Benie's Games Blog

So, this is a complete surprise. A week ago, heelz posted that Blizzard has reversed their no flying thing completely. Two weeks ago (nearly 3 weeks since my post about them removing flying), they announced “No more flying!” .. what made them flip-flop what they had ‘set in stone’, and why did it take two weeks?

He goes over the lengthy post for all current and ex-WoW players(like myself). Starts off as “Oh yeah.. we’ve been monitoring your all’s discussions on flying! We ARE listening!” So.. I’ll call BS here. They are listening, yet not to their players. They’re ‘listening’ to their subscription levels drop and know they have to do something drastic to ease the pain.

The next few paragraphs give somewhat good examples on why they chose to have no flying in Draenor (and even after hitting Level 100). It covers the Timeless Isle, and the Isle of Thunder. Basically the points are, that flying would had actually ruined the content and made it too easy. I like a challenge now and then, as long as its a sensible one.

Now the juicy part. They say in one of the PTR Builds of Patch 6.2, they’ll be testing something called the ‘Draenor Pathfinder’. This will eventually allow you to fly in Draenor in a later patch!
You’re probably asking yourself “What’s the catch?” Well, hold on to your ass, because there’s a big one. It mentions that you must “master the outdoor environment of Draenor”.
1. Explore all of Draenor’s zones. (Done it)
2. Collecting 100 Treasures in Draenor. (Done it)
3. Getting the ‘Draenor Loremaster’ achievement.
4. Getting the ‘Securing Draenor’ achievement. This is up in the air, of what specific things you must do to get this thing. Some say this is doing all the optional quests, while others say it’s doing all the Apexis Crystal quests and Dailies. But if any of them are Raid and/or PvP-based… fuck that shit.
6. Raising the three new Tanaan Jungle reputations to at least Revered. At least now… there’s kind of a point to mindlessly grind Apexis Crystals.

Once you do all of this, you’ll get a Rylak mount called the ‘Soaring Skyterror’. Until that later patch kicks in (whenever they release this 6.2.x version), the mount will still be ground-based. But once the patch goes in affect and you have this ‘Draenor Pathfinder’ thing, all players on your account (that are Level 90 or above) will be able to fly.

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So, that’s it. My thoughts? I actually like this (mainly allowing all my alts to fly). It’s a good balance that the anti-flyers want, and gives pro-flyers what they want.
Will this possibly make me come back to WoW? That’s… questionable. As in, I dunno. I don’t really want to do another subscription service, until I know it’s worth it.

I will be closely following this, as being very… very cautiously optimistic. I’m curious what hell I will have to go through. No doubt, it won’t be done in a day. It’ll take days, weeks.. maybe even a month or two. But it really depends on the level of hell. If it has a ton of raid content? Then no. Even if it’s just ONE raid, fuck it. The ONLY exception… is if LFRs are allowed to do the achievement. Then I might consider.

But does this overall, mean Blizzard has finally woken up? *shakes head* No. As I said, this is a desperate move to win back their lost subscriptions. This is in no shape or form, mean they’ve learned their lesson on how fucking BORING Draenor is (as a non-raider).
This is still good news, though (for the pro-flyers). Though I feel it’s not set in stone. Seriously, allowing all of your chars to fly in Draenor at Level 90? That’s not really learning from their past ‘mistakes'(in the eyes of anti-flyers). Personally, I think they were smoking weed at the time they were thinking of that.

At times like this, I wish I had the intelligence to know how to edit videos correctly, and what to use. Because what I just went through (as Franklin) for the past 10 minutes… wow. So much fun. The kind of fun I would had never gotten in GTA IV.

Basically, it started with doing the side missions to sitting on a train with either a Minigun or a Railgun, sniping at cops and cars with a 5 star wanted level.. in the city.
What lead to that? Spawning in a Hydra and taking it on a joyride (and trying to learn for myself how to control a Hydra). Let me just say, it was fun. Plus I increased the wanted level to full, and acted like a evil “dragon” swooping in and “burning” everyone with homing missiles, while the “brave knights” in their metal machines try to stop me.
And the only rule I had, is I would have to completely lose control of the Hydra (have it upside down on the ground, in the ocean, etc..) to be considered “slain”.

Then I went to an area of Blane County, and started taking potshots at a close road with my Sniper Rifle and explosive ammo. It was another ‘game’ I had setup, that if you manage to avoid being blown up, you ‘win’ by not dying! And 3-4 cars actually got away. Kudos to those scared shitless drivers.

Turned cops on again, to give myself more of a challenge. Then I teleported to a random location when I got a bit bored, and found myself in the industrial district. I then whipped out my Minigun and went insane on the bastards, shooting cops left and right. I considered this rage revenge for all the times the cops pissed me off for being better than me.

