Category: Games

Game shareware utility programs or discussions on gaming topics.

Got a New Mount from the Moogles

There is currently an event called the Moogle Treasure Trove going on in FFXIV. It ends when Shadowbringers launches, so only about three weeks left.

If you do dungeons to collect their special tomes, then you can get some mounts, minions and other items. But it takes 30 tomes for a mount, and 50 tomes for other cool items, so it takes a long time. Stop by an Itinerant Moogle in the capital cities to see what they offer. After two long days of spamming the low level dungeons with a few level 50 MSQ Dungeons tossed in, I was able to get a mount that I’ve been wanting – The Ixtal Dire Wolf.

And like almost all the mounts, it flies too.

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Shadowbringers – Give It a Try

Final Fantasy XIV has done something I have never seen a game do before – At least for an MMO. They have provided a DEMO of their new expansion. They are calling it a “Benchmark”, but it is really a demo of their new maps, job skill animations and character classes.

You don’t need an account, or to sign up for an account. Just download the demo and give it a try. You don’t play it, you just watch it. But it’s the real game engine running the real game content on your machine. And you get to create a new character to watch in it. It’s not a video, but the actual game engine. And you can run it as many times as you like with different choices.

How They Did It?

Cut scenes in FFXIV are scripted game footage that the engine renders with your character in the mix. Unlike some other games the cut scenes are not pre-rendered as videos for FFXIV.

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Games Wanna Be Like Movies

I’ve been watching some Youtube channels that talk about the Demise or just Problems of a few games recently and wondering what’s up. And then I saw a video about “Games as a Service is Fraud” and finally something has clicked for me. Here’s my theory about what’s happening in parts of the Game Industry.

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Game Studios want to be like Movie Studios. Games have not, traditionally, been like movies. When games come out, they have been designed to be played for years, and that’s not surprising because making a good game takes years. Leave aside MMOs for the moment which take much longer, but there is a lot of person hours in creating a game. If you watch the credits for movies, you see 1000s of names, but not nearly that many folks are marshaled together to build a game, so it in the past making games has taken longer. Movie studios and the surrounding special effects and catering etc etc services are all geared up to put massive effort into a movie for a short time. Game Studios [Art and Software folks] don’t work like that obviously.

But this is a problem for Game Publishers – the ones doing the Business, not the ones doing the Art, Story and Software.

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It’s Probably a Trap – Quest Helper

It’s Probably a Trap

Part of the Stormblood expansion, this is a multi-stage quest with a fight and then a run through the city to find your friends. The problem is that there are no pointers along the way, although at some point a “curious Kojin” shows up to guide you.

Part of the issue is that you are doing this quest at Night – At least I was and I assume based on the description of the quest, that everyone does it in the dark. The only Youtube walk throughs that I found were done by first timers who didn’t go back on an Alt to show the best way. I think I’ve found the best way by scouting it out in the daylight.

So to review.

  1. You meet your fishy friend on the bridge at night.
  2. He leads you to the docks and there betrays you to the Imperial Forces. Lyse beats up the fishy friend and holds him while you and Alisaie kill the imperials. The fight is easy. Just kill them all.
  3. The Local Samurai show up and want to arrest you, but you have 9 smoke bombs.
  4. Notice as you face East away from the water up the ramp a shimmering wall on your left. It’s not a barrier. Run through it. Use a smoke bomb here if you must.
  5. Then follow the map to the East, up and over and then down in an alleyway to find your friends. You don’t need to go through the market place.

I got lost and didn’t see the message about following the Kojin until I had found my friends. So you are likely to have plenty of smoke bombs. I didn’t use them until I was trapped. That’s fine too. You don’t need to avoid being trapped.

I wrote this up to remind me for when I do it on my Alts, but you might find it useful too.

Enjoy,
:ww

Neverwinter – Worth a Look

Neverwinter is a Free to Play MMO published by ARC Games. Lately I’ve been looking for something to play in the evening that’s less intense. Something different to try between sessions with FFXIV and GW2.

I remember trying Neverwinter years ago and being so unimpressed that I only made one character, got it to about level 4 and gave up. Well, a lot has changed since then.

Neverwinter is not a modern game. So be prepared for some nostalgia. But it’s not a clunker either. It’s a real 3D Game. Not a TOP DOWN ISO camera game. It is WASD movement. Those are requirements for me. I need to be able to look at the sky and move around with my muscle memory that I’ve trained after years of playing.

