#firecatrich

Please check out their pieces and enjoy! ✨

[[I’ve been having a rough few days recently and my amazing friend/rp partner surprised me with an adorable line art of Kai in her new fancy dress to cheer me up. She’s such an amazing person and her art is beautiful. Thank you so much @firecatrich! https://www.patreon.com/FireCatRich/  ]]

So my tumblr lovelies, it has been a long time. The great exodus to parts unknown and the return has been... a thing. I was really excited by the prospect that tumblr was going back to the way it was so many years ago. An image site welcoming all comers but from what I can gather things might be better but we aren’t going back.  How have you been? 

WoW has also been a huge part of my pre-teen and teenage life. I played back during Vanilla when I was young enough to think that using Sprint as a Rogue pre-level 60 (couldn’t even afford the level 40 mount) to catch boats from Darkshore to Darnassus was super impressive. I’ve built an iron-wrought connection with my group of WoW friends. I remember a lot of them were either already friends of mine in the guild or were conscripted from Silithus to assist with opening the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj--I still remember ringing the gong alongside some of them to obtain the title of Scarab Lord. Afterwards, I kept up with them throughout the entirety of classic WoW, all of BC, throughout my hiatus in WotLK, and then returned magnificently to raid Firelands & DS (actually got 8/8 Heroic DS) before bitterly moving on to Pandas. My expectation of Pandas was very low; which was partly due to my disappointment in both 301 days of Dragon Soul compared to the 154 days of Firelands (which I firmly believed was way better) and the similar daily quest grind system present in this expansion and the last. I lost my enthusiasm for the game and my friends sensed it though they didn’t say anything. I saw myself getting online just to do dailies for the Klaxxi, Tillers, Anglers, etc and then started my raid nights mentally exhausted by a routine schedule. My two best friends, a badass resto shaman by the name of Sekapoko, whom I kept trying to out-race in the healing charts, and a holy priest named Zen, whom I later had a falling-out with, were the first to bring up my loss of interest to the guild in order for me to publicly answer them. Though I denied my dispassion for the game because I believed it was the thing they wanted to hear, I knew I couldn’t continue playing much longer. Throughout this time, my home was going through a ridiculous amount of renovations. My elder step-brother and step-sister both moved out and my family decided to change up the house. Lots of things were moved, including my lanyard carrying my 2010 BlizzCon Blizzard authenticator and that was simply it, I lost my immediate access to my account. Through some stroke of luck and a timely excuse (that actually was out of my control), I was given the choice of continuing to play WoW with friends, or pursue something greater in my late high school life. Naturally, I decided to quit. I told them I would maybe be back; I knew this was a lie. The memories of our progression in Mogu’shan Vaults was still fresh and it left me deeply guilty to walk away from all of it. I was also strangely not one to keep everyone on my Battlenet friends list as well, so throughout the years I slowly began to lose track of my friends of 7 years. Luckily some months ago, I met up with Sekapoko in a random Overwatch game and we reacquainted ourselves. I asked “Did you happen to be a [badass] resto shaman that raided with a healadin by the name of ---?” and he replied with “Yes I did.” Today I play Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve played since August 27, 2013 (its release date) and quit WoW sometime in October of 2012 which was merely a 1.5 year break from playing MMOs and focusing on graduating high school. I’ve met friends in my first year of FFXIV, but held an ephemeral relationship with them due to raid drama and yet again went on a hiatus shortly after the first anniversary of the game. Some time after Heavensward released, I returned late to give the expansion a chance and really enjoyed it. However, as a raider through and through, I had a desire to find another static group after tasting the satisfactory level of difficulty that the early raids of ARR FFXIV had. Giving myself a 3-week time limit before I decided to quit, I met a certain Miqo’te couple seeking a skilled SCH to fill their ranks and returned to the raiding scene on the 21st day of my time limit. To this day, I regard this rowdy group of raiders as saviors that allowed me to once again be able to enjoy a MMO. I hold them in very high regards and respect each one of them as we’ve all been through bad memories, bittersweet occasions, and sweet moments. I also believe that we’re actually doing pretty well with our raiding and plan to meet at the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV FanFest in October 2016 @ Las Vegas, shortly after I turn 21. Though they may regard me as a snarky rascal, they truly do not know how much they mean to me. So with the 3rd anniversary of the ending-of-my-glorious-7-year-friendship-with all-things-WoW approaching, I’m grateful to be able to meet such wonderful friends and begin a new adventure in the world of FFXIV.  @traven-xiv @ayi-xiv