Meet the Officer Team

[RJO]

The officer team wanted to get a thread up to introduce ourselves to make sure you guys knew who it was who was leading you in to battle.

Each officer on the team will be posting a quick introduction so you can get to know the team!

On we go!

[RJO]

About Me

Hi, I'm RJO which is my initials: Ryan James O'Sullivan. This tells you something about me right off: I'm not a very creative person, very much a left brained person.

I'm 31 and live in Toronto with my wife Tammy (Boosie here on the forums) and my daughter Paige. I work for an eReading company called Kobo based out of Toronto where I head up their Publisher Analytics group. My background is in Computer Science and I've built my career around building business process that makes the most of technology.

Outside of work (when there is an outside of work - I am a bit of a workaholic) and when I'm not spending time with my family I enjoy gaming (more on that later), long haul ATVing (next week I'll reach 10,000km on my machine), Magic The Gathering, baseball, soccer, and golf.

I'm a very optimistic and happy go lucky person. I don't let much bother me and I try and go through life letting stress roll off my shoulders.

Me and Gaming

My primary hobby is in the area of gaming. I started on a commodore 64 (yogi bear!) and amiga 500 (It Came From the Desert, Wings, Police Quest, Kings Quest, Quest for Glory) and the rest is history. I came to MMO gaming by way of Ultima Online. I was lucky enough (through family connections in the industry) to meet some of the development team during the development of the game and managed to get my way in to the earliest betas and I was instantly hooked.

Early in the release period of UO I hooked up with Cironian (maker of UOX) and attempted to launch the first publicly available / full service / large scale player run shard. We started putting together an interesting little server when Chris Yates (EA's CTO at the time), Starr Long and a gaggle of EA's lawyers sat me down and let me know they weren't going to let this happen. Two good things came of this:
1) EA/OSI agreed they wouldn't go after server emulators and small scale grey shards if my team stepped away from "full service / large scale" player run shards, which I agreed to do.
2) I reconnected with Starr and some of the other developers I had met previously and they brought me on the original team of Counsellors / support volunteers which eventually led me to become part of the first team of SRCs who ran and built up the support systems in UO.

This began my long career in MMO meta-game. But I'll get back to that in a second.

I'm very much an MMO gamer. I spend close to 80% of my gaming time focused on MMOs. I always like to maintain a top 10 list of the games I've spent the most time on / enjoyed the most. This list changes a lot but the list sits something like this at the moment:
Everquest 2
Ultima Online
Star Wars Galaxies
World of Warcraft
Final Fantasy XI
Everquest
Anarchy Online
Warhammer Online
World War 2 Online
Vanguard

My play style is very core gamer. I've actually never been overly hardcore but I very much have always existed in that place where I'm as hardcore as I can be without sacrificing my out of game life and without the need to treat a given game as a job. I'm a sandbox minded MMOer who prefers to be given tools to have fun with a community. I enjoy games with a robust economy and where players inadvertently have the ability to set the agenda regardless of what the development studio is cranking out in terms of content.

Outside of MMOs I enjoy sports games, old school adventure games and the occasional FPS or MOBAs.

My real love when it comes to gaming is in the meta world of the industry. My work for OSI on UO was a gateway drug to my real thrill: helping build communities and the supports that make the MMO genre tick. That was taken me on a long journey from building support systems on UO, to writing columns for Warcry, IGN and Stratics, to being the Managing Editor of Stratics, to being on the research team for two strategy guides (SWG:JTL and EQ2) and many other roles throughout the industry. I also ran more player run shards (where I met Okaria, Gagtech and many of my gaming family) once Player Run Shards became ubiquitous (you're welcome for keeping the lawyers away :P)

My most recent and active role within the MMO community is as…

Me and the Guild

… one of the founders of Aureus Knights. I'm more or less retired from the industry stuff at the moment aside from the guild (I suspect temporarily, I have several things on the horizon and despite my couple years really out of the game I still am contacted all the time to get on board projects). Nowdays my meta project is the guild you see here.

I spend several hours a week working on various aspects of the guild and it very much is a part time job. That might sound like a complaint but if you understand how much I REALLY am in to the MMO meta you'd understand it's actually a point of pride as this project is something I'm VERY proud of.

