UPDATED 10/25/05 NEW VIDEO OF FINAL BATTLE!!!
If you've already read this post, go to the bottom of it to see the newly added video!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey hey guys! Just got back last night from the FFXI iGames Tour Event in College Station, and thought I'd give a run down about how the tournment and my team went, and also my story of forming 4 new long-term friendships and completely dominating all the competition in the tournament.
I woke up around 6 a.m. paranoid that I might not get one of the only 45-ish computers that were available there, so I arrived at Netzone @ approx. 6:30 to meet a Black Mage from the Remora server named "Ehrise" we chilled at the door and just talked about FF stuff till more people started showing up. (eventually there was about 400-500 people that came to the event)
I knew there was going to be a tournament later where we could fight the 3 heros of each nation, so I asked the Black Mage if he wanted to be the blackmage with me and my friend(Rogniak, a ninja on Odin) and he gladly accepted. And as more people showed up, we realized that the small group of 3 people we were talking to were perfect for being the final members of our 6-man party, RDM(Lucas of Bismark), PLD(Rindaarin of Odin), and MNK(????, of Alexander) were their main jobs.
And after several more hours of talking FFXI and waiting for 1:00 p.m. to arrive they finally announced they were going to let people in, and that the first 100 people got to decide whether they wanted a copy of FFXI for the comp, a copy of CoP for the PC, or a copy of CoP for the PS2... for FREE!
Then, with no time wasted they were already starting the heroes combat tournament. So I was stoked, I felt we had a great team of people, we had only known each other for a few hours but felt like we all were long-time friends.
So they give us a run-down of the rules for the tournament:
-Level 60 cap
-Only geared up in AF armor, and mediocre weapons/shields/accessories
-You have to beat 3 other player teams in a row in a "all or nothing" party vs. party match in the Diorama before being able to fight the heroes combat.
-NO ADVANCED JOBS
I was like "CRAP!" when I heard that last rule, because I was dead-set on being able to play as Beastmaster, and the PLD as PLD, and the Ninja as Ninja!!
But instead those 3 of us used to playing these advanced jobs just took similiar jobs that were familiar to due to the nature of our main. The PLD took WHM, and the Ninja took War. I used to play THF on Odin a long time ago so I was comfortable with that. We named our team SneakAttack, and started the matches. We quickly came up with a strategy of "Kill the tarus first" which was VERY successful and the crowd & announcer loved all the 4 vs. 1 taru gang-bangs. We defeated the first 3 teams with ease and LOTS of fun... and re-raise galore.
So we were now at the awaited match, HERO COMBAT! But we were told that if we won, we all would win nVidia 7800 video cards!! So we were asked if we wanted to take on just 1 of the heroes, 2 at a time, or all 3 at the same time. We wanted the video cards badly so we decided to only fight Volker of Bastok. Volker went down with ease, but had a TON of evasion, my thf didn't build up 100TP to do dancing edge until the VERY end of the battle. Here's a video of it that someone recorded:
http://s90972239.onlinehome.us/MOV01021.zip
We were informed that we were the first people in North America to ever participate in hero combat, and also win. But we felt kind of bad for only choosing to fight one hero instead of the hardest combo of all 3 at the same time....but I'll come back to this subject later in the post
We were very excited, we went to the awards ceremony and video cards were handed to us by two Mithras, and we were asked to state our character name, real name, server(I was the ONLY Quetzalcoatl person there at the event ;_; ) main job, and race. And when I said I was taru-taru I got a very big response from the crowd, since the entire match-ups we had focused on the pleasure of viewing taru's die.
After the awards ceremony, other teams were put against each other for chances to get to hero combat. I think a total of 3 other teams made it, with 1 choosing to fight all 3 at the same time, and the other 2 teams choosing to fight 2 at the same time, and all 3 teams losing, but with good effort. And this was making our team, SneakAttack, feel down because we took the easy way out.
So all day we were thinking of strategies of how to beat the 3 heroes of each nation if we were able to take them all on at the same time in a 3vs6 hero battle. None of us really expected to be given the chance, we were just talking strategies for pure fun. When finally the BLM of our group got the courage to ask the GM there if we could have a rematch if there was time, and he said "Maybe," then later the "Maybe" turned into a "I don't think so because we are behind schedule", and THEN to a "If the program is still set-up then I'll ask and see."
But then finally, at the very very end of the event, after the costume contest and the raffle was over, the GM walked up on stage and unexpectedly announced that they would be giving team SneakAttack a chance to fight all 3 heroes at once, with the battle showing on 1 large projection screen, and 2 large plasma screens for everyone to watch, as the finale of the event!!!!!
