Timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/I6DDMDN
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/LLopazM
I accept Paypal, Venmo, Cashapp, Zelle, Apple Pay. All prices are negotiable. I don't really do any research in market price, Just shoot ur shot.
Bundles > Dibs.

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Geissele URGI 14.5 Near Clone

BNIB, straight from Geissele and still in the sealed factory bag. I bout a few of these and a few of the 11.5s. Keeping the shortys.
Have 2x, paid $1015 + 10.1% sales tax = $1117. Shipping to you with insurance will be ~$30.
Asking $1149 each

G$ Super Duty Mod1 Stripped 10.3

Brand new and unfired from Geissele with the Huxwrx suppressor MD for you flow bois out there. Still has the factory jizz on there + the Steel QD inserts. Minty Safe Queen condition.
Comes stripped, so no bcg or CH, cannibalized these for a different build.
Product URL: https://geissele.com/super-duty-mod1-complete-upper-10-3-5-56mm-black.html
Asking $699 shipped!

Geissele Super Duty 16" in DNC Rattlecan

Factory Geissele Super Duty with a 16" Chrome Lined CHF Barrel, coated in Mag Phosphate (bought before G$ switched to the cheaper Black Oxide)
Comes with factory Nanocoated Surefire Closed Tine and Super Charging Handle. BCG not included.
This upper is coated in a DNC like Paint Job, and has minimal cosmetic damage. Only noticeable spot is a slight ding on the top rail from mounting. Paint job is super easy to remove, very light coat. I removed a small part of it on the bottom but got distracted and gave up.
Shot for around 100 rounds and put into permastorage in a vacuum seal.
Asking $899 $749 shipped

Factory Steyr Aug 16" Barrel with White Grip

Stormtrooper clone gone wrong. I decided to join the ODG gang gang instead.
No salt, spare barrel that was shot for 80-100 rounds. There is a slight imperfection on the backside of the white grip as seen from pics, came like that from factory
$420 $399 shipped

Clone Correct URGI 10.3 Upper

Here i've got a clone correct URGI 10.3 in a smooth shade of DDC. All parts are unfired except for the BCG/CH and Upper receiver. Had this assembled and sitting in my closet for close to a year now, i love looking at it but it's time i sell some extras.
Parts List:
Surplus Colt 13629 Keyhole upper
Daniel Defense 10.3 Barrel NSN Marked
Colt C stamped BCG
Geissele 9.3" MK16 DDC
Geissele DDC ACH, NSN Marked (shade matches MK16)
Surefire 4 Prong, NSN Marked
Cosmetic Condition: Like New, minimal salt.
Asking $1199 $1099 shipped

SIG LPVOS

Tan Sig Tango MSR 1-6
Tan does not come with mount, has some faint marks from mounting: $219 shipped

FCD Crap 🦆

• ABC/R serrated bolt catches, $55 each. 2x center, 1x forward biased

Rails n Uppers

• Aero enhanced m4e1 upper with integrated barrel nut + 15" enhanced upper gen 2. Used but minimal salt: $199 shipped
  
• FN M4 3S679 Code upper + FCD RHF 9.5. Both cerakoted odg: $299 shipped. Can split for $155 each.
  
• DD RIS III FDE 9.5: comes with hardware and nut, light salt 3-4 spots: $369 shipped
  
• Geissele MK16 9.3" Black: Blemula but re-nitrided so the blemula logo is barely visible. No salt like new. Barrel nut has some marks $199 shipped
  
• LMT M4 Forged Upper, with the lmt logo: light salt, $165 shipped
  
• Zev Redacted Upper: New. Stripped. $69 shipped
  
• Aero Normie Upper: New. Assembled FA but no dust cover. $69 shipped
  
• Aero M4E1 Upper: New. Assembled. $99 shipped
  
• Aero M4E1 Light Salt: Assembled, $85 shipped
  

AR15 Spare Parts

• Ergo grip rail covers black mlok 3x: $10 addon
  
• magpul 9 slot pic rail: $5 addon
  
• Bushmaster Commercial Spec Stock: $29 shipped
  
• BNIB RRA BuffeSpring for Carbines: 2x $15 each
  
• VLTOR A5 Tube: $49 shipped. Previously rattlecanned, most is removed but needs a bit more acetone.
  
• aero enhanced Tube: comes with nut and plate. $39 shipped
  
• bcm wrenches $5 addon each
  

BRN4 Parts from Forsaken Build

1x BNIB Operating Rod, $59 shipped

Mounts/Sights

Weaver Extra High 34mm Rings: $79 $49 New
Aimpoint PRO Riser spacer:, $10 addon
Aimpoint Micro OEM Mount: same as this one https://aimpoint.us/micro-standard-mount-for-h-1-h-2-kit/ very light salt, $69 $49 shipped
Aimpoint Pro low Mount: $49 shipped
Looks like this but with a picatinny mount https://aimpoint.us/aimpoint-30mm-top-ring-fits-qrp2-tnp-lrp-not-required-for-compm4-series/
KAC Rear Sight like new but missing parts (missing clamp screw and bolt clamp): $79 shipped
Scalarworks Leap/04 RMR Mounts: 0400 (1.42"), 0410 (1.57"), $99 each like new
4x random scope rings - 30mm, $15 each. Supposedly Vortex but no idea how to verify. No markings other than made in china labels and "AFA"
Unity fast qd lever: New, lost the springs but unity will send em to u. $35 shipped

Glock Stuff

Glock Sights: all takeoffs, $15 each. Tritium rear one is $30. $59 for all.
Random recoil spring: i think for G17, $15
CAA MCK Microroni for G19/23/32: Mild salt, comes with flashlight. $169 $149 shipped
Wilson Combat Gen 5 Performance Trigger + Tactical Connector, 250 rounds: $69 shipped

AK Stuff

JMAC: Non-Folding Stock/Brace Mount for MRKT Trunnion: lnib $29 shipped
1913 Adapter for MRKT Trunnion: lnib $29 shipped

Take both for $45!!!

Random Shit

Vortex Razor 1-6 Killflash: $30 addon
Benelli M4 Mesa Tactical Stock with comfortgrip, cheek riser and newest lock washer: $119 shipped
SF Warden FDE: light salt on muzzle end, $185 shipped

Patches

Also patches if you would like some: https://www.reddit.com/GunAccessoriesForSale/s/NzKFRKbgjL

Story Recap (From Heavensward)
Heavensward
Heavensward is a story of playing Hide And Seek with Thordan VII. So Ishgard was suffering with a war between the dragons for a 1000 years. Mr. Thordan VII thew bunch of lies towards us about the dragon war saying Nidhogg is defeated. So we had to go to tons of places and meet tons of dragons and we learned the truth of the Dragon War. So we found out that Thordan I and his twelve knights aimed to steal Nidhoggs eye. Nidhogg killed Thordan I and some other knights but Haldrath successfully stole the eye of Nidhogg to avenge his dad, and Nidhogg and the other dragons got extremely mad and even a 1000 years, still with hatred and doubt towards human beings. So at level 57, from around the Vault, Thordan VII was a coward and he started to know that his lies were busted and started going to Azys Lla. We defeated Bismarck but Thordan VII stole the key and made us not enter Azys Lla. So we went all the way back to Ishgard and made Cid to created an upgraded version of our airship which successfully rip the wall of Azys Lla. Then we looked for Thordan, found him in the facility and he became King Thordan and fought him, successfully defeating him.
Stormblood
Stormblood seems a bit difficult for me and the others compared to the other games but it’s just quite simple where the Seventh Dawn visited Ala Mingho, learned about the people there were Zenos’s victims. While having a fun break and a tour around the area after beating that Darth Vader like King Thordan and the vengeful dragon named Nidhogg. We had a full bunch of hope and pumped to defeat the imperials control super quickly but it didn’t turned out really easy. So one night, Zenos visited the Ranglers Reach, bullied everyone with his gangs, the WOL challenged him but the bully was too powerful so the WOL was easily beaten up by the big Samurai Zenos. The next day, we or those who were assuming that Zenos was weaker were all so sad, depressed, disappointed, and despondent, about to destroy and give up our plans and hopes but Alphinald brought up a genius plan so we traveled to Japan and China which also suffered with the same kinda problems with a 100 ton ship to stop the imperial control in East Asia , help the victims out there, stop the woman named Yotsuru psychopath (A weaker version of Zenos). A woman who was traumatized about her childhood abuse from her parents and appealing herself that her parents made a monster like this as a revenge to them, get some more allies or friends like in Kugane, we met Soroban from Ninja Turtles or Hien from some kind of Demon slayer character, or like those cool fancy looking strong friends first as a training to fight Zenos again at the end game. It sounded fun and exciting to meet new people and team up but that didn’t go very easy. We were asked to do some quests in each area to gain the people’s trust. You guys think Kugane was such a major place but it wasn’t. It’s more like a sightseeing destination in FF14 so ignore it when it comes to the major story plot. In the Ruby Sea, the people living there suffered from the imperial Kojin’s control. In the Azim Steppe, there were 2 species of Au Ra and one of the species were extremely powerful but the other was extremely weak so we helped the weaker Au Ra to end the rivalry between the 2 species of Au Ra. The weak gets revenge on the strong one. And in Yanxia, we focused main on stopping Yotsuru and that freak surpporting Yotsuru.
Shadowbringers
The game FF14 SHADOWBRINGERS is basically bringing back the darkness. Opposite from FF3. So you enter the dream world named Norvrandt, the sky was too bright so it was kinda weird. The reason was there was these evil creatures named “Sin Eaters” eats people and make them transform into one of the Sin Eaters. So the Warrior of Light and the Seventh Dawn heard that the people living there were uncomfortable about the Sin Eaters and wanted the darkness so we visited each state of the dream world and beated up the strongest or the leader Sin Eaters that were living in each areas. While doing so, we met Vauthry, an extremely fat Sumo Wrestler who is a king of Sin Eaters living in a richly and fancy place named Eulmore, but he kinda always hits the ground very hard when he’s mad or upset. Dude, can you just stop hitting the ground? I feel bad for the ground. I’m an HSP so please stop doing those painful or hurtful stuffs. Also, if you wanna hit something, go and hit the worst person I’ve ever met in my whole life naked please? I’m begging you and everyone living in Eulmore is begging you to do so. We can’t sleep too. Just too noisy. So yeah, we met him and we also met an extremely eccentric Ascian named Emet Selch, a friend of Ardyn FF15 who wanted to connect the Dream World and the real world together so we stopped him. After we did, he died but like Aldbert, his spirit joined us and became our companion and he helped us fight against Elidibus, a FF3 player that brings back the light and also the most powerful Ascian before going to Endwalker.
Endwalker
Endwalker has 2 stories but becomes one around from level 83. So from level 80 to 83 is most basically we found a strange tower in every state in Eorzea, manipulating people like a disease and Fandinel was the one who did this so at level 80, we were able to choose to go on a hunting mission to Thaniver or stay at Old Sharlyan and learned about the Final Days but we weren’t able to learn a clue about it. We only learned that Hydelen was the good god and Zodiark as the bad god. So In Thaniver, we learned about the Mangus Sisters and we entered the Tower of Zot, defeat the Mangus Sisters and helped the people stuck in the tower. We successfully did. At level 82, we visited Garemald, a dark, evil and cold state and that state had the main tower which is causing people to be brainwashed or manipulated. While investigating there, we met Zenos (Rival) and Fandinel (Arch Enemy) and Zenos transferred his soul to our characters skin and that was no good at all. We struggled with that imperial suit. That was a hard challenge. After that, we successfully captured Zenos, stopped his attack and at level 83, we entered the Tower Of Babil and killed Anima (The one causing the brainwash). After doing so, Fadniel and Zenos escaped to the Moon so we chased the 2. After getting to the moon, Fandinel took his soul and transformed into Zodiark and we defeated it but this caused more big trouble. So after killing it, the final days began in the Earth but before that, we found cute rabbits living in the Beastways Burrow, the rabbits working to make a new environment in case if we failed to manage the final days. Coming back to Earth, we met this nightmare with bloody burning skies and people turning into monsters by negative emotions. So we tried our best to control the Final days. From level 86, the player goes back to the Crystarium, meets Ryne and the soul of Elidibus, and going to the far past land Elpis. Once we got there, we met tons of young Ancients such as Emet Selch and Venat. So we also met Meteion and Hermes, the 2 were so kind and friendly but Meteion has lots of sisters, so around level 87 quest, we got the results of Meteion’s Sisters but all turned out dead or missing and Meteion turned arrogant, vengeful, depressed, and destroying hope about the world and turning to being one of the major villains of the game. Hermes was too kind and trying to make Meteion more emotional but that turned even worse and that’s the reason why the final days begun. Meteion’s negative emotions. After coming back to the present, we went back to Old Sharlyan, and started to build a huge airship to the Ultima Thule. We called the whole Eorzea alliance to get as much Ether so we can build a huge and fast airship. There were few quests with that cute rabbits from the Moon and that was quite hard to deal with. After we got to the Ultima Thule, we were confused and searched a way to open a way to Meteion but this was quite sad. So our friends had to sacrifice their lives to make a road. What they will sacrifice for is that is we had to find the character who is nihilistic. So there were the dragons, Ea’s, and the Omicrons. The dragons and Ea’s were all nihilistic so it was hard to find the biggest nihilistic but for the omicrons, it was so hard to find. So for the dragons, it’s about they gave up because their world is having a big war, Ea’s were saying that Knowledges are wastes, and Omicrons were saying they are preparing for the war. After we opened all the path by sacrificing your friends, Emet and his friend appeared and returned everyone back to life. After that we defeated Meteion with one, and we talked to Meteion at the edge of the Universe. Meteion finally broke her negative feelings and she casted out her new beginning. Full of energy and enthusiasm, Meteion flew and find a switch where the player could go back to the airship but before that, we had our duel with our best friend Zenos. Zenos was full of enthusiasm and excitement for our final duel in Endwalker. After we defeated Zenos, Zenos became disappointed and depressed that he lost again and saying his last words before he is fully gone. The Seventh Dawn came back, everyone was so happy and that’s the end for Endwalker.
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Item Name Set Number: The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr (10333)
Lego Price: $459.99 + $40.94 tax = $500.93
Shipping: 18lbs, 24 x 16 x 11, 99016 to 33136 UPS Ground = $71.97
Raffle Total/Spots: $572 / 143 spots @ $4 each
Price justification: retail
Call spots: Yes
Spot limit per person: yes - 4
Duration of spot limit: 30mins - wait for announcement
Location(Country): USA
Will ship international: US / Canada only - Canada / HI / AK / APO pay difference
Timestamp pics: https://imgur.com/a/38EeBG0
Description: Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-Dûr Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him.
Payment required w/in 15 minutes of raffle filling. 10 minutes for drama.
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Australian casino operator Crown Resorts has once again appeared in the epicenter of a scandal. Three former employees have brought the company to the court, claiming that the Crown Resorts is manipulating its slot machines and it hushed up a potential money laundering scheme at its largest casino in Melbourne. On Wednesday, independent Member of Parliament Andrew Wilkie presented video evidence in Canberra Parliament, in which the three former workers make their accusations to the company. The casino operator, known to be owned by James Packer, refused any involvement in illicit activities.
​
Crown Resorts’ reputation seems to be hit again by the shocking accusations made by three of its former workers, whose identity remained undisclosed. They accused the company of manipulating its slot machines at its Melbourne casino. Details were provided that the casino operator allegedly added modifying buttons that allowed players to play automatically and lose significant amounts in no time.
​
Here it is important to note that slot machines, or poker machines as they are known in Australia are one of the most wide-spread gambling activities across the country. Concerns regarding gambling-related problems were voiced. According to recent statistics, Australian residents lose around A$12 billion per year on gambling activities.
​
Apart from this, Crown’s former employees explained that the company stimulated its employees to use different identity cards for money transactions higher than A$10,000. In that way, the operator could skirt Australia’s anti-money laundering regulations and it does not need to report any suspicious transactions to the Australia’s financial watchdog.
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The independent Australian policymaker Andrew Wilkie presented the evidence in front of the Parliament. On Wednesday this week, he gave a speech in Canberra under parliamentary privilege, granting him legal immunity. Mr. Wilkie took the opportunity to support his stance, opposing the presence of the slot machines across the country. He asked competent authorities to conduct an investigation on the matter. The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation announced that it is to investigate the case as part of the regular review of Crown Melbourne’s gambling license, which is conducted in every five years. Supposing that the allegations prove to be true, it will point out a significant loophole in the country’s gambling legal framework.
​
Crown Resort’s Previous Offences
This is not the first time, in which Crown Resorts is involved in a gambling scandal. As it can be recalled, some of Crown Resorts employees were detained in mid-October 2016 in China for the illegal promotion of gambling services. They offered Chinese residents organized tours to the Australian casino operator’s gambling properties masked as tourism activity. Promoting gambling activities throughout Mainland China is considered an illicit activity. Earlier this year, Crown Resorts was brought to the court by another former employee, who claimed that the operator failed to meet the health requirements at the workplace.
​
All these accusations reflected on the company’s reputation in a negative way, so that its revenue for the 2017 fiscal year plummeted to A$308.9 million, or 21.5 compared to the 2016 fiscal year.
​
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For more Info, here: 무료 바카라