In 2006 a group of friends who had just suffered a bad guild break up decided it was time to take our experience running guilds and MMO communities and see what we could do on our own. We worked to build a charter and guild structure that would give us a community that was structurally designed to avoid the pitfalls we had encountered in the past. As I said. There's a lot to be proud of with this project! We started as 6 friends, grew to 40 members in our first game (Vanguard) and now going in to Final Fantasy 2.0 we've had over 1,200 members through the doors at various stages of the guild's life.

So that's me. I'm very much looking forward to playing Final Fantasy XIV with you all.

[Okaria]

About Me
Howdy, I'm Evan - otherwise known as Okaria Dragon. I'm a open source developer that works for a non-profit building tools that enable citizen journalism and humanitarian projects. I was previously a video game designer, and have a couple games out there on Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. I still dabble in it as a hobby. I currently live in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, but I travel a great deal.

Ron Swanson is my spirit animal.

Gaming
I didn't really get into gaming until I got my first PC. I spent a lot of time play Monkey Island, LOOM, Colonization, 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria, and other DOS classics. After transitioning to Windows, I got hooked on WorldsAway on Compuserve, which was one of the first GMUDs and the western successor to LucasArt's Habitat.

After this I spent a lot of time building and hosting MUDs. In 1996 I discovered Ultima Online, and got involved in the server emulation scene. This was when I met RJO and Gagtech, and a few other friends I still remain close to today. Since then I've pretty much played every major MMO release to date to varying degrees.

I've spent the most amount of time in Ultima Online, EverQuest 2, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Asheron's Call 2 and Vanguard.

The Guild
I am one of the co-founders of the guild, and am generally present in all of our flagship chapters. I also help lead our casual chapter and perpetual World of Warcraft guild.

I'm looking forward to giving many of my legendary walking tours in Final Fantasy XIV.

[ehrie]

About Me:

Hello, my handle is ehrie, but feel free to call me Craig. You'll find me in game usually on my main named character, Talshiar. I am 33 years old, I live in Orange in the great state of Connecticut. I was recently hoboed from my job, but before that I spent 10 years in the telecom industry. I don't miss it. I have been gaming since my grandmother gave me an Apple IIc for my 5th birthday. I love all sorts of computer games and just talking about gaming. My main game these days is League of Legends. I enjoy playing and watching the LCS when it's streamed online. I am one of the few Americans who loves Final Fantasy XIII and can't wait for XIII-3 and Kingdom Hearts 3 to come out within the next two months. My little brother is neens. Feel free to give him grief as he has always given me grief our entire lives. If you like sports I bleed New York Yankees pinstripes and am also a huge New York Giants fan.

AKS & I

I joined AKS at the launch of Warhammer Online and have been gaming with these fools ever since. By fools I mean that Evan guy. He's a swarthy one. I have been a officer since Warhammer Online and currently maintain the guild's Minecraft server. This place is great, I have brought friends and family to play games with AKS and don't have a single regret about it. Except Evan. See above.

[Zro]

About Me

Oh hi, I'm Zro. It doesn't have a distinct pronunciation so however it rolls off the tongue works. My real name is Mike but you may find some people call me Hopper or Hop. I live outside of Pittsburgh and I work at a Chevy dealership in parts. So if you have a GM car and need anything, I know some people that know some people that robbed some people. Outside of work I'm into skiing, cars, skateboarding and hockey. I also dabble (poorly) with turntablism.

Me and Gaming

I started back on the NES and upgraded through the years. I found myself drawn to the MMO genre but only really got in depth with FFXI. I was pretty hardcore from 2005-2009ish. I tried a few other MMO's but I couldn't find one to hold my interest. Weirdly, what did start to hold my interest was playing NHL and FIFA competitively on Xbox 360. I'll have to admit that is a weird transition of games but it was fun at the time. Now I just play for fun so if you have NHL or FIFA for 360 let me know and we'll get some games in.