  • The graphics is better than the old parts of World of Warcraft, but not as nice as Tera or GW2 or FFXIV.
  • But the combat is very nice. It’s Action Combat, not TAB targeting. So you need to place the little circle on your target.
  • There are a ton of Races and Classes to choose from. Follow the Wiki link above.
  • All of the classes I’ve played are completely survivable, at least through the tutorial and first few instances.
  • There are only a few buttons to push. Unlike Wow and FFXIV, the goal for skills has not been to fill the entire keyboard with skills. 5 or 6 will do you.
  • As a minor downside, no Hot Key mapping is provided. So you need to manually edit some ini file or other to change Inventory to Bags if you want to do that. I haven’t bothered yet. But they keyboard layout is well designed and works fine with my Left Hand game keypad. This game works on consoles too, if you are of a mind to play it that way. Update: Keybinds do exist. I just missed them.

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Warclaw – Complex to Get

Just got the Warclaw this afternoon after grinding about Five Hours in WvW to

So the process is to Get all the items in the Warclaw Achievement by grinding WvW stuff, enable the Warclaw in the Bottom Left area of the WvW panel. Then Activate the Warclaw Reward Track and grind that bar all the way to the end to get the Warclaw Helmet. Then the Warclaw Certificate shows up in the Vendor for 8 Gold. Buy that and use it. And Voila, you have the Warclaw mount. Sigh.

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News from an Alternate Universe

<Crackle… crackle…>

Attention! Attention! A message is arriving from an Alternate Universe.

<Crackle… crackle…>
This is an announcement from Blizzard on the Azerite Radio Network.

Wow_2019_03_08_01_51_20_931.jpg

As we know, Azerite was discovered in Silithus some time ago. But there has been <crackle…. crackle> a new discovery by the Gnomes and Goblins about how to use this magical substance. Azerite can now be used to travel throughout the Worlds of Warcraft.

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Warcraft Makes War on Portals

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Recently Wow developers announced removal of many portals in the game and there was an uproar.

While World of Warcraft v8.1.5 adds a lot of new content, it also is removing things from the game. In this case, many of the portals that get players around Azeroth in a timely fashion are being taken out to keep “the world having a meaningful size”. However, this design decision has sparked a massive backlash with the community, with several threads topping the 5,000 response mark. A new dev post acknowledges the outcry but essentially says, “Sorry, not sorry. We’re sticking to it.”

[…]

Wow Travel Has Always Been Slower than in Other Games

All the other games I play have always had portals. Wow has been alone is not providing universally fast ways to get around the world. If you aren’t a mage, or don’t have a mage in your party, then it’s always been a trek to get to a ship, airship or portal to where you want to go. Of course you can fly long distances, but those flights take “Real Time”, whether you use your own mount or take a flight they move at the same speed. Ship / Airship travel is a pair of short cut scenes and a portal across the world. At least they got that right. But unlike other games, there is no setting for SKIP THE TRAVEL CUTSCENE I have seen hundreds of times. And I still have to stand around waiting on a Wow [Air]Ship rather than it being ready to go when I am. No waiting in FFXIV on any ship and the cut scenes are optional.

It has long been a convention in most MMOs that to teleport to somewhere you must have been there before. Guild Wars 2 is a good example of this convention. Asura Gates, which are like Wow Portals take you anywhere, and will work the first time you use them. But the Waypoints must have been visited on foot before you can teleport to them. But in GW2 once  you visit a place, you can instantly travel across the world to any waypoint, for a small fee.

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Getting Your Warclaw Mount

 

If you are into the Path of Fire mounts at all, you’re going to want this mount. And especially if you are playing a Charr, you are going to want to ride this bad boy.

However, this is not the best mount in the game. As far as I know it does not move as fast or jump as far as Raptor. However, you may not need to have Path of Fire to get it and use it in the rest of the world. I do not have mine yet. But I know that you can ride it outside of WvW and I have seen no mention of requiring Path of Fire, which you obviously need for the other mounts. So if you only have the core game or only Heart of Thorns, you might go for this one. Have you noticed that the base skin for Warclaw looks dorky? I’m sure that’s on purpose. They saved the sweet skins for the Gem Store I’m sure. Anyway.

But… Getting this mount is confusing. The instructions are not clear unless you are completely familiar with WvW progression, as I was not. So here’s the skinny on getting your Warclaw, and you can avoid my mistakes and wasted grind.

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