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I can stop eating Gysahl Greens any time I want. Not like mister “dude, can I like crash on your couch just for tonight? Won’t even know I’m there” there. That was A WEEK AGO, CHOCO-BRO. Our adventures in FF3 continue… Dislike: Mini Final Fantasy III seems to take some kind of obscene pleasure in making the party take on odd conditions to proceed. There’s a couple, but the one I hate most is MINI. This spell, which has to be cast on everyone to make them smaller, and again to make them bigger, turns your party into useless clods. Sure, magic still works, but guess what, I only have one party member with black magic skills. So mostly I am just running away. I did find that I could just un-MINI everyone once they were past the MINI check, but that just takes more spell slots, or liberal use of mallets. Ouch. We were almost killed BY A RAT. ...

Final Fantasy I was a lot of fun. I really struggled which of the old NES Final Fantasy games to play next. FF2 added Cid and Chocobos – two elements that appeared in every Final Fantasy game afterwards. FF3, though, adds the jobs system, and I really wanted to try that. Excited to try out the new and wonderful jobs, I started up FF3 and, after the short intro, chose the jobs for my crew: Red Mage, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage. Yup, the same jobs as in FF1. But then things got a little more interesting… ...

I’m not going to blast this post anywhere, but if someone was interested in what a full run of the Google Trendifier looks like with about 160 games on the list. I’m still counting it toward my Blaugust quota, though. Some of the games on previous lists aren’t on this one, as I decided to eliminate those that Google Trends Suggestions didn’t label as an Online game or Video game, just to try and get the most fair comparisons possible. ...

I’ve just spent the entire night with my hands deep in the guts of the Google Trends API and the Python package that calls it. I’ve even sprinkled in Google Suggested Searches to sweeten the search. I’ve implemented a quick sort algorithm. My boyfriend was helping debug the program. But no matter what I do, the answer always comes out the same. I know this ordering doesn’t make any sense. I imagine it’s based on what people search for, and they’re more likely to search for FFXIV than FINAL FANTASY XIV ONLINE. ...

I was playing around with Google Trends last week, trying to see how a few MMOs compared to each on the ‘Trends. It was fun and all, but I missed a lot of games and I just thought it would be so much better if I could just compare EVERY MMO, past and present, automatically! Google Trends just catalogs the searches people would do for a game, but I figured that had to have at least a loose correlation to popularity, right? ...

It’s just gotten worse with time. The Kickstarter you were so excited for funded! YAY! The creators are as excited as you are, and they are showing every bit of the process and you just can’t wait to get your hands on what you funded and start playing the incredible game or whatever. Perfect Christmas present! Gonna be a hit at Game Night! And then… and then your game is put on a slow boat from China. You don’t know where it is or when you’ll get it. Why do you do this to us, creators? Can’t you just make it in the USA or Europe? ...

That… isn’t actually their tagline (old folks know that it was EverQuest’s), but it seems like what this social MMO is going for. An idyllic world where you can relax with friends. The trailer shows players building their own homes and communities, but is that all there is? Creek Because I enjoy tedious tasks for little reward, I found myself idly listing every MMORPG I could find on Steam last night. People called out all the MMOs I’d missed when I did the Google Trends experiment the other day, and I kept thinking of more, afterward. I’d missed Runescape!? I literally watch Runescape videos every day. I’m pretty sure that the Old School Runescape streamers are being punished in some sort of televised Hell, and I just want to make sure they’re okay and try to give them some hope for the future. ...

What brought the four Warriors of Light together? From where did they get the crystals of the four primal forces? Who were their families? Where’d they go to school? What foods did they like? Hell if I know. All I know is that they’re pretty good at killing fiends and running away. Mostly the running away. But we managed to finish the game and save the world, somehow. It’s been so many days since I blogged about my Final Fantasy 1 playthrough that I’ve lost track of where I was last time. ...

So, I listened to the DCUO livestream the other day, where they showed a preview of the House of Legends episode, packed to the rafters with quality-of-life changes and new content. I was listening, fascinated, until they mentioned that House of Legends was currently LIVE ON THE TEST SERVER. So, I, um, quit the livestream and installed the test version of DCUO and went to have a look for myself. Allies screen ...

I don’t play every MMO that comes out – not by a longshot. But, I follow a lot of gamers, streamers, and game developers, and between me and them, I see a lot of discussion about the new MMOs that come down the pike. Crowfall was released a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly, everyone was talking about it. And then, suddenly everyone was not. What did it all mean? I asked Google Trends to help me analyze searches for a dozen or so MMOs to help understand what all was going on with MMOs today. ...