Garwoofoo

Realised I had some sort of starter's ring equipped which was giving me EVEN MORE XP so I've taken that off and things are settling down a bit. Switched to Arcanist and that's a lot more fun than Thaumaturge, I even got to do a few side quests though I'm still levelling up fast.

A lot has changed though. Have they removed the requirement to level a second class as well before you get your proper Job at 30?

Ah. I’m apparently on a server that has a “Road to 90” buff which is giving me insane amounts of XP. And it lasts for 90 days and can’t be disabled.

Not sure whether to work around it by levelling multiple jobs, or restart on a more sane server.

Yep, new account, new character, the lot. The free trial is so generous I'd have been mad not to, really. If I'd tried to pick up my old account I'd first of all have had to buy the game on Xbox (because all the licenses are system-specific, and I'd previously played on PS4) then I'd have had to pay a monthly subscription. By starting a new account I get the free trial and potentially months of free game time before I have to pay a penny. Anyway, like I said I've forgotten pretty much everything anyway so I was in need of a big refresher, I can't imagine trying to pick up from wherever I'd left off last time and having the slightest clue what was going on.

All the talk of Evercold has encouraged me to go back onto Final Fantasy XIV for the first time in many years. I'd somehow pretty much missed the fact that it came out on Xbox so that was a very pleasant surprise, I've forgotten pretty much everything too so it's been fun starting from scratch.

A few random observations:

• The music. Oh god I've missed this.
• I spent about an hour resizing things in the HUD. Practically a game in itself.
• The graphics are still surprisingly nice but the little voice acting I've heard so far has been utterly atrocious. Whoever voices Thancred should be banned from ever working in the industry again.
• BLM is quite dull. Might have to pick another class.
• I'm levelling up REALLY fast. I'm literally only doing MSQ and job class quests (plus the odd tutorial) and I'm already multiple levels over where I should be. That's definitely new, and I feel like I'm being rushed through the game.
• Am I right in thinking there are now NPC parties for dungeons? That might actually encourage me to go back to tanking, which I enjoyed but wasn't any fun when you didn't know the dungeon. If I can learn them at my own pace then I'd probably have a really good time.
• I need a chocobo, stat.

Still an amazing game. And the generosity of the free trial is honestly just ridiculous.

Microsoft has just upped the cost of Game Pass by 50% - the top tier is now an eyewatering £22.99 a month.

Aaaaand they've backed down. Game Pass Ultimate is dropping from £22.99 to £16.99 with immediate effect, but you don't get new Call of Duty games for a year or so after release.

That suits me absolutely fine, as I have no interest in Call of Duty whatsoever, and it's interesting to see that they've basically admitted that they were charging six quid a month for that alone. It's still a reasonably pricy subscription but I get a lot of use out of it and I guess the challenge is now on for them to add enough games to it regularly enough to make it seem like good value.

Game Pass Premium, which doesn't include day one releases at all, stays at £10.99.

Mostly this is stuff is interesting because we're immediately seeing the new Xbox boss making big changes; I wonder where this is going to go.