answer any questions about whether I like it or not, then you're dumb. *Spoilers* The removal of separate beams was nice in the fact that I didn't have to change beams every 3 seconds for each different door type, however it would have been nice to get more than two upgrades. The lack of power bombs and super missiles was also noticeable. The new hypermode, which was designed to replace those aforementioned missing weapons, is reliant on you having health to use it in the first place. The game isn't overly difficult, so many times you will likely have the health to use it, but there are a few boss fights in the game that hypermode is REQUIRED to hurt them at all, and sometimes health is a precious commodity in a boss battle, and you don't want to start shooting it at the enemy. Now granted, none of this is as bad as the grievous error from Metroid Prime 2, in which they implemented the beam ammo idea. However, it is still a little frustrating at times. The story tied in with the original Metroid Prime to help explain in better detail what was going on there, and why. The new cut scenes were a little unexpected for a Metroid game, but even with that addition, 75% of the underlying story could be found by scanning objects.If you don't scan objects then you'd miss it entirely. Overall however, I found the game quite enjoyable. *End Spoilers*

In addition to that, I also rented Bioshock shortly before Metroid came out. I had heard relatively little on the title before its release, but the reviews and comments it was getting warranted that I rent it. I wasn't disappointed. The game was entertaining from start to finish, and when I was done, I even considered starting a new file to look at stuff I had missed the first time. If I ever see a used copy at EB for a decent price, I'll consider grabbing it.

FFXI goes on as usual. Outcast seems to have a pattern down. Assaults every Friday night, leveling every Saturday morning. My endgame shell also seems to be keeping a somewhat regular schedule, which is nice. Before they were somewhat erratic in their scheduling, which made it difficult to know when and where to show up. Now its easier to tell when they will be doing what. More importantly, they started up Limbus twice a week now, which has paid off with my first AF+1 piece:

I'm hoping more will follow soon. I also have the pieces to assemble a Paladin AF+1 piece, but most of the pieces aren't as good as the AF2 I'm already using, plus I'm hoping to keep saving my ancient beastcoins for a Brutal Earring. Perhaps if I'm lucky, they will start camping some of the HNM's and I can get a shot at some of the really nice gear I've only read about for the last three years.

One of the first things I did when I got back up here was stop at the closest Ebgames store to preorder some games for the rest of the year. For the last 8 years, when I wanted to preorder a game, I went to Ebgames.com. Being from a small town, I didn't have access to a local store, and not content to wait for Wal-Mart to get copies in, their online store was my only option. I had tried Gamestop once, but after they ended up sending my game to another state, I pretty much switched to Ebgames for life. I preordered Metroid Prime 3, Halo 3, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. That's a lot of money to drop on just games, but I keep telling myself, "Think of all the money your saving on shipping."

As I mentioned last time, my computer was down for repair. The retailer that sold me the card got the card back, confirmed it was indeed broken, and sent me a replacement, which arrived last Tuesday. Any later and I would have already left for Phoenix. Thankfully this time it works, and my PC is back up and running. Magus however is in a different boat. His PC works for just about everything, except FFXI. His system is showing similar signs of what mine was doing, and after Sandman and I played around with it unable to solve the problem, Magus decided he should look into a new card as well. We ordered him a slightly upgraded card to what he had before, and we are hoping the store we ordered it from will send it out promptly, but who can ever tell when ordering online. Magus only hopes his card holds out until the new one arrives, because not having a computer with classes starting would not end well.

Magus' FFXI problems are making it difficult to do Outcast events, since he's pretty much our main healer. We've been struggling through however. We still meet weekly for Assaults, and a leveling. We have also been trying to get Sandman through Promyvians to get him access to the Tavnazian Safehold. We completed Dem and Mea for him; we just need to get him through Holla. After we've done that, there are about five Outcast members who need the Phomiuna Aqueducts mission, so we are thinking of setting that up as well. There isn't much new going on with my endgame shell. Now that I'm back in school I'm hoping to make more of the events though. They invited me to a six man Salvage run last night to see how easy it is since the Salvage update a few months back. Long story short, the boss doesn't like me. I'm hoping they keep setting up Limbus runs, as there are a number of AF+1 pieces I'd like.