Me and the Guild

I joined the Aureus Knights this past summer right before FFXIV Beta Phase 4. Yep, I am the noobiest of the officers and a toddler in the guild's eyes. I don't have a long history with the community but it really has been nothing but great since day 1 for me. I was actually hesitant about joining a guild that had so many members. Also they had known each other for years. I quickly found out that none of those reasons were a big deal. Everyone, new or old, were very friendly, knowledeable, and most important, fun. This point was demonstrated particularly during a Praetorium run i was helping with. Most of the group were officers or long standing members. I did feel a little off but a person (who will remain nameless) decided to sing the Gummi Bears theme song. At that moment, I knew that the Aureus Knights were good people and the place for me.

I'm really looking forward to enjoying more moments like these with everyone. (Not singing the Gummi Bears theme song but other fun things.) The Knights did a wonderful job of making my transition welcoming and fun. I hope to do the same with the new and old Knights whether it be clearing content, role playing in someone's general direction, or an elegant naked march through the towns.

[Gwen]

About Me
Pretend this part is a clever intro, and my really real name is Crystal. I picked "Gwen" as a name in FFXI, and I just carried that over when I recreated on FFXIV. As of writing this, I'm 35 and thinking about chasing all the other officers off my lawn, damn kids. I'm originally from Southern California, met Haz online in 1998 (back when everyone thought meeting people online was OMG SO DANGEROUS), and we got married in December 1999. We have a kid: Marcus, who likes to talk to people on Mumble. In late 2013, we decided to uproot the whole family and move from California to Pennsylvania, where Haz brings home the bacon, and I stay home to cook it up. I like cooking, gardening, crocheting, and most other things typically reserved for 65 year old ladies.

Me and Gaming
I've been playing games in one form or another since before most of you were born. Seriously. The first console I had was an Atari, and my first computer was an Apple \\c. The only other MMO I really played for more than a few weeks was FFXI, which I played (along with Haz and Kheo and Daku and others) pretty religiously for a number of years. I primarily like RPGs, but I've been known to play a little Halo and Titanfall when the mood strikes.

Me and AKS
Haz and I actually just joined AKS back in December-ish 2013. We had been playing with some old FFXI friends on Leviathan, and Kheo refused to transfer to play with us because of this awesome FC he on Gilgamesh, he said. After we settled down from moving cross-country, we decided to jump servers and were welcomed into AKS. Everyone was really welcoming and a little weird (in a good way), and it was just a good fit.

[Artex]

About Me:
I’m going in. Hello all, many of you know me as Artex or prior Gartex but my real name is Casey. I work as a programmer with MetLife and have just recently moved to the state of North Carolina to pursue a more successful career in the company. I’m going on 30 this December so exciting… >.> . I lived most of my childhood just a bit northeast of Philadelphia, PA therefore I pretty much hate everyone. I like to think I’m an open minded individual but I’ll get racist, sexist and offensive in a heartbeat if I think it’s amusing and suited for the audience at hand. I have a hearing disability in my left ear from when I was 6 months old (RSV virus). Because of this I tend to mess up a lot of words or say them oddly. I would say it’s now 50/50 on whether it was intentional or not. I don’t own any pets but I would like to have a dog soon once I establish myself a bit more here. Other than video games, my hobbies include movies, anime, puzzles, and pushing people’s comfort levels. Likes: Warm water (not ocean though), massages, having abundance of time, playing games with friends. Dislikes: Repetitive noises, people who are narrow minded, waking up, having inferior computer equipment.
MY SPOON IS TOO BIG!!

