Uncategorized – Page 60

Pay for Placement Scam

January 9, 2019 by Belghast

I am breaking my review of the games coming out in 2019 to talk briefly about a weird experience I am having with a website. In my travels the other day I stumbled across one of those “Top 100 Gaming Blogs” lists, and I clicked through to see if there were any blogs on it that I recognized. Generally speaking this is not the case because in my experience these lists tend to include a ton of corporate blogs managed by the game companies themselves. The sites listed largely fit this bill, but as you got towards the bottom of the list I saw a bunch of smaller sites… none that I actually recognized but still smaller than MassivelyOp that was also on the list. Looking around the site it seemed to be a mishmash of two things happening… firstly it was some sort of a RSS reader tool that seemed to suggest that you could subscribe to a bunch of sites and get their content delivered to your mailbox.

Secondly it seemed to be selling access to the blog information to marketers, since when you register a site you are providing a contact name, the URL and an email associated with the blog. Claiming to be able to provide relevant bloggers in a given subject area. There was a form that allows you to submit your blog and on a whim I decided to do just this. At this point things start getting really weird and shady. You notice I have not mentioned the site yet or linked to them… it is largely because of the behavior that followed and my not wanting to give them any eyeballs as a result. Within minutes of signing up for the website I got the following email in my inbox.

So essentially on top of selling to marketers, they are also double dipping on the back end and running a pay for placement scam. This email arrived so rapidly that it has to have been scripted, and that they did not actually take any time to review my website. Additionally it isn’t really a “top 100 gaming blogs” list if you are letting people pay money to get onto it. As a curiosity I clicked through to see how much it cost for this gold service, and things get even stranger. For reference its roughly $24 a year, to essentially place your website on one of their lists, which is a thing I was not interested in. However two hours after clicking on the link to view the pricing… I got this email.

Of note… I am blanking out the guys name because he keeps email from his personal account on the site in question and in general I don’t think it is terribly cool to spread someones actual name around. I am not trying to Dox the person after all. Things keep getting weirder from here. Roughly eight hours pass and I get an email from the site telling me that I need to verify my email address. My working theory is that since I had not been responding to this guy at all… he is assuming at this point that I must have given him a bogus address. At this point I am finding this whole process interesting… so I validate the address and upon landing on the site it tells me that my account is in violation and that I have signed up for too many websites. That in order to keep using the service I will have to upgrade to Gold.

This morning I got the above email which is honestly what prompted me to take time and write about this scam. Notice how that it has switched from being listed on a top 100 list to being listed on a top 200 list. Additionally they are pushing a bunch of information about the site trying to sell you on how many eyeballs your $24 a year is going to be buying you. Back in High School there was something referred to as the “Top Scholars” scam, and there were a few perpetrators out there. They would request mailing lists for all of the graduating seniors and send out a message targeted at the parents touting that their child had been selected as some sort of an elite scholar and that they had earned the rights to be listed in some book. They go on at length about how much this book is going to improve their chances of getting into a good college, and that the only catch is that they needed to purchase one of these deluxe edition gold leaf adorned $150 tomes to go ahead with the listing. Thankfully our gifted and talented coordinator warned all of the parents about this scam and as a result my parents did not fall for it… but I know others who did.

What we are seeing with Feedspot is a confusion amalgamation of product offerings… including something that is very much the digital version of that scam. They seem to be targeting the bloggers themselves and promising fame and more traffic and targeting the marketers promising a verified list of contacts to get them in touch with people who could influence their customers. For everyone else… you have a RSS feed site that offers an email digest service. There is nothing necessarily “wrong” with a capital W about anything they are doing, but it is nonetheless somewhat shady. The thing is… this isn’t the only site offering a somewhat questionable top 100 list and likely not the only site that is going to offer to place your site on said list for a small fee. This is more or less a public service announcement that when you see something like this… it is likely going to be a scam.

