Archive for the 'Gaming' Category

How to Build Your Very First Airship

Sunday, September 20th, 2020

[Current as of Nov. 12, 2022]

I found that most of the existing guides for airships focus on what to do after you’ve created your first airship, and they pretty much skip or gloss over the “beginner” stuff. Here are the detailed instructions:

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[SOLVED] FFXIV: Can’t Purchase Game / Can’t Login to Website / Can’t Upgrade From Trial

Sunday, September 20th, 2020

If you have a game account for FFXIV and cannot log in to the website and/or cannot purchase the game, follow these steps:

  1. Go to https://membership.square-enix.com/ and log in with your game account.
  2. Immediately after logging in, you will be asked some questions to complete your account. Answer the questions.
  3. Log out.
  4. Return to https://secure.square-enix.com/ and log in.
  5. You will now have full access to the store, Mog Station, Lodestone, etc. using that single login.

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Firebird Mount: How to Unlock Heavensward Extreme Trials

Sunday, September 20th, 2020

Looking to obtain the Firebird mount? Here’s a quick guide on which missions to unlock and complete in order to unlock Fiery Wings, Fiery Hearts.

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Quick & Easy Guide to Accumulating Darkmoon Faire Prize Tickets

Wednesday, February 6th, 2019

NOTE: This guide was written in early 2019 and was correct and up-to-date at that time. Things change, however, so please leave a comment if anything needs to be added or changed.

How to get a large number of Darkmoon Prize Tickets with a minimal amount of time and effort:

[80 tickets] There are nine Darkmoon dungeon artifacts that can be turned in at the Faire for rewards. They give 5, 10, or 15 prize tickets apiece, and you can redeem one of each type per character per Faire. All can be purchased on the Auction House, usually for reasonable amounts if you wait until the prices drop.

[10 tickets] Kill Moonfang. Use the premade groupfinder to find a group. Can be done once per character per Faire.

[20 tickets] Do all five profession quests. They give 4 tickets apiece. Can be done once per character per Faire.

[120 tickets] Pet battles (guides here). Win both and you get 15 tickets. Can be done once per account per day.

Honorable Mention

[100 tickets] Fish up or purchase 100 Darkmoon Daggermaw and buy the Faded Treasure Map. If your classic fishing skill is high enough, fishing them should take 30-40 minutes. Can be done once per character.

DPS Calculation Explained: Active Time vs. Elapsed Time

Wednesday, October 24th, 2018

Two players can do the same total damage during a fight yet have significantly different DPS numbers. You may be wondering how this is possible.

In most cases DPS is calculated by dividing the total damage by the total elapsed time. “Elapsed time” is just the length of the fight. Most DPS calculators will subtract time you spent dead, and some will start the clock from when you entered the fight instead of when your group entered the fight. But if you stay alive and pull with the group, DPS calculation is done by using the duration of the fight, which I call elapsed time.

WoW, however, has a metric known as “active time“. For DPS this is essentially the amount of time you’re attacking the target. It includes time spent doing the following:

  • Channeling/performing a TYPE_DAMAGE ability
  • Waiting for the global cooldown to finish

Some DPS calculators in WoW, and most prominently the Recount addon, default to using active time instead of elapsed time when calculating DPS, thus changing it from “damage over time” to “damage over time for those times you were attacking the target”. When defined this way, DPS becomes an indicator of how effectively you can damage, but it’s not as good for judging how well you do in a fight overall.

This was quite confusing to me at first. Many people in WoW are adamant about how it’s better to look at total damage than DPS. Normally there’s no difference between the two—DPS is simply the total damage with a common scale factor applied and the two can be used interchangeably. But if you’re used to the numbers given by Recount, that is not the case.

Unlimited Pet Leveling with Sir Galveston

Monday, October 1st, 2018

NOTE: This guide was written in 2018 and was correct and up-to-date at that time. Things change, however, so please leave a comment if anything needs to be added or changed.

Sir Galveston is a pet master in Dalaran – Broken Isles who periodically appears for a world quest. He’s great for leveling an arbitrary number of pets, for the following reasons:

  • Sir Galveston remains after the world quest is done and can be fought repeatedly until you leave the zone, leveling as many pets as you wish.
  • The carry pet takes no damage and can be any level.
  • The required pets are fairly inexpensive and easy to obtain, assuming you have revered status with Court of Farondis in Legion.
  • Rewards significant pet XP, even for a level 24 carry pet.
  • Reliable: I’m seeing about a 1-2% failure rate.
  • Well-scripted: the only variation is whether or not you repeat the final action.
  • Fairly short: typically less than 90 seconds.

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How to Get a Water-Walking Mount

Monday, September 24th, 2018

NOTE: This guide was written in 2018 and was correct and up-to-date at that time. Things change, however, so please leave a comment if anything needs to be added or changed.

With the advent of the Battle for Azeroth expansion and its lack of flying, many people realized they needed a mount that could walk on water. Here’s a quick guide on how to get them.

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Did You Miss Saturday’s Huge Space Battle?

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

Game ControllerLast Saturday (1/26/2013), there was a huge space battle in EVE Online, a massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG). What started out as a minor raid became one of the largest battles in the history of the game, involving more than 2800 ships and 3200 players. All because one player clicked the wrong command.

Link: http://www.tor.com/…

The Unexpected Success of Pong

Sunday, December 9th, 2012

Game ControllerAtari’s famous video game Pong wasn’t intended to be an actual product. And it generated a lot of backtracking on the part of Atari, as they slowly realized how popular it was going to be. The linked article has details.

Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/…

The All-Time Bestselling Video Game

Monday, July 16th, 2012

Game ControllerEver wonder what the all-time bestselling video game is, not counting the ones that were bundled with gaming systems? Turns out it’s Tetris. I purchased a copy back in the late ’80s, and the linked article prompted me to buy the Tetris app for my Kindle Fire.

Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/…

Google+ Gets Games

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Social NetworkWhen I first joined Google+, I realized that its lack of games was a problem (my primary reason for joining Facebook was to play online Scrabble). Well that has now changed.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/…
(via The Daily Caller)

Madden NFL Video Game Predicts Superbowl Winner 88% of the Time

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

FootballEA Sports publishes the popular Madden NFL video games. Each September, they run a simulation of the upcoming NFL season using the game. Their record is impressive—they’ve picked the correct Superbowl winner seven times in the last 8 years. Note that the linked article, written in September 2010, correctly predicted the Green Bay Packers as the champions.

Link: http://www.wired.com/…
(via Slashdot)