Unfortunately now that I'm back up in Phoenix, I'm back to being limited to two Internet connections; one for Nov, one for me. While I found a way around it last semester picking up WiFi with my laptop, there doesn't seem to be a strong enough signal in range anymore. My Nintendo USB WiFi adapter will keep my Wii on the Internet, but my Xbox 360 is out of luck, which really kind of sucks with Halo 3 coming. I considered one of the 360 wireless adapters, but after finding them for $100, I decided offline play wasn't that bad. The thing I can't figure out is why the hell they charge $100 for a device that comes built in on the Wii. At least I'll still be able to play through campaign on co-op with Magus, which will keep me occupied for a while. And I can try the game out on Live on the weekends I go home I guess.

As for this summer, I've spent a good deal of it working. When I wasn't though I've been playing a number of games, mostly of the 360 type. I borrowed some games from a co-worker since the only game I own is still Gears of War. Need for Speed: Most Wanted held my interest for a while. The races were pretty fun, but I can't say I was a fan of the police pursuits. I also played Dynasty Warriors 5 for a bit, but the one game I had hoped for more from, Perfect Dark Zero, didn't keep my attention for long. The game forecast for the rest of the year looks pretty good. Metroid Prime 3, Smash Bros. Brawl, and Super Mario Galaxy should get some long overdue playtime out of my Wii. Halo 3 is of course on the list of must haves, but with the push back of GTAIV, it will be the only 360 game I plan to buy this year. There's also the new Zelda game, Phantom Hourglass coming for the DS. Hopefully I can find time to play them all.

I'm still playing FFXI, though with work my attendance to most events has greatly decreased. Shortly after our old static reached 75 we switched over to another set of jobs. My Warrior is at 60 now. And already there are whispers of possibly switching to yet another set of jobs after we finish these ones. With my end game shell, I helped kill Hydra, but was unfortunately at work when they killed Jormungand. I've also missed a good portion of the Limbus trips, though I've managed to still make Dynamis. A lot of good it does me though since I already have full AF2 sets for Dark Knight and Paladin.

I ran into some problems recently with my PC. I left it on while I was at work, and a thunderstorm rolled in and decided to fry my video card. I've been using my laptop since. I ordered a new card and when it arrived I discovered that the card was faulty, and now must wait for the company to send me another. I can only hope the situation is resolved before I head to ASU, which by my count is a little under two weeks away. By the time I update this again, I'll probably have moved back up to ASU and will be getting settled back into school again. Hopefully things will go smoother than last year.

On FFXI, our leveling static hit 75 a few weeks ago, which makes Paladin my second job to 75. Not content to simply sit in our mog houses twiddling our thumbs, we plan to start leveling our 50 jobs more. I've also managed to pick up the last piece of Paladin AF2 from Beaucedine Glacier, which makes my second full set of AF2 armor. In addition to all that, I've also decided to finally do a quest that I've been putting off for far to long. After almost four years on the game I decided it was about time I went and got that Lu Shang's rod, so I've been spending anytime I'm not already doing other events, fishing in my usual spot in Windurst Woods. I've manage to catch about 2000 so far with a little help from some of Outcasts. With a little luck, I'll finish this quest before I go crazy and break things.

As far as other games, I purchased an Xbox 360, which explains the Gamercard picture towards the top of the page. I bought Gears of War with it. Sandman and I played through campaign yesterday. I had played a little of Gears of War before and liked what I played, which led to my decision to buy it. On my next day off, hopefully we can get some more time in on it, or maybe rent some other games. Theres plenty that came out for the 360 I wanted to try that I haven't been able to up till now. Ultimately however, like most 360 owners, I'm just eagerly waiting on Halo 3.

The shell I attend endgame events with decided to pair up with another shell on the server for Xarcabard runs in the interest of farming items more efficiently than either could do alone. So far, it's paid off for me. In addition to the Paladin AF2 I got, we also saw pieces for Monk, Thief, and Beastmaster (though the BST piece dropped with 30 sec left and was lost before it could be lotted). The Dynamis Lord also dropped a Shadow Mantle, which is of little concern to me as I'm behind 15 other people to get it. We've only done a joint run once, with plans to do them twice a month, and already you can see signs that drama will engulf both linkshells. It's really only a matter of time I assume. I suppose that people could set aside differences and opinions in the interest of working together, but I don't have enough faith in humanity to really believe that. At this point however, I don't really care. I got the piece I wanted.