Gaming and I:
There are three major games that I have always contributed to my gaming addiction. Myst, Warcraft II, and FFVII. Myst infuriated me because there was a bloody sound puzzle in the spaceship which involved you hitting keys and matching the sound to another machine. Well fuck those developers and my hearing problem. Warcraft had me in awe because I found it pleasing to order little orc men around to gather wood and mine gold. The whole RTS genre really fascinated me as a child with the base/resource management. Final Fantasy FFVII, my first time seeing it was at my cousin’s house where he let me fly around the Highwind on the over-world map then later, I remember seeing another cousin playing it at that beginning scene where Cloud gets off the train and I just knew I had to play this game.
Afterwards, it’s been a sloppy binge after another. I mostly enjoy RPGs as I love the story they tell and the characters you get to meet. It is almost like reading a book but visually seeing it as well. Some of my favorites have been Final Fantasy (obviously), Zelda, Bioware stuff, Blizzard games excluding WoW and Heartstone, Fallout/Elder Scrolls, etc. I would say my top 3 favorite games, 1. Shadows of Colossus, 2. Zelda: Ocarina of Time, 3. Final Fantasy VII. Here’s why:
Final Fantasy VII: There is nothing in my series of gaming that has hit me harder than Aeris’ death. To fucking kill off your healer a little over half way through the game was a giant fuck you and huge eye opener to me as a fourteen-ish year old gamer as to the depths story telling could take you. I don’t think I’ve been as shocked by a death until Eddard Stark. The rest of the game just felt as a revenge quest for me, like I had to see this through.
Ocarina of Time: What a great game. I mean it’s probably one of those games up with Chrono Trigger as just possibly the greatest game ever to be created. The moment I’ll always recall is when you first get let out into the map of Hyrule after beating the Great Deku Tree dungeon. For me, I knew at that point, I was setting out on a timeless adventure. I have replayed this game about four times and that’s saying a lot because I normally only have one play through for a game.
Shadows of Colossus: If you have not played this game, I feel sorry for you. It is just brilliant in all regards. A guy, a horse, a dead girl, and 16 boss fights. Who would have thought that such a simple setup would become an exhibit of true story telling and atmosphere? I’ll tell you the part where I blew my load and this game went straight to the top for me. There is a colossus which is like a hawk and in order to fight this fucker, you have to jump on to its wing while it dives at you then crawl along its back to weak points and stab it. Part of the mechanics of the game is that there is a grip gauge which slowly depletes as you hold on to the colossus. So there I was holding on, flying through the air while this hawk does barrel rolls trying to shake me off. I’m stabbing the damn thing and my grip gauge is about empty with the hawk’s health within one stab of life. I’m upset/excited because I know it is about to barrel roll and my grip will give out, costing me time to get all the way back up on it. I make my way to the last weak point and sure enough the fucker goes into a barrel roll and I have nothing left so my character falls off. WHEN OUT OF NOWHERE, the hawk swings back underneath my character having me land onto his back. I literally fell at the highest point of the barrel roll only for him to swing back underneath to catch me. It was a defining moment in video gaming history for me as I drove my sword into it for the win.
AKS and I:
AKS and I. Welp, I knew I wanted to play FFXIV after playing in one of betas and I sort of got the feeling that my friends who were interested would only last a few months where I really wanted to commit myself to a MMO. I looked around a bit on the official forums for recruiting guilds and somehow came across AKS. I think I was impressed with the site design and the structure but I’m not even sure if I ever did an introduction post. I kind of just made an account and followed the FFXIV forums. The first couple days, we were all in the AKS Linkshell which we ended up having two of and wasn’t until after the early access that the FC was even founded. It’s funny, all those days are sort of a blur, I don’t recall many people other than I think Snuffy and Deliverus. I know I got on mumble and had interactions with other guild members as well as partake in guild events but nothing really stuck. It wasn’t until I was picked up by Flight 3 to tank First Coil that names started to make sense.
Eventually, down the road they put up an application form for officership of the FFXIV chapter and I figure, “why not?” It wasn’t until later that I was approached because Rowan needed help with the raid stuff and became an officer. It’s been a drama slide ever since. I feel like I have done a decent job as a Raid officer and officer but I’ll never truly know. I really try to help you all but some of you… well the words “are you fuckin kidding me” have been said more than once in my career. Anyways, I hope to make all AKS members’ time with us a memorable one even if I have drag your fuckin dead ass corpse through primal after primal after primal and have you leave the next day because no one in this fc helps anyone.

[Trufflepig]

About Me

Hey all, I'm Trufflepig. Truff is fine. I've been gaming since I was a kid with Poltergeist on my dad's TRS-80. I ended up with the Trufflepig moniker back in UO around 2001 when I wanted a character name that was flat out embarrassing to be killed by, and that gave very little mental motivation for ganking: "Oh big deal, you managed to kill a Trufflepig. Is the preschool your next stop? I hear those 4 year olds are hardcore!"

Fast forward several years and not only had the name stuck, but as I transferred over to release-WoW I found it was a great ice breaker and damn useful because people wouldn't forget it. When trying to make a name for yourself in a new place, an amusing and unique tag helps even more than knowing which is the pointy end.