I’ve still not responded to any emails from the site, because at this point I find it sort of entertaining. Hell if they actually do read my blog they might make a response here, but I have been pretty careful not to actually include links to any of their content. Posts like this one are likely why no one will ever take this blog seriously… however I do have an interesting product review in the works. I’ve always said that I was willing to review products if they actually were something somewhat related to my interests… and if there were no strings attached… and someone actually finally nibbled on my conditions. So we will see how well that works out once the product actually arrives.

2019 Looking Forward: Games with Release Dates

January 8, 2019 by Belghast

Over the weekend I talked a bit on the podcast about the various games that were coming out this year that I happened to be interested in. This morning I thought I would start a series where I talk about some of them here on the blog. It is a really big list so as a result I felt like I needed to break it up a bit. This morning we are starting off with the games that actually have fixed release dates… so I would say these are the MOST likely to release during the 2019 calendar year. I’m going to be talking about them in chronological order of release dates. I’m also listing the platform I am currently targeting at playing the game on.

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – Switch – January 11th

There is so much wrong with the name of this game and it represents all of Nintendo’s jacked up naming conventions colliding at once. That said I am really looking forward to playing this on a console that I actually enjoy playing. Sure this is another repackage of a WiiU game for the Switch… but I am in support of this practice because I have no interest in actually playing my WiiU. It was not a great console… but it happened to have more than a handful of really interesting titles on it. I hope they all get the re-release treatment, because the switch is just a more versatile platform. This comes out in three days so it represents the first of the titles on the list that I am interested in.

Onimusha: Warlords – Switch – January 15th

I loved the Onimusha series on the PS2 and am super amped about this game getting a re-release. It is coming out on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch… and quite honestly I am not really certain which platform I intend to pick it up on. Given that it appears to be a remaster and not a remake… I figure it is going to control like a PS2 era game which leads me down the path of favoring playing this on a console as opposed to the PC. I figure even on PC it will mostly be required to hook up a controller to be able to experience the title, so I might as well just start out on a console for the native controller experience. At this very moment I am leaning towards Switch as it gives me a wider breadth of play options.

Metro Exodus – PC – February 15th

This list is going to include a bunch of games that I am excited about… but likely won’t play at release. Metro Exodus is the first of these, largely because it is releasing in a time with a pretty packed number of releases… and a game that I way more interested is releasing a week later. I’ve come to peace with the fact that the Metro series is not in fact Russian Fallout as it originally appeared. I can live with it being a mostly on rails shooter experience, because the world is so rich and interesting. This game however supposedly opens the world up a bit giving you more freedom to roam around in the maps a bit. There is also supposedly part of the game that takes place on the literal rails… and I loved Snowpiercer. It looks really interesting so it goes on the list.

Far Cry New Dawn – PC – February 15th

This appears to be the year of neon color palette post apocalyptic games. I talked briefly about this game yesterday when I spoke of Far Cry 5, and I am still really interested to see how that setting turns into this one. This is also likely to get played way after the release date because once again it butts up against a game I am looking forward to more fervently. I feel like I might be in a kick of playing single player titles, and this is another on that fits into that list. However I still have a pretty hefty backlog of titles I have started but never finished… like Assassin’s Creed Origins and God of War… so it seriously might be a while before I try it.

Anthem – PC – February 22nd

Now for the title that is holding the last two hostage. I am super limited in what I can say about this game because NDA… but I have an awful lot of hopes riding on it. I also want to give Bioware a shot at making this work, because I feel like this might be the last chance EA gives that studio before shuttering them. I am not being hyperbolic here… EA has a proven track record of closing studios when it deems they are no longer profitable. As a new IP… it looks really interesting and I think there is going to be enough meat on these bones to satisfy the fans that cut their teeth on the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. I also think this game is angling for splitting the difference between Destiny and Warframe and creating a game that probably appeals to both tribes of players. All of those things seem really good… it just depends on how the game launches. I will be playing on PC, so if you are also planning on playing let me know. I have no clue what the Guild/Clan systems are going to be like but it would be nice to gather up a decent amount of folks for launch.

