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Veteran Internet users know of the turbulent time when Activision bought Blizzard and the gaming community exploded with anger. Of course, this wasn’t the first sell of Blizzard… the gaming company had previously been acquired by Vivendi, Sierra-Online (via CUC) and Davidson & Associates just to sort of measure out a few. Blizzard had a long history with Vivendi and that spree of 1998 to 2008 was pretty much considered their golden years. So, with that said, with all the problems the 2020s have brought Blizzard, what is the solution to their woes? Go back to their glory years where WoW released, Diablo released, StarCraft and StarCraft 2 released, etc. Forget Diablo, It’s Not a “Blizzard” Game Let’s set something straight, Diablo is actually a Condor Games game. Blizzard bought another studio, renamed them Blizzard North and they worked independently from Blizzard. The last thing they produced was in 2001…

Back in the early 2000s, when online gaming was a new frontier lag was everywhere. All of the fun and excitement of online gaming was met with rubber banding (where your character would move forward then snap back to a previous spot), in 2005 when WoW launched you would get stuck in the looting pose and in FPS games were heavily impacted on lag with shots being missed as players rubber banded around the map. These issues these days are still a problem, although not as much of one as they used to be. Gamers, to combat the lag, threw down their dial-up modems with 56k of blazing speed and took up cable and DSL as their preferred Internet standard. You had to live near a hub or some other kind of techno-gadget to get fast Internet, but that quickly expanded by 2010 to almost everywhere. That’s not to say…

So you’re converting to FFXIV from WoW and are ready to take on the world of Final Fantasy, the MMO, round two. A little back story, there was Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) which was another MMO that was pretty… interesting. It was, I would say, a game of patience and challenge loved by many, played by few. Then came FFXIV which followed on the coattails of the FFXIII for the PS3 which was a weird game because it was very linear compared to the open world Final Fantasy single player games of before. FFXIV when it originally launched was panned and then Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was… born? I guess you could say. That’s the game we’re playing today and it was remade to be better than ever and is, for a tab-targeting game truly a AAA masterpiece in the genre now. After expansions iterating on the design,…

In a typical MMO, a dungeon would be known as a dungeon but in FFXIV they are known as a duty. The duty finder is basically the dungeon finder in FFXIV and the lifeblood of the game. Now, like any MMO with a dungeon finder, there isn’t always the best company to play with and you won’t always have a successful run of whatever you’re signing up for, but that’s okay and part of life. We’re going to go over the duty finder and some tips on how to make your duty runs more successful, because with just four player groups, one person can make a difference. For those coming over from WoW: Dungeon sizes are different in FFXIV. Dungeons are known as as a “Duty” in the game. Instanced gameplay comes through a lot of flavors. To continue the story, often a duty is required although these requirements change…

So you’ve just started the new expansion (WoW: Shadowlands) and everyone else has months of Renown and you’ve just hit max level. Maybe you’ve taken a break for awhile and your friends haven’t caught up with you yet. It was super frustrating for me too, at the start of the expansion because it felt like I had to do everything to catch my renown up each week and it was pretty fatiguing. Except the good news is that you don’t have to do every renown quest every week if you don’t want to and if you start later in the expansion, you’ll still be able to farm your way to everyone’s current level. It’s very simple: How to Catch Up To catch your renown up just do anything in the game that rewards you something. Covenant Callings, Battlegrounds, Dungeons, world bosses (once per week), various weekly quests, etc. Most of…

The year was circa 2002. Ragnarok Online was getting long in the tooth and I was invited into a mystical world that existed only until 2005, which was Dark Age of Camelot. The entire game itself was I would argue harder than Dark Souls. Soloing anything was next to near impossible and leveling required a group and lots of patience. FFXI, while not my cup of tea, was in many ways similar and players have similar opinions. The point of the game, the success, came from community. Building community with like minded players who wanted to sit and chat and play a video game together was your reward. It wasn’t power. It wasn’t fame. It wasn’t prize money. It was friendship, something we’ve long long lost in online gaming. To level, you would have to have a stereotypical archetype group of a tank, healer and DPS. The tank could only…

Retailers manipulate us and that’s just something that we’ve grown accustomed to. From the primary staples being located in strategic isles in the grocery store to force you to walk past tempting deals all the way to manufactured sales pricing where items perpetually stay at some percent off to give the expectation of a “deal.” Black Friday is no different and it’s a song and dance that retailers use to get us to buy things that we shouldn’t. Here’s an example. I use a projector in my bedroom to watch television because I love the aesthetic. I use a rather low quality projector to add in some “fuzziness” to movies and video and makes it more “old school.” I have a 4K OLED TV in my living room and switching between it and the projector makes me appreciate the TV more and watching kung-fu movies at 720p is just really…

One of the worst things for something like World of Warcraft: Classic is more servers. If we learned ANYTHING from the days of vanilla, it’s that more servers are not the answer. They’re just not. What happens is the population spreads heavily onto the servers available immediately at launch and then, as new servers come on, people just simply make alts to play the game waiting on the popular servers to cool down to join their friends already there. Since WoW: Classic won’t have cross realm (which didn’t come out until way past vanilla) or phasing or anything like that, there is a real need to keep each servers population high. Right now, there is a major tourist season happening. WoW players are logging in and people are resubscribing at the idea of playing something that by all intentions, most won’t stick with. Which could just be diresome down the…

Picking a profession can be hard in World of Warcraft: Classic because you lose any recipes you learn if you unlearn a profession meaning it’s more or less a permanent choice. You’ll want to start early as well with some of them, like the gathering professions, which compliment leveling while others you may want to wait on leveling at a later time. We’ve ranked the best professions for everyone, the best to make money with and then what we consider professions you may want to think about before you choose them below. While subjective, I disagree that class based professions is a thing. Just because you’re a warrior doesn’t mean you can’t pick herbs and make potions. Take what compliments your playstyle over what others tell you at the end of the day. A Tier – Best Professions for Everyone Alchemy: Flasks for raids are important and making them is…