License2Splurge

My mum went shopping for a laptop today.

This was mostly inspired by my sudden sense of ennui with MMOs and surge of enthusiasm in organizing rooms in the house that had gone to the dogs for nigh unto five years (practically all of them.)

My dad had set up shop in my hobby nook, with an obsolete six-year old computer which my mum was also using. This made it impossible for me to clean out the hobby nook ever since we moved into this house, and after more than three years of dust accumulation, enough was enough.

(The darnest thing was, my dad also has his own computer in his room, but the ancient scanner has no drivers for Windows Vista, and hence had to be connected to this obsolete heap of junk in my way.)

I offered to buy them all NEW computers/scanners so that this rotten heap that not even a charity would want could be removed from my organizational path.

As usual, my miserly dad refused and retreated with this obsolete garbage into his room - after also digging out my four year old PDA that has not worked for two years from the trash bin.

(This really boggles me because it was my PDA, bought with my money, and I had a problem parting with it once it stopped working, hence my hanging onto it for two years. But I finally decided that it was just taking up space and was irreparable, having tried my very bestest to open it up, dedust, check connections, and even called the company to find out that it would cost me a good half of my original price to ATTEMPT a repair. But nooo, my dad couldn't bear parting with something electronically shiny so he fished it out of the trash bin, inclusive of the four screws at the very bottom of the bin, that I had removed in my last ditch attempt to CPR it before giving up.)

And no, he was not able to repair it either. When I said, ok, you have tried to repair it and failed, can we throw it away now? He shook his head and said, um, maybe later.

I swear we have a psychological problem here.

(Me, I have inherited genes from both sides because I tend to attach obsessively for years like my dad, then go into a cleaning frenzy like my mum. Oh dear.)

Anyhow, happily, both heaps of junk are now out of my way and in the garbage dump my dad calls a room.

This means my mum is without a surfing net and watching youtube videos device. So we finally got around to looking for one of the cheap netbook-y things we had said we wanted to get for her for ages.

License2play was on its last day, and last hour when we finally arrived at Suntec.

Course this meant we got some fairly good deals. Got a better laptop than the one we were eyeing, and I scooped up two random games - Saints Row for $30 (next stall had the same game for $50, go figure) and FF7: Crisis Core for the PSP (which makes it the first legitimate game disc I have bought for this portable *coughs* Then again, I've only played two rhythm games and an unobtainable japanese version of Sakura Taisen on it too... *hem* I am more of a DS fanatic.)

And here is where I learned why playing MapleStory or any other such Asian microtransaction MMOs is really NOT a good idea. Playing it seriously, hardcore-style, anyway.

They were running a charity auction of virtual weapons at chest-vibrating decibel strengths.

At first, I had just thought it was the standard desperate vendors attempt to auction off Samsung TVs, Fuji cameras and y'know, electronics like that because the price ranges were One thousand, One thousand and one, One thousand and two, etc. Then a pause. Then something else selling for $3000+. Then $5000 and what not.

Out of curiosity, I kept looking at the stage, wondering what the heck the product was. All I saw were a bunch of people holding video cameras. Didn't seem like any of them were auctioning any of those cameras off.

Then I spotted the white screen at their back. In the centre of the white screen, was a small pixelated image of a blue dragon-like claw.

I saw some numbers of stats besides it. +13 str or whatever. A couple of those. And this bugger sold for $6400+.

*faints*

I'm not sure I have the words for this.

Yeeesss, it is for charity. It is all for a good cause in the end. Yes, someone could just sit down and write a $10k check for charity without even getting anything in return but warm, fuzzy feelings. Yes, some people do earn $10k a month or more, so six thousand to charity is not a huge burden.

But come on, there has to be a certain amount of ego-strutting, e-penii waving and the whole Asian "face" thing going on, surely?

One uber massively rare-as-heck virtual weapon bought for six thousand doozies to wave around, brag about, risk theft of, and perhaps resale to someone else for a higher profit.

It rather boggles the mind about the economies going on in these Asian microtransaction games.

And yes, I have no idea why my latest urge is to go take Final Fantasy XI for a test drive, except that I went to listen to the Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy music concert and got all stirred up by an FMV on the big screen.

Objectively, I know it's heavily reliant on groups (though I hear it's getting better, and I was pleased to see that one class I wanted to play is actually capable of soloing from lvl 1-75.)

Objectively, I know it is a huge grindfest and there are probably Japanese and Chinese farmers grinding their hearts out for the 'gil' currency which I am not even going to compete in the slightest for.

Objectively, I refuse to participate in any big raid mobs, especially NOT raid mobs that take 11 hours to run and made international news.

I'm just kinda curious to take it as far as I can take it, solo. I don't mind some repetitive battles as long as the combat is fun. I'm rather inspired to see how their quests are structured, because they apparently tell some nifty stories with FMV cutscenes - which is something no other MMO does as yet.

Basically, I feel like playing FFXI like how an ultra-casual WoW player takes their MMO, never reaching max level.

If I had the slightest interest in the WoW lore, land or combat mechanics, I would have done the same thing and said no to the raid game. Alas, I just couldn't take the simplistic railroading and gather X items from Y mobs with a Z% chance quests after too long.

But FFXI looks different enough to at least give it a shot. I can't believe it's selling for $90 with all expansions bundled together though. It's a 7-year old MMO. Guild Wars bundles its trilogy for $70 and no subscription fee. *boggles*

Gonna have to KIV it and see if I can get a cheaper deal at some point. *twiddle dee, twiddle dum*