Category: Games

Game shareware utility programs or discussions on gaming topics.

Whitemane Frostmourne Experience

I’ve found another Wow Private Server. For Wow, this one looks, and works very nicely. I’ve played it for a few hours. But I’m going to move on from Wow. I’ll get to that later.

Whitemane can be found at Whitemane.org. I was most interested in the Wrath of the Lich King [WotLK] expansion since it adds the Northrend continent, and flight in both Outland and Northrend. I found the Frostmourne experience very stable. No constant reboots as with Project Ascension. No crashes. There were a couple of funny behaviors but only a few in the week or so that I played.

The signup is a little odd. You sign up at PlayerID.me, whatever that is, and you must have either a gmail or another well known email – I forget which one. And they send a message to verify your email. No surprise. But it went smoothly.

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Project Ascension is a Waste of Time

First Discovery

About a year ago or so I found the Project Ascension private server and played it for a while. This server is a Burning Crusade Classic server with class changes and other innovative changes.

https://ascension.gg/en

I like several things about their ideas for a Wow Server:

  • Extremely flexible class idea where you can pick and choose skills from any of the classes.
  • Ability to tame pets from Elemental, Dragonkin, and Demonkin as well as Hunter Pets.
  • Easy and free rank up of your skills.
  • Reasonably fast progression – at least at the time of my starting.
  • Good population so dungeon queue times were reasonable.

However, after a few weeks, I stopped playing. After I was able to level a couple of characters to level 70, and obtain flight in Outland, but then something changed and progression was so slow that everything felt like a grind. When I play a private server on any game, I don’t necessarily want an instant progression or boost to max level, but I don’t want a grind either. I expect a better progression than the original / retail game tho. If I were wanting a normal level of progression then I would just play the retail game. I didn’t figure out what changed at that time. So I know there are folks that enjoy the “Hardcore” experience where one death ends the character and you start over. I’m not a Hardcore kinda guy.

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Tera Private Servers

Recently I’ve found three Private Servers for Tera. If you are an MMO buff and if you have nostalgia for Tera, or if you’ve never tried it, you might find these interesting.

All of these are free of course, and they take donations for benefits. All but one provide free “Premium Buff and Bennies” such as a flying mount and Town/Village Teleport Tome, and all are easy to install. In some order they are:

Tera Classic. They just had a security breach. Not sure if they are up and running after that yet. The early Tera Experience. Starting in the Island of Dawn and with no level 70 boost – at least not gifted at the start. So this is Tera Old School and you can expect from the title.

Tera Agaia. An advanced server with a level 70 boost, and you get a level 70 set of gear as soon as you use the boost. The Story has been trimmed – maybe like some of the later releases of Tera. Very reliable. But only Three Character slots built in and no clear way to buy more, although they say so.

Tera Starscape. By far the most fun of the list here. Gives you eight character slots, a level 70 boost and then a 20 min run through the Velika Banquet gives you level 70 gear for your journey.

DDOS and Breaches

So, shortly after I tried these servers in late July, DDOS attacks began and didn’t let up for more than a week. Also Classic was Breached. I’m not sure they know who was behind the DDOS or Breach attacks. There was speculation that Kakao Games was behind it, but Krafton actually most recently owned Tera, so that makes more sense. DDOS the private servers rather than taking them to court for copyright? Well seems like a waste of time for a game that has not been active for a few years.

I played for several hours yesterday on Tera Startscape and had no problems. So looks like the nonsense is over. I’ll try Classic later and see how it looks.

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Skyrim Should Be Better

Skyrim Anniversary Edition is on sale now.

So I bought it. Wrestled my way through the Microsoft Store – And success. I am playing Skyrim. Welllllll… It’s not all it’s cracked up to be TBH. The main game and story are fine, but I have some gripes with the execution. I know. I know. There are lots of folks out there that are gonna beat up on me for having these opinions. But see. I’ve played some other game before this and I’ve gotten spoiled. Let me layout my gripes. I’ll be comparing Skyrim to a couple of other games in particular.

  • Guild Wars ONE – released on 2005. Recall that Skyrim released in 2011.
  • Elder Scrolls Online – Released in 2014.
  • Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn Released in 2013.

So let’s talk about my gripes. And then compare what these other games did right for each of these issues.

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Microsoft Store and Xbox accounts are different??

I used the web to purchase a copy of Skyrim Anniversary Edition and to do that I signed into one of my Microsoft accounts. As you can see above, I now own Skyrim. Then I opened the XBox app on my PC and tried to install the app.

I got this:

So as you can see, the account where I am logged into in the XBOX app, on the left, matches the account where I ordered Skyrim, as you can see on the right. I clicked the VIEW ORDER HISTORY button to display the web page on the right.

