August 2022 Update

Improvised "Hall Update" Thumbnail.

No drama this time. This month might've been slightly better than the previous one. Copywriting resumed for some time and I got probably the largest pay ever. I was a busy guy who rewrote a lot of silly texts and payroll kept getting delayed. You know, it is current times and something just has to go wrong for me. Then I got another two week break that, according to current plans, should end today (somewhere at August 13-15). So it feels natural to look back at July 2022 Update and "keep this post short" yet again.

The "rocPortraits" Mystery

Hidden Reign of Chaos portraits from Patch 1.33 PTR.

Blizzard's sudden return to Warcraft 3 with Patch 1.33 on PTR has been very interesting, to say the least. As I observed these events from afar, it did seem like we're heading in the same circle and repeating the same mistakes that paved the way for current Reforged. My initial plan was to go over all of this after the patch gets proper release, but things have changed for the better. Besides, I'm not really excited to revisit the negative side of things.

Instead, I would rather focus my attention on something great. Something that can be good for this game, its community and developers. I've mentioned the secret Classic+ (as we seem to currently call them now) portraits for 25 wins in The Frozen Throne before. Now, the last PTR update brought in all Reign of Chaos ladder icons and community loves these with Grubby & Wtii highlighting them on their YouTube/Twitch channels. It looks like Blizzard started to get it and we're in for a treat... However, I started to have my doubts because it is current Blizzard.

Hence why I decided to write this "article" and also mirror some key points on official forums & Reddit. I would talk about the portraits themselves, how they might be implemented and how I think they should be introduced into current version of Warcraft 3. As other members of the community, I'll try to help them avoid upsetting pretty much everyone.

July 2022 Update

Improvised "Hall Update" Thumbnail.

I was miserable and somewhat happy this month. Dramatic entry, I know. It's just that I would like to get over bad stuff straight away and then mention something either more interesting or positive. They ended up cutting us off from the warm water like a few days after my previous update. So that's fun. My copywrite fluff was mostly stale, but recently I get back to business and that's partially a reason why I would rather keep this post short.

June 2022 Update

Improvised "Hall Update" Thumbnail.

I would like to start by typing that I hope you're doing fine. That whatever challenges and annoyance you're currently facing are not grim and/or tough enough to get to you mentally. While I unfortunately can't say that, hopefully you can. Despite my initial plans for this month, I've been sidetracked by my current regular-ish sidejob with a bunch of bullshit on top of it. While currently there was a bit of slowdown that allowed me to catch a break, I got just enough time to look back at my approach to Ilko's Hall as of late.

Same business as usual: I'll go somewhat more in-depth about my real life challenges and suffering, after which I would offer more on-topic thoughts about my blog's operations with what may or may not change in the near future.

Remember the GameSpy

"GameSpyDown". Taken from GameSpy.

I had this thing going on with posts lately where I missed the anniversaries of games I wrote about, like Dungeon Siege and Wolfenstein 3D. While that might not be as much of a big deal as I make it out to be in jokingly manner, I wanted to somewhat cross correct myself by following one of my ideas. Since I actually thought of about writing an "article" about this particular topic for around a month now. But this anniversary isn't the one you might expect.

Five days later, on May 31st, would reach the 8th anniversary of GameSpy's shutdown. Even though the announcement for its site closure (still available online, which is neat; kind of, at least) and other stuff arrived at late February 2013, it was at the end of May when the popular and truly ironic online gaming service ceased its activity. While I can't really fathom how important GameSpy was to many people since I just wasn't there at the time, my lack of experience with it still makes me pretty sad because of that.

Mysterious Forms of the Serpent Riders

Murals for The Serpent Riders from Hexen 2: Portal of Praevus. Thanks, anon.

"The Serpent Riders" trilogy is great. While I still haven't beaten Hexen 2, I'm having fun running around as Paladin on my quest to get through famous puzzles and defeat Eidolon. I really loved original Heretic & Hexen, even though I'm yet to proper beat additional episodes from Shadow of the Serpent Riders or Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. I wanted to talk about something related to this franchise for quite some time and I've got a decent topic for that.

Many players like to remark how D'Sparil is the only "Serpent Rider" in this demonic family while Korax himself looks more like a serpent and Eidolon prefers classic demon look. How did this happened? That's the question I want to poke by taking a look at each Serpent Rider and some random stuff in order to see what potentially could've been. Perhaps there's more to this than I'm about to present, but I think it's more than enough to make a point with my weird logic.

The Achievement Parable

The Stanley Parable's"Go Outside" and "Commitment" achievements' stats on March 15th, 2022. Taken from Steam.

There's been a few serious-ish monologues regarding certain aspects of video gaming written by me for this blog: from my perspective on messy interpretations for re-releases and such to just as weird situation with gaming companies and their "brand relevancy". Or something that like, I feel like I make it sound more professional than those "posts" actually are and this is very important for material. Because now we need to get serious! I don't even know what label I'll give to this post, this is so exciting!

One of the topics I wanted to touch upon in in-game/service achievements and everything that comes with them. For a long time I couldn't come across the perfect point of time to start this discussion, but the miracle that is the release of spectacular The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe has enlightened me to finally get professional enough to challenge this topic. And this is a very pleasing coincidence since the original version of The Stanley Parable is  directly related to the achievements monologue I'm about to write down.