For one reason or another, the rest of the CoP static had all of Saturday off, so we decided to just make a day of it and finished the whole last chapter of the missions. The final battle was really what many people have come to expect from Final Fantasy bosses at this point; an oversized flying demi-god that ends up looking a lot harder than they actually are. Despite the somewhat uncharacteristically easy boss fight at the end for this series of missions, the cut scenes and prizes were definitely worth it.

CoP wasn't the only thing going on, the xp static is about one outing away from 70. It will be nice to have access to Raise III once we are. With any luck we should be able to pull that off sometime this weeks and then we can worry about getting Abanon through the Maat fight. A few of us also went along for some KS99 runs over the weekend, but for the most part it just turned into a big waste of xp. In fact, now that I think about it, between CoP, KS99, and the Dynamis-Buburimu over the weekend, I probably lost in the range of 5000 xp. And it would have been a lot more if Square Enix didn't recently remove xp loss from CoP BC fights.

Outside of FFXI, as I may have briefly mentioned above, school is winding down now, and there's only two weeks left before finals. I'm not so much looking forward to that as I'm looking forward to spending the summer back home. Hopefully I won't end up working so much that I don't get to go have some fun too.

Today is the first day back after Spring Break, but I use the term very loosely. In my mind, the idea of a Spring "Break" would likely involve some sort of reprieve from the regular work I endure week after week. Instead I've found that Spring Break isn't actually a break at all. It's just the week I get to do my work from home and send it in through e-mail. I question why I don't start doing it that way all together. Granted, leaving Phoenix for a whole week and getting to go back home was nice, but it would have been a lot nicer had I not been working on one project after another every day.

For some reason or another, I still find time for FFXI these days. The CoP static is on hold while we level our jobs up to do the last of the missions; we've finally resumed doing Assault somewhat frequently, and Athos and I have almost gotten through the current ToAU missions. Reading it on paper doesn't seem like that much is going on, but finding time to do all that between every bodies schedule has been miracle in itself. Our group isn't known for moving very fast, but I'm just hoping we can get leveling and CoP out of the way before summer, or we may have simply run out of time.

Aside from school, XI is still getting most of my game time. Since finishing Zelda it's pretty much all I've played other than a few games not worth mentioning. We managed to get a static going with Shield, however with his and our time schedules, leveling once a week is about as often as we can get. We've managed to get up to level 44, and for the first time since he got back, he seems to be enjoying it again.

The other leveling static is up to level 65 now, with hopes of making 70 in the not too distant future. Five of our six members have already done the Maat fight, but Sandman will have to beat the old man before he can get past 70. Hopefully it won't pose to great a challenge.

The Dynamis shell I attend has been hitting Dynamis-Xarcabard more frequently, and they think we will be ready for the Dynamis Lord soon. I was fortunate enough to get my final Dark Knight AF2 piece on one of our latest runs. I'm hoping to pick up a few more Paladin pieces in the near future.

The CoP static FINALLY made it to sea. We beat the Airship fight a week ago, and then finished the Tenzen fight tonight, as well as the mission just after it. Only a few missions left before we finish them all. This makes Athos, Noviel, and Verthandi the only people in existence to have Sea access, and not have Sky access. We're looking into fixing that soon…

As I previously stated, Shield got back after two years of being out of country. He came over to hang out with Magus/Sandman and I a few times over the break. He got a job and is working to save money to attend ASU next fall. With Shield back in town, we took the opportunity to FINALLY beat Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. It only took us 3 years. We also decided to finally sit down and go through Legendary on Halo 2. In addiction to those, we also tried our best to catch Shield up on everything he missed since he left. There were plenty of movies and games he'd missed while he was gone, and so there was a lot of stuff to show him. He's still considering a return to FFXI, but his lack of internet at the moment has stopped that for the time being. Hopefully he can fix that problem shortly and come hang out online now that I'm 200 miles away.

On the subject of FFXI, the CoP static took an unscheduled break for the last month. Schedule conflicts while I was back at work become to much to overcome and we decided to just put it off till I got back to school. Now that I'm here, hopefully we can finally get Sea access. Just before I left back home we tried the Airship mission once, and we actually did a lot better than we had expected to. A tweak or two in our strategy, and we should be through it. We did manage to finally get Rank 10 over the break. It only took three years of playing this game to finally go get it. Not bad for a group of 5 people with no tank, 2x DRG/WHM as healers, and a 60 Samurai.