I'm 36 now and active duty in the USN. I've been a SONAR Technician for over 16 years and love my job when I get to do it. Out of those, I've been rotated back to San Diego a couple of times to be a teacher. That's where all of my patience comes from. With all of that classroom time, I've developed a bit of skill in breaking complicated concepts in to simple and easy to remember components. It works well in the office and translates quite well to raid leading. I love it because all of those extra hours I spend playing games actually comes in handy for honing my communication skills in the real world.

Gaming

I'm pretty sure that I was playing video games on green monitor running off of a 5 inch floppy drive before I learned to read. My dad had an Atari before I was 5 years old and a Nintendo by the time I was 8.

I think my first big online experience was Quake, and later the Team Fortress mod for it. Then Diablo came out and hooked me up until I read about this new thing called Ultima Online... And that was how I lost 6 years of my life.

Since then I've been active in several of the bigger name MMOs. I'm serial-monogamous with games. I play one and only one to the absolute exclusion of pretty much everything else. Then I do it again. And again. And again. Games I've put real time and effort into include:

UO (6+ years)
WoW (5+ years with gaps)
Vanguard (About 6 months at release, but was reading and hyping it for 2 years beforehand including a Vegas trip for Fanguard)
EVE (6+ months of training and a ton of market PvP. When I beat the market, I got bored)
Rift (6 months or so until the day it went F2P. Eilri & Kalisalos came over to FFXIV from my Rift guild)
LoL (Been inactive for quite a while, but I love that game)
WS (About 4 months from release through chapter closure)
AA (About 2 months from release through chapter closure)
FFXIV (6-15 hours a day almost every day from re-release until just after Titan Extreme; 3-8 hours most days since just before HW)

I like character progression and definitely fall under almost anyone's definition of hardcore. About the only thing that really stops me from being an elitist asshole is age and experience.
I burned out a few times in WoW when I couldn't solo-carry the load as Guild Lead, Class Lead, Raid Lead, and Main Tank over long stints of time. Watching 3-5 months of hard work and 60+ people scatter to the winds because I wasn't as good as I thought I was humbled me quite a bit. By the end of my 3rd progression guild, I finally looked around and realized that I get more enjoyment out of teaching others and team work than I do as a dictator. So now I write guides and lead training runs instead of writing instructions and pushing server firsts. Everyone wins and I don't feel like my hobby is giving me an ulcer!

Aureus Knights

I'm relatively new to AKS and actually here kinda by accident. A couple of years ago when Wild Star released I was planning to head back to my old UO guild. It had been years since I was an active part of their community, but I've kept in touch and they all still move from game to game with the same sort of open return policy that AKS has. When Wild Star released their chosen server's queue was just too much for me. By the 3rd day I'd decided I was headed to less crowded pastures and selected Thunderfoot for population. That was where I found AK's forum recruitment thread.

I was selected as a Chapter Officer for Wildstar until we closed it down just in time for Arche Age. I was an active chapter officer in AA as well, but Trion's bungling just killed it for most of us when the whole castle debacle happened. I'd invested so hard into AA that when it flopped I took a months long break from serious gaming where I messed around a bit through WoW, D3, LoL (again), FTL, and caught up on a few TV series. When I started to feel the itch to MMO again, I came back to AKS and server transferred to be a part of the FFXIV chapter where I've been playing steadily since just before Heavensward released.

And that's me. If you're ever looking for something to do in game, hit me up. I'm always happy to run just about anything.

[reddragn87]

About Me
Hey everyone. My in game name is Artty Curren, and I am a video game addict (not really, but it sounded good). My real name is Rich and I am a high school math teacher. I have various degrees in education, focusing on mathematics and technology integration, and i even minored in physics in college. I have always been interested in technology, which really stemmed from my gaming background. Outside of work and gaming, I stay active with other hobbies, such as coaching high school track and cross country, helping out with a local Boy Scout Troop (I am an Assistant Scoutmaster in a troop where I earned my Eagle Scout Rank), hunting, fishing, camping, and backpacking, (although the last two I haven't really done much of recently). I am also a huge superhero fan, who loves reading comics and watching movies.

