I'm assuming it's okay to brain dump here. You want to know what I'm thinking?
Life is crazy. We're all growing up. I hear more about players needing to take care of their kids than about how their parents want them to log off. What are we going to do with our lives when we lose the game? We've been here for so long.
I'm barely able to keep up with the game as-is. I can't go grinding on FFXIV all over again. FF Explorers? Maybe. But who will I play with? There aren't linkshells in real life. My time is all spent taking care of my wife and kid, working, doing church callings, or whatever else.
I love you guys as a community, though. I took a couple of years as a break to get away from "serious" MMOs to play Elsword, and the demographics get flipped on their heads there. 16 year old ragers, salt thicker than blood, and instead of a community, it's more like a Barrio, like a ghetto. FFXIV is like an in-between. There's more salt and less class and kindness, but it's not as bad as the free-to-play games.
My wife and I are also looking at houses. We both have jobs in the city, and my mom (grandma) is watching our kiddo while we're at work, so we want to move closer to them, too. But our student loans are more than our mortgage. I wish I'd gone into a trade instead of college. I hope kids are getting pushed more to specialized labor than student loans these days. Community college is still a good option, too. But student loans for us are so bad, we struggle to take on anything more than a $120k house mortgage if we move.
I'm excited about ambuscade, though. It lets me revive old jobs I never thought I'd see again. My DRG can actually melee in T2 and T3 fights with that kind of damage taken reduction. Now I just need a polearm, lol. My DRK actually has armor! I can go play with it again. And my PLD can be crappy when I want to just goof around. And I don't need an Aegis with it. D Ring, Vocane Ring, Twilight Neck, and +1 Ambuscade armor is 48% damage taken. MDT caps at 50%, right? I can just augment the JSE shield and call it good when I need to tank something small, like T1 or T2, right?
Anyway, that's my brain dump. I can't even email half of this stuff to my wife, because she doesn't care much for video games. And that's fine, because I love her so, and she's my favorite person and my favorite out of all the favorites! But it's nice to talk about FFXI, too. Maybe I can do that here. I've never talked about FFXI to anyone before.