February 2022 Update

Improvised "Hall Update" Thumbnail.

Well, would you look at that? I did it. I actually did it. That wasn't a perfect ride, but, all things considered, I guess we have something to celebrate today. Exactly one year ago, I opened Ilko's Hall and published its first "article". Despite various obstacles that appeared on my way, forcing me to take a break from it one way or the other, I managed to keep this blog running somewhat consistently and that feels great.

At first, I considered to writing a separate post about it, but some good & bad things grabbed my attention away from an idea I didn't knew how to realize anyway. Consider this an "Anniversary Edition" of basic update post as I'll take some time to reflect on such a mildstone while discussing where all of this might be heading into the future.

First Year Has Passed...

Previous year was one hell of a beginning. I'm both surprised and happy that this idea of mine to keep myself occupied with some kind of hobby managed to somewhat work for me. All of 55 currently published posts were written with the focus of creating something I enjoy while throwing it out there for someone else to share my passion, interests and fair share of distaste towards various subjects within gaming industry. Not everything was planned or went according to existing plan, but I believe that it helped me in various ways.

In terms of created "articles", I suppose its fair to say that I spent that year on finding my style: how and what I want to write about. While some ideas were proven to be ultimately flawed in their execution, some posts went on to gather some actual recognition within related communities. In particular, I would like to highlight the trio of the most popular "articles" in this Hall at this point in time:

• A Tale of Warcraft Remasters That Almost Happened: To this day, I consider this article to be my greatest work (if you can call it that) and the prime example of what kind of posts I want to write for this blog. It just came out in the right way at the right time. There was no planning ahead of time with everything being written from start to finish in a matter of single day in combination with perfect timeframe for its release.
  

• True Tragedy of Warcraft 3: Reforged: Based on revised script for a video that was never meant to be made, this one is more of an anomaly in comparison with other members of this trio. Unlike them, True Tragedy of Warcraft 3: Reforged was a "definitive version" of my older Reddit (yikes, I know) posts about various topics related to this game's remaster. I guess you can say that it's more of a "2.5 version" of an already existed material that holds a significant importance to me and this Hall.

• Saddening Tribute to Reign of Chaos: Similarly to many other posts I published, at first I wasn't  sure in this one. I wanted to dive into the fate of Reign of Chaos for a long time, but I still believe that I wasn't able to do it proper justice due to multiple factors that didn't let me to plan and spent much more time researching the subject. Despite being one of many harbringers of Just an Idea: "War3EE", it still outperformed it in term of received clicks. It happens, I guess.

While I will talk more about specifics in following paragraphs of this "article", I suppose that the main takeaway from here is that I'm terrible at advertisement. To be fair, the original intent was never to gain popularity or any kind of stable audience surrounding it, but more often I find my desire to find in different direction. With that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if the key theme of this year would be to follow this new objective.

Lastly, I can't ignore previously mentioned Blast from Blizzard's Past and Overthinking the Ghostly Return of Quake. Through these posts, I managed to indirectly predict the release of both Blizzard Arcade Collection and Nightdive's re-release of original Quake. I agree that this was more a result of a luck and sheer coincidence, it still cracks me up and I'm curious to see if my recent "predictions" regarding Commander Keen & Wolfenstein series will come to fruition.

Updates & Changes.

For now, I plan to keep on examing the current status of various older titles in similar style to some of my latest "articles". Once I'll be done with the hideous "Eternity's End", the final (oh yeah) major patch for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, I suspect that classic games will remain the primary topic of this Hall for the forseable future. Although the news of upcoming Microsoft acquision gives me some hopes in brighter future, we would have to be patient in order to see how this would actually go. However, there's one thing you just can't deny: this hell of a ride will keep on giving in best and worst ways.

Besides that, my other ideas involve going deeper into hardware and emulation side of things. There's at least one idea in my mind, but I hope to gather some more as we move forward. I just want to embrace the pure variety of gaming topics, so that there's still some freedom and element of surprise to what this Hall has to offer. I clearly have a soft spot for the past (as many people do), but I don't want to tie myself to a specific niche and instead keep a bit of chaos in emerging pattern.

As I've said before, I really wish I would be able to take much more scuffed interviews this year. My plan is to make a internal list of various developers and other cool people who I would like to bother with some dorky questions about the stuff they're worked on before or are creating it right now. Even just one more "A Little Chat" post would be a huge success. Besides that, I would like to revisit existing pages and visual aspects of the blog to change things up here and there.

The Prolonged Menace.

In the meantime, my family's financial problems are getting worse and I'll eventually face more several consequences of this tragedy. At this point in time, more than ever, I believe that should reconsidered my approach to stuff I previously thought of as detrimental and doomed from the start. I think its best to not mention anything specific as that's the story for another time, I would like to acknowledge that some ambitions & desperate plans are brewing in my scuffed head.

Due to all of this, I would like to acknowledge that I deactivated all donation options that were previously highlighted in this blog. While PayPal.me page is gone for good, my Ko-fi doesn't accept any kind of payment until further notice. I'll some time to think about better ways to approach and handle it properly while not going too far by making either wrong or stupid decisions that would ultimately do more harm to this Hall.