The Division 2 – PC – March 15th

Now for the first of two titles that I am really not certain about. I liked The Division for about the first twenty levels of gameplay… and then it became a slog as things started to get more serious and the mobs became more bullet-spongey and I seemed to be wearing paper thin armor. I finally reached the level cap back in October… but that was a really long ride of me bouncing out pretty regularly before I finally got there. I have not pre-ordered this game, because in truth I really want to see more of it before that happens. I was hoping I would get into an Alpha or Beta so it could win me over, but a combination of the bleak setting mixed with the third person shooter game play… it may not be the game I am looking for. That said I know a lot of people will be playing it. Ultimately whether I give this a shot depends largely on how engaged in Anthem I am just shy of a month after its launch.

Rage 2 – PC – May 14th

I feel like I am one of the few people who hold a serious candle for the original Rage. I loved everything about it… except for the fact that it felt like it simply was not finished. As you near the end of the game… I legitimately thought that we were working on a world two scenario with the game about to open up in a big way and let me explore new areas. Instead I got a credits roll… and the game was over. I THINK that the intent was to keep releasing DLC content but the poor sales of the game and the technical problems on literally all platforms… especially console… lead that plan to get scrapped. Now we get a new game and it appears to be part of the ushering in of the neon apocalypse. I am not sure if I will like this game… because I am not sure if enough of the original still lives to make me interested in it. If this ends up just being a neon mad max sim shooter… I am not entirely sure how interested I will be. I am still interested enough however for it to make the list.

What are some of the games you are looking forward to in 2019… specifically with set launch dates? Tomorrow I am likely going to talk about some of the things that are going to release… we just don’t have launch windows yet.

Hopes for the New Year

January 2, 2019 by Belghast

I’ve started this post a half dozen times this morning only to keep backspacing it away. So as a result I am just going to go with it as not to waste anymore time. I am not used to blogging while sitting downstairs, and I think that might be harshing some of my mojo. Either than or the fact that I am effectively writing the first blog post of 2019, a new year… and don’t want to mess things up. Regardless this morning I thought I would write a bit about some of my thoughts for the coming year. I am not generally one to do resolutions, so I am going to participate in the practice without actually calling them that. So here goes some of the things I hope for the next year.

Figure out Discord

I know this sounds like a silly topic, but I am being completely serious. No I am not meaning figure it out in a technical sense, but instead figure out how it fits in my life. Right now I am legitimately in fifty different discord servers, and have probably since its launch left about that many as well. Hell there are a half dozen that I set up myself for various reasons. This fragmentation means that I end up using none of them on a regular basis. While I use Slack and Microsoft Teams for work purposes… and that gave me a fixed reason to use the social Slacks I am in… I don’t have a similar need for Discord other than when I am wanting to use voice chat for some reason. As such we have a bunch of general purpose discords that serve as a ready voice chat option when we need one.

All of that said there are awesome people and interesting conversations going on there, and I would like during this new year to figure out how to become part of that. I’ve been pleased to see the Blaugust discord is still active, and I love hanging out with the Moogle’s Pom crew when I remember it is a place that exists. Unfortunately I think discord has way too much noise to really make it a constant destination. Too many people are scattered among too many different servers to have it feel like a cohesive experience. I think the other challenge is everyone is struggling to figure out how exactly to use it. Every single alpha that I am in wants to use it as their primary means of communication and as a replacement for the traditional forum experience. The UI doesn’t exactly help to identify what are things I actually should be reading, and what is just so much more spam.

It would be nice if there was a way to group servers into folders… so you could have a half dozen ones that you regularly use and then the rest neatly hidden behind a wall. This is a problem that I want to solve this year but I am not even sure where to start apart from simply leaving every server I am in and adding them back more judiciously.

Get Over Anxiety Tanking

I am not sure where it came from but lately I have been super anxious about getting back into tanking again. This is a big part of why I have been largely bouncing from Final Fantasy XIV is that I cannot seem to get over the hurdle of just tanking for randoms. That is what I need to do so I can get the currency I need to upgrade my gear to be able to run the dungeons to be able to finish the main story line. Yes I realize that was one hell of a run on sentence but I absolutely did that on purpose. Everything in that game seems to be gated by something, and the answer to all of it is just to tank queue as a Warrior and be done with it.