My Gaming Backstory
I grew up in a household, playing games on my dad’s Intellivision and Atari system, until he got a used NES. When I was 7 years old, I received a Sega Genesis for my birthday. Luckily thanks to the wonderful invention of Sega Channel, I was able to easily feed what would become a love of video games. One of my favorites to find on Sega Channel was the Phantasy Star Series, and this is where my love of RPGs came also. This RPG passion carried over to the SNES where I then played Final Fantasy VI (and because I was a dumb kid then, I thought that Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star were related :-P ).
I got into PC gaming thanks to the original Warcraft, as well as Starcraft. I played those games religiously, time and time again, loving the storylines. When WoW was released, I knew I had to play. It was my first MMO (and is where the name Artty started. One of my favorite Starcraft characters’ name is Artanis, which is what my Paladin was named in WoW.) I started WoW during Vanilla, and raided as a Paladin when i got a chance to. I played religiously starting with TBC and through WotLK (because Paladins actually played much better then), but sort of died out in Cata. I was a guild leader and a raid leader for a while and after I left WoW, I vowed to never be the full on leader again.
I transferred to Rift and played through to F2P. From there, I hopped around various games (SW:TOR back to Rift for Storm Front, then to Guild Wars 2). After the GW2 love fell, then I played various single player games that have been in a backlog while waiting for FFXIV. I started FFXIV during the 2nd beta weekend and continued through patch 2.2 when I started to get tired out from the Relic Grind, Titan Extreme, etc. I moved FFXIV to Wildstar and Archeage, having a blast but missing the FFXIV community. I returned to FFXIV in November 2014 (and found that my sub was still going O.O) and have been there since. I still play lots of other games (Lego games, FF Replays, Fallout, etc).

My AKS Story
Before starting FFXIV, I was planning to rejoin a guild that I played with for a handful of years in various other MMO’s. However, I saw an ad for the AKS on the forums and decided to check it out. I loved the community, the organization, the webpage (which was times better than what my previous guild had). I read over the forums that I could and found a community that was tight knit and helpful. I put in an application and joined AKS. I tend to be a quiet person because I hate interrupting and talking over others (although that is something I have gotten over), but through listening and having a great time with select individuals, i decided to stay with AKS. I was always that quiet helpful guy on the side, often helping any chance I could get, especially through crafting and farming. Once I started to raid with Flight 4, I started to get more involved within the guild and continued to be a team player until my hiatus in early 2014.
I have played with AKS in various games, starting with FFXIV, into Wildstar, and then into Archeage, being with those chapters from start to finish (I remember logging into AA one day and wondering where everyone went). In November of 2014 when I returned to FFXIV, I was welcomed back by old friends, immediately brought into a raid group again, and felt as if I never left. In January of 2016, in talking I was asking about the process to become an officer, and mentioned that I was interested if positions opened up. (I really wanted to be an officer to change Meat and Mead when needed, move people in mumble, and promote my own personal agenda, but you didn't hear that from me). A few days later, I was asked to serve as an officer, and decide “sure!”
If you need assistance with anything, my door is always open, except we don't have doors, but, whatever.

[Ayuna]

About Me:
Hey everyone, i'm Ayuna, one of your local, friendly neighborhood officers...well, at least I am 95% of the time
First thing's first...I have to confess I am absolutely terrible at writing these kind of "about me" things...I've never been good at summing up a person, be it someone else or myself. There's so much more that makes a person than you could ever write down, but I suppose we'll start with some basics and see what happens. Well, I am probably the youngest person on the officer team, being only 18 at the time of writing this, though most people don't guess it as my voice makes me sound a lot older :P. I am currently in college studying IT and want to end up in that industry somewhere...though i'm not quite sure exactly where yet. In terms of my hobbies, Well, like most of the officers (or as I like to say, occifers), I love video games, which is no surprise seeing as i'm playing FFXIV, I also have a passion for 3D modelling and digital art, although I recently decided I was going to keep that as a hobby and study down the IT route. I'm also a massive Sci-Fi nerd, I love all things Star Trek and am also a fan of basically anything to do with science fiction - especially spaceship designs, which is what most of my 3D modelling involves. I also have an interest computers and technology, which is the catalyst for me studying IT, I love to keep up with fancy new technology and all the awesome things it can do.