WaltDisneyWorld would not let me post my travel thoughts, so posting here for others.
Firstly I want to say that I've been visiting Disney world since regularly for 40 years and I know all the parks and the history very well. In the early 2000's I lived in Windermere directly behind the Magic Kingdom and was a annual passholder. I'm also a Disney stock holder, so I follow the financials of the company and am aware of most if not all of the management decisions that have been made regarding the revenue of the parks and cost of running them. My hope is that this channel is monitored by Disney management personnel and some of my observations from an experience standpoint will fall on (mouse) ears.
I now live in Texas and have not been to any of the Disney parks for many years, so I was eager to take my 9 year old for her birthday to see the new attractions that everyone has been talking about this week (5/28 - 5/31). I had some old park hopper tickets that I was able to update to the new card system, which I immediately found complicated and arbitrary. I received several plastic cards to replace the paper tickets I had, but I could only determine what each of the cards had remaining on them by looking up each cards serial number using the Disney "Experiences" app. Now if you use Genie+ or Lighting Lane pass, every ride you go on requires you scan either your card, phone, or as I later discovered my iWatch if I paired it with the "Experience App". This required me to constantly pull out my card which quickly grew tiresome. My daughter saw everyone with a LED mickey wristband, which I learned was called a Magicband. I found out that it could be used to scan her into the rides and had an added benefit of playing a little audio clip on gold character statues around the park, and vibrated during fireworks, so I bought the cheapest one @ $35. A smart move by Disney to solve a problem with another upsell that they created in the first place.
I'm a software developer, so most technology does not usually confuse me, but the design of the "Experiences" app is pretty bad. It's very hard to get the information you need, the features are categorized poorly, not explained well, and navigation is redundant and unintuitive. I really don't know how the average family makes heads or tails of it. I think that the feature that I utilized the most was the Cast Member Chat, because they were the only one that could make any sense of the extensive rules and restrictions that have been added to all the parks and access. I leaned on the Disney ticket agent who was a 26 year Disney employee veteran to help setup which parks my daughter and I were interested in. I had to purchase an additional child's single day ticket ($5 off the $179 adult ticket) so I had the ticket agent set that up as well. The ticketing process is so confusing that even the 26 year Disney employee had a problem with the setup that I'll explain later.
The first day we went to Epcot for the Guardians Coaster, Ratatouille, and the Frozen ride what I had not seen before. I was told that to reserve the Guardians ride, I needed to get on the "Experiences" app at 7am to reserve a virtual queue in line. I loaded the app at 6:55am and kept refreshing until at 7 the screen switched to "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" button appeared. In the 4 seconds it took me to read the text on the page, the app told me that the virtual queue was already full and I would now have to wait until 1pm to try again or buy a lighting lane pass for $36 for the 2 of us. I wanted to park hop to Magic Kingdom and you are required to be in the park at 1pm to try the queue again so I simply bought the lighting pass to get it over with rather than spend my vacation pulling out my phone out and checking my watch and queue status all day.
Just as a FYI, I was successful queueing the next day for Tron, by using the same technique but hitting the "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" immediately, a process that I estimate took me 2 total seconds. Doing so I received a queue group of 72 which resulted in our group being called at 2:45pm in the afternoon. Needless to say I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth as I had to be on my phone at 7am every morning with mixed success and then even when I was successful I constantly had to check my phone to see where I was in the queue to avoid missing our place. Even my 9 year old was so annoyed by my phone obsession and eventually suggested that we only check the phone after we get off a ride.
We had to scan our fingers on the initial check in, which I'd heard about to lock our tickets to us. As a privacy advocate I'm not super excited about this, nor the idea that I cannot easily swap users of the card to another family member at my choosing, but I'm sure that others have expressed these concerns so I won't elaborate further. We were staying at a Disney Resort, so we arrived at the Epcot back entrance exactly at 8:30am to rope drop Ratatouille. Apparently that was everyone else's idea because the outdoor line queue for Ratatouille was already at 35 minutes when we arrived. When we did get on the ride, I was very underwhelmed with the presentation and felt that the quality of what I had known Disney to produce had severely dropped. I had to wear 3D glasses on a practical dark ride that moved in parts from 3D projection screens to small room breaks that had no characters or effects which required my to constantly remove and again put on the glasses to see anything clearly. As far as I could see there were no animatronics or real characters within the practical scenes and the 3D screens were dark, poorly aligned when attempting to create false parallax, and frequently distorted. Overall it reminded me of a rip-off of the Spiderman ride at Universal that was made about 10 years ago.
I bought 2 Genie+ passes in addition to the $36 Guardians Lighting Lane passes, so that added another $100 to our park tickets. As soon as we got in the park I made a Genie+ reservation for the Frozen ride, but the first available slot was 1:45pm, so I guess that's a popular one too. Since we had some time to wait for our 11:15am Guardians Lighting Lane reserve, we walked around world showcase, which was pretty much how I remember it and walk over to the new Moana water thing. I've probably been to Epcot about 200 times so I thought I knew my way around pretty well, but when I got the old communicore fountain area I got completely lost by the labyrinth of narrow paths and hidden turns. It seems Disney's original rule of designing a park to lead the patron to the next focal point has not been adopted by the current designers. The moana experience was wedged in between the restrooms between The Land and Living Seas pavilions, which was an odd choice when it seems they could have put it where the old communicore fountain was to both add tropical beauty to that previously dull area as well as implement an impressive water feature. As it is installed now, the experience is hidden, cramped, and overall does not really communicate the naturalist messaging that the numerous signs in the pathway claimed to resemble.
There was also a new choke point that was introduced between Spaceship Earth and the Land where the only path on that side of the park was about 12 feet wide. A great idea now that every other family either has a double wide stroller or electric scooter taking up even more of the pathway than they used to. I also noticed this at Hollywood Studios in the new Galaxy Edge area. Not sure why the current Disney design team thinks the paths in the parks should narrower than they were before, but my assumption is that it's a cost saving measure.
We made it on the new Guardians coaster with our lighting pass, and I appreciate that we did not have to wait in the regular queue and got on the preshow portion of the ride in 5 minutes. I thought the ride was ok, not great with heavy use of video projection in both the preshow and ride. The extent of practical effects was a giant planet that you rotate around which seems flat and unrealistic. For a ride that is supposed to be the new high standard of Disney Imagineering, it seems that a nearly completely reliance on some projection screens in a dark coaster seems cheap and uninspired. Does anyone remember the giant glowing future city at the end of World of Motion? How did we go from that to this?
We finished Epcot at the Frozen ride, which was lackluster with no story, cheap animatronic character that had disturbing glowing projection faces with dead stares. Not that the Norway ride was that great, but it at least and some interesting scenery, a troll with fiber optics and a drop with the Miniature practical Storm and Oil Rig which were slightly memorable. To replace it with a bunch of flat, black light painted wood panels to recreate one of the highest grossing animated modern era Disney films seems uninspired and unimaginative. I mean they couldn't even design an interesting mirrocrystal room for Elsa's Ice Palace that would make you feel like your are in a much bigger and impressive space?
The next day we went to Hollywood Studios and I paid another $44 for both of us to go on Rise of Resistance and $70 for 2 more Genie+ passes, so another $114 in addition to the cost of the park tickets. We did Tower of Terror first which thankfully has not been redesigned and still holds up over the years, even though I think the drops have been reduced and shortened, a change I'm sure my 9 year old did not have any objection with.
We made our way over to the new Pixar area which I found to be very garish and infantile, more like if McDonalds designed a theme park, not Disney or Pixar. The wait for Slinks coaster was already 90 minutes at 10:30am and even though we had the Genie+ pass, it was not available so we skipped it. On another note it was already 94 degrees and there is no shade in most areas of the new areas of this park other than some haphazardly placed umbrellas on the sides of the path that guests huddle underneath. It's like the park designers have never visited Florida in summer or simply don't care if anyone bakes in the sun.
We made it to the Star Wars area and I found it very confusing and mazelike. I never knew where I was, as the other areas I mentioned there were multiple choke points in the paths in a area that proved to be the most crowded in the park. The detailing of the buildings and nature features seemed cheapy executed and fake. They didn't really remind me much of the Star Wars universe and would barely hold up in an episode of the Mandalorian. My favorite experience by far was the Millennium Falcon ride where my daughter and I got to pilot the ship which was a dream experience. Even the queue area of this ride is amazing with the level of detail and nostalgia that I would expect from a E-Ticket Disney Ride.
Rise of the Resistance was fine, not worth $44, containing more of the poorly executed fake projection screens effects and motion vehicles traveling though cheaply constructed Empire/Order hallways. I'm also 95% sure that the Kylo Ren animatronic at the end is the recycled from the Wicked Witch from Great Movie Ride. I feel like the animation was even recycled.
Last day we went to Magic Kingdom with the intention of riding Tron and Snow White Mine Train. I bought Lighting Lane passes for both rides adding another $66 ($26 for SN and $40 for Tron) to the tickets. I again got up at 7am to enter the virtual raffle for the Tron queue, and discovered that I could now add my daughter to the queue group. I immediately contacted a Disney chat agent who discovered that the helpful Disney ticket agent who I purchased a single day ticket to Magic Kingdom had put in the wrong date for our visit. By doing so, it effectively made my daughter ticket ineligible for virtual queues (and may have not granted her access to the park for the day I paid for). Thankfully the online agent was able to change to date so I could actually use the $175 single park ticket that I bought the night before I intended to use it.
Snow White was well done and fun, sort of a combination or Matterhorn and Barnstormer. I did notice that it also contained the cheap animatronic characters that had disturbing glowing projection faces like the Frozen ride. Is it that really that hard to maintain facial articulation on audioanimatronics? Disney did it since Carousel of Progress and the projection faces seem like a huge step backward.
Tron was what I was most excited about being envious of the Tokyo version. The building that houses Tron is impressive and clearly designed to be a key feature to draw guests in with an extended walkway and LED effects on the scaffolding. I was able to reserve a virtual queue for the day, so I reserved a 10:00pm Lighting Lane pass. I preferred the night ride, as there was more constant immersion with indoooutdoor areas of the coaster. I thought the reclined ride cars were unique and well done if not a bit uncomfortable. They are slightly constrictive how they hold you in and I noticed that a child in the car in front of me was restrained to tightly and started to have trouble breathing screaming for help from her parents by the end of the ride, which was unsettling, so consider asking for the last car that does not have this type of restraint for little ones. The ride again was plagued with projection screens inside the ride in lieu of practical effects and reminded me or Guardians. We also bought a Diecast Tron lightbike with LEDs in the giftshop and upon getting home the bike was made in China, was broken and did not illuminate.
After all the travel, tacked on cost of all the addons, special ride passes, and the inconvenience of the highly restrictive and expensive park tickets and the cheaper quality of the rides, I don't feel like Disney offers a good value or exceptional experience anymore. I actually felt bad for families with several kids that clearly were spending thousands of dollars for a vacation that honestly felt more like a job most of the time. I also noticed cast members that were either rude, impatient, or audibly complaining about their job position, shift, the heat, or anything else that an average worker would complain about. I understand that Disney employees are regular people and not robots, but previously I always felt that Disney employees were extremely proud to be working at Disney World and it reflected in how they treated guests and it added to the magic. Now I just felt like I'm was six flags and everyone was just counting the minutes until they could go home. I'm glad that I could take my daughter and have the experience with her, but I will not be returning to Disney World any time soon as it seems that the company and how they value the guest experience has diminished significantly from what I remember.