That said I keep logging in, playing the cactpot and then logging right back out. I think a lot of why I have not returned to World of Warcraft in earnest with the recent patch is that I have a similar wall that has built up against the responsibility of tanking. I want to figure out a way past this so I can get on with my life and start to enjoy MMORPGs again.

Organize My Vault

Another huge problem I am having with Final Fantasy XIV is that I am avoiding my inventory. I have six retainers full of shit and I cannot begin to figure out how to sort it all. I know there is a good deal of it that I can stick in the glamour chest and be done with it, but I am so paralyzed by the mountain of items that it is effecting my willingness to go do anything that might add more to it. I am similarly having an issue with Destiny 2 where I am running out of vault room. I need to go through and get rid of everything that I can buy back again through the collections… but right now I am willfully avoiding touching anything. I am struggling with an irrational fear that I might remove the wrong thing and with no undo system and no buyback vendor… I could accidentally get rid of something I can’t get back.

Quite honestly so many of the things I am dealing with are anxiety based… anxiety over interacting with people, anxiety over responsibility, and anxiety over possible loss. If I could figure out a way to solve that core problem a lot of these would disappear.

Figure Out Streaming

Another one of these anxiety triggered things is the fact that I would like to stream more… but always struggle to push that “go live” button. I think one of the big problems is that a lot of what I do on a nightly basis does not exactly make for “must see television”. I don’t play the type of games that lend themselves to streaming, because in a narrative experience… the fact that I am streaming seems to get in the way. Additionally does anyone actually want to see me grind public events in Destiny 2 for an entire night? I would love to come to terms with this and figure out a way to work it into my life.

Figure Out Social Media

As it stands I follow way the fuck too many people on Social Media and I have been paralyzed to start trying to tackle this problem. On Twitter I follow just shy of 1200 people and that is way too many to make it usable. Similarly I have allowed my Mastodon profile to balloon up to 226…. which means I am setting myself up for the same sort of problem there in the future. Again like so many of these I need to take the hard step and just start slashing those follow numbers, because it is completely unsustainable the way it is now. There is no way in hell that I can actually interact with that many people. Twitter vacillates between being extremely enjoyable and being a wall of noise that I cannot seem to push past. I need to figure out how to reduce the noise.

I have not done this thing because I have not been willing to risk upsetting some people in the process. I need to get over that and rip the band aid off.

Minimize

A lot of this has been about gaming or social media… but this one is more personal. I have reached a point where I am larger than I have been at any point in my life. I will never be a small person, but I need to be less big. So this year I need to get back on the wagon and reduce my calorie intake while also increasing my exercise output. I’ve done this numerous times in the past and I need to do it again. The problem is something will happen in my life that causes me to stop giving a fuck about it… and then this happens. Caring about my weight is not my default state, it is something I have to work at caring about. So this year I need to devote serious effort into fixing this before it gets worse.

Tomorrow I will return to games blogging, since the last few posts have been more on the personal and serious side… but I wanted to get them out of me as they appear to have needed to be written.

Year End Wall of Text

December 31, 2018 by Belghast

Over the last few days I have been doing a number of posts to review the year that is ending, and with today being the last day of 2018… I thought I would probably do another one. This time however it is probably going to downshift considerably and get into personal territory. It was an odd year for me specifically and quite frankly… not an amazing one. My world had been fairly hectic and as a result it has trickled down to effecting how I view this blog and the games I end up playing.

This was the year that I took over as Manager of my section at work being comprised of three different subject areas. That means that on any given day I am responsible for roughly fifteen other lives, not to mention a handful of individuals that may not actually report to me but regularly seek advisement. Now this is something I have steadily moved towards over the last decade, but even with that… I am not sure I was quite prepared for the stress level increase.

I am now accountable not only for the actions of myself, or previously the actions of the handful of application developers… but also the actions of a whole bunch of people that I am significantly less integrated with. So this year has been in large part about me getting accustomed to this role and learning everything I can about the roles of everyone that was not a traditional developer before the transition.