So now I need to set the store account to match this account that I’m logged into so that I can play the game, Right?

Oh.. there it is…

So the fix oddly enough, was to open the Store, sign out, and sign back in with the account. While the XBOX app seemed to offer an option to do that, it just sent me to a website that never said to sign out of the store and back into the store with the other account. So there are two apps, the store and the xbox app, that have different pointers to accounts for the store and when they disagree, they don’t help you sync them up.

Sigh. Looks like I can play Skyrim now.
:ww

Final Fantasy XI Discount Makes No Sense

The Final Fantasy Eleven game is having a Discount. For 30 days you can try the game for a discount if you are a Final Fantasy Fourteen player.

This makes no sense. In fact the service fees for FFXI make no sense.

Let’s compare:

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Wow Ascension Private Server

Wow Ascension Review

Wow Ascension Web Front Page

Download and Install on PC

Overview

Wow Ascension is a World of Warcraft Private Server. <Insert Legal Disclaimer Here> Let’s review briefly. For more information do a google search for “Wow Private Server Legal”. As I recall, in about 2018, there was a big brouhaha about Blizzard taking some private server folks to court and shut them all down, but the private server folks went to Blizzard and had a meeting and they decided to call a truce. If the Private server companies [Groups or whatever you‘d like to call it.] did not “Charge Money” for playing, then Blizzard would “Look the other way”. And based on the obvious popular appeal, Blizzard dug around in their old backups and recreated the original Wow, which they released as Wow Classic in 2019. So Private Servers are effectively “Legal” although technically against the “Terms of Service”. But if you are playing Wow, and paying for it, then you are subject to any TOS, and if you are not playing the official Wow, then how are you subject to any TOS? I’ll leave that question for some lawyers. I’m sure that for legal reasons, Blizzard needs the TOS to forbid private servers, but has decided to “Look the Other Way” for community reasons. Now on with the show.

Wow Ascension has some interesting ideas, and if you played Wow for years as I did, it has a powerful nostalgia value. Wow Ascension is essentially Wow The Burning Crusade Classic, with a novel class system and about 5x XP leveling boost.

Quick Overview of “Classless”

The “Classless” system allows you to learn spells from any class to mix and match to make your own class. This is available from level 1. They are two tracks: Pick a pre-built combo of spells, or roll your own. Personally, I can see the appeal of using Pre-Built if you are already max level and understand the system. But a whole setup will not work if you are just starting out and don’t have enough Spell or Talent points to do the build. So I always have “Rolled My Own”. More on that later.

So let’s talk in detail about the features Good then the Not So Good.

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FFXIV New Quest Icon?

Gotta post it somewhere to put it in a forum post. Sigh…

So this arrow means that the NPC takes you somewhere to continue quest.

However. This NPC takes you to a room to see the Lord Commander and there is no Arrow.

So oddly inconsistent apparently. Oh, but this NPC has a confirm box before he takes you in to see the Lord Commander. Sigh…

Actually, no. This NPC has a confirm just like the one for Fortemps Manor. But no Arrow on the icon.

:ww

Modernizing Final Fantasy XIV

These are suggested modifications for FFXIV to make more in line with other modern MMOs like Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2. There are several areas that, in my view, should be upgraded to keep FFXIV more in line with a better user experience and to make the new user experience better. These three MMOS are all approximately the same age and yet ESO and GW2 have modernized, or were created in a modern way that prevented some problems that with its older design FFXIV now faces.

The Leveling Experience

FFXIV is facing a severe problem with regard to leveling. The static, vertical leveling model has gone way past a reasonable limit. The amount of work that a new player faces to catch up to the current “End Game” is too daunting to expect a casual player to invest that amount of time and effort. Also the current design of the game locks the new features – new Jobs, new Zones, new Allied Races, etc. – behind this long progression. To bring FFXIV more in line with the current state of other modern MMOs changes should be made. For years now we have heard that folks must just push through A Realm Reborn and the game will get better. Well it may get better after ARR, but you are just nearing the tree line of the huge mountain you must climb to get to that class you want to play or that dungeon you want to do or that story you want to experience. “I’d like to meet the Loporrits”. Well in a few weeks you can do that.

Many MMOs that are now, sadly deceased, have tried to address progression by making the game just much easier. And this appears to fail most often. None of the suggestions here are attempting to make the game “Easier” or “Progress Faster”. The total time to play the entirety of the FFXIV game should take about the same amount of time. After more than 10 years there is a huge mountain of game play and world out there. The suggestions here are intended to add choice not make things easier. Tera changed things to make things easier. Made the game all about End Game and then after a few years died. Anyway, after many years playing Tera that was my observation.

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