I find that kind of unlikely. If they wanted to frame someone just to have a killer, they wouldn’t be talking about a “3D printed ghost gun”, but just use a regular gun. I, for one, haven’t known that it’s possible to 3D print a pretty well working, and silenced, gun. And that might inspire someone - acquiring weapons is the harder part of any such murder, assuming you don’t want to get caught, and the fact that you can get it without anyone knowing about it makes it way easier.

I admit I’m kinda disappointed. He pulled out almost perfect assassination that looked well thought out, managed to get away with only a few hickups in his plan as far as his face is considered, and then walks around with a murder weapon and a manifesto in his bag? Shame, really. All he needed was to lay low for a while, grow a beard and he’d probably be OK.

I mean, that’s literally how research works. You make small discoveries and use them to move forward.

Thanks for this, it actually made me realize that there is another MMO I spent more of my childhood with - Stat Wars Galaxies, and more importantly, that I can still play it on private servers. Which also extends to WoW, playing on a private server might acually be a good compromise, when I get the urge again.

But so far, I’m falling for FFXIV. Hopefully Square Enix isn’t as bad as Blizz. I remember hearing some NFT writings on the wall, but so far it doesn’t sound too bad.

I just got through whole of ARR and started HW, so I should be past that point. Haven’t really noticed it too much, but the difference in pacing is kind of apparent in the hindsight. The story is interesting enough and the game never ceases to amaze me with variety of side activities or QoL things that I don’t mind a slower pace and am greatful for the game as is. Especially comparing it to WoW, its such a breath of fresh air. So far it feels like the game SWTOR wished to be, and it’s great.

I also think that they heavily cut through the amount of slog required for ARR, judging by the list of removed mandatory MSQ quests on wiki.

I started FFXIV trial few weeks ago, and so far I was having a blast. The major issue is that I probably won’t manage to convince my friends and partner to also switch, since they are invested in WoW and are having fun. But the plan is to find a nice FC and get some regular events in, and we’ll see how it goes.

On the other hand, I tried that with GW2 a few years ago, had a blast, found someone random to play with, but eventually I just forgot about the game… Which is something that never happens with WoW 😠

Blizzard. I’ve been recently thinking about how much of a “comfort food” the game is for me, and how no other game could ever get me the same feeling as returing back to a game I’ve spent literally months player over the last 15 years. It’s my escapism, where I don’t have to stress about anything and know so much about the game, that I don’t have to learn anything new or unknown, which makes it even more comfortable. It’s also a game where I have a lot of friends, and since they are in the similar boat, we usually just meet up for an expansion - but investing our whole group into another game usually just fails.

The problem is, that Blizzard knows this and has started to exploit it. Milking players of as much money as they can, while abandoning their “Players First” motto and absolutely shitting over the playerbase by gutting most of the development teams that had some passion left, hiring management who didn’t care about the game in the slightest and only was there to increase revenue and reduce costs as much as possible.

It’s more and more apparent, the game is in the worst and buggiest state as far as I remember, lot of content was cut, there’s literally no customer support - people can be stuck for weeks with their character somewhere, while only response they get is an AI generated “FUCK YOU”, and their only hope being that their post will blow up on reddit and someone will actually look at their case.

The new book about Blizzard is so depressing read, and makes me extremely angry. Fuck all those people who ruined the company, even though one of the founding owners was extremely against it and fought for years to keep at least some semblance of original vision. And he lost.

I hate that I always return to the game when I’m down and just need a serious dose of escapism from real life, that only this game can provide. I’m slowly trying to invest myself into other MMOs, and get rid of this toxic, gaslighting ex WoW has been for me. But what I hate the most is how obvious their change of priorities is in their recent games.

I wish nothing but the worst for people who ruined Blizzard. We could’ve had second Larian, if it was Morhaime instead of Kodick and his greed who won.

Thankfully, we have FFXIV and Path of Exile, that still respect players, and Blizz games can go fuck themselves. I hope I’ll manage to finally transition from WoW for good this time.

I’m actually glad for it. It made me switch to Linux, discover Mullvad Browser and their VPN combo, get a GrapheneOS phone, find an amazing Freetube YT desktop client, and dabble with Home Assistant and PIHole. Plus I migrated to Protonmail and Kagi as my search, and Lemmy instead of reddit is also an amazing change, the discussions I’ve seen so far feel better and more in depth, and I’m enjoying my time here so far. The lack of endless content is also great, to help with implementing Digital Minimalism.

So, while I hate any large corporation and their greed with more and more passion, it has lead me to a nice privacy journey, for which I’m glad.

I work as a pentester and Red Teamer, I can attest that even for some large companies, you always stumble upon something that’s just dumb, and completely renders their multi-million investment they are probably making into security tools and solutions worthless.