We also had a pretty significant shake up position wise and saw me having to go on a hiring spree in which I filled several positions. As is the case with hiring there is a certain trickle effect where… someone higher up leaves, and you promote someone into that position… which leaves another vacancy and so on. This meant for what felt like six months I was doing interviews… which is weirdly more tiring than you might think. The positive is that I got to promote a lot of great people who were waiting in the wings… and also hire several more awesome people in the process.

It is weird how much leading guilds in MMORPGs prepared me for this role, and in truth I wish we lived in a world where that was more recognizable as valid experience. Had I not lead guilds and raids there is no way I would have had the people skills required to make the transition work at all. If you can convince 20-40 strangers to do something… then you can convince 10-15 people you can actually sit in the same room with to make the changes needed that have actual tangible benefits to their lives.

On the gaming front however 2018 was a pretty lonely year for me, and I found myself withdrawing further and further away from anything resembling organized play. I think part of this comes from the fact that by the time I got home… I was “over socialized” from having to be responsible for so many other people. Another part of this comes from the fact that things that happened in 2016 and 2017 were starting to really affect me in 2018.

For years I had been in the habit of hanging out every night on voice chat with the various members of the AggroChat community, be it either the other five members of the podcast or the various folks that surrounded it. When the podcast started it was made up of 4 members that lived in the EST timezone and myself and another that lived in CST. That meant at worst we were an hour apart and pretty drift compatible as it comes to gaming together.

For years I was used to getting up at 5:30 in the morning and going to bed around midnight. However with the way my life has changed that is just no longer sustainable. Now as the night wears on I start to wind down around 9-9:30 and play for thirty minutes or so on my phone before falling asleep around 10ish. So that alone has greatly lowered my window of viability from having about five hours each night to do things in… to a much shorter three hour window.

Starting in 2015 a change happened… slowly at first but it built over time. It began with the migration westward of Tamrielo to Seattle, and before long Kodra had accepted what seemed to be his dream job and joined him. A little bit after that Ashgar migrated as well because he had the functionality to work remotely from pretty much anywhere. Before I even really grasped the ramifications, half of our show was located on the West Coast and as such two hours behind me.

What this meant in practice is all too often they were showing up to play games… at roughly the same time I was trying to disengage for the night. For a long while this was okayish, because I still had Thalen and Grace to hang out with, but I found myself spending less and less time in voice chat, because there was nothing more depressing than an empty server… or in our case a server with a ghost of Kodra on it because he never logs out of anything.

Grace and I did more and more together because we seemed to usually be playing the same games. However this year Thalen and Grace both had life changing events alter their play schedules and as such I am sort of now the odd man out as it were. So I am left with this decision… do I just accept that I am a single player gamer or do I invest the social capitol that it takes to branch out and find new groups of people to play with? Because of the draining nature of my work changes… the answer has generally been that I just sit alone and figure out things to do that don’t actually require other people to do them.

This is not a cry for help mind you, because there are a constant string of awesome people who keep inviting me to do things with them. Squirrel and Waren are always offering assistance on the Destiny 2 front, and I have a list of people that I could be doing stuff with in Monster Hunter World as well. Similarly the Final Fantasy XIV free company is super active and all it would take is for me to show up on the right nights to get back engaged with doing lots of things with them. The problem is… all of these things take a number of “spoons” that I generally do not have in my drawer.

Two Thousand and Eighteen was a year when I felt completely out of sync with everything going on around me. I am hoping that Two Thousand and Nineteen can see me finding ways to remedy that. Since tomorrow is New Years I am likely going to call it a holiday and not make post, but Wednesday I will return with a post about some of the ways I am hoping to change my current situation. The last few years have been rough, and I am hoping in this next year some things start to turn around. Sorry for ending the year on a bit of a bummer post… but I sorta had to write what was in my mind. As not to end the post on a complete downturn… this year was also the year I got back into contact with a good friend of mine from High School so that was definitely in the wins column.