Firstly I want to say that I've been visiting Disney world since regularly for 40 years and I know all the parks and the history very well. In the early 2000's I lived in Windermere directly behind the Magic Kingdom and was a annual passholder. I'm also a Disney stock holder, so I follow the financials of the company and am aware of most if not all of the management decisions that have been made regarding the revenue of the parks and cost of running them. My hope is that this channel is monitored by Disney management personnel and some of my observations from an experience standpoint will fall on (mouse) ears.
I now live in Texas and have not been to any of the Disney parks for many years, so I was eager to take my 9 year old for her birthday to see the new attractions that everyone has been talking about this week (5/28 - 5/31). I had some old park hopper tickets that I was able to update to the new card system, which I immediately found complicated and arbitrary. I received several plastic cards to replace the paper tickets I had, but I could only determine what each of the cards had remaining on them by looking up each cards serial number using the Disney "Experiences" app. Now if you use Genie+ or Lighting Lane pass, every ride you go on requires you scan either your card, phone, or as I later discovered my iWatch if I paired it with the "Experience App". This required me to constantly pull out my card which quickly grew tiresome. My daughter saw everyone with a LED mickey wristband, which I learned was called a Magicband. I found out that it could be used to scan her into the rides and had an added benefit of playing a little audio clip on gold character statues around the park, and vibrated during fireworks, so I bought the cheapest one @ $35. A smart move by Disney to solve a problem with another upsell that they created in the first place.
I'm a software developer, so most technology does not usually confuse me, but the design of the "Experiences" app is pretty bad. It's very hard to get the information you need, the features are categorized poorly, not explained well, and navigation is redundant and unintuitive. I really don't know how the average family makes heads or tails of it. I think that the feature that I utilized the most was the Cast Member Chat, because they were the only one that could make any sense of the extensive rules and restrictions that have been added to all the parks and access. I leaned on the Disney ticket agent who was a 26 year Disney employee veteran to help setup which parks my daughter and I were interested in. I had to purchase an additional child's single day ticket ($5 off the $179 adult ticket) so I had the ticket agent set that up as well. The ticketing process is so confusing that even the 26 year Disney employee had a problem with the setup that I'll explain later.
The first day we went to Epcot for the Guardians Coaster, Ratatouille, and the Frozen ride what I had not seen before. I was told that to reserve the Guardians ride, I needed to get on the "Experiences" app at 7am to reserve a virtual queue in line. I loaded the app at 6:55am and kept refreshing until at 7 the screen switched to "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" button appeared. In the 4 seconds it took me to read the text on the page, the app told me that the virtual queue was already full and I would now have to wait until 1pm to try again or buy a lighting lane pass for $36 for the 2 of us. I wanted to park hop to Magic Kingdom and you are required to be in the park at 1pm to try the queue again so I simply bought the lighting pass to get it over with rather than spend my vacation pulling out my phone out and checking my watch and queue status all day.
Just as a FYI, I was successful queueing the next day for Tron, by using the same technique but hitting the "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" immediately, a process that I estimate took me 2 total seconds. Doing so I received a queue group of 72 which resulted in our group being called at 2:45pm in the afternoon. Needless to say I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth as I had to be on my phone at 7am every morning with mixed success and then even when I was successful I constantly had to check my phone to see where I was in the queue to avoid missing our place. Even my 9 year old was so annoyed by my phone obsession and eventually suggested that we only check the phone after we get off a ride.
We had to scan our fingers on the initial check in, which I'd heard about to lock our tickets to us. As a privacy advocate I'm not super excited about this, nor the idea that I cannot easily swap users of the card to another family member at my choosing, but I'm sure that others have expressed these concerns so I won't elaborate further. We were staying at a Disney Resort, so we arrived at the Epcot back entrance exactly at 8:30am to rope drop Ratatouille. Apparently that was everyone else's idea because the outdoor line queue for Ratatouille was already at 35 minutes when we arrived. When we did get on the ride, I was very underwhelmed with the presentation and felt that the quality of what I had known Disney to produce had severely dropped. I had to wear 3D glasses on a practical dark ride that moved in parts from 3D projection screens to small room breaks that had no characters or effects which required my to constantly remove and again put on the glasses to see anything clearly. As far as I could see there were no animatronics or real characters within the practical scenes and the 3D screens were dark, poorly aligned when attempting to create false parallax, and frequently distorted. Overall it reminded me of a rip-off of the Spiderman ride at Universal that was made about 10 years ago.
I bought 2 Genie+ passes in addition to the $36 Guardians Lighting Lane passes, so that added another $100 to our park tickets. As soon as we got in the park I made a Genie+ reservation for the Frozen ride, but the first available slot was 1:45pm, so I guess that's a popular one too. Since we had some time to wait for our 11:15am Guardians Lighting Lane reserve, we walked around world showcase, which was pretty much how I remember it and walk over to the new Moana water thing. I've probably been to Epcot about 200 times so I thought I knew my way around pretty well, but when I got the old communicore fountain area I got completely lost by the labyrinth of narrow paths and hidden turns. It seems Disney's original rule of designing a park to lead the patron to the next focal point has not been adopted by the current designers. The moana experience was wedged in between the restrooms between The Land and Living Seas pavilions, which was an odd choice when it seems they could have put it where the old communicore fountain was to both add tropical beauty to that previously dull area as well as implement an impressive water feature. As it is installed now, the experience is hidden, cramped, and overall does not really communicate the naturalist messaging that the numerous signs in the pathway claimed to resemble.
There was also a new choke point that was introduced between Spaceship Earth and the Land where the only path on that side of the park was about 12 feet wide. A great idea now that every other family either has a double wide stroller or electric scooter taking up even more of the pathway than they used to. I also noticed this at Hollywood Studios in the new Galaxy Edge area. Not sure why the current Disney design team thinks the paths in the parks should narrower than they were before, but my assumption is that it's a cost saving measure.
We made it on the new Guardians coaster with our lighting pass, and I appreciate that we did not have to wait in the regular queue and got on the preshow portion of the ride in 5 minutes. I thought the ride was ok, not great with heavy use of video projection in both the preshow and ride. The extent of practical effects was a giant planet that you rotate around which seems flat and unrealistic. For a ride that is supposed to be the new high standard of Disney Imagineering, it seems that a nearly completely reliance on some projection screens in a dark coaster seems cheap and uninspired. Does anyone remember the giant glowing future city at the end of World of Motion? How did we go from that to this?
We finished Epcot at the Frozen ride, which was lackluster with no story, cheap animatronic character that had disturbing glowing projection faces with dead stares. Not that the Norway ride was that great, but it at least and some interesting scenery, a troll with fiber optics and a drop with the Miniature practical Storm and Oil Rig which were slightly memorable. To replace it with a bunch of flat, black light painted wood panels to recreate one of the highest grossing animated modern era Disney films seems uninspired and unimaginative. I mean they couldn't even design an interesting mirrocrystal room for Elsa's Ice Palace that would make you feel like your are in a much bigger and impressive space?
The next day we went to Hollywood Studios and I paid another $44 for both of us to go on Rise of Resistance and $70 for 2 more Genie+ passes, so another $114 in addition to the cost of the park tickets. We did Tower of Terror first which thankfully has not been redesigned and still holds up over the years, even though I think the drops have been reduced and shortened, a change I'm sure my 9 year old did not have any objection with.
We made our way over to the new Pixar area which I found to be very garish and infantile, more like if McDonalds designed a theme park, not Disney or Pixar. The wait for Slinks coaster was already 90 minutes at 10:30am and even though we had the Genie+ pass, it was not available so we skipped it. On another note it was already 94 degrees and there is no shade in most areas of the new areas of this park other than some haphazardly placed umbrellas on the sides of the path that guests huddle underneath. It's like the park designers have never visited Florida in summer or simply don't care if anyone bakes in the sun.
We made it to the Star Wars area and I found it very confusing and mazelike. I never knew where I was, as the other areas I mentioned there were multiple choke points in the paths in a area that proved to be the most crowded in the park. The detailing of the buildings and nature features seemed cheapy executed and fake. They didn't really remind me much of the Star Wars universe and would barely hold up in an episode of the Mandalorian. My favorite experience by far was the Millennium Falcon ride where my daughter and I got to pilot the ship which was a dream experience. Even the queue area of this ride is amazing with the level of detail and nostalgia that I would expect from a E-Ticket Disney Ride.
Rise of the Resistance was fine, not worth $44, containing more of the poorly executed fake projection screens effects and motion vehicles traveling though cheaply constructed Empire/Order hallways. I'm also 95% sure that the Kylo Ren animatronic at the end is the recycled from the Wicked Witch from Great Movie Ride. I feel like the animation was even recycled.
Last day we went to Magic Kingdom with the intention of riding Tron and Snow White Mine Train. I bought Lighting Lane passes for both rides adding another $66 ($26 for SN and $40 for Tron) to the tickets. I again got up at 7am to enter the virtual raffle for the Tron queue, and discovered that I could now add my daughter to the queue group. I immediately contacted a Disney chat agent who discovered that the helpful Disney ticket agent who I purchased a single day ticket to Magic Kingdom had put in the wrong date for our visit. By doing so, it effectively made my daughter ticket ineligible for virtual queues (and may have not granted her access to the park for the day I paid for). Thankfully the online agent was able to change to date so I could actually use the $175 single park ticket that I bought the night before I intended to use it.
Snow White was well done and fun, sort of a combination or Matterhorn and Barnstormer. I did notice that it also contained the cheap animatronic characters that had disturbing glowing projection faces like the Frozen ride. Is it that really that hard to maintain facial articulation on audioanimatronics? Disney did it since Carousel of Progress and the projection faces seem like a huge step backward.
Tron was what I was most excited about being envious of the Tokyo version. The building that houses Tron is impressive and clearly designed to be a key feature to draw guests in with an extended walkway and LED effects on the scaffolding. I was able to reserve a virtual queue for the day, so I reserved a 10:00pm Lighting Lane pass. I preferred the night ride, as there was more constant immersion with indoooutdoor areas of the coaster. I thought the reclined ride cars were unique and well done if not a bit uncomfortable. They are slightly constrictive how they hold you in and I noticed that a child in the car in front of me was restrained to tightly and started to have trouble breathing screaming for help from her parents by the end of the ride, which was unsettling, so consider asking for the last car that does not have this type of restraint for little ones. The ride again was plagued with projection screens inside the ride in lieu of practical effects and reminded me or Guardians. We also bought a Diecast Tron lightbike with LEDs in the giftshop and upon getting home the bike was made in China, was broken and did not illuminate.
After all the travel, tacked on cost of all the addons, special ride passes, and the inconvenience of the highly restrictive and expensive park tickets and the cheaper quality of the rides, I don't feel like Disney offers a good value or exceptional experience anymore. I actually felt bad for families with several kids that clearly were spending thousands of dollars for a vacation that honestly felt more like a job most of the time. I also noticed cast members that were either rude, impatient, or audibly complaining about their job position, shift, the heat, or anything else that an average worker would complain about. I understand that Disney employees are regular people and not robots, but previously I always felt that Disney employees were extremely proud to be working at Disney World and it reflected in how they treated guests and it added to the magic. Now I just felt like I'm was six flags and everyone was just counting the minutes until they could go home. I'm glad that I could take my daughter and have the experience with her, but I will not be returning to Disney World any time soon as it seems that the company and how they value the guest experience has diminished significantly from what I remember.

