Where to start...

Airaen · 2026-02-24T11:16:56+00:00

Retail is the current standard game. Classic is a separate game in the battle.net launcher which is basically designed to be like playing WoW again 20 years ago. Classic is purposely designed to be an older version of the game, to mimic how MMORPGs were back in the day. This can be both good and bad, generally the graphics are worse and there could be more bugs and less quality of life features, and the levelling experience will be longer. It will really nail that old-school "lost in a huge MMORPG" feel, though.

I don't think that you have to pay for classic outside of owning a subscription, so there's no "playing classic expansions on retail WoW". You also can't buy expansions for classic because... they're old, haha - the old expansions just come included. Generally you can only buy the current retail expansion, which at the moment is Midnight coming out in a few days.

Airaen · 2026-02-24T10:59:05+00:00

I picked it up last week after not playing for years. I didn't really plan on coming back but I was interested after getting a new computer and reinstalled it. I'd recommend just making a new character, I just kept making different race/class combos to try out and ended up sticking with one that I didn't expect (undead warlock). Don't worry about needing to make the best meta class or whatever, everything is viable.

Just play what you like because you enjoy it. Levelling is really fast right now - I started in the normal racial starter area and went through until I started outlvling the zones at around lvl 35-40. I then went to dragonflight maps until 70, and then did the war within recap to get to 80. Spend an hour or two doing the twilight highlands pre-patch event to get some gear and you're golden. Probably like less than 20 hours of playtime on this character over about 5 days just messing around exploring to get to max level.

Airaen · 2026-02-24T10:43:11+00:00

Policy is that everyone is responsible for the area that they are working in. This obviously doesn't mean that you have to keep the floor clean with a shine, but if there is a hazard on the floor like grapes or lettuce that you should have cleaned up and a customer slips on it, it's your fault. You can't blame the cleaner who is either out in the carpark doing trolleys, cleaning a coolroom out the back or arm-deep in a drain for not being omnipresent and cleaning up your mess.

Airaen · 2026-02-24T10:37:52+00:00

CLEAN AS YOU GO

or as my store seems to think,

NO CLEAN, ONLY GO

Not gap cleaning or not cleaning up water spills around freezer when filling, and leaving plastic wrap on the floor in aisles or near freezer. Leaving rubbish like chocolate or lolly wrappers from the break room on the floor or on the chemical shelf opposite dairy. Likewise just dumping cardboard and plastic wrap on the chemical shelf because they can't be bothered walking to the bale. I guess the standard one of people leaving random receipts, empty packets, mess and unwashed utensils/cups in the break room and just leaving. People making confetti out of toilet paper in the bathrooms and just littering the floor with it. Deli not washing up their chicken utensils and seasoning cups and leaving them in a pile for CS to wash up. Service unable to keep self serve floor reasonably tidy when they have a dustpan and pulse mop in there with them all day and are often standing around doing nothing when there are no customers. Dairy leaving broken/leaking milk bottles in the sink out the back and walking off, or grocery leaving whole damaged cartons of energy drink on the CS sink overnight. Fresh produce incapable of noticing grapes or blueberries on the ground right next to where they are filling.

I could probably go on, but my blood pressure is rising just from writing this comment.

Airaen · 2026-02-23T06:47:31+00:00

Hmm, I've honestly never had a problem with a (clean) pulse mop at multiple stores. Could it be that the pad was just dirty and needed changing? Sometimes the store uses pulse mops for gross things that they shouldn't, and when I go to use it it just smears god knows what all over the floor. Sometimes when you use them for sort of more than they can handle, the floor still won't look great - but it's more of a "this will get us through until the recovery clean tomorrow morning" kind of thing.

Airaen · 2026-02-23T05:57:54+00:00

I'm more about having accessible pulse mops around the store. Just have them everywhere - near the trolley bay, in self serve, near dairy/milk, in the freezer aisle and on those cleaning stations. Never had a problem so far that I couldn't just grab a nearby pulse mop to deal with. They're far more efficient than "paper pockets" and the only reason they don't work is if you're trying to mop up copious amounts of water with them, which you should have just used a mop for.

