Advice
16 entries. 10,412 words.
2014-04
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ArcheAge – Founder’s Packs, Resisting Temptation.
2014-04-28.
As announced on Trion’s live stream Thursday, ArcheAge Founder’s Packs are now available.
They are expensive. $149.99, $99.99, and $49.99 for Archeum, Gold, and Silver, respectively. Archeum gets you into the game right now, playing until launch day, otherwise you only get to play in beta “events” starting in June.
So let’s discuss. With myself.
My first Russian glider!
I think they are fair prices.
Based on the laws of supply and demand, it makes perfect sense that it costs $150 to get into the ArcheAge alpha.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Opinion
2014-05
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Know Why You’re Blogging.
2014-05-05.
There’s a lot of great advice going around about blogging this month for the NBI, and if you are new to writing or blogging (or not), you should read all of it. Thankfully many of them are summarized in the Newbie Blogger Initiative Week #1 Roundup, so I don’t have to. The only thing I can add is my own personal philosophy on this blog.
But first, if you want to start a blog, just start it, and do whatever you want, and to hell with everyone else and what they think.
- Advice
- Blog
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Scheduling Posts.
2014-05-08.
I saw this excellent post from Belghast a while back: Thumper Logic.
The first part of his post got me thinking about my own publishing schedule, and as it is NBI month I thought a meta-blogging post would be a good topic.
I too have tried to write one post a day-in the past. I applaud the effort, and anyone who can do it is far better at this than I am.
- Advice
- Blog
- Musings
- Responses
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Blogging The Hardest Way Possible.
2014-05-15.
In honor of the Newbie Blogger Initiative, in this post I’m going to talk about “how” I blog for Endgame Viable. That is, the actual process. I don’t recommend doing it this way. :)First, I play some games. Usually they are MMORPGs. This typically happens on weeknights and weekends.After I’m done playing games, the next morning I often go to a place where I can’t play any games, which is a place that rhymes with the surname of a famous Star Trek captain.
- Advice
- Blog
- Responses
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FFXIV – Trials, A Cheat-sheet For Ranged DPS.
2014-05-16.
(Resurrected from my Drafts folder.)
Trials in FFXIV are cool little instances that consist of a single boss in an arena-like setting. The normal ones require four players, and you queue for them just like a dungeon. (Or if you actually know real humans who play games, you can go in with a pre-made party I guess.) I find them quite fun.
This is an 8-man Titan Hard Mode trial, but you get the idea.
- Advice
- Dungeons
- MMORPG
2014-06
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WildStar – Addons I Use.
2014-06-11.
I’ve seen some others reporting the WildStar addons they are using, so here are mine.Overall I feel like WildStar addons are going to allow people to do “too much.” I mean, there’s an addon to automate the Simon games. Really Carbine? You put that in your API? I would not be surprised if we see aimbots very soon. But in the meantime:Active:
AMP Finder. Pretty much mandatory if you want to locate AMPs within a reasonable time frame.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Responses
2014-08
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What’s The Best Subscription-Only MMO?.
2014-08-29.
What’s the best subscription-only MMO out there right now? If you could only pick one to maintain, which one would it be? (By the way, the possible answers are: WoW, EVE, WildStar, ESO, or FFXIV.)
This is pretty easy for me to answer, actually: Final Fantasy XIV. Hands down. No need to even talk about it. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, there’s a lot to do, it’s updated often, it does every MMO mechanic (that matters) exactly right, and it’s cheaper than the others at $12/month.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Opinion
2014-09
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Results of Un-Learning Invert Mouse.
2014-09-09.
I noticed that I never reported the results of trying to un-learn the use of Invert Mouse.
After about two weeks, I was no longer fighting my muscle memory and could play MMOs unhindered.
After about a month, I felt like I could aim pretty well again in shooters where precision is important.
It’s now been nearly six months, and I feel like I’ve never played any other way.
So it is possible to switch, even if you’ve played with Invert Mouse all your life.
