In October 2005 I had been out of college for about five months and I had the desire to get back into FFXI and had the money available to buy a PS2. So after hitting up every EB Games in the area I finally found one that had an old style PS2 and off I went to play FFXI. It was a Thursday and I had Friday and the weekend off so I decided I would play non-stop. Well, after re-installing FFXI on the new PS2 I used my POL ID and password, reactivated my User ID's, and was shocked to see that Taylor and my mule were waiting for me. Then, disaster struck. I kept getting an error message whenever I tried to log in as Taylor. Panicked, I called POL customer service (I was so lucky: They were getting ready to close when I called) and after the very nice gent on the other end spent almost an hour trying to resolve the issue I found out that I needed to delete Taylor and recreate her since she could not be recovered.
Well, I did recreate her. This time, I decided I wanted a different name for her so I went with the name of a good friend of mine: Keavy.
With Keavy created I went to work. I wanted to get back to where I was and get back to leveling. So I used the money I had on my mule (250K) and basically self-Power leveled Keavy. Starting on Friday morning and going straight through to 2 am on Monday morning I took Keavy's Monk to level 20 (Solo except for 15-20 which I did in the Dunes in an amazing JP party) and her Warrior to level 10. She also got access to subjobs and a chocobo license in that weekend. The secret was that I used Meat Jerky and lots and lots of Selbina Milk. Whenever Keavy would rest, she drank Milk. Whenever she fought a Tough Mob she drank Milk. I would go through 3-4 stacks of milk an hour at times but I was also getting incredible experience.
It was on one of my runs back to town for more milk that I ran into an old friend who I said hello to. I told him who I was and he handed me a linkpearl. There were so many familiar names scrolling across my chat screen welcoming me back and wanting to know what happened to me. As I leveled I caught up with them and felt like I was back at home.
As time went on I decided that I hated Monk (I took Taylor's Monk to 30 before switching her to WHM and falling in love) and like my friend said: "If I had taken a job from 1-20 in two days I'd hate it, too" which makes me wonder what the people that level from 1-75 in a few days think of those jobs.
So I went with RDM because I remembered RDM's being the "Hot Job" back in Taylor's day and well, I wanted to get back to the Genkai's and AF as soon as I could. Once again, I took RDM and leveled it (Got it to 30 in no time and took a break to farm because that 250K was almost gone and I wanted to unlock advanced jobs) and while leveling WHM as a sub for my RDM I fell in love all over again and, as you can see, I am going strong.
Well, as most of you know, about a month back into FFXI I discovered MithraPride and joined. If I had known such a cool and wonderful place existed earlier I so would have joined
So yeah, its now a year later and as you can see, I've done a lot in that time. Comparing Taylor to Keavy would be pretty hard because I don't have exact figures but I can tell you that at the one-year point Keavy is way ahead of Taylor in terms of WHM. Taylor was 51 with AF Hammer and Boots (No Erase, either) and Keavy is 60 with full AF and every WHM spell either learned or in scroll form and should be ready to go for the run to 75 as soon as her subs are leveled (Real life keeps interfering) so, in the end, while I am still upset over having to start over I am glad that I have had the opportunities I have had, I am glad that I have the friends that I have made, and I can't wait to see what happens next!
