GamerEscape

It’s been more than four years since we refreshed the look of the site – and wow has it been an exciting few years for us here at Gamer Escape! Since then, we’ve expanded our ranks considerably. We’ve welcomed new writers to our reviews team, allowing us to take on more games than ever, and we became an official Metacritic review site in the process. We added a new host to our Final Fantasy XIV podcast Aetheryte Radio and are focusing on putting out regular episodes to our growing audience. We’ve also added two new wikis which, combined, already have more than 15,000 pages and 30,000 edits.

On our most prominent wiki – for Final Fantasy XIV – in that same timeframe we’ve completely revamped a number of areas. We added more than 100,000 images to showcase images of all in-game armor on all applicable combinations of races and genders and 13,000 maps so you can pinpoint that elusive Moogle. We revamped all NPCs to add their appearance information so you can mimic their look and later added even more information about each NPC (dialogue, warps, Triple Triad info, etc.). Finally and most recently, we revamped every quest in the game, ensuring that the wiki is not only providing accurate, updated, information about the rewards, but also improving the layout so we can showcase mini-maps of the quest giver, add Trust information, include better images, and more.

In addition to all that work in front of the scenes, we’ve also been hard at work on the back end. We’ve massively scaled up our servers since 2017, and improved other back end services to improve speed wherever we could.

Which brings us to today’s news! To further improve both the visual aspects of the site, in addition to its speed, we’ve undertaken the massive task of re-building the site. This project has been long in the making, and we’re finally close enough to its implementation that we’re going to start using our new logo and go over some of the new features that we’re really excited about.

Firstly, we have what is perhaps the most requested feature: dark mode. Period. Full stop.

Your selection will stick with you from news to reviews and across all of our wikis. And from session to session. Change it back and forth as you desire.

It’s dark mode. You know how it works. Sorry it took us so long.

Beyond dark mode, we’re going big with something we’re calling Gamer Escape Plus+.

At its core, Gamer Escape Plus+ is our way to provide an ad-free experience – something else that we’ve seen requested more than a few times.

We know that many of our users don’t like ads – we don’t either. But, for better or worse, ads are needed to pay for the site. They pay our hosting fees, they allow us to pay our expanding team of writers, and they help us attend conventions (remember those?) so that we can bring you exciting news and interviews straight from the source. But, for those that want to be able to visit the site – but not see the ads – we’re offering Gamer Escape Plus+ as an alternative. For $2.99/month (or $29.99/year), you can become a Gamer Escape Plus+ member. For those wanting a less distracting browsing experience, this is a great way for you to still support us for the cost of a cup of coffee.

While the ad-free experience is at the center of Gamer Escape Plus+, we wanted to add some additional benefits to becoming a member. To that end, we decided to expand on our “Swag Rank” program from 2019. As a Gamer Escape Plus+ member, you will earn points for everything you do on Gamer Escape. Liking an article? Points. Leaving a comment? Points. Logging in daily? Points. Social follows? Points. Editing the wiki? Lots of points. All this adds up to the ability to claim more swag – now with our new logo. More details about this program, and other benefits, will be posted separately prior to launch.

Finally, for those who don’t want to be – or cannot afford to be – a Gamer Escape Plus+ member, we haven’t forgotten about you! You will also gain points! And those points can add up to free Gamer Escape Plus+ memberships!

There are a number of other bells and whistles coming with this new skin too, so stay tuned. But for now, enjoy the upcoming content coming out of the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Media Tour, and stay tuned for more information about the launch of the new Gamer Escape.