First Patreon Royal Road is up to chapter 30!
“NOAH ARE YOU OKAY?!”
That was all he heard before Noah slipped into the dark, inky, blackness of unconsciousness.
While he was passed out, Noah dreamt of a war. A war where he, by his lonesome was standing up against a whole army numbering in the millions yet, he wasn’t losing. He cast spells repeatedly as if he had an infinite mana pool to draw form, he cast a fireball the size of a two-story house that decimated the enemy by the thousands. He cast tornadoes that wreaked havoc on the enemy formations. He cast an ice wall akin to the great wall of China that forced the enemy army to funnel in from a limited number of points where he cast massive firestorms and lightning strikes.
He felt like a God among mere mortals, invincible and yet, he felt that he was missing something. That’s right the blue marble, the pseudo-planet that popped out of nowhere and came into his hands. He summoned it and out came an army of his own, an army composed of humans and beasts of all shapes and sizes. But then he heard something “Noah!” he looked around but found no one who was calling out to him, as if on cue, he felt something shake, it started with his vision but he then felt the earth beneath his feet quake “NOAH! WAKE UP!”
Noah woke up with a start and immediately sat up to see Mark struggling on the ground with a wolf on top of him trying to bite his head off. “Mark what the fuck is happening?!” Noah said as he blinked repeatedly, his newly woken up brain still processing what was going on.
“NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, GET THIS WOLF OFF OF ME” Mark shouted back at the top of his lungs
“OKAY, OKAY. FIREBALL!” Noah hurriedly tried to cast the fireball spell but nothing happened except a small spark that petered out and disappeared as soon as it came. ”WHAT THE FUCK”
“THIS ISN’T THE TIME TO FIGURE OUT YOUR POWERS JUST KICK IT OFF AND SMASH ITS HEAD IN” Mark screamed
Noah hurriedly got up and kicked the wolf off of his cousin and continued kicking its head in, a moment later Mark got up and joined in on the beatdown. Blood and brains flew as they kicked and grunted, not stopping until both were entirely sure that it was dead.
[You have successfully killed [Wolf - lvl 1]
Noah and Mark both stopped mid-stomp when the notification appeared in their vision. They were breathing heavily after having beaten the poor wolf when Noah said “Mind explaining what just happ…” he didn’t get to finish what he was saying when another notification appeared in his vision.
[Congratulations on killing your first life form! You now have access to your status screen, just say or think “Status” in order to view it]
Noah and Mark looked at each other as if to confirm that they were seeing the same thing, they both nodded with a tacit agreement to discuss later after viewing their statuses. After that, they practically said at the same time “Status”
[Name: Noah Blake] [Class: Elementalist(EPIC)] Level: 1] [Subclass: N/A] [Guild: N/A] [Mana: 40] [Stamina: 14] [Strength: 8] [Dexterity: 11] [Constitution: 7] [Intelligence: 20] [Regeneration: 15]
“Okay my intelligence and regeneration are through the roof! I’m really well and truly made to be a mage, no doubt about it. But I wonder why I couldn’t conjure that fireball earlier hmmm, let’s try this then”
“Skills”
**Analyze(lvl 1)Analyze anything and everything in the world (results only limited by its level) Mana Manipulation(lvl 1)Manipulate the mana within and outside of your body to do your bidding (amount of mana that can be manipulated scales with level) Mana Sense(lvl 1)Sense all particles of mana in a 1 meter radius around you (scales with level) Fire Manipulation(lvl 1)Manipulate fire according to your will (unique spells can be made and discovered depending on usage and level) Water Manipulation(lvl 1)Manipulate water according to your will (unique spells can be made and discovered depending on usage and level) Earth Manipulation(lvl 1)Manipulate earth according to your will (unique spells can be made and discovered depending on usage and level) Air Manipulation(lvl 1)Manipulate air according to your will (unique spells can be made and discovered depending on usage and level)**
“I guess that answers that question, although I have the manipulation skill, I don’t have the fireball skill itself so I still need to discover how to do it myself, how hard can it possibly be?”
Noah activated the fire manipulation spell and conjured a flame on his hand the size of a flame from a small lighter, he checked his mana pool and saw that it decreased by one point. He tried imagining and projecting his will on the flame, mentally telling it to form into a ball shape, it worked and waited but no notification came. “Okay how about I increase the amount of mana going into the ball” and he did just that, he gradually increased the amount of mana, constantly checking his mana pool when finally on the tenth point of mana he finally got that oh so sweet notification.
[You have acquired the spell [Fireball] You have also unlocked the Spells window, think or say “Spells” to access]
“Cool now that I know how to do that the other basic elemental spells should be a breeze”
Noah was just about to continue tinkering with spells when he remembered that they just killed a wolf that somehow got inside of the apartment building. He looked to his cousin and started speaking “So Mark what uhh, happened back there? How did that wolf even get in here? I didn’t even know that there were wolves in this part of the world”
“Beats me” Mark said with a shrug “I was just watching over you while you were asleep because I was worried, that’s when I heard scratching at the door, I opened to check what was making all the noise when that wolf just pounced on me, the rest of the story you can pretty much fill in yourself since you were awake at the time.”
“How long was I out anyway?
“Around 3hrs total I guess? I’m just going off how long it felt because the phones stopped working after that whole ordeal earlier and I don’t have a watch”
Noah hurriedly checked his phone and sure enough it wouldn’t turn on. Then he noticed that despite the bright moonlight coming in from the window the light fixtures in the room were all off “So I’m guessing the electricity is out too?”
“Yup, pretty much anything electrical looks like. Probably because of the whole, I don’t know, the FUCKING apocalypse” Mark said with an annoyed yet tired sigh “I was supposed to be a doctor you know, well I guess I became the next best thing, I got a healer class out of all that, an uncommon version of it anyway. That’s what I was going to say when you asked before we were rudely interrupted by that blue marble that popped out of nowhere. What was that anyway?”
Noah thought about what he was going to say, could he just come out and say that he’s now the proud owner of a whole pseudo-planet. What was he going to do with a planet anyway? Throw it at people? He vaguely remembered his dream where his very own army came out of the small marble but was that even possible? Was it all just a dream, or was it something more? In a world of magic, anything was possible so maybe that really was a dream about the possible future. “Fuck it, I’ll just come clean, he’s family after all and if you can’t trust family, who can you trust?”
“Well, it’s kind of complicated but basically, I’m now the owner of a whole planet… ehem… pseudo-planet to be exact. That’s what that blue marble was anyway, still don’t know how it works or what I can even do with it. I was a bit busy absorbing the information that, we just saw the world end, expand and got classes then I passed out so I didn’t really have the time to examine it any closer.”
“True, too much has happened today” Mark said incredulously “But still, a whole planet huh… wonder what else is possible in this new world”
“Yeah, but first, let’s make sure the main entrance down stairs is closed before we discuss more so that we won’t wake up tomorrow to some random beast knocking on our doors again.”
Noah and Mark went down the stairs and made sure that all entrances whether it be doors or windows were all closed and locked before they went back up to the tenth floor and chose the room furthest from the stairs. They pulled two chairs in front of each other then sat down.
“Okay, let’s lay everything out and summarize so we can decide on our priorities. First, the apocalypse, we’ve apparently got an alien invasion from some “Old Gods” but the system or whatever it’s called contained the invasion gates and turned them into dungeons so it might be safe to say that the System is on our side or at the very least, on the opposite side of the Old Gods. Then the Earth transformed because of the mana core activation thing. Then we received classes, I got the EPIC rated class Elementalist by the way and can pretty much manipulate the 4 elements like in Avatar but I have to discover the specific spells before I can cast anything, that’s why only a spark came out when I said fireball earlier with the wolf”
“Then you got a planet” Mark said with a smirk, trying to lighten the mood
“Then I got a planet” Noah said with a smug smirk
“Anyway, an EPIC class huh? Guess I’m sticking with you because from my experience with games, a healer can’t really solo anything, especially the apocalypse.” Mark said self-deprecatingly
“Come on don’t say it like that Mark, you’re probably going to save my life one of these days. Remember that wolf had a level? I’m guessing that humans aren’t the only ones that can level up now so having our own healer is going to be MASSIVE for us and our survival.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m just… It’s just so hard to absorb all this…” Mark said with a sigh. He noticed that he’d been sighing a lot lately but what could he do except sigh and accept the situation? At least he has an ally, no, he had family, in this new world where society has collapsed, having someone you can trust with your back was going to be priceless. He could only imagine what kind of atrocities his fellow humans would do to each other now that the old world’s law and order has gone down the drain. “People did some fucked up shit even before the apocalypse, how much more now?”
Noah looked at his cousin sigh for the nth time today and couldn’t help but also sigh. “Come on Mark, I know the world as we knew it is over now but think on the bright side, we’ve got magic now and a new world full of…, yes, it may be filled with dangers but it’s also filled with wonders, wonders we can only imagine.” He said with a bit of hope and a twinkle in his eyes.
Mark chuckled at Noah’s expression and said “Yeah, you’re right. With how random mountains just grew out of the ground around us, we can only imagine how much the rest of the world changed”
“There are probably a new set of places in the world more beautiful than the past seven wonders of the world with how everything is so much… more… now that there’s mana. If games and novels were anything to go by, who knows, maybe there are floating islands out there, can you imagine that?” Noah excitedly said, wanderlust practically oozing from his words
“Woah there cowboy, I completely understand where you’re coming from but I’ve got blood and brains all over me. First, let’s take a bath then turn in for the night and discuss more tomorrow.” Mark said while looking at the blood and bits of brain matter with a disgusted look on his face
Noah glanced at his blood-soaked shoes and pants with distaste and said “Yeah, let’s do that. You go first, I’ll keep watch out here in case some random thing comes and tries to eat us again”
“Good idea, we should probably sleep in the same room too so we can react in a more timely manner if ever the worst happens, anyway I’ll shower first then” Mark went to the bathroom and turned on the shower but nothing happened “Crap”
“Is something the matter Mark?” Noah called out
“Yeah, there’s no running water”
“Crap”

In anticipation of M6, I think it would be fun to host a little game here on the subreddit involving every one of Marina's songs before her discography expands! A similar game was hosted on the Taylor Swift subreddit, and it was a fun time so I'm bringing a similar version here! Here's how it works:
I will be including every Marina song from an album, as well as Mermaid Vs. Sailor, all of her unreleased songs*, and features. I will not be counting covers. The songs will be categorized by their starting letter (e.g. Primadonna will be in the "P" category) and you guys will vote on which category of letter is the best! This will continue until each letter has been ranked. Voting is simple, the letter with the highest amount of upvotes wins the round! (e.g. if you want to vote for P, and someone else has already commented P, simply upvote that comment.) Each round will last 3 days.
*I'm not counting Not That Ugly or When You Take Away Control since only the titles of those songs are known. I'm not counting snippets either, so no Beautiful World.
Here are the letter categories!
A- About Love, Absent Love, Ancient Dreams In A Modern Land, Are You Satisfied?
B- Baby, Bad Kidz, Believe In Love, Better Than That, Blindfold Me, Blue, Bubblegum Bitch, Bump In The Night, Buy The Stars
C- Can't Pin Me Down, Cause I'm A Woman, Cruel
D- Daddy Was A Sailor, Demons And Angels, Dirty Sheets, Disconnect, Double Life
E- E.V.O.L, Electra Heart, Emotional Machine, End Of The Earth, Enjoy Your Life, Eternity
F- Fear And Loathing, Flowers, Forget, Free Woman, Froot
G- Girls, Gold, Goodbye, Guilty
H- Handmade Heaven, Happy, Happy Loner, Happy Meal, Hermit The Frog, Highly Emotional People, Holiday, Hollywood, Homewrecker, Horror Pop, Hot, Cross Bun, How To Be A Heartbreaker, Hubba, Hypocrates
I- I Am Not A Robot, I Love You But I Love Me More, I'm A Ruin, I'm Not Hungry Anymore, If I Left The World, If It's Worth It, Immortal
J- Jealousy, Just Desserts
K- Karma
L- Lies, Life Is Strange, Like China Dolls, Like The Other Girls, Living Dead, Lonely Bones, Lonely Hearts Club
M- Man's World, Miss Y, Mowgli's Road
N- New America, No More Suckers, Numb
O- Obsessions, Oh No!, Orange Trees
P- Pancake Karma, Pandora's Box, Perfect-Oh, Philosopher My Arse, Pink Convertible, Plastic Rainbow, Please Don't Call Me, Porn Does Good, Power & Control, Primadonna, Purge The Poison
R- Radioactive, Rootless
S- Savages, Saviour, Scab And Plaster, Seventeen, Sex Yeah, Shampain, Silver Walls, Simplify, Sinful, Soft To Be Strong, Solitaire, Starlight, Starring Role, Su-Barbie-A, Supermodel's Legs, Superstar
T- Teen Idle, The Archetypes, The Art Of Letting Go, The Common Cold, The Family Jewels, The Outsider, The State Of Dreaming, There's Nothing Wrong With You, This Is L.A., To Be Human, Too Afraid, Troubled Mind, True
V- Valley Of The Dolls, Venus Fly Trap
W- Water Under The Bridge, Weeds, What I Wanna Do, Where Diamonds Grow
Y- You
Happy Voting! :D

Hi everyone. I apologize for the wall in advance, but I'm going to try and include as much detail as I can. I've been running into intermittent crashes and freezes recently, and I'm trying to troubleshoot the issue. I'm hoping some of you can point me in the right direction.
Background: I built this PC in December of 2023, and it's been running smoothly with XMP enabled since day 1, for a couple of months. Around March, I started getting crashes here and there, but they were very infrequent, and I thought nothing of it. However, the more I used the PC as time went on, the more crashes I'd get. It got really bad starting beginning of May, as the system would not last a day without a random BSOD or a freeze. A couple of days ago, the system froze up three times in succession. So I finally decided to try and figure out what was going on, and I'm hoping that I can get some help here.
Here are the basic PC build specs:
Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING Z790-PRO WIFI ATX LGA1700 CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K 3.4 GHz CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30-40-40-96 1.40V (F5-6000J3040G32GX2-RS5K) Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME GPU: PNY XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB GeForce RTX 4070 PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850 P2 850 W 80+ Platinum
I also got some additional case fans to help with airflow and tried keeping the mobo BIOS up to date, but that's pretty much the extent of changes since day 1.
Issue: Once every couple of hours, sometimes only once a day, and very occasionally now once every two days or so, my PC would randomly BSOD or freeze. When it freezes up, I can still see the last still image/capture on my screen, but everything stops responding, and audio stutters on the last couple of milliseconds of what it was playing at that time, causing a stuttering, jarring sound coming from the speakers. This persists until restart.
When it BSODs, most of the time I'm able to look at the minidumps and it's never the same executable/module/driver that causes it, based on WinDbg's analysis. Some examples include:
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (PROCESS_NAME: GenshinImpact.exe, IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe, STACK_TEXT includes: nt!KiPageFault+0x463)
CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT (PROCESS_NAME: Advanced Combat Tracker.exe, IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe, STACK_TEXT includes: nt!KiPageFault+0x47)
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (PROCESS_NAME: ffxiv_dx11.exe, IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe, STACK_TEXT includes: nt!KiPageFault+0x485)
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (PROCESS_NAME: StarRail.exe, IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe, STACK_TEXT includes: nt!KiPageFault+0x485)
Most of the time, however, I am not getting a BSOD, and just a random, sudden freeze, after which I need to restart my PC. Very occasionally, this causes some of the data used by the apps stored in the system drive to become corrupted. For instance, if I have an app reading and writing a configuration file (e.g. chocolatey), after the restart the file in question will be partially filled with zero byte values. I'm just assuming that this is caused by the memory state being corrupted at the time of the crash and buffers being flushed in a bad state.
Here's what I tried so far:
Prime95: With XMP enabled, one of a few things can happen: the program can crash upon starting the test, the computer can BSOD or the test will just run. The most recent example of a BSOD when Prime95 starts its test was SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, PROCESS_NAME: Discord.exe, IMAGE_NAME: win32kbase.sys, with STACK_TEXT containing nt!RtlpHpVsContextAllocateInternal+0x27b. If the test just runs, after about a minute into the test, Worker #7 fails with the following message:
FATAL ERROR: Final result was AEA9A0B8, expected: 87610A79. Hardware failure detected running 288K FFT size, consult stress.txt file.
Having run this test multiple times, worker #7 is always the one that fails with a similar message. Note that there are *no* rounding error messages in this error output.
When XMP is not enabled, there are no freeze ups or BSODs when running Prime95, but worker #7 consistently crashes about a minute into the test. To minimize the chances of running a buggy Prime95, I tried two different versions, one being the most recent one, and one from 2020. Both produce similar results of worker #7 dying about a minute into the test.
Memory swap: I tried running Prime95 with just one stick, tried each stick in separation and each one of the channels on the motherboard. Swapping the DIMM slot on the motherboard seemed to have made no difference. Running one of the sticks, however, proved to be a bit more reliable in the short term, while running the other once froze up the PC. The more stable stick produced the same issue with worker 7. I was also able to put my hands on a brand new memory stick with the same specs (same model), and with XMP, and upon running Prime95 I got a BSOD.
BIOS update: Updated BIOS to the most recent version, and that resulted in no changes.
Driver verifier: I was able to identify two drivers that were causing BSOD with the driver verifier on. One was the Razer synapse driver for my mouse, the other was voice-meeter banana. I removed Razer software completely, and updated VB, which got rid of driver-verifier-related BSODs. This had no impact on the stability of my system, however.
Reseating the CPU: I took the CPU and the heatsink out, reapplied the thermal compound, and put everything back together. No impact on Prime95 errors and issues, and it's too early to tell regarding the overall stability of the system as I've just done that last night.
y-cruncher: Last night I ran a stress test using the following command: "y-cruncher.exe stress -TL:1441 VST VT3F". That passed with XMP on. However, when I ran "Benchmark Pi" -> "Multi-Threaded" -> "5,000,000,000", the PC froze about 40% into the test.
This is all I've done so far, and I'm looking for guidance as to what to try and test next. My goal is to have a stable system with XMP on.
Thank you, and once again, sorry for the long wall.