Getting a tad bored with that, I discovered I was near one of the active train lines, and had an idea to ride the train through the city, while taking out helicopters. And it would be considered my “getaway car”.
Finally having the more realistic trains mod (will explain why it almost wasn’t later on after I’m all epic’d out from typing this), I waited while killing cops for a train to come. Using the Super Jump part of the Native Trainer, a really long train showed up, and I hopped on.
What followed was me going through the city while surfing on a train, minigun in hand, blowing up helicopters. This… this feels it should had been in the game (as one of the Single Player missions) for the epic value.
Riding the rails through the city, was a brand new perspective for me. And I loved it.

Finally after taking the entire route of the Fright Train, I hid in a tunnel to get the heat off me. And that.. as they say, is it.

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Anyway, now to explain how this didn’t come to pass. It isn’t the ‘mod breaking’ patch, which thankfully was fixed. And thankfully I didn’t have to wait for it. Nah. My issue (and still is), is the updater. See, it checks to make sure all files are validated everytime you launch. And there’s no convenient way to disable it.

The ONLY way… is to literally unplug my cable modem during the pre-boot process of the game, and get it to go into Safe Mode. After it passes the updater (can’t force update, as the files are online), I can plug in my Cable Modem again and play normally. I’m actually shocked Rockstar has this Offline Mode option.
Seeing this.. maybe they aren’t EA, or even as bad as them. But that fucking stunt they pulled with the Steam “sale” they offered, they’re getting there. I’ll never forgive them for that, and I’m sure neither will their playerbase.

It sucks the fact I have to do that everytime, but as I said, it’s the only way to play. Yet I wonder if there’s a better way. I’ll get back to you on that.
EDIT: Got an email (author chose to remain anonymous) a few days after posting this, stating that I can block the executables (all three of them) through Windows Firewall. They have to be blocked both on the Inbound and Outbound to work. It worked for me, so I wanted to slap this on here to let you guys know what to do, if you don’t have the Steam version.

Went through a bit of hell to get it. There were a few codes on the Steam Forum, that you can get it for 30% off instead of 20%, but they turned into codes that only the one that got it, could use it.
Plus, the 20% off code actually changed on me. It reminds me of that one part in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, of having this thing giving random codes every 30 seconds to get a chest open.

But now I finally have GTA V for PC, thanks to Green Man Gaming! I had considered waiting ’till my birthday to buy it (and Far Cry 4) from Steam. But seeing this one time deal on GMG that only lasted until the 20th instead of August 20th (my birthday), I went on and got it.
(Plus, I’m bored with Minecraft. I want something new to play!)

I can see why not a lot of people like the Rockstar Social Club. First of all, the system is so bad, it makes uPlay look good. Second… you’re required to stay logged in to play the game. This is the same BS that EA did for SimCity 5.
This doesn’t affect me, having a constant connection. But not everyone has an ISP that doesn’t punish you for abusing your bandwidth.

Anyway, waiting for the game to download to my computer. This is much better than the hell I went through to get it on my PS4, where it took HOURS to download. And I mean, 10+. This is taking… 3-4 hours (give or take a few hours, depending on how stable my connection is). A lot faster than it took there. Of course, everything’s better on PC. We got mods. We got better visuals. So yeah, I’m part of the ‘PC Master Race’.

Plus, unlike what happened on my PS4, it actually shows how long the download will take! It doesn’t show “ohh, it’s 40% complete now!”. This thing tells me what my current download speed is, how much has been downloaded to my computer, what’s remaining, and how long it’ll take (as I just said). It’s much better.

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EDIT: Still waiting for the download to complete. It started around 5:14pm, and it’s currently 8:44pm as I type this. Been just over 3 hours. I’ll have an update later on.

EDIT2: 9:54pm now. It has 15 minutes remaining. I say the download will be done in possibly half the time it took for my PS4 (5 hours compared to 9), and without hearing the console overheating.

EDIT3: 10:15pm, “Grand Theft Auto 5 is now ready to play” showed on the launcher. So let’s see.. started from 5:14pm, ended at 10:15pm. That’s roughly 5 hours. Just half the time it took to download on my PS4.
Time to finally see if it’ll work on my computer!

The Steam Summer Sale has officially kicked in, dubbed the ‘Monster Summer Sale’. It goes between June 11th(today) to the 21st(first day of Summer, and Father’s Day). So, around 10 days of sales.
Most of my wished games are on sale, including GTA V for the first time since its release. It’s. $60. still. How is this a sale, you ask? Because it’s not…

On the store page, instead of getting just GTA V, you can get the game, plus a ‘Great White Shark Cash Card’ for $80. Yes… $80. What the FUCK happened to just getting the game only? I wish I knew.
It’s now on “sale”, for $60. In other words, you’re still paying full price for the game, but you get the Cash Card for free. Woopy fucking do!
What is a Cash Card? Literally speaking, it’s microtransactions. You pay for a card, you type in the code to said card in GTA V, and you get the ingame cash on that card.

