Absolute Virtue feature on Massively.com

[C_Brennan]

Hey Blue Gartr,

Let me introduce myself. My name is Colin Brennan, and I'm one of the columnists/bloggers over at http://www.massively.com, a website devoted exclusively to the coverage of MMO news, discussions, and features. If anyone likes Joystiq, we're one of Joystiq's sister sites.

And, if anyone remembers that far back, I'm also Deltina, the former head of the CrystallineKnights LS, an old friend of Alim, Tildaor, Halie, and Darkatvar. I know alot of BlueGartr attended the "funeral" of Halie in-game, and if you did you might remember a level 30 mithra doing the main running of the "funeral", that would be me. :D

But, I'm coming to you guys on work business sadly, and not old memory business. I'm doing a feature article on Absolute Virtue for Massively.com, and I'm looking to talk to some people about the monster, fights with it, and how close people have gotten to legitimately defeating it. (Not wall glitching it or other stuff like that.) I'm still too low to see it personally, so I need to talk to some people who have killed off Jailer of Love and have been beaten to death by AV.

I'm interested in your comments on the AV fight, any findings you guys may have found with AV, and a general opinion of the battle overall. If you guys have any screenshots of it, I'd love them too to use in the article, with your permission of course.

You can either get back to me here, on this forum post (I hope I put this in the right section guys) or get back to me at colin.brennanATweblogsinc DOT com. I'll try to use comments from as many people as possible, but it's obviously limited. :D

[The Stig]

AV is hard.

[CelinaAlexander]

Nuking with the element of the current day lowers his regen.

[Kerberoz]

You're going to piss off a lot of people if you insinuate that AV is "challenging" or "legitimately defeatable"

It's a broken mob that SE refuses to fix; end of story.

[Khrno]

You might want to go through all of this thread: Strategies to Defeat AV (All Theories/Ideas Here), and gather the best info you can find, there might be a few other big threads about AV, but someone else might point them out, or you just might give the search a try.

[The Stig]

One other thing I forgot to add, that video they (Square Enix) released tells us everything that we need to know to defeat AV!

[Khrno]

I don't think sarcasm will help to write an article for a MMO site, but they are all true as sad as it sounds ._.

[The Stig]

I don't think sarcasm will help to write an article for a MMO site, but they are all true as sad as it sounds ._.

Yeh I know, but as you said, it's true. Which is what I'm trying to achieve here (sarcasm yet truth). I'm not lying

I don't think there's that much to write about overall. If needed to go into details, then of course the other 2-3 threads will provide a good insight. But in summary? Hah =D

[kayn]

As another poster said, if you read the existing AV threads you'll have all the info you want and more. They're fairly comprehensive details and analysis of every legitimate attempt at the mob.
Write a good story/blog entry and come back here and give us a link so we can appreciate you're work.

[C_Brennan]

Oh, thanks for the infoz guys. But what's your opinions of the mob? Do they need to lower it? (Obvious answer is yes) What have been your experiences with it?

I want the player angle, not just something that a thread can tell me. :D And ranting about how SE blows is fine, I'll try to edit ya. :D

Sarcasm is great... I think my entire opening is sarcastic so far. :D

[The Stig]

Not to be rude, but a lot of what the thread will tell you is the player angle.

[kayn]

Not to be rude, but a lot of what the thread will tell you is the player angle.

I think he just doesn't want to read 80+ pages.

[Kaeko]

History lesson about this mob...

Jailer of Love first popped and has massive regen - unkillable.
Some Ninja Patch
Jailer of Love popped and actually killed due to lowered regen.
Couple of days later, JoL killed and AV actually pops (first sighting)
AV is found to be retardedly hard and pretty much not beatable.
Time Passes
LS fights and holds AV for literally 30 hours straight.
At the beginning of this fight, they actually LOCK AV so it does not spam magic, WS, or 2hrs - that is why the original AV thread is called "AV UP ON ODIN AND NOT 2HRIN"
Someone (a friend of mine) actually accidentally CALLS FOR HELP on this locked AV... they have to reset and 2hrs etc. come back...
20+ hours later...
Near the end of their attempt they try a glitch strategy BG calls the "Wall of Justice" (where you nuke AV from the other side of the zone so AV cannot reach you)
LS eventually gives up because they can hurt it but still wipe to Meteors as well as constant Benedictions.
Days later, another LS on another server uses this same wall strategy, but AV does not fight back (glitched) - first AV kill - DROPS NOTHING.
Couple more kills using this wall method, some LSs actually get drops.
Ninja Patch - SE gives AV draw in if you attempt to nuke across zone wall.
A group figures out a funny way to hold AV using the Goblin Footprint, but they get GM'd for it.
A group (same that did the original Wall Trick) finds another way to glitch AV into doing nothing by killing Wynav pets at the same time over and over.
More groups log AV kills and get items
SE Ninja Patches this Wynav glitch method - no one has killed AV since.
Time (years) pass
SE releases a "how to kill AV" video which turns out to not help.