Throughout 2018 and 2019, Musk gave the impression that Tesla was going through tough times. They then raised $2.7 billion in May 2019 to fund "full-self driving".Once the money was raised, Musk wrote to employees saying the company will run out of money in 10 months.
In a later interview, he said that the carmaker was actually "about a month" from bankruptcy during the run-up in Model 3 production from mid-2017 to mid-2019. This means that before the raise in mid 2019, Tesla was one month away from bankruptcy.
However.
In the months, before the raise Musk was singing a very different tune.
In February 2019 he said:
"Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week."
Obviously, this never happened and Tesla produced around 400k cars in 2019.
He said in April 2019:
“I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year,”
Never happened.
To top it all off, in April he bought $25m in Tesla stock. Completely not a stock pump attempt.
Lo and behold, he was able to raise money in May!
Magic!
To top it off, there is no mention anywhere in the Q1 2019 10Q that Tesla is very close to bankruptcy. Here are some of the 'concerns' listed:
We face risks associated with our global operations and expansion, including unfavorable regulatory, political, economic, tax and labor conditions, and with establishing ourselves in new markets, all of which could harm our business.
Or......
Servicing our indebtedness requires a significant amount of cash, and there is no guarantee that we will have sufficient cash flow from our business to pay our substantial indebtedness.
There is an even opportunity to warn against the insurance (gasp!):
Our insurance strategy may not be adequate to protect us from all business risks
But nowhere does it mention that they will literally run out of cash in one month!!!
Tesla's Cash Position Today
The eagle eyed users of this forum have observed that Tesla's cash balance is not all that it seems.
Tesla is said to have $25 billion.
But it pays suppliers late to pump its cash balances.
Its accounts payable is $14 billion.
Its accrued purchases is $2.6 billion.
That leaves around $8 billion.
Then there is cash for FSD, deposits and understated warranty reserve.
So we'll deduct another $2 billion.
Finally, there is the cash balances held in Yuan/Eur which are $3.47 billion.
I personally believe it is highly likely that a majority of this money is in yuan meaning it cant be taken out of the country. If they had this money, they would not need to layoff 20% staff, but I cannot prove it.
Whether the yuan balance is there or not, a company that is vertically integrated losing 2 billion in negative free cash flow per quarter needs cash wherever it can find it. Whether its there or not, things are still bad.
The Game Plan For Musk
Tesla is acting like a company in deep financial distress.That is because it is! It likely cannot survive the year without a raise. The pay package is partly about getting enough money to literally save the company.
But now we are witnessing a re-run of early 2019 stock pump, where Enron Musk is essentially able to lie about FSD to raise another round!
He proposed to launch robotaxis in China in his April visit where he was not actually invited.
He said in the Q1 call that Tesla is now going balls to the wall autonomy! WOAH! Balls to the wall!
Musk said he was not quite betting the company. I would say this is much more than betting the company though. For a company that has not progressed beyond level 2 FSD, when level 5 is 'full-self driving', this is more than betting the company.
This is fraud.
Now we see Musk is combining forces with trump. The game plan here is very obvious. Musk is creating an escape hatch where he can claim that the DOJ, 'went after him' for political reasons. All-in-all, its clear that if the DOJ do not charge him before he raises more money in August for the robotaxi announcement, he will have once again lied to escape bankruptcy.

By the end of this penitence, I have about 100 hours in the game (70 on steam, probably 20-30 on switch before I repurchased and moved to steam). I had about 30 on steam I think after my first playthrough, and I explored everything and completed everything I could in my first run. Blasphemous is the first metroidvania I've played, so I'm not amazing at the game by any means but it's one of my favorites. Before I knew that the other two penitences provide beads that would help out with doing the Penitence of the True Guilt, I chose it as my first to give myself a challenge and get what I viewed as the hardest out of the way first. I haven't done the other two yet, so I don't know if it actually is the hardest penitence but it was rough. I'll be going through all the bosses and how many attempts it took me to beat each of them, as well as the beads, prayers, and hearts I used most often. I also decided to do Ending C in this run because it was the only ending I hadn't seen yet, so that means I also did Sierpes and Isidora in this playthrough.
TL;DR: Penitence of the True Guilt is a hard penitence to do. At least I had a hard time. Light of the Lady of the Lamp bead, Saeta prayer, and Molten Heart were my saving graces. Isidora (13 attempts) was the hardest boss I think although not the most attempts I did, and had a comically hard time with Tres Angustias (63 attempts) because I didn't upgrade my health prior to the fight at all. Also fought the Amanecidas in this playthrough, and worked on the Requiem Aeternam achievement so I didn't really make use of my fervor flasks. I don't think I recommend doing this penitence first.
Favorite Beads:

• Light of the Lady of the Lamp: I was also trying to work towards the Requiem Aeternam achievement, and I read that the fervor flasks count as using a flask still, so I didn't use any flasks for the original bosses. To keep myself from accidentally hitting the button, I would just run my flasks out in the previous room before fighting a boss, and this bead became a mainstay in my rosary because of it.
• Silver Grape: I basically enjoyed anything that beefed my all around defenses in this run, and the Silver Grape did that job amazingly.
• Consecrated Amethyst - Magic Defense
• Thorned Symbol - Physical Defense
• Fire Enclosed In Enamel: This one accelerates prayers, and I slept on it for the first bit of the run. Once I found enough knots to run like 4 defensive beads and then prayer buffing beads, I started using this one a ton.
• Drop Coagulated in Ink: Again, once I started running prayer beads plus defensive, this one stayed in my rosary a lot. It buffs the damage of prayers, so whenever I used Debla, it was in my rosary.

Besides those, I would just switch out beads situationally, usually slotting in elemental defense depending on the boss.
Favorite Prayers:

• Saeta Dolorosa: This is the lifesteal prayer. In a penitence where you have to find other ways to recover health, this prayer was the one I used the most. It saved me in several situations and made most bosses much easier than they would've been I'm sure.
• Debla of the Lights: When I wasn't using the Saeta as a survival tactic, I used Debla to be more aggressive. It's my favorite damage dealing prayer and I don't think I've really used other damage prayers once I got Debla. Actually, Lorquiana is the exception, as I used it a lot to get passed big enemies while keeping a distance.

Favorite Hearts:

• Molten Heart of Boiling Blood: For the same reasoning as the Saeta prayer, I needed a way to recover health, and this one was clutch while adventuring through the levels. Especially in the Library with the enemies that spawn the floating heads; those enemies were like life farms for me with the Molten Heart.
• Heart of Smoking Incense: For bosses I used this heart since the Molten Heart doesn't do any good in a boss fight since it recovers health upon kill. So for boss fights I used this heart to make Saeta last longer and to buff Debla.

Bosses (in order, spoilers for DLC bosses):

• Tres Angustias, 63 attempts, with Viridiana: I don't know what I was thinking by heading to Jondo and Grievance Ascends right off the bat. I hadn't done any adventuring or found any of the Stinging Pains health increases, so I did those areas and Tres on a very small health bar, and boy it was tough. It made me wonder if I 'd even be able to complete the Penitence. I think when it comes to Tres, I did that many attempts because I got in a groove where I wasn't really improving and should have taken a break. I was playing at night, and did 60 attempts in one sitting, and actually finally did take a break, and beat it in three attempts the next morning. So I don't know that this attempts metric is really accurate to how hard this boss is. I struggle with Tres a lot though because I'm terrible at having to fight and platform simultaneously. On top of that, even after defensive beads, I could only take three hits from anything, so I had to do the fight pretty cleanly to beat it. It was infuriating.
• Ten Piedad, 1 attempt: I've fought Ten a few times because I've started multiple save files that I haven't completed. I've become very familiar with the fight and Ten's telegraphs, so this one was easy money. Not hard at all.
• Our Lady of the Charred Visage, 2 attempts, with Viridiana: In previous playthroughs, I've struggled a lot with Our Lady. To me, she was one of the hardest bosses. Because of that though, I've fought here many times, so now that I've finally gotten decent at the fight I managed to do it in only two tries. I was shooketh. I struggle with the two hands phase when she uses the rapid fire move with something else, so I found that for me it's best to just be as aggressive as possible to give her less chances to use that move.
• Amanecida of the Golden Blades, 14 attempts: Oh, did I mention that I also did the amanecidas in this run? This one wasn't terrible as far as bosses go, but it took me a bit to figure out the patterns. Super fun boss fight though. Since the amanecidas have a similar way that the fights progress, this one took me the most attempts, because I think I knew what I was getting into quicker with the others.
• Amanecida of the Bejeweled Arrow, 8 attempts: The move where the amanecida shoots 3 or 5 arrows up the wall, and then they lightning strike was tricky for me to figure out. Once I did though, this one went down in a couple tries.
• Exposito, Scion of Abjuration, 2 attempts, with Viridiana: Maybe I should've saved Viridiana for a different one, because I found this fight shockingly easy. I remember it being harder, but I managed it pretty well. I'm pretty sure Viridiana didn't need to heal me in the winning attempt, so I don't think Viridiana is why I beat it so quickly.
• Melquiades, the Exhumed Archbishop, 19 attempts: Yes, I tried a prayer build with Debla, Coagulated Ink and Heart of Smoking Incense. Even though this one is regarded as one of the easiest, I struggled a lot with the mace staff stabby move and never really got the parry timing. Which is odd because I live by the parry in other fights. Maybe I just wasn't at the top of my game for this fight, but it took me longer than I thought I would. Pretty frustrating.
• Quirce, Returned by the Flames, 5 attempts: I've realized this is one of those fights that once you understand the telegraphs and how to respond, it becomes very easy. I think my first few attempts were getting familiar with the moveset again, and once I understood it, boom. Down goes Quirce. Fun fight though.
• Sierpes, 4 attempts: I think this is one of those bosses that some people find difficult, but I don't think I ever have. I've fought Sierpes before, and the first time I fought him (him? her? it?) I think I did it in 2 tries. The struggle with this one was keeping my cool, as on this penitence this fight was looooong. I think it might've been like ten minutes straight. It just felt like I did very little damage, but I find it very doable to avoid all the attacks, so I was able to get it done. Saeta definitely saved me in this fight. On my winning attempt, at one point I was at a tiny sliver of health, but was able to recover thanks to the prayer. I was glad because I think it was near the end of the fight, and with how long it was taking I did not want to start all over. Pro tip: you can parry the bite lunge forward. I'm not sure everyone knows that, but it makes it much easier.
• Amanecida of the Chiselled Steel, 7 attempts: I think this one might've been my favorite, I think it was a fun fight. Not too hard to figure out, I think it was mostly a parry timing thing. Also figuring out that you can hit the green swirly blades out of the way made a big difference.
• Isidora, Voice of the Dead, 13 attempts: Keep in mind I've fought Isidora before. In my previous playthrough where I explored everything, I fought Isidora and Sierpes, although I didn't do ending C. Isidora is frustrating, man. The first phase I think is pretty easy, it's the second phase where the fireballs start constantly floating around that I start getting absolutely bullied. The strategy I ended up using was trying to get through the first phase almost flawlessly and without Saeta, and then while she's rising for the second phase, spam two Deblas, and then flask if needed and survive for a third. I finished this fight on a sliver of health. I'm sure if this was the first time I fought her, I'm sure it would've taken me at least 30 attempts. Love love love the boss music though.
• Amanecida of the Molten Thorn, 3 attempts: At first I thought it would take me wayyyy longer by how the first two attempts went, but then I somehow magically figured out the parry timing and bam. So I guess it wasn't too hard.
• Laudes, the First of the Amanecidas, 3 attempts: I mean, this boss is just all the previous amanecidas rolled into one, with pretty much none of the moves that I really struggled with. The struggle here was that I couldn't prevent her from reshelling in between phases so destroying the shell each time was kinda tough. Overall not too difficult, but super fun and super cinematic.
• Crisanta, of the Wrapped Agony, 15 attempts: After Tres, I decided if I made it to 15 attempts I should take a break. I didn't with Melquiades for whatever reason, but I totally would've with Crisanta because of the second phase (the second phase is exclusive to Ending C for anyone who didn't know). I managed to do it on my last attempt for the session though which felt super satisfying. The difficulty of it is really just the change in pacing for the parry, so it took some practice but I got it.
• His Holiness EscribaLast Son of the Miracle, kinda 4, but actually 6 attempts: Technically it was 4 attempts, but I ran out of time and had to leave during the true form of escribar phase so I had to fight it again. Got it in 2 attempts the second session, so not too bad. I don't think either of the phases is that hard once you understand the attack patterns. I find the fireballs the hardest to avoid.
• True Form of Escribar, 20-ish attempts: Also just an ending C thing. I didn't really track this since you can't pause the game and once you "die" here you just instantly start over. The stupid spinning toxin balls were the death of me, and are why it took so many tries, as I burned through several attempts right at the beginning cause they kept getting me. It's also not really worth tracking attempts since this bit feels more for cinematics since dying really has no consequence.

