Wednesday 21 August 2013

21/08/2013 - Moved Blog!

Hey guys!

I've recently decided to move over my blog to a WordPress one instead of Blogger. I'm hoping to expand the blog/site more than what Blogger was actually capable of - which required the move.

All current posts will remain on here, however they have been all transferred to the new site as well. I will continue to post updates on my G+ account, so nothing is forgotten.

I hope everyone likes the new site and style, and be sure to let me know what you think.

http://panzii.azurewebsites.net/
[I'll hopefully within the next few months purchase my own domain.]

Many thanks
Panzii x

Tuesday 20 August 2013

20/08/2013 - FFXIV: Open Beta

So over the past weekend it has been Phase 4/Open Beta for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For a game which in theory is '2.0' - it is a very well built replacement compared to the 1.0 installment released in 2010.

This beta phase was crazy! There were so many people - and not many trolls! Everyone that I met personally, either in the world or in dungeons, were just so friendly and helpful. The community here was just amazing, something I've never truly felt before within an MMO.


I can easily say that I am a big fan of the Final Fantasy IP, from playing FFIII on the Gameboy, FFVII and FFIX on the Playstation, all the way to FFXIII-2 on the PS3. But that doesn't mean that my love for the franchise will cloud my judgement when playing this game. It just is a really good game, simple as that. It's not trying to be anything new, like most modern MMOs with 'action-combat' etc, it has classic Tab-targeting and follows the Holy Trinity. The solid back-bone and skeleton of an 'old-style' MMO is there, it is just fleshed out with the Final Fantasy story.


It's great to play with my boyfriend *who has not played any other Final Fantasy game* be surprised at little things, which we *as FF fans* take for granted. The biggest thing he thought was very strange was the music which played whenever you was mounted on a Chocobo - he'd never experienced anything like it in any other game. I personally thought this was pretty funny and believed that he'd missed out on a lot of awesome things by not playing any other game. (I'm not saying that is a bad thing, it's really good to come into a game nowadays and have that 'wow, this is new and exciting' feeling).


On the XIV Nation forums someone asked the question:
"I have some friends that claim they won't play Final Fantasy because it's just another WoW clone. Would someone like to help me debate to why it's not or why you think so??"
 The best answers I found were:
"Yes, FFXIV is a itteration from wow. Simple as that. Someone who hates hotbar, themepark MMO will dislike xiv..."
"I like to think of ff14 as being like WoW in it's glory days, back when threat meant something, back when you had to plan out your attacks, and pick the right buffs/spells..."
And all the answers were as simple as that. I totally agree with all of them - It's refreshing to play a game as beautiful as FFXIV, and still be able to play how you want/what you have been used to. So if you're one of those people that would refuse to pick up FFXIV just because you think it is a 'WoW-Clone'... Imagine playing vanilla-WoW but the graphics of FFXIV - that is how we all feel.

I have yet to edit to UI - so please excuse the mess.
I'm not going to lie - there were some issues during this beta phase. Error 3102 came about with thousands of players not being able to log back into the game as the Error stated that they were still/already inside the game. The other (less common) error was Error 90000, where players were disconnected whenever entering a story instance or a dungeon. (Only NA/EU servers seemed to suffer with this errors, JP servers appeared to be totally clean).
I was one of the lucky few that managed to not suffer any error whatsoever, so I send my condolences to all those that did. Squeenix did have an emergency maintenance towards the end of the beta which fixed Error 3102, and extended the beta for NA/EU servers by 5 hours. It wasn't much - but it was something, and many were grateful for it.


This was the last beta phase before early access of the game, and all progress from this phase will be passed over onto the full release.
Although I wasn't playing constantly like many people were, I feel like I've managed to get a good headset in the game for when I do return to the world of Eorzea. I sadly wont be playing at launch due to moving back to uni and having to study for an exam (exactly a week after release) - so this will be put on hold until I'm back there with decent internet.

Thanks all for reading.
Toodles x

20/08/2013 - Cube World: Pinkie Pie Mod

Hey guys!
I thought I'd have a play around with the model editor for Cube World and try and make something.
It's a first attempt - but here is Pinkie Pie!


I also had a play around with my characters hair style - making it a little cuter ^_^


Toodles x