What if I don’t want the card? What if I just want the fucking game only?! Ohh.. too bad! There’s no option!! We’re literally FORCED to buy these cards! This should be illegal!
The other “options”, that you can get a ‘Tiger Shark Card’ by either getting Max Payne 3 or GTA: San Andreas. And these are both $60. This is Rockstar saying “Ha ha! The game will never be on sale!” while wearing a troll face.

Look. At this time, I don’t fucking care if it ever goes on sale. But to trick potential buyers of a “sale”, that all it is, is trying to shove these worthless Pay to Win Cash Cards down their throats… why? Who in the fuck could possibly do that to their fellow humans?

Seriously, you don’t need the cash card. Play the game in Single Player. Complete the last heist, and you’ll be swimming in cash. I did on the PS4, and I’m rich. And I never bought one of those Cash Cards, nor did I cheat (well.. I did cheat in that helicopter to get Franklin off the roof of that building with cops all around, but I never cheated in money). You don’t even have to get 100% completion.
The game is easy, as long as you make sure you set your aiming up correctly. Of course, I tried my best not to cause cops to come after me (unless I got bored).

Anyway, back to this mess. So on the Steam Forum for this, there’s dozens of threads (and growing) about this injustice.
I still can’t believe they did this. They’re taking full advantage of how bad people want this game on PC. This… this is worse than EA. These are greedy, underhanded, big wig business practices, and they should be illegal. And I’m hearing it actually is in the EU. Don’t know where the EU is. I’m guessing most if not all of Europe (maybe even including the UK).

…Even though, there’s nothing that says that you (as a game developer who posts their game on Steam) HAVE to have the game alone when you choose for it to go on sale. So the angered fingers should be pointing at Steam instead of Rockstar.

EDIT: This just hit a new low. So, most everyone knows about Steam offering refunds now? Well.. the fact that this is bundled in such a way, it refuses to give you your money back. Ain’t that just fucking great?!
So now we have direct proof, that Steam is working with Rockstar. This… there is no words for this that I haven’t already said! I could cuss. I could scream. But it isn’t doing any good! It isn’t forcing them to offer the game separately at a discounted price!

EDIT2: Wow. 12 revisions so far of editing this post. Anyway, being told there is a legal alternative. Over at the site ‘Green Man Gaming’, there’s a 20% off code where you can get the game for $48 instead of $60. Not a good sale, but at least it’s better than this bullshit that Steam and Rockstar are pulling. Just a word of warning, the code expires on June 20th. So you got 9 days to get it.
Here’s the code, and the website to get it. Both are perfectly legal, as I said;

Website: http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/ca/en/pc/games/action/grand-theft-auto-v/#item-s2
Code: 20PERC-ENTOFF-JUNE20

Going over their refund policy has me scratching my head. One of their conditions states the following;
– The game has not been activated or downloaded

Being told that it works similar to the Humble Bundle Store, that you click a thing to reveal a Steam key after paying for it. You got to not do this, if you feel you’re not going to be happy with it (or it’s not going to work on your computer).
Yet, it also lists “or downloaded”. Very confused.
It does give you a week to try it out, compared to two weeks on Steam. Not too happy about that. But, if it doesn’t work.. then, well, I’ll know to get a refund.

Anyway, $48 isn’t that bad, compared to how much content you can get out of it. Gonna get it.

Been playing Feed The Beast for a long time; longer than I usually do when it comes to playing legit in Minecraft. But there’s something I really want to get off my chest here.
Usually, I stick with IC2 and maybe some Redpower 2, get my tools, my Diamond Drill, my machines, virtually infinite power via solar, and have an auto-sorting system… then I just get bored and quit after having done everything I wanted to do, and go play another game.

I feel like there’s nothing really else there. I got my machines. I got chests. I got enough resources to make pretty much anything I want and need, and I got an auto-sort system. What else could I need, really? And even now, I ask this question.

Angry on the other hand, has shown time and time again that there’s a LOT more than just IC2 and RP2. Yet I’ve never seen his setup until now.
Yet he told me he would show me all the new things that I’ve been missing. And clearly, I’ve been missing a lot.

Now, I’m using several mods; mods I’ve never touched in my lifetime until angry showed me what he’s done. Using AE2, a bit of Thaumcraft, Mystcraft, MachineMuse’s Modular Powersuits, Ender IO.. and that’s just a small handful. Because of this, I see him as a “mod expert”, and look up to him… yet for the wrong reasons.

