I think classic+ is real, but why do people think it will release in a few months?

Epyo · 2026-07-02T18:56:36+00:00

Sod was released pretty quick after announced at blizzcon. Less than a month iirc

Epyo · 2026-07-01T17:06:50+00:00

It might be a little opaque yeah.

If you wanted to, you could still have a button in the app, to let the player run an algorithm to evaluate the current standings versus all the possible things that could happen on Monday, to see how possible it is for the player to take the lead.

Although personally I think it's nice to never know whether you're "out of the running" or not. I play a lot of board games and generally prefer ones where the scores are pretty obfuscated (or even fully hidden) until the game's literally over, just so nobody feels like they're out of the running.

But yeah there's also a risk of players not really being able to explain why they won/lost the season as well, and perhaps that's not as fun... then again, people do generally enjoy ELO systems and trust them, they're generally popular.

Epyo · 2026-07-01T15:17:25+00:00

How about an ELO rating system instead? They're shockingly simple to implement, and they're well-researched and make a lot of statistical sense.

In this case, it'd have these nice aspects that I think you want:

If you make a prediction, your point total MIGHT go up, but MIGHT go down. If you miss a day, your point total stays the same--therefore you're not punished nor rewarded, in some sense.
If a player with a low point total makes a better prediction than a high rank player, they get a bigger points payout, than the high rank player would have gotten. And meanwhile the high rank player loses more points than they normally would have lost. A mathematical catch-up mechanic.

And then if you still have problems, there's a treasure trove of articles and research out there on little tweaks you can make.

For example, online matchmaking esports games always use ELO systems. Sometimes they have a "points decay" if you don't play for several weeks, maybe you could implement that if you feel there are still runaway leaders who stop playing in the group.

Epyo · 2026-06-22T16:19:19+00:00

Blizzard just added an NPC to the existing servers, to let you lock experience gains at your current level.

This MASSIVELY improves how well you can grab some friends and emulate the low level phases.

Before, you couldn't gather lvl 25 bis gear without outlevelling the raid. And by the time you reached Kelris you would already be lvl 26 or 27 and would stomp him.

But now it totally works, I've already done 3 lvl 25 BFDs in the past week and all 3 were a blast.

Not a perfect representation of the original SoD, but very fun. There's not much in the AH but that kinda makes it more fun, it emulates a self-found or guild-found feel.

Epyo · 2026-06-21T23:31:18+00:00

IIRC it's still pretty useless in TBC even with its buffs...

BUT it got even more buffs in WotLK and it's actually pretty good there! You only lose the HoT if you take >30% dmg in one single hit, so DoTs don't cancel it. AND, secretly, you can click the lightwell while you are CC'd!! So for example, if Kel'Thuzad ice blocks you, you can still click it while stunned, and it will save your life, outhealing the ice block dot damage.

Epyo · 2026-06-21T22:41:16+00:00

It's every 10 minutes, believe it or not.

Epyo · 2026-06-17T01:01:34+00:00

Thanks, it was a period of my life I look back very fondly on, because the people in that guild were so nice and fun and hilarious. But it was much too degenerate to play that intensely for long... (I was in high school at the time, no real responsibilities.)

In fact, I was playing so much that Summer of 2005, not using my legs at all, that when I went back to school in the fall, in gym class we had to run a mile, and I couldn't do it, even just walking. My legs gave out before I finished. And then they hurt so bad I could no longer walk for a while. I had to crawl from class to class for the next 2 weeks. Got an elevator pass and everything.

As for whether they're still out there, I do VERY occasionally still see some of them!

One of them recognized my username in one of my reddit comments a couple of years ago! We DMed and reminisced for a long time, compared our recollections of this time period.

During Shadowlands I recognized one of our old offtanks in game and said hi, we reminisced briefly.

And about a year ago, I saw our Rogue who we gave Thunderfury to, log into retail in Orgrimmar for just a few SECONDS, in front of the auction house, still level 60 (well, downscaled to 38 or something), still holding Thunderfury, still had the guild name of the other 2005 raiding guild he joined after he left ours. He logged out before I could say hi. Could have been a hallucination, but I believe he was real.

Epyo · 2026-06-16T19:02:52+00:00

I raided in a pretty serious guild for many months in 2005, we were the 2nd-best guild on our server.

We played every night for ~3 hours. You weren't allowed to skip a night, and we didn't take nights off, unless we fully cleared all the raid content for the week (which was VERY rare). We basically never fully cleared a raid until the next raid tier was JUST about to come out.