******************

Why Absolute Virtue is so Epic (Fail) to most FFXI endgamers...

1) People actually DID find ways to kill it or mess with it... but they were all "glitches" so SE ninja patched them all. In fact, if you attempted those strategies back in the day, you could have been GMed (actually has happened). Not only is this mob like not killable, if you attempt to think outside the box, you might get GMed!

2) Every time some method was found to kill it, SE basically says oops that wasn't supposed to be the way it worked, we'll patch it... Like how the hell were we supposed to know you didn't kill Wynav pets? Whatever the real method is it's about 100x more cryptic than the ones people used (and got GM'd) for.

3) This AV video they gave which shows like nothing... People here still argue "there's something we're missing!"... OK, you got endgamers from like 4 different languages across the world analyzing this video for weeks exausting the most retarded ideas and no one can find anything... The video is like a joke.

4) This mob was introduced like 4 years ago... It gets complained about so often and asked about basically at every possible SE interview - SE doesn't do anything and gives "beat around the bush" answers every time. It's like SE doesn't want this mob to be killable - they've had 4 years to do somehting about it and all they've done is break the methods people have used to kill it, and given out that stupid video.

5) The first kill dropped nothing - the only kill ever to not drop anything. A lot of people back then suspected SE didn't even add the drops yet because it was like a joke and was supposed to be unkillable.

6) Just in general, mentioning AV is a crack at SE's perceived lack of customer service.

That's the bad

***************************

The good in my opinion is this mob has led to so many ideas being generated (many on the glitchy side). The "Wall Trick" still works on any mob that can't draw in - like it works on the other Sea Gods. The Goblin Footprint trick was pretty funny. Also things like a LS fighting it for 30 hours straight refusing to give up... those are pretty interesting moments in FFXI "history". So AV is a big joke, but it's led to a lot of the very unique things I've personally read or personally seen in game.

If you want old school screenshots of AV like back at the original kills, first kill, drops, people using those old glitches, AV using benediction for like 100,000 HP, GM's warpin' in to ban people killing it, etc. I have a ton of those. A lot of those threads with all the big happenings regarding AV are also still on BG - I think just about every big event regarding AV was first discussed on BG forums.

[Sindalf]

I want to fight it badly but everyone is scared of it

[Tekki]

I think you will learn a great deal from the posted threads. Why it is unbeatable and a source of frustration for most is all contained within most of those threads.

The only thing your going to get from here is sarcasm and reposts from the older threads.

[The Stig]

No one cares much for its drops either anymore. Maybe except the Sash itself, but even then there's Speed Belt for the jobs that need it.

[Khrno]

I still want a Mars's Ring too instead of my Toreador's (and the sash of course) x.x;

[C_Brennan]

Trust me, I've gone through the entries, talked to people in game, and I'm looking over the threads you have pointed out to me. I'm very much appreciative of all the feedback you guys have given me thus far. I can see that AV is a subject that pisses many people right off.

But, as a journalist, I can't just go back to old threads and pull up what someone said and then quote it. I technically don't have the right. When you guys post to me here, and say these things to me, then you understand that I'm going to quote you and what you say may be reprinted.

So it's not that I don't want to read 80+ pages (it's my job to read 80+ pages) it's just that I'd rather not dance with legal issues, and I'd rather directly talk to the people here, who are looking now, and not what X guy said X years ago, which may or may not be accurate to what's going on now.

So, in short, I'm reading your old posts, but I'd like current sentiment, like how much anyone actually cares to do the mob, if anyone still tries, and things like that.

And, I am very thankful for all of the help anyone gives me in this thread. Not trying to raise up old ires or anything, just trying to get a story here.

[Khrno]

About feeling wise, i believe the desire is still there, it drops 2 of the best items in the games (Ring and Sash), however the way it is right now, it is just a complete waste of time and experience leading to more waste time getting 30k (which granted can be just 1 hour for some but still is wasted time).

It's not like we want our hands hold by SE and given a step-by-step walkthrough for any hnm in the game, that's where the challenge lies, but after many attempts from so many people, so many hours, effort, and exp thrown at it, and even after succesfully managing to beat it by the ways mentioned by Kaeko (which you should still include in your article since it is all part of the AV history), SE does nothing but slapping us in the face with a video that to leaves us in the same place we were before even watching it, just only with a worst opinion of SE's customer service and stuff. At this point a video of the whole fight, even with log hidden (Scroll Lock) isn't too much to ask.

We do want the drops, but we can't bother the way it is right now.

[NoCause]

I though we figured out how to kill AV... i mean it is clear in the video all you have to do is stare at the text and use random 2hours like 30 times in a row without a 2 hour wait... duh...