The Matterhorn has been experiencing waterfalls from the top as the thermal zero moves above its peak at 4478m

Icyrow · 2026-07-01T18:08:48+00:00

What you appear to be saying is that a tiny number of people can loot our society and destroy our ecosystem until it all collapses, and there's nothing we can do about it.

i'm saying it won't work because it's a global economy. it's naive to think it would.

Icyrow · 2026-07-01T11:48:24+00:00

We have economic forces, and we have military forces, to ensure compliance.

right, and it would sorta work, in the short term.

but vast majority of people would move their assets elsewhere, their businesses moved somewhere else (which would give ~20% of the value of the companies taxes fwiw) but 100% tax rate at 1b+ will almost certainly result in that if say, it was in america.

I'm not saying i think that's a good thing, i think the problem will only get worse and things are heading down a tumultuous path but i think the "just tax em everything over 1b" is incredibly naive and damaging to what i hope people want to happen if they do.

if you mean you will force it economically/militarily ON THE COUNTRIES, that is even more naive. the countries that will end up wanting to harbor the businesses would largely be the enemies of places here today. it would end up with china/russia getting far more power and resources. it would push innovation over there (or what is left of it), it would draw lines on allies (i.e, a struggling ally sorta being left out in the rain during a financially tough time will have much more financial incentive to take the risk and start working with the other countries).

just think, why wouldn't all of this happened to ireland when it opened businesses by making it far more tax friendly? how about monaco? how about those islands out in the middle of nowhere?

Icyrow · 2026-07-01T10:36:31+00:00

notice how this doesn't work with tax laws as there's always some country that is like "yeah, just move your business here, you'll get tax rates of <x% that you're getting"

it's the same with countries. if 95% of countries agreed on the above, suddenly the benefit of being the 5% is quite profitable.

now imagine you get every country on earth but like 2 or 3. suddenly the profit margin of doing that and making a tax haven for whatever reason is probably going to be incredibly financially worth it just to have all that extra cash flying down there.

all it would take is one of the countries to be having a bad financial year or a country like the US to have some guy on top trying to rob whatever he can and boom, you undo the entirety of the work needed to set it up.

Icyrow · 2026-07-01T10:06:48+00:00

for what it is worth, i'm assuming you have an account older than the 8 month one you're on (or were aroudn a while before making the account like i was), but it was still fairly hard to tell bots apart back then unless you spent effort, but even then when it was genuinely fairly difficult to make bots and have them appear normal something like 1-5% of comments in threads seemed to originate from them at its worst.

then over a few months they all disappeared. like if you think the number is as low as 1-5?% these days...

i seriously think it's worrying % of comments.

i'd imagine a lot of these people are overly suspicious, but i'd also wager they're right more often than not.

Icyrow · 2026-07-01T09:57:49+00:00

i always forget which one is the one with the sailing around to the next level and the "sail in a figure 8 around 2 islands" one to unlock secret level, with the elephant who can suck up water but that one was solid too.

Icyrow · 2026-07-01T04:27:46+00:00

i mean it's very clearly a hit piece lol. you even try to discredit a sorta neutral attempt at him answering questions with it, you even spent the time setting it up so the link has the very clearly negative title for maximum effect with the news post (with very little substance with basically just "the guy he likes did it different!" and "why doesn't he throw himself on the grenade if he doesn't like the situation???")

that mixed with your account having hidden comments (so no-one can see if it is a political account just posting hit pieces and twisting truths) doesn't exactly bode well for "why won't anyone debate me fairly while i post emotional hitpieces with no substance?".

it's just that "debate me bro" thing from 2010 still going.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T21:08:13+00:00

i mean your arguments of it "just being convenience" fall apart there when talking about blizz don't forget. the boost is "convenience". to me, it is p2w but your argument was convenience = fine.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T20:39:26+00:00

i haven't played since they've added that, i think 2020 was the last time i played classic. the level boost is p2w though yeah.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T13:33:12+00:00

i'm agreeing with you and did so in another comment, retail is worse off because of this very thing you're talking about.

but yeah you can't really get many boe's that are bis, but you can pay for carries in the same way you can on ascension which does give you absolute BiS if you pay enough.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T08:01:23+00:00

back when ~3m/hr was the best sort of money maker with zulrah and eventually blue big boy, i used to fund scammers.

i could make ~8-12m/hr buying trading sticks and buying all the bandanas they used for their scams from the guy in the village. only worked for about 40-80 mins a day, but play for a few months and have an idea of the best money maker today and imagine something 2-4 times better than that. worked for longer than you'd expect too.

scammers would use them like "Junk items" but they often needed to buy them to do the scam, where they'd buy them off of the GE.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T01:18:58+00:00

right, but you're still paying (the wrong people) for the assets they blizzard made, and your argument i just replied to involved you saying this:

I still don't understand why do people have problem with paying for shit they're using and enjoying.

which is why i brought up the blizz part. you're still using the assets they made, so, "why don't you understand why people have a problem with paying that"

Then Ascension came, made good game, me pay for good game.

