I never enjoyed streamers, I don’t find them entertaining. They call themselves “content creators”, but they’re only a bunch of backseat drivers who never created anything (free speech feels good!).
When a game is popular, they’re on the first line, singing its praises but, when the game loses in popularity, they’re the first to lead the hate charge. The human brain is wired toward negativity, it’s a biological fact, it’s what makes us look for cars before we cross the streets. Medias have been abusing this facts for hundreds of years by serving us all the bad things happening in the world through their news shows. Streamers are doing the same, because a negative video simply brings more views.
The problem is that, by gaining a greater audience, they gain the power to influence the trend. Do you honestly believe that Final Fantasy XIV would have such stellar numbers if streamers wouldn’t play it? The problem is when a nobody uses that power to damage a game or a company for profit or just because he got cocky over an insult on Twitter.
When the scandal against Blizzard first appeared, the amount of streamers to jump on the hate train was incredible. The same people who profited their games for over a decade suddenly became a linch mob. Now, they’re already tempering their speech, realising that World of Warcraft is still a great game and that it is still popular. The “I will never return” has already turned into a “I still enjoy the game”. Wait for the next patch or the next expansion and you will see those hypocrites posting WoW videos again.
So, where’s the integrity in all that? Well, that’s simple, there’s none. If you’re looking for integrity, just stop watching video game streamers, they’re just trying to pay their bills, mostly at the developer’s expanse.
When nature strikes, humanity doesn’t stand a chance. This time, the threat isn’t a tornado or a volcano, but a toxin released by the plants. It has two effects: it pushes humans to kill themselves and it makes actors play bad.
However, if you don’t mind a bad scenario, a lot of mistakes (like Zooey Deschanel suddenly changing outfit even though they didn’t bring anything with them) and a super awkward acting, you’ll maybe make it until the end… After all, it’s only 90 minutes. This movie is the evidence the M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t make only good movies.
Trivia: We watched The Happening while we were both experiencing hay fever, which made it even weirder.
Sometimes, you realise how good something is after you’ve tried something else… Well this is exactly what happened to us. We were a bit burned out of Shadowlands, then came the Blizzard scandal and the huge “let’s quit WoW” trend that followed. So, out of curiosity, we gave FFXIV a try.
Final Fantasy Online was released in 2010 but we’ve never felt that it was something for us. We’re not fans of anime, we don’t like their aesthetics, it doesn’t match our idea of heroic fantasy. However, the hype got us and we felt that we had to give the game a chance.
The first thing that I can say is that, if you don’t like steaks, no sauce will make you love them. Well, it’s the same with games. No matter how you look at it, Final Fantasy is, at its core, a Japanese game with anime-like graphics. But I thought that I could close my eyes, put the steak in my mouth, chew and Swallow… I was wrong!
Graphics
The first thing that prevented me from enjoying the game is the lack of details in the landscape. For example, when you walk in a desert, it’s just plain yellow, you move on a yellow flat plate that’s supposed to feel like a desert.
The lines are too straight, the buildings feel like they’ve been drawn with a pencil and a ruler. There are entire cities made out of a bunch of textured polygons stuck together that resemble houses and castles but that’s it, there’s no charm.
Music and Voices
The music is miles away from what was composed for World of Warcraft. Most WoW themes have created memories that I will remember forever (Lament of the highborn, Aldrassil, Coldridge Valley,…), while FF14 themes are tunes that I want to forget.
We started by muting the music that launches automatically every time you ride a mount. Then we muted the combat music, which makes the game feel like Pokemon. We ended up by muting the entire sound, we couldn’t take it anymore.
There’s almost no voice acting, and when there is, it sounds bad. World of Warcraft’s voice actors can pride themselves for the amazing job that they do. FFXIV voice actors should rethink their career choices. Most of the time, it sounds so ridiculous that it triggered uncontrollable laughters.
Text
Each quest comes with pages of text . If you don’t read it, the game easily becomes shallow and if you do, you end up reading the worst literature that I’ve ever read in my entire life. The localization team apparently decided to go for some “old English” style, the results is a annoying to read, and there’s a lot of it.
Dungeons
Honestly, how can anyone find FF14’s dungeons good? Their design is uncharacteristic and the bosses are uncharismatic.
If you wanna see what I’m talking about, you could compare two starting dungeons from both games: The Deadmines (WoW) and The Copperbell Mines (FFXIV), the difference of quality is so huge, it’s embarrassing.
Gameplay
From the start, killing mobs in WoW feels amazing. Whether you hit them with a huge stick or you curse them from afar, WoW’s gameplay is smooth, fast and addictive.
FF14’s gameplay, when you get to experience it (between the hours of text reading), feels clunky. You will often read that you have to wait the last levels to experience the real gameplay of Final Fantasy, but no matter how many buttons are added to the action bar, weaving easily gets tedious.
Ridiculous
Everyone who plays WoW knows of Muradin, Sylvanas, Anduin, Ragnaros,… In FF14, I don’t even know the name of 2 NPCs, and if I do, it’s because they’re so ridiculous that I can’t forget them (unfortunately).
The name of the places are horrible: Limsa Lominsa (I had to google to spell it right), Costa del Sol (yep, I swear),…
I have to say something about the gear… Why even bother with dragons and castles, only to have us stumble upon a dude dressed in Summer attire? I completely breaks immersion.