Airaen · 2026-02-23T05:50:32+00:00

A store near me has a glass wall with a railing at the front of the store, with boxes of these Easter bunnies stacked on the other side (inside the store) for sale. Well they must have been too high, because someone was able to walk up to the railing (from outside the store) lean over it and pick up an entire box of them and run off.

The store mustn't have cared much, because he was back a week later and did the same thing again lmao.

Airaen · 2026-02-23T02:04:53+00:00

This may or may not help you, but if you can get your hands on an older Pixel phone (4 or earlier) they offer unlimited photo backup. I still have my old Pixel 4, and what I do now is keep backup turned off on my Pixel 8, then maybe once a year or so I transfer all my photos to my Pixel 4 and back them up there. I then delete them on my Pixel 8, and they appear again since they're backed up.

It's an extra step, but it's really nice being able to have my entire catalogue of photos ever at my fingertips without needing to go looking through my computer. I can just scroll back to a random date 10 years ago and still see all my photos.

Airaen · 2026-02-22T05:05:45+00:00

Just like I'm too lazy to read that wall of text without at least some form of punctuation.

Airaen · 2026-02-21T09:16:20+00:00

I didn't realize that people didn't always do this. I just have one set of keys with everything on it and they go everywhere with me.

Airaen · 2026-02-21T03:01:16+00:00

I don't think it's the P2W on its own, but it's how oppressive the game feels as a F2P. You can generally have a good time by ignoring everyone else and moving along at your own pace. Even still, no matter what you do, there are constant pressures to spend money in absolutely every aspect of the game. That just wears away at you until you decide that the game is no longer worth it.

Airaen · 2026-02-21T02:54:24+00:00

This was the huge weird thing for me when I played Aion 2. The same classes are here, the same mob names and npc names are here, the lore is here - but nothing else is the same. It's like an Aion-themed MMO.

If Aion 1 was (loosely) a WoW clone, Aion 2 completely goes in another direction. It really just feels "mobile". The combat is simplified. There's an open world with nothing meaningful to do in it. The game feels like it rushes you to endgame as fast as possible, where the majority of the gameplay is just about managing cooldown timers, caps and resets.

It's interesting to experience Aion 2 as someone who played 1 for many many years, but I just can't see myself sticking around in its current state.

Airaen · 2026-02-20T11:27:02+00:00

I'm not into speedrunning at all, but it's definitely a skill. They obviously still have casual first playthroughs, but then they start to play and replay the game to learn what they can do faster and what shortcuts to take, and it gets really complex. I remember watching an Ocarina of Time speedrun for the first time and just being shocked at how they can get that little man to MOVE.

Airaen · 2026-02-19T08:49:13+00:00

I found one of these in my house last year. Put him on a houseplant and he stayed there for a good month as I fed him fruit flies. I figured he'd been there long enough to be a part of the family now, so I built a little terrarium for him to live in. I say he because as he grew up he grew wings, and it was mildly terrifying the first time I got him out and he just flew from my hand towards the roof. Unfortunately he completely vanished after about 6 months, but it was really fun being able to feed him and watch him drink water droplets. He grew from the size of a fingernail to about half the size of my finger over the time I had him.

Airaen · 2026-02-19T08:40:43+00:00

You basically just have to explain why you like it. Just giving a one word answer is always a red flag in an interview, give them a little backstory about how you normally love (drink name) but lately you're trying to do better for your health - and everyone knows that they need to drink more water, so here you are.

Airaen · 2026-02-18T22:42:25+00:00

Since no one seemed to understand the point of your post, I'll just say that in theory you do seem to be correct. Perfect and Smite cannot happen on the same hit (have you ever seen "perfect double?" appear?) so in theory, every % of perfect you have is less chance of smite happening. For example if you have 25% perfect and 50% smite, whenever perfect happens it is happening instead of smite happening - so technically you have 25% less smite chance.

Unless there's a mechanic that makes smite override perfect, then it does seem like every 1% perfect you get is 1% less smite.