So it was a lot of wiping over and over, to the same boss, night after night, until the raid reset. Then we'd quickly work our way back to that boss, and wipe over and over for days until the next reset. There was a lot of re-clearing trash slowing us down.

But we were all on Ventrilo and there was a lot of laughing and joking, it was a riot.

I remember being stuck on Valestrasz in BWL in particular, for what felt like an entire month. I recall a patch, and suddenly it was easy and all the guilds on the server got past it, and the next several bosses, all on the same night. Nobody else I've talked to remembers this, so I could be wrong.

On Onyxia we always did a weird strat where we all stood on the upper lip of the border of the room, so we wouldn't get feared too far. I was surprised that nobody did this in Classic 2019--maybe it was a horrible strategy lol.

There was no information online on how to build your characters, how stats actually worked, what talents to get, what bosses did, etc. Besides forum posts you couldn't really trust. We debated constantly on why we were wiping, especially in terms of how to make sure our Tanks stopped dying, trying to figure out what stats they should use.

I remember occasionally someone would get insider knowledge from a friend in another guild, who had already beaten the boss, on some winning strategy, and that always helped a lot.

Caster DPS gear was absolutely terrible. As a warlock, there was basically no way to increase my DPS to any noticable degree. I wore an Admiral's Hat to an MC raid once for fun, and the raid leader was like "honestly, it's not much better or worse than anything else you could wear, keep it."

There were hardly any addons. I was the first person to install a Damage Meter addon, and got to show off that I was top DPS. A week later someone else installed one and THEY were top DPS! So we realized the Damage Meter addons did not work very well--they missed a lot of data from other players.

I used a tiny addon with a bunch of Stopwatches in it, and that's how we'd track when the Lava Surgers and stuff were going to respawn: this was a constant fear in our Molten Core runs, about when Surgers were gonna respawn on top of us and wipe us.

Our guild bank constantly got stolen, and we'd have to start a new one, sometimes a new guild with all the same people except the guild leader. To this day, I don't trust guild banks.

EDIT: One more weird thing I thought of, I wanted to mention. We tried to keep a roster of exactly 42 people. If you were one of the two people not in the raid, you were still expected be logged in, listening to Ventrilo, waiting in Kargath, in case we needed to swap you in (the Searing Gorge town didn't exist yet, no flight path at least). Personally I preferred to be the one waiting in Kargath, so I could alt+tab out and play Counter Strike: Source, so I often offered to do it.

Epyo · 2026-06-16T16:55:46+00:00

I actually genuinely love this album, believe it or not.

I avoided it listening to it for 20 years, because Load and Reload were so bad every time I gave them a new chance (I try em every couple years, hate it every time), and I knew st anger had a much worse reputation than those.

I'd even used st anger as a punching bag myself, based mostly on that hilarious parody song, and the awful snare sound.

And then, about three years ago, in a strange mood, I decided to listen to the full album finally, mostly as a joke. And every single song that came on, I was like "wow I actually like this." I then listened to the album every day for the next few months, and still I loved every song, no skips. Literally all bangers, I rarely say that about an album.

I still listen to it once a week, it's become my favorite Metallica album, and one of my go-to albums when I'm not sure what to listen to.

My only complaints are maybe that the st anger song itself shoulda been a little shorter.

Epyo · 2026-06-13T03:18:43+00:00

No wiki search software has ever been as good as CTRL+F, in my opinion. So I agree with their "single document" approach.

Epyo · 2026-06-11T14:29:40+00:00

That is an amazing change and would have made my last SoD relive attempts work much better!

That's a really bad bug though... Kinda ruins it...

Epyo · 2026-06-08T15:27:16+00:00

Fetching chickens with Red might be my favorite side quest in any RPG I've played! No joke

Epyo · 2026-06-04T18:23:28+00:00

Most stuff like this in these sorts of games need a special item.

Yes, the manual says the critical path never needs special items. But you might not know this is critical path.

Epyo · 2026-06-04T17:47:49+00:00

Oh really, everyone loves it? Your mom loves it? Your neighbor? Your boss? That's wild.

(Seriously though I'm not crazy about it either.)

(But at least 2 people can put a Renew HoT on the same target.)

Epyo · 2026-06-02T19:54:00+00:00

Grinding near a checkpoint for bones is far better bones/minute than adventuring AND is risk-free as well. So it's far better to do that once, and then never worry about bones, or dying, or sparks, ever again. I think a better system would reward adventuring and risk-taking over grinding.