Reasons such as constantly asking him “How did you do this?” “What’s your setup to this?” “What did you unlock to get this?”… and this is really starting to annoy him. Can you really blame him, though? Instead of me venturing out of my comfort zone and just doing my own thing, I’m trying to copy his setup and do what he did. Yet I refuse to go any further than that. I refuse to get into those uncharted modding waters, with all of these mods I haven’t touched yet. Is this the point of having a Mod Pack? Touching all of these mods instead of the ones you’re familiar with, and avoiding the others that look intimidating?

Intimidating = “I got to do WHAT to get into this mod?! UGH!! Too much WORK!!”

And I can’t help myself. It’s not even my fault, nor do I blame JeetTol who showed me the ways of IC2 and Railcraft (what I mentioned early on here). The thing about Jeet, it wasn’t the fact he wasn’t getting out of his own comfort zone, but he always had a hard time following through with his Let’s Plays. When he gets to like.. episode 30 or so, he’s doing something else and ignoring what he was working on before. He even brought his son in to show him what Modded Minecraft is all about.

I still remember when he got back into Railcraft. Ohh how I wanted him to keep working on it, to give me more ideas for the W2TS. Then it happened; real life got in the way, and he announced he wasn’t going to do it anymore. Still got a blog post marking that sad day.

But anyway, going back to the topic at hand. I just want angry to tell me “Look, will you please stop depending on me all the time? I’m not a ‘mod expert’. If you need help, there’s wikis and other sources. I want to do my thing. You do yours. You’re out of my tech level anyway.”
And of course, I would be shocked and upset at the same time; even while writing this. Yet I would also understand. My 12 year old spoiled brat brain won’t, but my common sense already has.

I really wish I never got into this again. I don’t even remember what I was doing before this, but I do remember how it started. It was from watching Youtube videos, and seeing all of these videos of Dan and his father having fun playing the same game together. And there’s also VanossGaming, with his friends who play random games. I really, REALLY wished that was me and angry playing those games. I guess I just got lonely for a true friend.

But it you’ve seen my “we’re incompatible” post, you’d understand why it didn’t really go so well.

If I was to tell you that I suddenly want GTAV for PC, yet for a reason, you’d be curious. Of course you would.
You’ll also be wondering, why? I already have it on my PS4, so why spend another $60?

Well, here’s the reason. It was another GTAV video from Dan. This time he’s showcasing mods. The one in particular when I said “Oh wow.. I got to get this NOW!!” was ‘The God mod’.
What makes this really awesome, is the fact it’s similar to the menu mod thingy (forgot the name) from GTAIV. You can spawn cars, boats, people, bodyguards, set the time, set your wanted level, toggle police… all sorts of things.

And now it’s in GTAV. This turns it into a true Sandbox fuck with everything mode. Want to teleport to the top of Mount Chilliad? You can! Want to do it while in a jet? YOU CAN! 😀 It’s Just Cause 2 in GTAV. This, is why I want it on PC, and I want it now.

Yet, there’s two reasons I’m refraining myself from doing so;
1. How well will it work on my computer?
2. The risk of downloading mods.

The second thing, you’re probably very confused. But if you’ve been following what’s been going on, a few assholes have been putting viruses in some of these mods. And these viruses cannot be detected by most Antivirus programs. So, it’s a “if you get it, you’re screwed and forced to reinstall Windows right then and there” thing.

What made these viruses undetectable, is they’re masked as a normal Windows process ‘svchost.exe’. The only way to really detect them, is to constantly check your Processes and look for anything suspicious. Both of these viruses had the potential to steal your credit card info and stuff like that.
It really surprises me of these people who have no respect for others to want to do this.
So if you’re like me who are all “Uhhh… I dunno if I want it now!”, I can completely understand. Or, you can just buy the game without even bothering with getting into using mods at all. Yet that’s literally wasting your money, if you already have it on a console.

However, most of the mods are completely safe for what I know, but two have already been detected as having viruses in them. Thankfully, they have been removed.
What were they, you might ask? Personally, I don’t care. All I do is to hear who wrote the viruses are behind bars, treated as a common criminal (which I never heard anything about, unfortunately). But if you’re really curious, one was called the ‘Angry Planes’ mod, and the other was a Noclip mod.
Yet this doesn’t guarantee any future mods to not have these potentially-serious viruses in them.

More mods to show up are quite possible, virus-free or.. not. Hopefully, all of these will be safe. And I do hope (and wonder) if this gets worse and worse with more of these damn things, that Rockstar will step up against this and develop a hotfix for GTAV and insert it into your game, that will detect and kill these undetectable to Antivirus viruses before they infect your computer. Because that would not only eliminate the threat to your privacy, but show that this game company is willing to protect their gamers from it.

On top of that, hopefully even gain some respect from what they lost due to the constant, trollish delays of the release of GTAV for PC.