Main Quest Update

"Main Quest Update" Thumbnail.

You know, this post should've been written and released a long time ago. Too bad I ended up being weirdly sentimental about it to a point where I decided to drag it out up until blog's third anniversary. Despite a few events out of my control, I've managed to more-or-less keep some resemblance of investment into a niche hobby and hold myself roughly accountable to this odd commitment. Starting out with taking my shot at various types of texts before figuring out what kind of strangeness I enjoy the most. Not every post ended up in a way I hoped or initially thought, but at the end of a day I'm glad I spend time doing something and trying myself at writing different things within this large world of blogging or digital diary.

As time went on and things were changing in a way they did, it became apparent to me that Ilko's Hall needs to change too... Well, I think it needs too. Nothing stops me from just letting its current state speak for itself, but that's not how I want it to go. I want to bring the proper sense of closure to something that's been a part of my life for surprisingly long time. However, that doesn't mark a definitive end to it and I will explain it shortly. Just let me start with the usual conclusions and then some.

Third Year Has Passed...

And it was full of very rough and incredible tragic moments, to put it quite lightly. Thankfully, it wasn't all doom and gloom. I mostly have to thank my amazing friends for that, but this blog played its part as well. Only 27 "articles" were published throughout 2023 and that's definitely much smaller than previous two years. My attention was redirected to other things, so I wasn't able and willing to write as much as I did before.

Due to this, there's really nothing much I can say about blog's statistics aside from monthly anomalies where Blogger detects a lot of new readers going through random "articles" on this blog. Mostly old, but some newer publications also managed to attract some sort of attention from unknown visitors. Perhaps some actual people read them, who knows. Either way, here are the highlights:

• Recent Tides of Warcraft 3: This one, of course. What else could it be, all things considered? It was definitely refreshing to revisit Warcraft 3 yet again, especially in such hopeful way. Despite another quiet period and lack of news from Blizzcon 2023, I'm still confident about my predictions I made at the time. All roads and signs still lead to a soft-reboot surprise for Warcraft's 30th Anniversary and then some.

• Beholding The Ultimate Power: Surprisingly enough, quite a few people were interested in me bragging about my new laptop. This majestic beast keeps serving me well in spite of a couple worrying troubles I'm trying to gracefully solve at this time. I'm so incredible thankful to my friend and his generosity since it allowed me to have my current job, enjoy many games and just have some good times these last... almost seven months? Woah.

• The Sandbox Paradox: I'm very pleased by this one. Sharing my gaming experiences with certain titles and genres, how they serve as a reflection of my real life and simply speaking out my mind. These silly moments of coming off as a "smart guy" can really be quite comfortable.

This was a humble year, I suppose. My promise of taking blog slowly came to fruition and everything lined up for it. Just a few interesting "articles" published sometimes. Well, I think bots became more rampant in these times as I'm pretty sure I saw more view counts grow for pretty much every post consistently every month. Moments like this does make me regret not looking into getting proper option for tracking these statistics, but I also think that getting obsessed with them just isn't healthy.

It's just for my own amusement, after all. To keep myself busy doing something I actually enjoy and keep up an illusion of being productive. I had some ideas for typical January grind, but ended up not going through with them as I decided to just enjoy my free time after work instead. While current times may be incredible grim and hopeless, my daily routine was blessed with relative safety. That leads me to a big statement I should declare.

Stating The Obvious.

Basically, Ilko's Hall has served its purpose. A hobby I could commit to in times when I didn't have worthwhile and fulfilling endeavors. When this blog started, I had a very hard time with all those things. Even when there were certain improvement in my routine, it didn't quite get there. But now it has, more-or-less. I have a daily job that provides me with regular flow of cash. This gig and payments themselves aren't really special and there're definitely better options, but it's probably as good as it could've been for me nowadays. My desire to actually play games as opposed to engage with them via YouTube, Twitch and this blog is probably stronger than ever. And I still work on being more social dork with moderate levels of success. Can't say the same about new hobbies though.

There's a great video game analogy I want to use for my current perspective. By establishing this blog, I set a certain main quest for myself, and I've been moving towards completing it over the course of these three years. It is done now, but that doesn't mean there's nothing left behind. There're side quests, challenges and other forms of additional content. What I'm saying is that there's still a lot of room for new "articles" within current (or perhaps even new) Categories. Hall will remain opened. I bring this adventures a conclusion I believe it deserves while also leaving the doors open for smaller journeys in the future. In fact, there's a chance that I would revisit one of my favorite topics shortly after being done with this post. For old time's sake.

What does this actually mean? No more monthly updates and tying us loose ends. This includes looking into "FAQ" & "About" pages to make them more up to date with blog's current status and look through all Warcraft posts to change their wiki links to the current one. I've already did so for my Minecraft "articles". Besides that, there're also a bunch of small stuff I'll be thinking about to see if they're going to help with cleaning this Hall. Nothing specific, but at this point it's something I'll keep to myself.

Conclusion.

As a sense of closure settles in, I would like to thank every single one of you. I'm thankful to my friends for encouraging me to keep going with Ilko's Hall. I'm thankful to random strangers on the Internet who spent some of their free time to read my posts here. And I'm very thankful to Revae for giving me an opportunity to take that silly interview. If you're reading this wall of text right now, thank you for your attention.

Lastly, let me just quickly go through what I was actually doing during this last month. After perfecting Transistor, I've decided to go back to Ion Fury and reclaim another perfect game by competing Arrange Mode and defusing every bomb in that remixed campaign. Once this was over, I was preparing myself for diving into DOOM Eternal because I got its Standard Edition after participating in a giveaway at Emberheart Games' Discord server. Naturally, I decided to revisit DOOM 16 and give multiplayer achievements another go. Then I stumbled into a couple of Steam guides (English and Russian; both of them provide the same information), so now I perfected it too. Getting "A Memorable Performance" was particularly annoying, but at least that match was quite fun due to fewer amount of players.

Outside of games, I've been following my daily routine and struggling with both sleep & sudden anxiety episodes. There's also ongoing issue with my laptop's power button. I'll be dealing with that too. Perhaps now I'll be able to choose and tackle another hobby. Start a new adventure and see where it's going to lead me.