Wow, what a BlizzCon! I have a lot of thoughts and feelings to express, so here goes!

So, Blizzard just announced WoW: Forever, AKA Project Camelot and I think we need to have a conversation about datamining, spoilers and all that again. I'll have a longer post reviewing/reacting to all the things announced at BlizzCon soon after this one, but I wanted to get this down first.

I used to love the internet. I've grown up with it and some of my fondest memories are online ones. In recent years, and moreso in the last few months, I've gradually received less and less enjoyment from being on it to the point where it is getting into the negatives now. I've grown increasingly angry and cynical when it comes to the internet and its netizens and am likely even part of the problem. Why?

Note: I wrote this to force myself into venting a few emotions that have been running high. I started writing this post on the 1 year anniversary of my Mom's passing and have added onto it over the last month based on reflections, my personal diary entries and talking with my family, please note that this post talks about death, grief and mental health issues. Please take care.

I think a lot about WoW's player housing and where the related tech might end up going. There's a long road ahead to get to some of these ideas and in lack of an official roadmap, I thought it'd be a fun exercise to make one of my own. One that goes into very speculative/pie-in-the-sky territory as time goes on. I'm going to make this list with the assumption that housing will keep getting major updates in major patches and smaller updates in the smaller ones.

Note: this is not a list based on datamining, but is just a glorified list of expectations and/or wishes.

As vibe coding gets easier, more accessible and quite frankly higher quality, it is becoming harder and sometimes even impossible to recognize its usage in the making/update of software. Where is this going? What is the place of me and my projects in this? Why am I scared?

This is yet another long AI-related rant, for my previous one/stance on AI see here.

I am very much against genAI, especially when it comes to things that are commissionable from humans. AI sucks, yet I use it and services that use it regularly, whether against my will or not.

Why does it suck? If it sucks, why use it? Not sure. It is hard to reconcile my thoughts on this, but let's try, I guess.

I will not pretend to be an expert on things. This is purely an opinion piece based on my impression of it all and where I think it may be going.

Warning, rant ahead.

I've talked about my bad memory before. While the cause has become more clear every year and I'm slowly working towards fixing it, it's not something that's likely to get fixed overnight anytime soon, especially not retroactively. I am also a programmer and a dataminer, so the question of "Why do I not take it into my own hands to build something to be my memory?" has been something that's (ironically?) been kicking around in my brain for years now.

Now, I'm sure you've heard someone say that losing a parent or someone close to you is like losing a part of yourself, and I now know what that means. My mom was my knowledge base for a lot of stuff about me, and now that she's gone and to deal with this feeling of losing a part of myself, I decided to get it over with and start working on fleshing out this idea and seeing how realistic it is and what it would look like.

Another year, another blog post reflecting on it. This one has been a rollercoaster. I started these reflection posts in 2022 and I can with confidence say that this year is the lowest of lows so far, while also having some highs in terms of what I've been working on.

I'll start with all of the major updates to the projects I've been working on this year as well as looking forward a bit to the plans I have for various projects next year. I'll end the post with personal updates, that bit is largely for myself as I've talked about in previous reflection posts, but feel free to read it regardless.

A short but needed blog post.

In today's Midnight Deep Dive, Blizzard introduced us to "The Arcantina", the model of which is based on the Hearthstone Tavern interior model.

Yes, the Hearthstone Tavern model I've mentioned many times before, even while on the Community Council AND modded a whole exterior for (see those posts for some history on the tavern model both from the game and in canon outside of it).

This means the tavern "far away from her (Xal'atath) reach" (#1, #2) from the Seasons comic was what we now know to be the Arcantina.

With it now being a 'story hub', my battle for its use in the game is over. Thank you, Blizzard.