And yeah, that's about it. I also ended the game with 412,410 tears of atonement, even after buying all the shop items, and donating entirely to the church, including getting the skin. If y'all have any recommendations for which of the remaining two penitences I should do next or any boss tips, I'd love to hear. Sorry about the novel of a post but I wanted to share my experience as it was very challenging to finish the game on this penitence. Also, as a random fun fact, those charging dudes in the Wall of Holy Prohibitions? I didn't have any trouble with them in the regular game but they were a complete pain in NG+. Hate them so much.

As mentioned in the title, my landlord/property manager is trying to evict my husband and I's next door neighbor for the lease violation of nuisance behavior and quiet enjoyment infringement. For the past few years I've been treated to intimidating, stalkerish behavior, verbal and sexual harassment, and wall pounding, and have generally not been able to feel comfortable in our apartment, and have had to change our lives around in order to avoid him. I will attach my initial post which goes into much more detail.
They've been really proactive and helpful and did everything right with sending a warning letter, which didn't work, a 30 days notice, a 3 day notice, now they are facing him in court on June 11th because he's fighting it- aggressively. We have agreed to testify, as has the previous PM and a maintenance guy. He has an attorney who is counterclaiming for $25,000 plus punitive damages, which seems like just another way to drag things out, which he's done a lot of (begging to stay, trying to put rent in escrow, threatening to sue for age discrimination, etc.)
We have several instances recorded of him harassing us (video/audio) and examples of wall pounding, and the PM has phone messages he's left her (they have issues with him too) , and a complaint letter I submitted last year, and I don't know what else.
My question is- how can we best help our PM and their attorney win? It's a bench trial, which seems like it's very quick- there's a bunch scheduled for the same time slot with the same judge. How much detail can we possibly get into, or should we just keep it very simple and basically just confirm we've had our right to quiet enjoyment violated? I've never gone to court before so the idea of him somehow winning is pretty scary- so I want to do my best to be concise but also effective.
ORIGINAL POST

The good:
Greater affixes: GAs made loot more interesting and exciting, and added a long term goal/chase to improve the character and squeeze out more power in a moderate way without feeling too necessary. Single GA items are quite plenty and can improve the player power well if hit on the most important affix, and are also easily obtainable via trade. 3 GA items give the player something to chase after they hit a specific power level, so no matter how far you are in item progression, there is always something to make me excited.
The second great thing about Greater Affixes is that if you reach a certain item progression point, you dont have to bother with non-GA items anymore. Gone are the days where, no matter how far i progressed through a season, i had to spend an unfun amount of time checking every item, every rare and legendary that dropped for a potentional upgrade, because you could always miss out on that armor with triple damage reduction affixes for example. Now i only have to check my GA drops, maybe also non-GA Amulets, and can simply salvage/sell the rest without bothering. Reducing item affixes from 4 to 3 also speeds up the loot evaluation quite well.
Affix revamp: great additions, a lot of affixes i will never miss gone. Druid got spirit per second, helped in the early leveling stages alot.
Codex rework: this is the best change in this season so far, it opens up so much inventory space. Some aspects were quite rare, i had seasons where i only found one single max roll of a specific aspect many days into the season. The problem there was storing this aspect forever in the stash, because i refused to pull the trigger and use it on a subpar item. The second great thing about the aspect change is, that it encourages tinkering and trying out stuff, because you can now use it as many times as you want.
Tormented Bosses: A huge improvement of the Uber Boss Rotation Meta. Doing Uber Rotas in the past was extremly boring if you reached the point where these bosses died in seconds. They were loot pinatas for Uber uniques. You were spending most of the time running, sitting in loading sceen or selling stuff to the vendor. The actual gameplay lasted like a few seconds. Right now, the Tormented Uber bosses feel like a real challenge, i had a Group early in the season that wiped 10 times on Andariels last intermission phase until we downed her. That challenge was fun. Unfortunately the group leader got his/her achievement, and simply left the group. Guess who spend the mats on the first summoning. Dont be that asshole. At least, if you are the group leader, and miscalculated the power of these bosses, and just want to opt out, at least you could have asked the group to give the player who summoned a compensation, or ask if one of the people who havent summoned yet to leave and then find a carry who gets paid by everybody putting money together. Whatever, lesson learned.
Trading: Being able to trade all items except uber uniques opens up a new way of improving your character. It also makes item drops more exciting, because even if you find a good item that isnt useful for your build, you can trade it away and slowly accumulate enough gold to buy whats best for your current character progression and build.
I have to admid, trading is tedious sometimes, i use diablo.trade, i only put at least single GA items that have useful affixes for sale, and i dont use a fixed price but ask for offers. Mostly only 10-20% of what i have in store attracts buyers at all. Maybe because i play Druid, not the FOTM class this season. Furthermore, more than half of the bids i get seem to be lowball scams. Still, over several days, i sold plenty of items in a range from 5m to 75m, on average like 15m, and was able to accumulate 500m in this process. Still, the time and effort to put all these items for trade, check and learn the value of items, communicating with the seller quick enough so they still need the item and the actual trading was at least one hour time investment per day. I then used 75m gold to buy 2 GA pants to reach my Armor Cap, because that was my weakest item in my build so far. I was able to improve my weakest point in terms of item progression and reap the fruits of hours spending trading without only relying on drop rng. Then i spend another 100m to get a 2 GA Amulet, because that item slot was the very next best way to improve my char by giving me +4% crit and more movementspeed overall, replacing my non-GA Amulet. Unfortunately it was time to roll +2 Envenom on this amulet, 100 rolls and 300m gold later i got a few +2 skills rolls, but no envenom. RIP. Rng giveth and taketh away.
This is a bit offtopic, but i would love to be able to relist an item on diablo.trade. For Diablo 2 i use Traderie, and Traderie has the option to relist an item every 24 hours, so it appears on top of searches again. Right now on diablo.trade, if you dont sell an item after 2-3 days, it will rot in nirvana forever, unless it is a really good rare item that sells for 100m+. Nobody will browse 8 pages of listings until they see the your single GA item you posted 3 days ago. You can delete your old listings and relist them, but this is quite a time investment with how bugged the item reading service is on this page and could be made way easier by allowing to bump an item back to new with a single click like every 2 days or so.
The mixed feeling:
Tempering: Lets improve itemization in this game by simply adding another layer of gambling to it. Thx, no. I didn't mind it in the beginning, item drops were plenty, but as soon as i reached a point where item upgrades became quite expensive, where i had to spend days of farming and trading to accumulate the gold to be able to buy them, bricking these expensive items totally takes away the incentive for me to improve and bother about 2 or 3 GA items at all. It just feels bad to not hit what you need for your build and the fact that you only have 5 tempering attempts and most categories have 4 possible affixes makes bricking an items quite probable. Lets not talk about the fact that you mostly want to hit 2 specifix affixes. The second feelsbad moment is, when you actually hit your desirable affixes on the very first attempts, but they roll low, and you are stuck with the decision whether you want to use the 4 temper attempts remaining to improve the roll. From my experience, its not worth the try. Still, it feels weird to have temper attempts left, but using them will mostly brick the item.
What i would love to see:
at least give me the choice of keeping my old temper roll if i try to roll another time, similar to the enchanter. At least i can choose the very next best affix that shows up, so there are more usable, mediocre outcomes instead of complete bricks. And i still have the chance to create an item for a different spec, if my mainspec affixes dont show up at all. As Bob Ross said: happy little accidents.
The second idea would be able to reset or increase temper rolls, but make it expensive. Stygian Stones, huge amount of gold, Pit materials, or some dungeon/outdoor rare drop thematically fitting. whatever.
Temper affixes: the affixes you can get via tempering are a nice addition to many builds, they have unique effects, that havent been there before, but, in my opinion, some of them are a bit to powerful. Some are disproportionally strong compared to other affixes, aspects, uniques, paragon nodes. There is no second best alternative that comes close. It limits choice. Furthermore we have builds, that got a crazy power boost, and builds that got left behind. Maybe we could get more temper choices in the future, but hopefully they wont increase tempering rng and bricking even more. On the other hand you cannot compare apples and pears, because every build has its own stengths and weaknesses, so those tempers can help alot to improve a build in terms of playability/playstyle if it cant be fixed in a different way. I just hope this game doesnt develop into the direction of diablo 3, where itemization was dictated by effects like +500% damage to an ability, or + 10.000% dmg via set items. Changing those item slots was a mistake, and there was no other choice. Diablo 4 has a really interesting approach compared to D3, most skills, paragon nodes, affixes, aspects, or unique effects gave the player power increases in the 10-30% range, so a lot of these never felt obligatory. I'm still constantly changing two of my offenisve aspects in my build, because there is no clear winner. And dropping an offensive aspect because i feel like i need more survivability right now, doesnt feel like completely crippling my damage. There are of course outliners, like Shepherds Aspect, the very next best alternative is just too far behind, so it feels mandatory on many builds and occupies 3 ability slots on top of that. I wouldnt mind if passives, nodes, aspects or items currently overperforming in the game would be nerfed in the future, because from my experience nerfing power outliners (and some new tempers seem to be that case) creates more build diversity and freedom of choice/individualization. In short: there will always be a best setup for a specific environment, and the actual balancing act is imho about how far behind the very next alternatives or build are behind.
Masterworking: No opinion on that, feels like a long term resource/time investment to squeeze out the last bit of power. I'm currently running with the strategy to try to hit at least the first and second masterwork crit on one of the two most important affixes if i have an item that i will keep for some time, and dont care what the last masterwork crit will bring. Hitting all three on one specific affix feels not worth the effort. I came across an idea from a different redditor to allow to reset to a specific masterwork tier, so you dont have to start from scratch every time you want to give your slotmachine a new try, but honestly i dont care. Hitting the last MW crit seems to be something for perfectionists, and im ok with above average. As far as i could get behind the mechanics of MW, it seems that there is a potential to waste masterwork crits on +skill affixes, if you dont reach a certain breakpoint for the next level with that masterwork crit. But not 100% sure about that.
The Pit: Oh boy. What is happening on reddit. First of all, i'm really thankful that Blizzard implements content that makes me test my limits and sweat. It feels good to be the director of how much difficulty i want, simply by choosing which Pit level i want to go for. Chill day? -15 levels from whats my personal best. Wanna sweat and progress? Lets push my highest level so far. This will always be the case, every build, every player will run into a wall. Yes, classes are imbalanced between each other right now, but does it really matter? Sure it can be improved in the future, but right now you need Pit level 61 to have access to everything in this game. I don't know what people want, but if you are not a total newcomer to this game, and spend some time building up your character and to leran and understand the mechanics of this game or dont lack some skill, this doenst seem to be that hard to me for the last Tier that really matters and for content, that is supposed to test your limits.
Before season start i read about damage reduction affixes mostly being removed from the game, and that we get a new near-endless scaling late game activity, so i had the supposition that stacking life will be an important part of the players defensives. I went with 5 paragon boards this time, to grab every +% life node i could get on them. Yes, maybe i do 10% less damage than a 6-board that way, but +% life seems pretty busted in this game, because it always increases your current hp by this amount, regardless of how many +% you already have.
Boy, glad i did, those bosses were slappin. As i slowly climbed the pit, it was clear to me, that the bosses are the hardest part, and my first goal was to increase my hp even more, until i dont get oneshot by most of those abilities anymore. To be able to make mistakes every now and then without ruining the whole try. The bosses were the solely reason why i would fail climbing higher, not by running out of time, but by dying too often during the fight. I further tried to adapt my build to do as much single target damage as possible. Might need one more minute fighting trash, but i want to make the hard part of the dungeon as short as possible. This might change in higher tiers, i dont know. Improvise, adapt, overcome. I rock with +3 evade boots, because i want to be able to hit that evade button twice in a row, for miscalculated situations, where i couldnt afford to attack the enemy. I put methamorphosis aspect on my boots to have a second cc break against the naga eyes that stun, if i fail to dodge them, or simply to be able to get out of the vortex shadow attack, if i fucked up my trample cd, because it gives evade a bigger range. So far it worked. I'm currently sitting at pit level 95 with a few minutes left, feels ok for my homebrew human lightning storm druid. I am 5 levels away from pit 100, so i'm close to hit the damage income cap, after pit 100 the damage you take won't increase anymore. And i still have the possibility to add +life on my amulet and ring, to change my keeper glyph to give me +8% more life. I dont have Shako or Tyraels yet, items with very strong defenives, i'm at masterwork 8/12, most items only have one GA. So still a lot of room in terms of survivability. Most abilities are actually not oneshot. Unless your defensives are poor. Maybe i'm wrong, and some classes are struggling with survivability. But right now, for endgame, it seems balanced, because i already saw some videos, people facetanking those bosses with nearly best in slot gear. So if you have the fantasy to facetank the hardest content in the game, because this game is 100% action for you, there is hope. Give it some time. We are 2 and a half weeks into the season, and aquiring the best items takes some time and effort, to beat the hardest content in the game. and to be honest with the amout of stuff you get shoven up your ass this season with iron wolf and seasonal caches, having like multiple free tromented boss rotas, getting your uber uniques will happen eventually. You get free sparks, you can level alts to get more sparks. This season feels like christmas. If you know what you are doing and you have some exp from past season, if you just stick to the iron wolf and seasonal journey and spam your free mats you can pretty much rush to the highest content in like 3 days. It feels crazy.
Back to the Pit. I'm ok with the "oneshot" mechanics people complain about so far, the real problem i see is the frequency of those abilities, basically stage 3 in a bossfight. Against some combinations, i have like 10% damage uptime on the boss, and 90% i'm playing dodgeball. It's a little bit too much to be honest. Give the player some breathing room. Boss fights also feel punishing, because if you die at trash, you only get your death penalty. But if you die 3 minutes into the bossfight, because you made one mistake, you not only get your penalty, but also lose 3 more minutes. Maybe the timer could stop as soon as you reach the boss, then you still have 10 tries before your equipment breaks. Or bosses keeps the hp value they had before you died. Not sure about that, maybe that would be too easy. But overall, the difficulty ratio between trash and boss feels a bit off. I'm also not a big fan of those shadow attacks, because i would like to have bosses be thematically challenging. Wolf boss has an intermission with his pack showing up, snake has 3 more poison themed attacks, and so on. Having random shadow clones as the difficulty raiser feels thematically a bit off to me.
The bad: I didn't enjoy the leveling process that much. It was way too fast, and the content was a steamroll. I started every season on WT 2 so far, although people say WT 1 is faster leveling. But thats not my kind of priority. I like to have an actual feel of danger in the world when i start a new character, mob types matter to me, i want the bears and giant goatmen to whoop my ass if i dont pay attention. Still remember my first time in WT3 Helltides in season 1, mobs were actually an overwhelming force if you dived too mindlessly. Thats way more interesting gameplay for me, than everything being generic cannon fodder from minute 1. I leave that part for when i actually mastered my build, instead i enjoy a slow and steady power increase throughout leveling, and i honestly dont care if it takes a week to reach 100. the early game is an important part of the game for me, where i can try out a lot of stuff according to the loot i get to always have a different leveling experience every season. Well, it was probably my fault, i respected the capstone dungeons too much and did capstone one with 45 and capstone 2 with 60. the bossfights lasted like seconds. Next season i will try them earlier. Still the leveling was so fast i was drowned in materials, items, skillpoints, nothing really mattered as i would like to, items lasted for a few hours at best, i stopped spending my skillpoints at some point, simply because they were flying in so fast. The helltide never felt like hell, the only exception was the hellborne spawn after threat reset, and the blood maiden fire ring. Everything else was swatting insects. Helltide Commanders died in 2 seconds. I dont know, tempers and the new affixes made some parts of the game (also NMDs) being outscaled way too fast. Maybe the difficulties could be adapted, to allow for a more RPG style playthrough from minute 1.
For some people all this game is about is 100% loot. For others pure action, or rpg, in depth character build creation. I dont know, let everyone have something in this game. I personally dislike the helltides feeling like an amusement park, but ok, let the players who enjoy it have it. Im not a fan of loot pinatas. But every now and then its fun. Not everything has to be something for me. And the fact that they add more content, where you can choose your difficulty, is a great plus. (mindcage, pit)
Hope that's not too much overall negative feedback, because at long last, i'm having fun.
Thank you for reading, and may the GA stars shine upon you.