All 6 of us, including everyone at the event was cheering extremely loud at this announcement. Everyone came to see this Heroes Combat, or to beat it. But nobody could defeat it, and nobody wanted to go home without seeing the amazing being pulled off.
So we went to the designated computers, were given about 15 minutes to set-up our macros and go over our strategies/skillchains with each other, and the match began.
SneakAttack
vs.
Volker - Warrior type, can use Spirits Within and Mighty Strikes.
Prince Trion - Paladin type, Invincible and Savage Blade
Ajido-Marujido - annoyingly casts ice spikes that had a very strong paralyze, and uses Mana-font
We started off with the RDM kiting Trion, and had the MNK take all the hate from Ajido-Marujido by doing Hundred-Fists straight from the Start. At this time Volker was being tanked by the war, but also being periodically stunned. Ajido-Marujido finally went down after a Howling Fists -> SATA + Dancing Edge to the face.
But tragedy struck once Ajido died, our BLM had hate from stunning Volker and got killed. So it was now 5vs2, RDM was constantly going from red -> yellow -> red while kiting Trion, but thankfully to nicely timed weapon-skills and great healing we were able to take down volker and have our War voke Trion just before the RDM was out of mana.
With the RDM being free of having to kite, he quickly healed up enough mana for raise, and Chain-spelled it to get the BLM up. And no longer than 20 seconds after the BLM was healed, he was able to cast ancient magic and send the crowd into applause. Our Howling Fist -> SATA + DancingEdge got eaten up by his invincible ; ; . But after using all our TP and MP, Trion would not die, and the War was in the red and was for sure going to eat dirt because the WHM's cure wasn't going to go off fast enough, but thankfully luck was on our side and Trion missed and allowed enough time for us to finish him off with normal melee attacks.
The moment Trion fell to his knees the entire place errupted with cheers, whistling, applause, and people grabbing our shoulders and complimenting our teamwork.
SE employees asked us to come to the back of the room and just quickly interviewed us on our names and such and put it all into their computer, we didn't get any prizes for this, but we didn't want any, we just wanted to disprove the disbelievers that were saying "The first team only won the video-cards because they only took on 1 of the heros." which was true, but we wanted to prove it to ourselves and to them that we could do it.
Also, during the time after the battle we were very please to find out that even though Heroes Combat has been available to FFXI events in Japan, only one JP team has ever been able to defeat all three heroes at the same time! But not only did we do it, we did it in a record shattering 4minutes and 37seconds! The japan team's record was close to 7 minues (Like 6 min. and 40-ish sec), as told to us by one of the SE staff members. However, this clear time by the JP reported to us is still being looked into since at the end of the battle it says "The clear time record is 4min. 15 seconds."
But sadly, it had to come to an end, and we exchanged AIM names and decided to make characters on another server with the exact same jobs/races that we had in the tournament and see how far we could take them, sub-jobless, just like in the tournament...and of course, just for fun.
I'm not leaving Quetzalcoatl by any means, but us 6 have decided that whatever server it is, we will meet up for 2 days of the week to XP together on them. The FFXI community is by far the greatest community of people I could have ever imagined.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATED 10/25/05 NEW VIDEO OF FINAL BATTLE!!!
After pulling my hair out and bugging the crap out of dozens of people far and near, I was finally able to get some help from the stratics website. The managing editor, Zigrah, posted my video request on the main page of the news: http://ffxi.stratics.com/ and not too long after I got an IM from someone that was there and had a camcorder!!
Unfortunately he was only able to start recording about 1 second before Volker died so it begins with us relieving the RDM of his Trion kiting, but compared to not having any footage at all... I'm not complaining. Now there's some annoying people with fat heads in the way of the screen, and some bad camera angles, but try to bear with it Also, the video takes place thru the eyes of the Monk, so as the thf I'm rarely in it since the mnk is my SATA partner /cry but enjoy!
Thanks so much to Teekameeka of Cerberus for filming this!
http://files.filefront.com/FFXIHeroespt2wmv/;4287570;;/fileinfo.html
And here's a picture of Team SneakAttack just after we defeated the 3 heroes, it was about 11 p.m. and I hadn't really slept too well the night before (was of course playing FF till about 4 a.m., and woke up at 6 a.m.). Plus, I'm not sure, but it appears that I pissed myself? lol or I did another bodily function that expresses a state of "happiness." You decide...