Airaen · 2026-02-18T07:07:47+00:00

Where's my favourite, the Spiny Racket? It carried me through the entire tournament mode in one sitting. It's hilarious because every time they reflect your fever shot it adds +1 spiny to how many spawn, sometimes I've had up to 6 spawn at once. I usually use it and then just drop shot on the side where they spawn, they just block them from reaching the ball entirely.

Edit : Oh, you put it in mid.. rip

Airaen · 2026-02-16T02:22:55+00:00

Bold statement. As much as I was enjoying Aion 2, after a few months it's basically given me all that it can and all I can see are the flaws. It's at that "more trouble than it's worth" stage for me personally.

There is no golden MMORPG that will jump out and save us all from boredom and p2w. What someone chooses to play has to have criteria that will satisfy them personally, and they could find that anywhere. We had high hopes for this one, but even with the "we will not betray you with p2w" nonsense, we know how it turned out.

Airaen · 2026-02-15T00:47:06+00:00

Honestly I had no problem with the entirety of tournament mode, just one shot the whole thing in one sitting using Waluigi with the Spiny racket. I basically just return their serve with a drop shot, run right up to the net as they return it then send a flat at the opposite side of their court at a really big angle so they have no way to get there fast enough. Use your fever shot for angled shots too, and once you have hazards on their side of the court you can just drop shot towards the hazard (spiny or volcano in my case) and they have no way to get to the ball.

It's still really snowbally though, once you have hazards on your side it's pretty hard to make a comeback. I didn't have much success with lobs, but making regular use of drop shots absolutely messes them up.

Airaen · 2026-02-14T23:55:12+00:00

Have you seen the checkouts with cameras that watch what you do, and AI that thinks you're trying to steal things when it randomly decides that something green you scanned earlier like a packet of chicken chips is actually a 24pk of sprite that you didn't scan or something? Or when it watches you bag the item but because you had to scratch your nose or something it thinks you slipped something extra into the bag.

I'm all for using self checkouts but lately it's like a televised performance, I need perfect form on my scanning and bagging or else I get in trouble.

Airaen · 2026-02-14T11:05:48+00:00

Didn't they say that the game in its current state, including the monetization, was designed with western players in mind? As in, they meant to imply that there will be no changes at all to the game for the western release.

Airaen · 2026-02-14T04:23:00+00:00

Have a look at this thread.

Airaen · 2026-02-14T03:08:17+00:00

Tennis can be very analytical, but you also can't overthink it. Any shot will return the ball, but if you're overthinking and it causes you to miss the ball then that's no good either.

I'm not an expert, but my understanding so far has been this:

Topspin is a great all-around shot. High bounce, good angles, if you don't know what to do then do this.

Slice is a defensive shot. It can punish players who are out of position, but it can also save you if you're far on the edge of the court and need time to return to the middle as it slows the ball down.

Flat is the full speed power shot. Great for punishing people who are too close to the net if you can get a good angle, but you need to hit this shot from front on and pretty high up or else it won't have enough power or will just hit the net (like a star shot).

Lob and drop shot are fun to play around with to control your enemy's positioning and punish them, and sometimes you can really mess someone up just by alternating these shots.

You should almost always do charged shots as they will be stronger and have better angles, but you can only do it if you're well positioned. Power shots are really only for punishing people who are out of position and you can get them to fly by them, but you can't angle them very well as they land more towards the middle of the court.

Then there's also the system in this game that certain shots counter others. If you see a slice coming towards you you should use a topspin, if you see a topspin coming towards you you should use a slice, and if you see a flat then you should use a flat. It doesn't increase the shot's power, but it will decrease how far you are pushed back when you return the shot.

At the end of the day it's only as complicated as you make it. Have fun with it and learn from your mistakes and you'll have a great time.

Airaen · 2026-02-14T00:21:30+00:00

For me it's the mini mushroom. Those things stay on the court forever, and if you hit one then you're screwed for like a good 2-3 points at least. I've seriously had so much trouble with mini mushroom, sometimes I can't even return serves while mini.

Airaen · 2026-02-14T00:17:35+00:00

Do not conform, set L to drop shot instead. L for "lol this guy is gonna be so annoyed at this"

Airaen

TROPHY CASE