- Advice
- Musings
- Status
2015-01
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Elite: Dangerous Opinions and Advice.
2015-01-10.
Elite: Dangerous is a neat game, however right now I see it mostly as a single-player game. I play it entirely in the “Solo” mode, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything without other people around. Thus I wouldn’t consider it a contender for 2014’s MMO of the year, despite how bad the other choices were.
From what I can surmise, there are only two possible outcomes that can happen if you encounter another person: Either they can a) ignore you or b) try to shoot you down.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Reviews
2015-02
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WoW – My Favorite Addons.
2015-02-20.
I started this post in November 2014, and TAGN’s recent post on addons reminded me that it was still sitting in Drafts. So I thought I would finally post it.
Addons are a fact of life when you play World of Warcraft. You can play without them (I’ve done it), and most of the gameplay basics are there, but Blizzard has consistently refused to put in any of the quality-of-life enhancements that we are all used to from every single other MMO released in the past ten years.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Opinion
2015-04
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Star Trek Online – Delta Recruitment.
2015-04-06.
I’ve enjoyed Star Trek Online quite a bit over the weekend. I’ve tried to play STO several times in the past but I could never get into it, but for some reason (boredom, probably) I’m “getting it” now.
My heavily-armed away team takes on time-traveling bad guys from blue space.
Perhaps it’s because they just started this Delta Recruitment event at the exact time that I began playing again. I abandoned my two previous characters (who were no higher than the STO equivalent of level 1 or 2) and made a new Star Fleet “Delta Recruit” dude.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Status
2016-02
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Don’t Feel Bad About Getting Bored.
2016-02-03.
I recently saw a farewell post on My Life in Azeroth. I’m sorry to see anyone stop blogging, and I hope they resume someday, but the tone of the post got me thinking.
It seems like a lot of WoW players sound apologetic or guilty when they discuss leaving that game, like they are somehow letting Blizzard or the community down. I’ve seen it in blog posts, and I’ve seen it on Twitter.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Musings
- Responses
2016-06
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NBI 2016 – Thoughts On Blogging.
2016-06-02.
The first rule of blogging is not to blog about blogging. However, June is the Newbie Blogger Initiative here in the game blogging community, so this is the month where we throw out all the rules, talk about the craft of blogging, and try to recruit and encourage new bloggers.
I technically started blogging in 1998, when I put some random notes up on my first ever web site, unless you count some Quake match updates I posted on the clan’s page in 1997.
- Advice
- Community
- Writing
2016-08
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ShareX For Uploading Screenshots.
2016-08-29.
A while back I asked on Twitter if there was a way to automatically upload screenshots taken from games to some kind of online repository:
Is there a tool/app/process that makes it easy (ie. automatic) to upload my game screenshots to some cloud repository? — Endgame Viable (@endgameviable) August 24, 2016 It turns out that ShareX has this capability.
You can’t actually take the screenshots using ShareX, because it doesn’t support full screen applications, but it has a feature where it will watch certain folders and upload any new files to wherever you want.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Reviews
2016-09
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FFXIV – Importing Settings From Another Computer.
2016-09-13.
Documenting this with better search keywords so it’s easier for me to find next time.
I re-installed FFXIV on my new PC and of course all of my settings were gone. I dimly remembered running into this before, but it took a while to dig it up.
To copy your FFXIV settings from one machine to another, copy Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn to the other machine. I left out the “screenshots” and “downloads” folders.
- Advice
- MMORPG
2016-12
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NaNoWriMo 2016 Post-Mortem.
2016-12-01.
I like to write up a post-mortem about my writing projects after I’m done with them, so here are my thoughts on my NaNoWriMo 2016 draft. For reference, it’s an untitled historical fiction set in Belgium at the beginning of World War I. It’s about, you know, people, who like, do stuff.
The hook might still need some work.
I validated my (exactly, as it turned out) 50,000 words about 8 PM on November 30th.
- Advice
- Writing