Looking for a quick catch-up on the buzziest stories of the week? Here's Inman Top 5, the most essential stories of the week, according to Inman website visitors.
Lumping people into “generations” based on population shifts on a graph and applying wholesale marketing techniques to them makes about as much sense as me telling you to avoid people born in the year of the rabbit, says Jay Thompson. Here's why he thinks marketing by age demographics is a racket.
Players who choose to try Monty's Millions free slots have the incredible chance to play a Barcrest game with high image quality, simple gameplay, and great prizes.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is here, and things have changed. Not only have the developers refined a few systems, but things have also been stripped out....
Requests are side quests in the new Pokemon game. This Pokemon Legends Arceus Requests Guide will tell you where to find all of the Requests we've completed as well as information on how to complete each of the Requests you encounter while exploring the game.
The Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker 6.08 patch adds an Oceania Data Center that should help combat server congestion, along with buffs for most character classes.
Genshin Impact's new event, Fleeting Colors in Flight, is now live as of January 25. This update has players back in Liuye--following the last update's very impressive tromp through the eerie Enkanomiya--to prepare for the annual Lantern Rite Festival.
There are four activities with different gameplay: Flameplume Starflowers, The Great Gathering, Wondrous Shadows, and Oceanic Defender. In Flameplume, players are tasked with creating fireworks through smelting. In the Great Gathering, like the name implies, players go to Guyun Islands in order to beat up Treasure Hunters and gather materials. Wondrous Shadows is a puzzle event featuring … you guessed it, shadows. In Ocean Defender, players defeat monsters under varying challenge conditions.
Like the usual event rewards, all events will give out Primogems, EXP books, materials, and more. But in a more unique twist to rewards: Successful completion of The Stars Inscribe the Year's Wishes quest will get you a free Liyue 4-star character of your choosing. That's eight characters to select from, including the newest Geo opera singer, Yunjin.
Players, upon completing the necessary quests and achieving the requisite amount of different Talismans, will also be able to get a free outfit for Ningguang. Called the Orchid's Evening Gown, Ningguang's new glam is a departure from her usual yellow Geo color scheme.
Roster of 4-star Liyue characters and Ningguang's new outfit
Accompanying the new update are two new rerun character banners: fan-favorites Ganyu and Zhongli. Ganyu, a Cryo bow user, is a powerful DPS and Zhongli, a Geo spear user, is a valuable shielder. Players will literally never need to dodge with Zhongli, and if they're missing a cryo DPS (and if you have Shenhe, a cryo damager booster)--Ganyu is quite an attractive option.
Per FFXIV's Patch 6.08, the Oceanian data center is open for residence. The new data center, dubbed Materia, will improve network latency and decrease ping issues for players based in Australia and New Zealand. Materia hosts five servers currently: Bismarck, Ravana, Sephirot, Sophia, and Zurvan.
For those looking to transfer existing characters, Home World Transfer services to the Oceanian data center will be available on January 25 around 10 PM PST. The transfer fee will be waived and players will get the following bonuses: double EXP until level 80 and 10 gold chocobo feathers. If players own a private estate or apartment, they'll receive gil in compensation.
For players creating new characters on the Oceanian data server, they'll also get bonuses in both gil and EXP. New characters will get double EXP until level 80 and 10 silver chocobo feathers, and upon reaching level 30 in any class, 1 million gil and 15 free days of playtime.
In addition to these updates, quite a few jobs received buffs. Paladin, Dragoon, Dancer, Black Mage, and more have received potency upgrades to certain skills. Surprisingly the Dragoon will also no longer have the dragon tether animation applied (the red noodle that links Dragoon and their chosen party member), even though the skill will still remain. (A pity for all the nuptials where players jokingly tethered themselves to their partner with the skill as a joke.)
Released two weeks earlier than the original launch date, the new data center will ease some of the burden off of server queues. Wait times have already remarkably improved since we're months out from Endwalker's launch, but peak playtimes during significant patch updates like the Asphodelos raids are still seeing longer-than-normal queue times.
The euro has edged lower at the start of the week and dipped below the 1.13 line in the European session. EUR/USD is trading at 1.1315 in the North American session, down 0.25% on the day, as the US dollar is broadly higher. German PMIs outperform The week started with strong German data, as PMIs […]