My past in gaming:
I have been playing games casually since I was pretty young, I remember the first thing I ever played was Dune 2000 on the PC, I was terrible at it of course because I was only like 5 or something lol, and I played various other games that my parents bought. I really got into gaming when I got an Xbox 360 not long after it came out and realized that "hey this stuff's pretty cool yo." A few years later I got my first personal PC (rather than a shared family one we always used) and now I play on PC pretty much exclusively. So, how did I get into MMO's? Well, the game that started my love for MMO's was a game called Taikodom, which was a space simulator MMO, I had a lot of fun with that game, but sadly I came too late and after only a few months the game was shut down. So then I moved onto a little game called Pirate Galaxy. I would be surprised if you've heard of it honestly, but it was the game that truly ignited my passion for MMOs. Pirate Galaxy was never a very big game but it was a lot of fun and had an awesome community, sadly...it's pretty dead these days, it hasn't had an update in a few years and it feels like the developers just kind of forgot about it. After Pirate Galaxy had started to die down I found a little game (at least at the time) called World of Tanks. I played this game for about 3 years or so, and it was an awesome run, I lead a pretty successful Clan (aka guild) and really enjoyed my time playing the game (as frustrating as it could be at times) however, after enough time of doing the same battles with the same gameplay, and no small number of less than spectacular teams, I finally exhausted of what the game had to offer and although I still play the occasional battle, I never managed to re-find the passion I had for the game. Throughout that time I played a few other MMO's, such as Black Prophecy (which is now dead), Taikodom: Living Universe (also dead), Star Trek Online and SWTOR, all of which I enjoyed. MMO's aren't the only games I play, I love RTS games like the Command and Conquer series, Starcraft II and Sins of a Solar Empire. My favourite game series of all time would probably be the Mass Effect trilogy followed closely by the Dragon Age series (I'm a bit of a BioWare fanboy). I used to play all sorts of games really, but I spend the majority of my time on FFXIV these days.

My AKS Story:
I originally came to Final Fantasy XIV and AKS in early 2015 and have been with this awesome bunch ever since. I have played a lot of MMO's and been in a lot of guilds/clans but never have I found one even slightly on the level of awesome that this group is. It's a truly special community with so many unique people. I really got involved with the AKS community when I entered the voice chat for the first time, not long after I joined AKS. I used to be really shy and nervous in voice chats before I met these guys but now I can hardly imagine trying to play an MMO without it. I've met so many cool people in this FC from all different walks of life. AKS has had a pretty massive impact on my life in the time I have been with them and I've made a lot of friends, so when the opportunity to apply for an officer position came up I jumped right on it, I wanted to be able to help AKS to grow and develop to become even more awesome than it was before (with the added benefit of being able to better troll people in mumble ). I'm quite new to AKS by comparison of some the the officers we have on the team, but I love AKS and I'm committed to doing my part to both maintain the amazing community we have developed as well as improve it.

So, What do I do In-game?
Well, I guess my favourite aspect of Final Fantasy XIV is the combat classes and learning how to play them, I play a little bit of everything, I enjoy DPSing, Healing and Tanking and all the classes (yes, yes I know they're called jobs stop being pedantic) have fun and unique gameplay to offer. My main love in this game however, is the Machinist Job - I love this class and it's what I am usually using in raid (sometimes I switch to bard for some fights). I feel that Machinist is such an under-played and under-appreciated class and there are very few players that have actually mastered the class, and can you blame them when there are no decent guides or anything out there? I have been thinking of making some guides of my own and seeing how I go with that, but we'll see. If you ever want some advice on the Job I'm always more than happy to teach you, just hit me up in-game. Besides playing Combat classes I dabble in crafting and gathering a bit, I should really get into it more so I can make the big bucks in the game. To be completely honest though, I spend most of my time in-game adding "giggidy" to the end of various people's statements and spamming suggestive emotes :P

So yea, that's me. That's Ayuna. If you ever want to hit me up in-game my full name is Ayuna Arulat. I'm usually on in the later hours (in US times at least) seeing as I live in New Zealand IRL. You can usually find me running around the goblet either mindlessly jumping around various fences, spamming emotes, or just chatting with people.