Conclusion
Of course, my opinion isn’t objective but this is my blog and I don’t need to be objective. Now, I must admit that a great part of my negativity towards Final Fantasy comes from the fact that I’m not into anime. I love western fantasy, the one from Dungeons & Dragons.
But, regardless of my preference, I think that FF14 suffers of a huge lack of quality. From its gameplay, the way the lore is passed on, the graphics, the music and the overall charm, it feels like a cheap asian rip-off. Coming from WoW, it’s as if you’d be walking inside of a fake Chinese Disney park after visiting the real thing for years.
Trying FF14 has brought us some good though, it made us realize how spoiled we are with World of Warcraft. Since we’ve tried FF14, I’m even more amazed by the quality of Blizzard’s MMORPG. So many things are over-the-top, from the smooth gameplay to the music and the polished graphics, but the thing that matters most to me is the charm of the world and Eorzea doesn’t hold a candle to Azeroth.
The title is deceptive because the franchise actually counts 12 movies (why go that far and not making a 13th?).
Like Part III, the film was originally supposed to be the final installment in the series. It’s not entirely bad, it even has a few good parts, especially those with Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover’s dance scene. However, this is where our full rerun ends. If I remember well, the next chapters are not worth watching, unless you’re a hardcore fan, or you’re really bored.
I wish I could say something nice about the third movie of the franchise, but I really can’t come up with anything. The jokes are bad, the action is tedious and the actors are not really good.
I actually write this post to remember that we shouldn’t watch it again… It’s the second time that we watch it and, hopefully, this post will keep us from watching it a third time.
Year after year, World of Warcraft has lost its popularity. There’s always been negative people but their voices were lost in the ocean of positivity that was surrounding the game. Expansion after expansion, the game has lost its identity, trying to satisfy too many different types of gamers. Victim of its own success, WoW entered a slow and painful descent, no king rules forever.
Keeping a good PR when only haters can be heard is a difficult job, especially when your product so heavily depends on its community. So, when a developer publicly calls one of the last big streamer “an a**hole”, it’s time for damage control. It never happened and, ultimately, the streamer left for another game, taking with him hundreds of thousand followers.
As one’s misfortune often benefits another, FF14 reaches now a total of 22 millions accounts. The store even has to place people in a queue, only to purchase the game.
As if it wasn’t enough, California sues Activision Blizzard over a culture of ‘constant sexual harassment’. I’m not gonna quote the entire lawsuit, but we’re talking about lack of support by HR to the victims, encouragement of this behaviour by the CEO, J. Allen Brack, and even Alex Afrasiabi being called the Bill Cosby of Blizzard. It goes as far as the suicide of an employee after a week-end/relationship with her manager and her bullying at a company meeting.
From in-game protests, massive unsubscribes and tons of flaming forums, I can tell you, internet reacted accordingly to the gravity of the situation. There can be no compromise toward this kind of attitude, there’s no place for frat boy culture in this world.
Since the departure of its former CEO, the Californian company has only shown disregard for its community and its employees. I remember the last Blizzcon of Mike Morhaime, when he said about J Allen Brack “You think you know him, but you don’t”. I often wondered what he meant… I think that I know, now.
I know that Blizzard isn’t the only company with an horrible behaviour towards women but, if we want the world to change, examples have to be made and Blizzard prepared its own gallows by first angering its own crowd.
Ok, Legacies was never destined to leave a mark on television history but it was a good show to watch with our Saturday evening Spaghettis. A teen drama in a school for kids with special powers, that’s almost as perfect as Riverdale (sarcasm or not, you decide).
But what happened to the third season? Was there a cut in the budget? Were the writers depressed? From the first to the last episode, everything is horrible! The effects are kitsch, the story is… Well, there isn’t even a story to talk about and the cast isn’t charming anymore.
It would take a miracle for the show to get renewed after that. Sometimes, it’s merciful to take the beast down.
I’ve added the Deep Sea Creatures kit to my Pirate ship Lego Scene. It was nothing planned but, since we’re both vaccinated, we’ve visited the new Lego store that was recently opened in Brussels and I couldn’t help myself… At the store, they had a pirate scene and the boat was surrounded by small blue and white pieces to imitate the waves around the ship and I’m wondering if I shouldn’t order a few (hundreds) as well… As always, the kit was fun to build, especially the great white shark with all its teeth.
Of all the streaming services that we are subscribed to, Apple TV is probably the worst, in both quantity and quality. The App works fine, but the catalogue is filled with original content that really isn’t good. The fanboys will tell you that a few shows are worth watching, but certainly not worth a sub, not even at 7 euros.
Speaking about fanboys, well… We are both Apple fanboys! From the Airtag to the MacBook Pro, we have the entire ecosystem. This is probably the reason why we didn’t cancel our Apple One subscription yet, even though we only use Icloud and Apple Music.
Last week, after an argument on Reddit, I decided to try The Morning Show, it was boring (Jennifer Anniston is hard to look at with all the plastic surgery), and Ted Lasso is about soccer (I hate soccer). However, we’re having a blast with Mythic Quest, a TV show about a company developing an MMORPG. The cast is great, but the character that cracks us up the most is the “Lore” writer, CW Longbottom (portrayed by F. Murray Abraham).
Now, is a single show worth a subscription? No. Will we cancel our sub? No. It’s part of the Apple One bundle and we sold our souls to Apple long ago. At least, I don’t hide behind pretenses.
