It’s Developer Appreciation week. Whenever these come up, I really don’t know what to say. The games I’ve played have changed my life. When things were darkest, they maybe even saved my life. MMOs, in particular, have made it easy for me to “find my people”. I’ve played with the same group of people now for more years than I care to count. My daughter married someone she met in EverQuest. I’m living with someone I met there. ...
I didn’t have big goals for tonight. Grind to 50 with the jobs I intend to take on the trip to the World of Darkness. And then… maybe jump into Final Fantasy XIV Online, and try the MMO version of FF3’s final boss. So that’s what I did. Three of the jobs are basically no-brainers. Ninja is the most capable physical attacker in the game. Devout is the best healer, and Sage is the best magical attacker, having access to all black magic, white magic, and summoner spells. ...
I only had time for a short session last night. Time to grasp Real Power in the dungeon of Eureka, and then, just for fun, see what’s at the top of the Crystal Tower… Time to step back and see what I’m going to need to do before I can finish the game. Like most Final Fantasy games – most RPGs of all types, really – there’s a point where you can just forge on to the end of the game, or just dally around working on other goals so much so that the end game isn’t really a challenge. I’m there with Final Fantasy III now. ...
Just one crystal to restore – the Earth crystal. We’ve already restored three of them. How hard could the last one be? Harder than all the rest, combined. You see, it was shattered into a million pieces… and we have to find them all. With our trusty airship, the Enterprise, chained in the harbor “for our own protection”, we were forced to stay in the village we found ourselves in against our will. Seems our crazy stories about the world being drowned beneath the sea and everyone being stone statues caused more than a little concern. BUT IT’S TRUE! we shouted, and then they tried to keep us away from sharp things. ...
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? ...