Mobile game
PVP gacha unit placement
Late 2010-maybe 2021 at the latest
2D cartoony medieval with possible cyberpunk/tech skins and units
Some of the units were: Gas mortar bombers, Had cannons on their back that they loaded gas bombs into to launch across the map, mine had plague doctor skins. Hounds. Regular dogs, skeleton dogs Skeleton spam troops Spearmen A necromancer that would spawn skeletons from gravestones of killed units A tesla tower? A single skeleton dude with a bomb that just ran in a straight line and blew up whenever it ran into something I believe you could put walls down There were little mines that would mind control enemy troops and turn them into allies There was a unit that did the same thing but it took forever and I can't remember anything about it other than that
Gameplay went as followed You'd place your units on the left side of the field. It was free placement so your whole left side was open. No tiles or anything to limit you, just space and unit cap. When ready to fight you'd hit a button on the bottom right of the screen and the right side of the map would slide from the top to the bottom of the screen like slots. Eventually it would stop on another players field and the troops would auto battle.
I know you could change the scenery of your side of the field and that would carry on to pvp. Your chosen background could be different than your opponents. I know you could change your profile picture. I know there were battle passes that would give you various themed cosmetics for units. You earned trophies and that would move you through different environments that served as rank brackets. Some environments were forrests, underwater ocean, winter forrest, a volcano, a gray castle hallway, an open grass field. Getting to that environment tended to unlock a background to match it. I can't recall any active gameplay besides setting up your troops and then starting the battle.

