moregrammarplz

I didn't actually think it would ever happen. FFXII didn't sell particularly great - a bit better than FF6 but lower than every other main series game from VII onwards. It's also super divisive - a lot of people thought gambits and the automation of your party was lame.

But FFXII is my favorite in the series. It's absolutely massive in scope and rewards exploration more than any other Final Fantasy. I loved gambits and the battle system is absolutely brilliant. To this day I'm still amazed by how they managed to get that game onto the PS2.

For those who don't know, this remaster is currently only announced for the PS4, though I hope a PC release will be coming along not too long after that. As with FFX, it will include bonus features from the 'International' edition that we didn't get in the original US release, chiefly the Zodiac Job system which lets you choose from among 12 unique character classes to assign to your six playable characters. The game's soundtrack is also being remastered though you can switch back to the original music if you prefer. Rounding out the new features are autosaves and an overlay map mode which should come in very handy indeed as you explore the vast world of Ivalice.

I had extremely bad luck with pubs in this game. Nine games out of ten I was running Lucio or Mercy - because no one else would - and desperately healing individual players who kept charging the entire enemy team all by themselves. The concept of hanging back for a bit and waiting until the rest of the team respawned and gathered up seemed to be completely beyond their understanding.

My advice - look around on gaming communities like Giant Bomb and see if they have a voice communication server running. I play with people from a GameFAQs spin-off site and it's so much more fun that way. I know Giant Bomb has a Discord server you can use, though to be honest I haven't seen anyone using it to coordinate an Overwatch team. It's totally doable, though. Add some battletags from the Giant Bomb team thread here and get cracking!

Everyone has bad luck here and there, especially in solo queue matches, but if snipers are repeatedly headshotting you then maybe there's a problem with your positioning and/or movement. Being out in an open space when the enemy team has two snipers is a bad idea. In those situations, your team has to start using side passages or someone needs to switch to a hero that can provide shields to their teammates like Reinhardt, Winston, or Zarya. I do agree that some heroes need health buffs, especially Zenyatta who can get killed by a single charged-up body shot from Widowmaker.

Overwatch's respawn timer and the run back to the fray is an important element of matches in the game. It discourages doomed Rambo-style solo charges into enemy territory and makes each elimination matter by taking out the defeated hero for a decent bit of time. Instant respawns and sprints for every character work in deathmatch-style games, but not for heavily team-focused games. If you're still in the process of learning a character and you're just getting wrecked constantly by enemy players, you should look into spending some time in the training zone and then playing a match or two against AI. It won't be a big challenge but it'll help you get the basics down so that you're not flailing about in the middle of an actual match.

I actually wish Blizzard had gone a little bit further with their respawn tech and implemented wave-based respawns, so that you respawn alongside all your other team members that died recently. I feel like it might have a positive effect on solo queue groups which have the tendency to trickle one by one into the enemy's front line to their deaths.

As the game and its playerbase mature in the weeks and months following release, I feel like even random matchmaking teams will start implementing a little more teamwork. Lucio is a really fun character to play even if you're not a huge fan of healing, and Symettra is really undervalued when it comes to defense - both these characters will get you back in the fight in seconds. And even learning the maps and where the health pickups are will help you pick up good habits, like retreating to heal yourself in friendly territory instead of plunging recklessly forward with 15 health remaining.

Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and the two Ahn'Qiraj raids are still sitting at level 60 without many changes, besides the addition of new battle pets that can drop off the bosses there. I don't know if Giant Bomb would be daring enough to stream out footage from a private server, but stranger things have happened.

I feel like it'd be super cool if they could get a group of the Bomb crew to run some WoW content, but a lot of them haven't played in a long while, and it takes a lot of time investment to get anywhere. Even if all they wanted to do was run Deadmines together, that's a time investment of several hours to level new characters, and I'm positive that they would rather spend that time playing other games. But it's a pretty rad idea.

I'm reminded of this old video series called Project Lore that was basically just a group of friends doing dungeons and raids together. I think the most notable member was Alex Albrecht who co-hosted The Screen Savers on G4/Tech TV.

I was excited to see a piece of upcoming WoW content listed on the main page, though I'm wondering what it could be. Based on the name, it's a look back at vanilla WoW and its raids (probably spurred by the recent Nostalrius drama), but I'm wondering who's headlining it. Matt Rorie will probably be there, and Jeff and Brad played during vanilla, but I don't think either of them raided. Maybe it could be some out-of-left-field thing done by the east coast team? I think Vinny, Alex, and Austin all played during the early days. I'm also interested to see how they approach the content. Are they going to commentate over old footage of 40-man raids, or simply send Rorie or someone similarly up-to-date in to solo them while the rest of the crew talks about the old days? Could they possibly be fielding some kind of group effort? I have a lot of questions. I'm excited to see what this could be.

EDIT: Just noticed it's running on a Saturday afternoon, so I'm guessing it's going to be a single crew member streaming from home. Slightly less exciting but I'm still going to tune in. :]

After much consideration - or 10 minutes' worth - I've selected austinmiller as our winner. :D

Metroid Prime, Mass Effect, and Final Fantasy XI are all amazing examples of virtual worlds I've happily gotten lost in over the years. And you can't get much more OG MMO than Final Fantasy XI, unless we're talking about EverQuest and Ultima Online.

Congrats and thank you to everyone who posted! I wish I had enough copies for all of you!

Alright, it's midnight EST! As such, no further entries will be considered. Thanks for understanding!

Time to read everyone's post and pick a winner!

Hey, hi, hello! Quick backstory - I bought The Division, wasn't able to run it maxed out on my GTX 760, and so I bought a GTX 980 which is working great. Funnily enough, my new card came with a download code for the game. It'd have been nice to save sixty bucks, but my misfortune is your gain, since you can win the code right here in this thread!

I want to add an element of randomness so it's not just the first person who reads the thread that wins the code, so here it is: List three of your favorite video games of all time. Doesn't have to be your top three or in order or anything like that, just three games you really like. I'll be back at midnight EST - about 6½ hours from now, and I'll give the code to the person whose favorites most closely align with my favorites.

Good luck!