If you have read this blog for any length of time, you will know that I have a habit of jumping around between massively multiplayer online games. One of the challenges of this is the fact that each game has its own infrastructure of websites and tools that I end up using. Occasionally I will compile these links into a single post, but more often than not I just pepper them in among dozens of posts as I happen to be talking about them. I know for example I have mentioned and linked to Destiny Item Manager a significant number of times, because it is one of those tools that I find indispensable.
Last week when I added the “Core Beliefs” section to the top nav of the website, it got me exploring various things that could work better. One of those was the [Game] section, which in theory was just a series of links to the categories associated with specific games or specific genres. The truth is, I am not sure it made sense nor do I think anyone probably ever clicked on it. From there I had some breakouts for specific games since there are a handful of games that I tend to play often enough to deserve their own category.
Yesterday on a whim I decided to restructure this into what is now the [Game Tools] menu. The idea is pretty simple, that I would take all of those sites and tools and plunk them down into a menu structure. The name of a specific game still links to the category of blog posts, but now expanding out from it is a series of tools that I regularly use when playing those games. For now we have a pretty short list of games, but I will probably continue to expand as I dive into other titles. For now I have collected some of the links and tools for the following games:
- Diablo 3
- Destiny 2
- Elder Scrolls Online
- Final Fantasy XIV
- Grim Dawn
- Guild Wars 2
- Phantasy Star Online 2 NA
- World of Warcraft
The [Games By Type] option functions much like the previous menu did, where it just links to broad categories based on game type. I’ve contemplated adding a General section for linking to tools that I regularly use like Parsec or GeForce Now. Before I do something like that, I probably need to spend some time reorganizing my categories to group some of those things together. WordPress Menus don’t really allow you to create just a sub menu title, but instead expected to be linking to something and for now categories have seemed to make the most sense.
Now comes the part where I ask for your help. I’ve gathered up some of the best tools that I use when playing these games, however I am sure I missed something you consider to be crucial. Please drop me a line in the comments with anything I might have missed for your favorite game and I will check it out and consider adding it to the list. My hope is that this can serve as a helpful resource for folks to return to in the future. Additionally since I seem to always be wracking my brain to figure out what that one thing that I used in the past was, it gives me a menu structure to keep returning to for my own benefit.
Thank you for some links to some awesome new tools! Here a couple more FF14 ones.
https://www.ffxivclock.com will track timers for resource nodes and give you audible sounds when the node is available
https://tylian.net/sslog/ is super niche, but it tracks all the time/weather combinations for the Realm Reborn sightseeing logs and lets you know when that combination will be available next. It was super helpful to me when I was trying to complete the log.