(Note: ‘retail’ refers to the regular Neopets website, currently owned by NetDragon, previously owned by JumpStart - thank you u/fancytables)
BACKGROUND
Before I begin this post, it is important to talk about what Neopets is and why a classic version of it was created in the first place. Neopets is a virtual petsite where you can own pixel pets, converse with other players on the neoboards, play games, meet people through guilds (which are like clubs geared toward certain interests), and partake in daily activities. Because Neopets is now a 24-year-old site, many of its users have been around for a while and remember what Neopets was like pre-conversion.
In 2007, Viacom (the company that owned the domain at the time) decided to “convert” all pets in order to introduce customization–a new site feature where you could spend real money to dress up your pets. While pre-conversion Neopets had dynamic poses and character, post-conversion Neopets were static and rather awkward. Most species and color combinations were automatically converted, but owners of certain combinations were given the option to keep their original unconverted pet. This drove up the value of unconverteds (otherwise known as UCs), and created a fierce trading system on Neopets. In a sea of converted pets, everyone wanted an unconverted.
Players had the option to trade around and work their way up to getting one of these highly coveted pets–but starting from ground zero often meant working on a singular trade chain for years, if not decades. This was a daunting task for many. Soon enough, there was a robust black market for unconverted pets…and when I say robust, I mean, people who desperately wanted these “UC” pets were flooding the “black market” with thousands of US dollars per year.
Millions of players who had been there since the beginning of Neopets would continue to be discouraged by the site's direction for years to come. In 2020, it was announced that Adobe Flash would soon be discontinued. With the termination of Flash, all the beloved Neopets games that relied on it were lost. Three years ago, Neopets further dug its own grave by introducing NFTS. Needless to say, the active player base has dramatically decreased over the years.
NEOPETS CLASSIC IS DEBUTED
Enter Neopets Classic (NPC), a fansite made to model early 2000s Neopets when there were around 3 million active users. For privacy purposes, the name Kiko will refer to the site’s creator (all screenshots with him will be censored in YELLOW). Kiko began working on this project as a way to learn code in his offtime. He began posting screenshots of the progress he was making with NPC on Reddit as far back as 5 years ago (2019). To say Neopets fans were excited is an understatement. When the site eventually opened to the public in December 2020, tons of users rushed to make accounts and create the unconverted pets they had never imagined getting to own, along with names that are probably stuck on frozen accounts from 2003 or so on retail. Instead of Rose6920Neopets, it was possible for a user on Neopets Classic to actually make the pet “Rose”. In its early days, the site was incredibly nostalgic and fulfilling for many people.
Kiko opened a Patreon account where people could show their support through monthly donations ranging from $1 to $25. Each tier unlocked special rewards on NPC’s Discord server, but the most appealing was the ability to make an NPC account for $1. After the initial wave of sign-ups, the site closed regular sign-ups to manage the influx of users as there were easily 200 members already. The only way people could get accounts after this point was by donating, or to wait for sign-up links to be posted about every month or so to the Discord. After receiving an email from Patreon where they warned him of Neopets copyright issues, Kiko moved to Buy Me A Coffee (BMAC).
A few months into Neopets Classic, there was a surge of site bugs and issues that went unfixed and quickly piled up. Kiko was nowhere to be found for almost two months. There was no communication indicating when users could expect fixes to the issues they were facing in game. Not even the mods were able to tell the users when or even if he would be back. He came back eventually, with no word of apology or explanation for his absence. This left users quite upset at the lack of communication while he was MIA, and not knowing whether their ongoing donations were going to waste if the site never started working properly again.
Kiko’s prolonged absence opened a door for many cheaters to abuse the site. This included the use of various bots and scripts that could auto-refresh around the site and auto-buy items from shops. Additionally, several users funneled items and neopoints (the in-game Neopets currency) from their side accounts to their main accounts, which was against the rules. Upon his return, Kiko was made aware of the massive cheating issue and started issuing bans accordingly. He created a channel within the Discord titled “Wall of Shame”, where he mocked the users he froze and immortalized their “crimes.” Ironically, Kiko himself had quite a bit of experience with similar illegal behavior on retail Neopets. He had previously been a black market seller of “UC” pets for real money on retail - and Clraik, a forum-based website dedicated to sharing and engaging in Neopets cheats, did not hesitate to expose this in his ban message from their site. Interestingly, Kiko had previously been fairly involved in the Clraik community and even recruited his first Neopets Classic players from there. He eventually deleted the channel.
Kiko also shamed his own playerbase behind closed doors in BMAC-only channels, but the Wall of Shame wouldn't be the first time he did so publicly. During the Halloween event in 2021, players collected candy around the site that came in different varieties. To redeem prizes, you had to collect certain varieties of candies - and if you didn’t have those varieties, you could swap candies with other users to get what you needed. One user made an unpopular choice to ask for multiples of one kind of candy for less of another and received severe backlash from not only the community but Kiko himself. While some users agreed that the player was acting out of line and applauded Kiko’s condemnation of the user, many others were grossly uncomfortable with the site creator openly ridiculing a player who wasn’t breaking any known game rules. Kiko had started a dogpile where members of the community continued to speak against the user, who then felt bullied off the site. A few friends of his followed suit and quit playing.
ART CHAOS
On March 7th, 2022, an NPC artist (who will henceforth be referred to as Carmariller) asked Kiko for permission to add a commissioned pet to the site that had been commissioned by a user with Neopoints. Kiko said yes and gave her permission, noting that it wasn’t any different from a user paying for a commission, as long as the user was fine with it being on the site. Their stone Shoyru design was eventually added to the site. Later on, several other users pitched in together to pay for a commission of another pet design from Carmariller in hopes of it being added to the site. When the site’s main moderator (let’s call her Lupe) found out about this in a public channel, she made it clear that commissions for pets to be added to the site were not allowed anymore, claiming it was unfair for users who couldn’t pay to affect site art through neopoints. However, those who had commissioned the art were confused and upset that this decision was made in direct opposition to the precedent of the Stone Shoyru. Following Lupe’s claims of unfairness, several users chimed in to express that it was problematic that users had commissioned art to be added to the site. Carmariller took a lot of heat from this discourse, which caused them to take a break from NPC. This series of interactions will be important later on.
ISSUES WITH INCLUSIVENESS
During April 2022, it was announced that a spring Easter event would take place on NPC. In the suggestions channel of the Discord server, a user submitted a suggestion to incorporate small nods to other religions because all the events around the holiday season were Christian-centric. This opened the door for a few users to vehemently disagree, stating that religion had no place on Neopets, that the site could never be “100% inclusive”, and that someone will always be upset. What started off as an innocuous suggestion for more inclusive features on the site ended in a heated debate, with many users feeling hurt and angry by the seemingly xenophobic arguments being made against the suggested features. Users from marginalized groups began to feel unsafe in the server as users were allowed to freely speak out against suggestions to make the site and community more inclusive with no mod intervention. When Kiko eventually came online, he did little to comfort those marginalized voices when he wrote that he wasn’t interested in “pandering to other cultures”, and that “Christian holidays are secular in western societies”. A user suggested adding a menorah or sugar skulls to represent Jewish and Mexican holidays, respectively. He wrote that he wasn’t interested in adding these items “any more than he was interested in adding a crucifix” item to the site. Some users responded that a crucifix is a symbol of the entire Christianity movement, whereas a menorah would be a symbol of Hanukkah and wouldn’t be different from the features that already exist on the site to represent Christmas, such as the advent calendar and the Christmas paint for pets and petpets. To this, Kiko just responded with a screenshot of his Google search where he googled “is menorah a religious symbol”.
Users became even more upset with his response, which seemed tone-deaf and careless in light of the conversation. A Jewish user argued that the menorah is tied to a single Jewish holiday, whereas a crucifix embodies Christianity as a whole. (NOTE: this is noted in the screenshots provided in the link, but several of the screenshots were taken recently whereas some were taken the day of this incident. In the last screenshot, where it says that a Discord user is responding to a message that has been deleted, the original message entailed Kiko’s message where he sent screenshots of his Google searches).
Users grew more weary of Kiko as he wrote that he would introduce a slow-mode in the suggestions channel since the users “couldn’t behave themselves”. To many users, it felt as though Kiko had been punishing and scolding them for expressing their hurt, without reprimanding the users who argued against the implementation of inclusive features.
Kiko and the users who were against adding features to represent other religions and cultures besides Christianity wrote that they would not have been able to “get it right” anyway since Kiko and his moderators were all white. A user responded to this and wrote that those kinds of arguments were often used as an excuse by non-marginalized individuals to not try to be inclusive by seeking out advice from the groups that they were attempting to represent. To this, Kiko reacted with an eye-rolling emoji instead of responding to the user directly and having a conversation about his reasoning.
After this debacle, some of the Neopets Classic Discord moderators created a separate server to invite BIPOC and address their concerns. A number of players disagreed with this move, because they felt that they were being pushed out of the main server and forced to express their concerns elsewhere, but the change was pushed regardless. Notably, Kiko, Kiko’s sister (who had been invited on to help him with the site), and the main moderator Lupe were not in this server. At first, the moderators involved piled the server members with apologies and asked for advice on how to do better. The advice was forthcoming from BIPOC players who committed to the emotional labor necessary to help the team understand–but they never understood. It was very quickly evident to everyone in the server that the team had no intentions of promoting inclusiveness, or a safe space for BIPOC players.
One member expressed that they were deeply uncomfortable with Lupe because of her pattern of silencing BIPOC users. The moderator running the server (let’s call her Moehog) meant to address BIPOC concerns told this member, and I quote, “I’m not going to comment on that. You can view her as you wish.” Immediately, the other members of the server called Moehog out on her inappropriate response. Moehog did not apologize or take any action against Lupe. It is important to note that during these conversations which were supposed to be geared toward making NPC a more inclusive space, Moehog was responding to messages in the private NPC staff chat with approval about how a Black member of the community would rant about being painted as a “an angry Black woman” while having a “nasty personality”. Screenshots of this are included further down.
BANNED NAMES - AND THE START OF NPC'S DOWNFALL
On May 24th, 2022, a user reported the pet ‘Soviet’, claiming that it was an insensitive name that shouldn’t exist on a p​​et site given the fact that Russia had very recently invaded Ukraine. The NPC mod team forced a “name change” for the pet Soviet, where the user received a name change token so that they may change the new name to another untaken name. Users began reporting other names that could be deemed offensive, such as Bimbo, Twink, and the username ‘slut’. Other users immediately took issue with the removal of pet names that were reclaimed slurs, such as Bimbo, and began asking the moderators about it in the NPC Discord server. One user, a Black woman (we’ll call her Aisha), pointed out that pets as harmless as Bimbo were being removed yet the pet Minstrel was owned by a NPC moderator - in fact, it was owned by the main moderator, Lupe. (While the word minstrel may mean medieval singer or musician, it is also strongly associated with blackface as in American history it referred to a member of a band of typically white actors with blackened faces. Minstrels performed songs, dances, and formulaic comic routines based on stereotyped depictions of Black Americans.)
Lupe swiftly deleted Aisha’s message that called out her pet Minstrel and wrote a reply stating that the pet Minstrel was in the process of being name-changed, and that users should submit tickets for any issues they have with pet names. It was never made apparent why action was immediately taken with Soviet and Bimbo, but not Minstrel. Aisha wrote another post about how it felt like her voice was being silenced, especially as a Black woman speaking about the hypocrisy of the moderators deleting pet names while owning a pet with harsh racist connotations. Aisha was swiftly banned from the server. It didn’t take long for users to come to her defense and demand to know why she was banned from the server for expressing her feelings of discomfort. Another moderator (Maple) claimed that he had attempted to mute Aisha for ‘inflammatory speech’ but had accidentally banned her instead. This caused outrage in the community, as more and more users denounced the silencing of marginalized voices without addressing any of the harm that was done. You might be asking: where was Kiko during all of this?
Kiko had been gone for several weeks at this point. By now, the users were used to this. Kiko was often gone without word, and left it up to his moderators to handle any and all issues--really, it was often Lupe dealing with the public chat while the other moderators held more of a backseat position. He did, however, come out of the woodworks to write about how angry he was with the community for “causing drama”. Once again, he placed the blame in the playerbase and found no fault within the community moderators for inflicting harm to their players. Furthermore, he wrote that he was proceeding to shut down non-informational channels. Only BMAC supporters (i.e., people who were paying real life money) were allowed to converse and use the Discord server as normal. In his post, Kiko also wrote that the server was shutting down in order to find new moderators to help keep the peace within the community. During this time, on the evening of May 24th, screenshots from staff chat had been leaked where Kiko is seen claiming that the “argument for reclaimed slurs is dumb”, followed by a joke about how NPC supports bullying minorities and white supremacy. This led several users to feel uncomfortable, believing that Kiko was joking about something that still felt so raw and painful for them.
After most of the player base was suddenly unable to communicate in the main server, many users moved to the site’s neoboards. Although they were glitchy and had many broken links, it sufficed as everyone needed a way to talk about the mess that just occurred in the main NPC server. Remember Carmariller? People were still unsatisfied with how Carmariller was driven away from the site. Some users took to posting “JUSTICE FOR CARMARILLER” on the neoboards, but were swiftly frozen (in which you are never allowed to play NPC again) or temporarily banned/muted. Carmariller returned to the boards to reveal that she never knew commissions for site art weren't allowed as Kiko had previously given her permission to accept commissions from users to eventually add to the site (as shown in a previous screenshot). Kiko showed up to say that he only did that the one time. Carmariller wrote that he said it wasn’t a problem that one time, so she assumed it wouldn’t be a problem later. Kiko then asked Carmariller if she would take time off from work any day she wanted if her boss had previously given her a day off. This was enough for Carmariller to quit the site and never partake in the community ever again. That, however, wouldn't stop the site from continuing to use her art and pet designs that she only had given permission for before quitting the art team. Not too long after, the entire board was deleted by either Kiko or his staff.
KIKO'S ABSENCE
The shutdown of the main server for NPC occurred on May 24th, 2022. After Kiko wrote that long post, he disappeared for nearly three months. The main server became a ghost town, and hardly anyone ever posted there. Much of this is due to the fact that most of the playerbase couldn’t chat there, since they weren’t BMAC supporters. Even though Kiko had left and there was no news of change or progress on the site or in the community, the BMAC stayed open. This meant new users were continuing to donate $1 for accounts that they weren’t getting because Kiko was M.I.A. and unable to process their links. As familiar as prolonged disappearances of Kiko were to old players, several new people who had not come to expect this by now were anxious about where their money was going. There were frequent inquiries posted in the discord about when new users could expect to receive a sign-up link. Mixed messaging from the moderators in response made the situation all the more tense. Lupe made an announcement that Kiko and his sister will return but was unable to say when, and used privacy concerns as reasoning to not elaborate on why they had “to take some time away due to IRL, external matters.” This left many users genuinely concerned that something may have happened to him that pulled him away from the site that the mod didn’t want to share publicly. One artist even mentioned that Kiko tends to his grandfather who was sick at the time, leading users to worry as they began to wonder if everything was alright. Later, a user asked the mod Moehog if Kiko left because of the heated discourse surrounding pet names like Soviet and Minstrel. Moehog responded that the Kiko and his sibling were simply away on holiday, and just needed some relaxation time. Users were bewildered at the lack of simple communication prior either by the devs or the mod announcement to say that they were taking a short break and would be back. Donors in particular were frustrated that they could have saved their monetary contributions for an account had they known it would be some time before Kiko returned.
During Kiko’s long absence, the NPC moderators decide to promote a prominent art team member to moderator status. We’ll call them Chia. The first action Chia took as a moderator was to delete the Spanish-Chat channel, where Spanish and Portuguese NPC users previously talked about the game in… well… Spanish and Portuguese. Given the fact that much of the tension in the NPC community stemmed from issues regarding racism and xenophobia, many users felt like this was a terrible decision which went against the very thing they sought: inclusivity in the NPC community. Chia responded and wrote that their intention was to delete non-essential channels, and that it wasn’t uncommon in larger Discords to exclude non-English channels. Users were quick to note that this was a popular xenophobic sentiment in those very gaming communities.
Because over half of the playerbase was shut out of communicating in the main NPC server, a few individuals made a side server titled “NPC Peeps”. Many NPC users migrated to this server to keep up with the community while these harsh changes were implemented upon the playerbase. It is important to note that none of the NPC staff or moderators were allowed in this server, as it was created initially to aid NPC users in airing out their grievances without the fear of being punished in the community or on the site. Site artists were allowed but later removed.
Then, it came to light that Maple had been actively spying in the “NPC Peeps” server on a burner account, and taking unauthorized screenshots within a private venting channel to use against players. Many players were frozen on the site or banned from the main discord server at the whims of the moderator team. Reasons were never given for these bans, so many assumed it was simply for speaking negatively about NPC, even though these discussions took place in a separate server. The second server had been created as a safe space for all NPC players, especially BIPOC members, and many users felt as though this was a gross invasion of privacy that made them feel even more unsafe.
After Maple’s burner account was banned, he and other moderators and artists continued to attempt to get into the second server and spy on users. (A screenshot of a site artist proposing the idea of sending friends to spy in the NPC Peeps server with Lupe agreeing is provided here)
In the BIPOC server, members expressed their concerns about the unwelcome surveillance, but were again met with unsympathetic ears. Moehog informed the members that she planned to quit as a moderator, and that the BIPOC server would have to take their concerns elsewhere. Members of the server took the opportunity to once and for all express serious frustration with how their concerns had been handled, and how nothing had ever come of their concerns (Moehog had only told them she would pass on their recommendations to Kiko, and Kiko had never responded). Moehog then said that she was keeping the server open as a favor to them and because she didn’t “want their emotional labor to go to waste.” Another member who had applied to be a moderator months earlier expressed that, if they became a moderator, the first thing they would do would be to ask Maple to step down from his position. Immediately following that message, Moehog deleted the entire server.
PROMINENT MEMBERS LEAVE TO CREATE THEIR OWN SITE
All the discord server drama aside— if you asked any NPC user, you’d find that, from 2020-2022, there was little to actually do on the site: you could restock (which entails buying items from non-playable character shops and reselling them for a profit in your shop or on the trading posts), feed kadoaties, paint your pets with Neopoints you earn through Random Events or by restocking, or do fetch quests from non-player characters, where you must find the item they are asking for and they will give you Neopoints in return. A few long-time NPC users had previously offered their services to Kiko multiple times, constantly telling him that they are familiar with web development and could assist him in adding new features to the site such as games and the Battledome, but Kiko always refused.
So, in July 2022, these same members had become increasingly frustrated with NPC and began working on a new site called Grundo’s Cafe. Grundo’s Cafe was designed to resemble early 2000s Neopets, as well. The idea of an early 2000s Neopets fansite was not new by then, and several had popped up such as Virtu.pet and Moderneo. The creators of Grundo’s Cafe aimed to implement more than NPC already had to offer such as recreating flash games using HTML5, the Battledome, and the beloved Habitarium. On August 12th, Grundo’s Cafe had their Grand Opening, and allowed 100 slots for signups which quickly filled up as dedicated Neopets players were eager to try this new clone. Many former NPC users were excited to play a new site that had many features to offer that actually did represent early 2000s Neopets: functional neoboards, restocking, guilds, flash games, and games such as Sakhmet Solitaire, Dice-a-Roo, and Lenny Conundrum. A few of these were features that took over a year for NPC to provide, and many are features that NPC still does not have.
The next day, on August 13, 2022, all of the Grundo’s Cafe developers and Discord moderators were shocked to find their Neopets Classic accounts had been frozen. Their ban messages simply read ‘C/ping custom text and content from NPC is not allowed.’ Allegedly, the Neopets Classic staff suspected Grundo’s Cafe ripped their code and content and consequently froze their accounts. It was widely unclear, however, what content was thought to have been stolen from NPC as the HTML, content, and images used were from the original Neopets as might be expected from a clone site like NPC itself. There was also no way to dispute their account freezes, as the “contact our support staff” link was broken and led nowhere. The Discord server had also been locked down, requiring users to submit verification forms through Google Forms where a moderator would reach out to them via neomail on the site and give them a password that they had to in turn message to a moderator via Discord. The Grundo’s Cafe moderators in particular were confused and upset that they would be frozen if the reason was stealing website code and content, because their roles as moderators had nothing to do with working on the site development.
Long-time NPC players were horrified by the NPC staff’s actions for a while, but this was the final straw for many. Several users who had been playing since the first couple of months quit NPC and happily joined Grundo’s Cafe never to look back. Some friends of the Grundo’s Cafe staff took it one step further by going directly to the Neopets Classic Discord to air their disappointment. These messages were quickly deleted by the mods online at the time, and the five users involved in the conversation were permanently muted in the server and on the neoboards, and eventually frozen on the site. Several users were also frozen for expressing their discontent with the NPC staff. Users complained that the server felt like severe censorship as they couldn’t express any discontent with the site’s actions without it being deleted or their accounts being muted.
STAFF CHAT LEAKS
Long-time NPC players weren’t the only ones disgusted by the behavior of the NPC staff. One staff member took a huge risk to expose some controversial conversations from the NPC private staff chat which included Kiko, his sister, the mods, and artists. In these screenshots, staff members/moderators and artists are seen mocking Aisha, calling her a “nasty spiteful little bitch” and referring to the player base as “cunts”. They joked about making Aisha’s verification word to get access to discord “minstrel”. Although Kiko and the NPC staff accused the Grundo’s Cafe team of copying and pasting content, screenshots were also leaked of them snooping around to steal scripts and code from Grundo’s Cafe staff members. These scripts were initially created by the Grundo’s Cafe team when they were active users on NPC, and many of the playerbase depended on them. However, after being frozen on NPC, the Grundo’s Cafe team removed access to their scripts, leaving NPC users at a disadvantage. In the previously linked screenshots, staff members are seen discussing how to get those scripts back in order to add them to the NPC website and pass off as their own. They also accused the Grundo’s Cafe main developer of stealing the footer text from NPC, but a Reddit comment from Kiko himself would prove otherwise. Through the leak of these screenshots, it became swiftly apparent to users that the Grundo’s Cafe team was frozen out of pure jealousy or spitefulness at their quick success without any solid reason to back it up. Many of the players who had been loyal through the ups and downs of Neopets Classic over the past two years felt disgusted by the racist remarks made behind closed doors. Any messages regarding the staff chat leaks in the NPC server were deleted, and some users were muted or frozen for attempting to talk about it.
After August 2022, many users stopped playing NPC. Between other Neopets clones such as Grundo’s Cafe, Moderneo, and Virtu.pet, many people found that there was much to do on other sites compared to NPC. Many users also refused to be associated with a site run by individuals such as Kiko and his staff. The drop in active numbers was evident even to NPC users that remained active. On the site homepage, there is a counter of how many users are online at the moment, and there were often only 30-40 members online (whereas in the past, numbers would easily reach triple digits, especially on the weekends). NPC users grew frustrated with the lack of updates and small player base, claiming that it was now difficult to complete quests as no one was restocking and filling their shops with items. In October 2022, users expected a Halloween event, and staff members responded that it was coming, keeping it vague at best. On October 28th, it was announced that a Halloween event would be coming that day. However, the site broke the very same day. Users grew more and more frustrated as they just desired to play on a functional site where the developer actually had an interest in improving the site. A few days went by with radio silence as the site remained unplayable. Then, on November 3rd, Kiko wrote a very important announcement. He announced that, because of some issues with the server, the site had lost 5 months of data. Many users were shocked and devastated, as all their progress and hard work from the past 5 months had suddenly been erased. Several users wondered how Kiko had gone five months without backing up data onto any external site. Users who lost pets due to the rollback were required to message mods with proof of which pets they owned so that they could be replaced. Typically, Neopets Classic would do “pound releases” where previously stuck pets on frozen accounts would be released to the pound where any user could adopt them to their own account. However, as a result of the chaos from the rollback, mods used this rollback as their chance to take pets from frozen accounts for their own use, giving themself a secretive priority over which pets they wanted for themselves before they were released to the pound for the general public.
THE STATE OF NEOPETS CLASSIC TODAY
To this day, several Neopets fansites and projects exist, and many Neopets fans are members of multiple sites. The sites, such as Grundo’s Cafe, Virtu.pet, and Moderneo, remain friendly with each other, and oftentimes the developers even work together on each other’s sites in various ways. Grundo’s Cafe has even been referenced by the official Neopets team multiple times (example 1, example 2). All three sites have an active community.
The exception to this is Neopets Classic. Users are no longer able to check how many players are online, as either Kiko or his team have removed the feature. You can try and gauge activity with their latest news announcement which stated that they received zero poem submissions for Moehog Day (a pet day where Moehogs are celebrated on every Neopets site, often including new pet art and user-submitted poems).
Neopets Classic is the only Neopets fansite without any affiliates or relationships with other Neopets fansites, which begs the question of whether this can only be attributed to Kiko and his inexperienced mod & art team.