In my typically long-winded manner, this has ended up more like a mini novel, but ah well...so be it: I call this "The Day Vana'diel Stopped"
I got most of my goodbyes out of the way during the group photo on Sunday, so I just logged in sporadically all day, chatting with people I wouldn't able to chat with so easily for a bit, and getting a few e-mails from non-LS people I wanted to stay in touch with.
I just pretty much chatted away the evening until the event started. Of course, in my opinion, the event itself was a terrible mess. Square has this rule of letting the players figure out what to do, and share information amongst themselves, on the premise that figuring out what to do with friends is more fun than being told what to do. And this is fine and well if the event is working properly. But when it goes wrong and they still don't say a word, then they're just frustrating people needlessly.
Nonetheless, after much confusion, and running around, and waiting, and trying to find a Moogle through the laggy crowd, and waiting some more, wondering if I did it properly, and going back to talk to the Moogle a second time, I did finally disappear. And from then on, I alternated between Garlaige Citidel and Fei'yin, warping about every 5 minutes. I managed to avoid enemies for a while and just watch. Enemies and people disappeared frequently due to the lag, and people were falling dead all around me, killed by invisible enemies. Then I got warped and found myself unable to move. Many others were similarly affected, as there quickly piled up a bunch of people, dead and living, at the exact same warp-in spot. After a short bit, an enemy found me and killed me. But even dead, I continued to warp back and forth and was able to watch the carnage safely. Someone, one of you I believe, raised me, but there was no safe place to rest there, so I quickly perished again.
Eventually, I noticed several people had warped in on chocobos. I and others quickly deduced what had happened. I returned to my homepoint, reregistered with the Moogle, and quickly got a Chocobo. Clearly, others had the same idea, as the price of a Chocobo in Windurst had risen to somewhere around 370gil. I stood around Sarutabaruta for a while, unsure what to do, but soon was warped in, on a Chocobo. This gave me extraordinary freedom to explore. I saw a great many enemies I had only glimpsed at best.
Unfortunately, while riding close to a battle I got hit by a potent poison area effect (20 units/second!) and died shortly thereafter. I was raised again, and rested up, and then reentered the fray, this time determined to fight something. The GMs had clearly forced all the NMs to pop and had brought them to the same places. I intended to try fighting Old Two-Wings in Garlaige, but quickly found myself overwhelmed as several Fallens were already nearby, and then Skewer Sam showed up, and then a Fetid Flesh entered the fray. I saw other people die to Serket and Capricious Cassie, the NMs of Fei'Yin.
After laying dead for a while longer, I decided to homepoint again, and try to return on another chocobo. But this time, I didn't warp. I waited out the last half hour before 9PM on a chocobo, but never warped again.
I briefly logged to do some business, and when I returned, I once again found people in a bit of a tizzy, this time about fireworks. They had been promised, but there was no clear indication where to get them from. Once again, Square's tendency towards vague instructions got people frustrated rather than excited. It didn't help that a few people had imported fireworks into Windurst from Jeuno and were setting them off, yet were relatively quiet in the face of repeated shouts from people asking where to get the fireworks. Some people said "they just appear" in your inventory, yet that was clearly not the case in Windurst. Eventually someone else said a GM could hand them out. Only problem was that there was no GM in Windurst. A while later, one appeared, got us to stand in line, and started individually trading with us to give us fireworks. A bit much work, but I got my fireworks, and got some nice screen shots.
Later, I went to Jeuno and found that there, your inventory did indeed fill with fireworks automatically. I suspect that had been planned for all towns, but somehow did not work, and so Square was forced to resort to Plan B: handing them out manually. (In fact, I suspect they'd planned the earlier event to actually involve setting enemies loose in town, couldn't do it, and had to settle for the lame teleportation trick. But oh well, I guess things like this need more beta testing before they dare try them in a retail setting. That's what we were there for.
)
The reason I was in Jeuno is that Aucihen got an 11th hour hankering to suicide vs. some BCNMs. (For those of you who don't know what a BCNM is, there are three "burning circles", where you go to fight the dragon in Mission 6. You can trade beastman seals to a man in Jeuno in exchange for orbs you use on the burning circles, which will activate battles with special NMs carrying rare items). So I ran to Jeuno and got a Moon Orb (Lv. 60), and later returned to get a Comet Orb (Lv. 50.) We used both in Balga's Dais. The former resulted in six very hard Yagudo who killed us almost instantly, with amazingly potent spells and songs right out of the gate. The latter we took on with the help of Chapel. Not that it helped any. Faced with a choice of a "Small Box", a "Medium Box" and a "Large Box". I chose the Medium Box, which turned out to be a Mimic-like NM. We all died almost immediately to it.
Since it was midnight by then, when the beta was promised to end, I homepointed to wait out the final moments in Bomingo Round in Windurst, as everyone chatted and shouted and set off the remainder of their fireworks. Midnight came and went, and they hadn't kicked us off yet. We were getting a bit weary after 30 minutes of waiting tensely for the end, but finally, they started shutting down the areas, one by one. We eventually noticed whole areas of people going offline. First the areas outside of towns. (Someone shouted out when they noticed that they couldn't leave town anymore.) Then parts of Jeuno. Then the rest of Jeuno. I never did see if Windurst, Bastok, and San d'Oria went out in any kind of order. They all seemed to be intact until, around 12:30AM Oct. 15, my client announced that it had lost connection with the server, and that my account had been suspended.
It was a good run, however (over 32 days, 19 hours of total play time!), and I'm thoroughly happy to have shared the experience with all of you. It's too soon after the beta to want to think about retail, so I welcome the two week break, but once that's over, I'll see how I feel. I figure I'll be lured back by retail, more likely than not, once I've given it a short rest.
Thank you all for making beta such a great experience!
) Lead him and Badkarma on a wild goosechase through La Thiene( I was on foot and they were on chocobos and they still couldn't catch me! 
I putzed around Bastok for awhile but just lost my desire, since I missed the event and just wound up logging early. 