:
If you've already read this post, go to the bottom of it to see the newly added video!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey hey guys! Just got back last night from the FFXI iGames Tour Event in College Station, and thought I'd give a run down about how the tournment and my team went, and also my story of forming 4 new long-term friendships and completely dominating all the competition in the tournament.
I woke up around 6 a.m. paranoid that I might not get one of the only 45-ish computers that were available there, so I arrived at Netzone @ approx. 6:30 to meet a Black Mage from the Remora server named "Ehrise" we chilled at the door and just talked about FF stuff till more people started showing up. (eventually there was about 400-500 people that came to the event)
I knew there was going to be a tournament later where we could fight the 3 heros of each nation, so I asked the Black Mage if he wanted to be the blackmage with me and my friend(Rogniak, a ninja on Odin) and he gladly accepted. And as more people showed up, we realized that the small group of 3 people we were talking to were perfect for being the final members of our 6-man party, RDM(Lucas of Bismark), PLD(Rindaarin of Odin), and MNK(????, of Alexander) were their main jobs.
And after several more hours of talking FFXI and waiting for 1:00 p.m. to arrive they finally announced they were going to let people in, and that the first 100 people got to decide whether they wanted a copy of FFXI for the comp, a copy of CoP for the PC, or a copy of CoP for the PS2... for FREE!
Then, with no time wasted they were already starting the heroes combat tournament. So I was stoked, I felt we had a great team of people, we had only known each other for a few hours but felt like we all were long-time friends.
So they give us a run-down of the rules for the tournament:
-Level 60 cap
-Only geared up in AF armor, and mediocre weapons/shields/accessories
-You have to beat 3 other player teams in a row in a "all or nothing" party vs. party match in the Diorama before being able to fight the heroes combat.
-NO ADVANCED JOBS
I was like "CRAP!" when I heard that last rule, because I was dead-set on being able to play as Beastmaster, and the PLD as PLD, and the Ninja as Ninja!!
But instead those 3 of us used to playing these advanced jobs just took similiar jobs that were familiar to due to the nature of our main. The PLD took WHM, and the Ninja took War. I used to play THF on Odin a long time ago so I was comfortable with that. We named our team SneakAttack, and started the matches. We quickly came up with a strategy of "Kill the tarus first" which was VERY successful and the crowd & announcer loved all the 4 vs. 1 taru gang-bangs. We defeated the first 3 teams with ease and LOTS of fun... and re-raise galore.
So we were now at the awaited match, HERO COMBAT! But we were told that if we won, we all would win nVidia 7800 video cards!! So we were asked if we wanted to take on just 1 of the heroes, 2 at a time, or all 3 at the same time. We wanted the video cards badly so we decided to only fight Volker of Bastok. Volker went down with ease, but had a TON of evasion, my thf didn't build up 100TP to do dancing edge until the VERY end of the battle. Here's a video of it that someone recorded:
http://s90972239.onlinehome.us/MOV01021.zip
We were informed that we were the first people in North America to ever participate in hero combat, and also win. But we felt kind of bad for only choosing to fight one hero instead of the hardest combo of all 3 at the same time....but I'll come back to this subject later in the post
We were very excited, we went to the awards ceremony and video cards were handed to us by two Mithras, and we were asked to state our character name, real name, server(I was the ONLY Quetzalcoatl person there at the event ;_; ) main job, and race. And when I said I was taru-taru I got a very big response from the crowd, since the entire match-ups we had focused on the pleasure of viewing taru's die.
After the awards ceremony, other teams were put against each other for chances to get to hero combat. I think a total of 3 other teams made it, with 1 choosing to fight all 3 at the same time, and the other 2 teams choosing to fight 2 at the same time, and all 3 teams losing, but with good effort. And this was making our team, SneakAttack, feel down because we took the easy way out.
So all day we were thinking of strategies of how to beat the 3 heroes of each nation if we were able to take them all on at the same time in a 3vs6 hero battle. None of us really expected to be given the chance, we were just talking strategies for pure fun. When finally the BLM of our group got the courage to ask the GM there if we could have a rematch if there was time, and he said "Maybe," then later the "Maybe" turned into a "I don't think so because we are behind schedule", and THEN to a "If the program is still set-up then I'll ask and see."
But then finally, at the very very end of the event, after the costume contest and the raffle was over, the GM walked up on stage and unexpectedly announced that they would be giving team SneakAttack a chance to fight all 3 heroes at once, with the battle showing on 1 large projection screen, and 2 large plasma screens for everyone to watch, as the finale of the event!!!!!
