*Somewhere in the Northern San d'Orea residentials...*
Young elvaan children:
"Boy, I'm bushed!"
"Yeah! I've never fought so many rarabs in my life."
"These skins should sell for a fortune, though!"
Grey-haired elvaan male:
"Hah! You kids think you have it so tough. That's nothing!"
Child1:
"Oh no, here we go...grandpa..."
Male:
"Didn't your mother ever teach you to respect your elders?? Where was I...oh yes.
Back in my day, we didn't get no 3000 gil for a stack of earth crystals! We were lucky to get more than 500, and we were thankful to get it! Of course, we had to farm for months to get that much, and we had to contend with the RMT too!"
Child3:
"Oye, not the RMTs again..."
Male:
"Whenever we'd get a leg up on them, they'd just drag a horde of beastmen onto us and warp away, leaving us to clean up the mess! Meanwhile, their buddies would make off with the good stuff. Even training was harder back then! We didn't have the luxury of displaced mobs -warping- back to their spawns. No, they _walked_, and they'd pick on adventurers all the way there! And if you so happened to be a summoner, we didn't have this 'mini-avatar' nonsense. If you wanted to master the elements, you'd have to take a full party of experienced fighters in to wail on them! These days you just have that scraggly rat sneeze on them, and over they went..."
Child2:
"Hey, not everything we do is easy! We work hard for our gear!"
Male:
"Pah! What do you know about work? Your generation has no work ethic, that's your problem. You get to walk into one of those pansy BCNMs and get your drop. In _my_ day, we had to hunt our items down! It was either beat out the RMT and your legit opposition, or haul your wallet to the Auction House and pay for it! I remember spending a month and a half camping the Valkurm Emperor. We didn't have these fancy shmancy Empress Bands to aid our experience gain, either. We either got a party, or we sucked it up and solo'd easy mobs for 30 experience! And heaven help the dragoon who got his dragon killed...none of this 20 minute recall bull, we had to wait two full hours to get our pets back!"
Child3:
"Grandpa, you make it sound like _everything_ took a week of sweat and blood back then."
Male:
"Oh, no, not everything, I suppose...in fact, some things were easier! Why, I remember..."
Child1:
"Oh, great, now look what you did!"
Male:
"Back then, 1 million gil would get you the Emperor's Hairpin, Ochuido's Kote and Leaping Boots, -and- you'd still have enough left over for the week's groceries! TP practically fell from the sky with our old weapons, one weaponskill lead right into another...not like these flimsy new ones, you'd be lucky to get 20TP on a PentaStrike...and oh, what a wonder it was to be a Beastmaster! Mobs hung around even after you released them, and you could hit chain 6 without even really trying..."
*Elderly Elvaan gets a far-off look in his eyes.*
Male:
"The streets were practically paved with gold, and our enemies fell swiftly beneath our weapons..."
Children:
"...I think he's having one of those flashbacks.."
"Let's get out of here while we can."
"Sounds like a plan. Hey, you guys want to help me level my Dragoon?"
"You have a Dragoon??"
"Wow! Yeah! Dragoons are cool!"
*Meanwhile, somewhere in Ghelsba Outpost...*
Ancient Orc:
"...and back in MY day, there was none of this 'Oh, we're so far from home, let's just warp back to our spawns' crap! After we got done hunting outside the city walls, we had to walk fif-teen coordinates just to get home! Sometimes we'd pick up a Tarutaru to snack on along the way..."
Orcish child:
...*sigh*...