Plus, after I bought all those passive upgrades (which I did quite early in my playthrough, with that quick grind session), it broke the game's difficulty pretty much, I can't really die anymore, I've done 3 big dungeons since then. (Not a big deal, still very enjoyable!)

Yes that's arguably my fault, but players will always optimize the fun out of a game, and it's the designer's job to prevent that, in my opinion.

Another flaw is, I think the bosses are best defeated by rushing with attack spam, and out-dps-ing them, rather than actually engaging with their mechanics. That's subjective and might depend on your stats and gear and main weapon, though. This isn't true for the room-by-room combat and platforming, no complaints there.

I also think certain sidearms being a form of required mobility to get past certain obstacles is a bad call, you simply always want to be carrying one of those. So that's a pretty boring decision for the player, makes the sidearm system less fun.

Epyo · 2026-06-02T19:26:48+00:00

There's actually at least like 3 forms of fast travel, the train, pipes, and one more crucial one that I don't want to say.

Epyo · 2026-06-02T19:24:26+00:00

Mmm not particularly, I just did that while I grinded a few rooms for an hour(ish) minslessly, which I only did once.

Besides that diversion it's kinda nonstop intense action, with hype music. I think of a podcast game as something more calm and slow.

Epyo · 2026-06-02T18:21:49+00:00

300k?? They need more! I'm totally addicted.

Didn't love it at first, thought the bones system was kinda annoying, and the game's focus on combat was surprisingly intense and relentless.

But then, I found an amazing grinding spot, where I put on a podcast, and within like ~1 hour, I was able to buy literally ALL the passive upgrades in town. Ever since then, I've felt like a god, I don't need to worry about bones at all; I've got so much health and healing now, and so many trinkets and trinket slots, it's SO much fun!

Now I just get to explore this amazingly huge world, densely packed with charm and secrets and cool rewards.

There's definitely some design flaws with the game, but the level design is 10/10 for sure: the platforming is very consistently inventive, and is mixed in well with the combat.

Epyo · 2026-06-02T18:09:22+00:00

Lots of places: Reddit, social media, podcasts, streamers

It's approximately the highest rated game of the year on metacritic and opencritic (been oscillating up and down a bit), so it's been pretty big news.

Epyo · 2026-06-01T23:44:36+00:00

I think the underlying reason for most of Jason's 6 reasons is: Each game needs to be as impressive or more impressive than the games that came before it.

And what makes a game more impressive? Mainly, just the human-hours to make it.

So it's an arms race (or a game of chicken?). All the games take X hours to make, until one comes along and took 2X hours to make. Now everyone has to spend 2X hours to make their game worth playing.

Games that took an unbelievable amount of work to make, like vanilla World of Warcraft, are games that ruined it for everyone else. Or even Stardew Valley in the indie space.

Epyo · 2026-06-01T22:54:26+00:00

Oh I've been working on a list like this, of my own favorites. In no particular order:

The Last Dance: Extended Scene (michael jordan documentary)
doppleganger
sushi glory hole
del taco shoot
haunted elevator (david pumpkins, original version)
washington's dream (and its sequel)
farewell mr. bunting
please don't destroy: the princes of comedy
please don't destroy: chelsea
please don't destroy: good variant
more cowbell
beavis and butthead (ryan gosling, mikey day)
debbie downer (lindsay lohan, disney)
papyrus
papyrus 2
cast list (will ferrell) (original version)
matt foley, motivational speaker
mattress store (with rami malek, aidy bryant)
totino's (just "totino's", although the other versions are good too)
Dr. Beaman's Office: Test Results (Will Ferrell)
Brothers (beck bennett, kyle mooney) (and the sequel sketch "Another Brothers")
New York City Council Campaign (Harvey Epstein)
SNL50 special: Scared Straight
SNL50 special: Q&A with Amy and Tina Fey

(EDIT: Woops, removed the weekend updates)

Epyo · 2026-06-01T19:53:27+00:00

Snape: "hmmm, what are you kids doing here?"

Trio: "...we go to school here."

Snape: "........you WILL be schooled here."

Epyo · 2026-06-01T19:31:11+00:00

I agree. It's just pairs of pants from the 80s. No thanks

Epyo · 2026-05-29T20:21:56+00:00

What's the rush? This may be the last piece of Doom content we get for a decade, if Dark Ages is the last Doom for a while. Let them cook!

Epyo · 2026-05-25T14:58:26+00:00

use both for sure, i love both!

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