All 6 of us, including everyone at the event was cheering extremely loud at this announcement. Everyone came to see this Heroes Combat, or to beat it. But nobody could defeat it, and nobody wanted to go home without seeing the amazing being pulled off.
So we went to the designated computers, were given about 15 minutes to set-up our macros and go over our strategies/skillchains with each other, and the match began.
SneakAttack
vs.
Volker - Warrior type, can use Spirits Within and Mighty Strikes.
Prince Trion - Paladin type, Invincible and Savage Blade
Ajido-Marujido - annoyingly casts ice spikes that had a very strong paralyze, and uses Mana-font
We started off with the RDM kiting Trion, and had the MNK take all the hate from Ajido-Marujido by doing Hundred-Fists straight from the Start. At this time Volker was being tanked by the war, but also being periodically stunned. Ajido-Marujido finally went down after a Howling Fists -> SATA + Dancing Edge to the face.
But tragedy struck once Ajido died, our BLM had hate from stunning Volker and got killed. So it was now 5vs2, RDM was constantly going from red -> yellow -> red while kiting Trion, but thankfully to nicely timed weapon-skills and great healing we were able to take down volker and have our War voke Trion just before the RDM was out of mana.
With the RDM being free of having to kite, he quickly healed up enough mana for raise, and Chain-spelled it to get the BLM up. And no longer than 20 seconds after the BLM was healed, he was able to cast ancient magic and send the crowd into applause. Our Howling Fist -> SATA + DancingEdge got eaten up by his invincible ; ; . But after using all our TP and MP, Trion would not die, and the War was in the red and was for sure going to eat dirt because the WHM's cure wasn't going to go off fast enough, but thankfully luck was on our side and Trion missed and allowed enough time for us to finish him off with normal melee attacks.
The moment Trion fell to his knees the entire place errupted with cheers, whistling, applause, and people grabbing our shoulders and complimenting our teamwork.
SE employees asked us to come to the back of the room and just quickly interviewed us on our names and such and put it all into their computer, we didn't get any prizes for this, but we didn't want any, we just wanted to disprove the disbelievers that were saying "The first team only won the video-cards because they only took on 1 of the heros." which was true, but we wanted to prove it to ourselves and to them that we could do it.
Also, during the time after the battle we were very please to find out that even though Heroes Combat has been available to FFXI events in Japan, only one JP team has ever been able to defeat all three heroes at the same time! But not only did we do it, we did it in a record shattering 4minutes and 37seconds! The japan team's record was close to 7 minues (Like 6 min. and 40-ish sec), as told to us by one of the SE staff members. However, this clear time by the JP reported to us is still being looked into since at the end of the battle it says "The clear time record is 4min. 15 seconds."
But sadly, it had to come to an end, and we exchanged AIM names and decided to make characters on another server with the exact same jobs/races that we had in the tournament and see how far we could take them, sub-jobless, just like in the tournament...and of course, just for fun.
I'm not leaving Quetzalcoatl by any means, but us 6 have decided that whatever server it is, we will meet up for 2 days of the week to XP together on them. The FFXI community is by far the greatest community of people I could have ever imagined.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATED 10/25/05 NEW VIDEO OF FINAL BATTLE!!!
After pulling my hair out and bugging the crap out of dozens of people far and near, I was finally able to get some help from the stratics website. The managing editor, Zigrah, posted my video request on the main page of the news: http://ffxi.stratics.com/ and not too long after I got an IM from someone that was there and had a camcorder!!
Unfortunately he was only able to start recording about 1 second before Volker died so it begins with us relieving the RDM of his Trion kiting, but compared to not having any footage at all... I'm not complaining. Now there's some annoying people with fat heads in the way of the screen, and some bad camera angles, but try to bear with it
Also, the video takes place thru the eyes of the Monk, so as the thf I'm rarely in it since the mnk is my SATA partner /cry but enjoy!Thanks so much to Teekameeka of Cerberus for filming this!
http://files.filefront.com/FFXIHeroespt2wmv/;4287570;;/fileinfo.html
And here's a picture of Team SneakAttack just after we defeated the 3 heroes, it was about 11 p.m. and I hadn't really slept too well the night before (was of course playing FF till about 4 a.m., and woke up at 6 a.m.). Plus, I'm not sure, but it appears that I pissed myself? lol or I did another bodily function that expresses a state of "happiness." You decide...
:
that really means a lot to me coming from you!