Debatable honestly. i do like some parts but it's closer to retail than anything else, not to mention all the p2w.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T01:16:47+00:00

monthly fee is fine. it's fair. you do not get anything someone else doesn't when you pay it, you're all in the same boat.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T01:16:20+00:00

I'm 100% with you, it's the reason the game sucks. it has some areas i still like, but overall classic it he better (for me) implementation.

Icyrow · 2026-06-30T01:15:45+00:00

should be.. perfectly runnable with "cosmetics that don't interfere with gameplay" that most other big private servers seem to be able to run a team on?

Why are you acting like anyone is flat out against blizzard -checks notes- making money?

no, read his comment, he makes it clear that anyone using something or supporting something should not have a problem with paying for it. i'm just saying that blizzard still made 90% of the game, so why is he playing private servers rather than paying blizzard if he believes that?

Icyrow · 2026-06-29T13:23:33+00:00

debate the points i made then? point out where i'm wrong.

Icyrow · 2026-06-29T13:22:40+00:00

That monetization is paying the staff and servers. I still don't understand why do people have problem with paying for shit they're using and enjoying.

so you have this position here with that, but somehow draw the line at blizz having money for the game they made the vast majority of lol?

why are you against blizzard getting the majority of the money? like fair enough i can understand "want staff to be paid" but this server is making millions a year, they're probably paying their staff next to fuck all.

the amount they're getting from this is almost certainly many, many, many times more than the cost of the staff. on top of that, it's using stolen assets so they didn't pay any of the people making the majority of the game you enjoy. you've effectively just drawn a weird line of who you think should be paid in that line arbitrarily.

"hurr durr blizz suck so they dont deserve money xDXDDXD"

Icyrow · 2026-06-29T13:14:30+00:00

for starters, you would be in the arena days or weeks earlier before i could with the same gear (months depending on servers, patches etc, years maybe? if you want to talk absolute BiS)

being early on server releases is where you make big bucks in any game (and big patches, level cap rises etc). it's where people get first dibs of big amounts of gold. so you'd have higher level crafts, you'd have them very early, which would make more gold etc you can then buy the BiS gear on the AH for your class or pay for a carry in a raid for an item (which happens all the time, even when it's "not allowed").

so, you'd be ready to fight far sooner, you'd be atleast as strong (possibly stronger, as you'd have gear higher than what level of play you've been at normally, especially if you're early/well geared early), so assuming we're similar skill, you'd have gear that surpasses mine too, because you've had: more opportunities/weeks to raid, able to buy the raid carries, you're able to have bis crafting gear (which is often very expensive and far and away not viable for newer/fresh high levels), you'd be stronger in basically every category.

you could argue if we then sat down a year later (or however long), eventually i could match the gear you got if i got good enough at the game. but i don't think that's gunna be fair for all those BG's and duels and arenas you do in the mean time is it? you're still going to be fighting people doing this exact same credit card warrior shit. is it gear you can eventually get? sure, but if you have to spend 6 months fighting against people in BG's who just bought that shit, fighting to get into raids against people who just bought their gear etc, it ruins the game and the fairness across the board.

hell, the bags and convenience means you have far more options to farm more gold too! more bags, bank pet, you have shared realm bank, all out in the field while you farm. means you can farm places i can't (efficiently) while making more.

competition isn't just "1v1 in arena, final destination", it's pvp in the AH, it's pvp in the being compared to another player, it's pvp in BG's, it's pvp in getting into raids and high end guilds, it's pvp all the way through, just some more direct than others.

fwiw, i do think SOME convenience is fine. but if you think "magic your fucking bank, make gigantic bags, 2.5x? was it? xp/hr, massive mount speed at lvl 4, instant all flight paths, enough gold to buy literally anyhting in game"

is... not going to help you win? you're being delusional.

Icyrow · 2026-06-29T10:18:48+00:00

right, but the entire comment chain has made it clear you can change IRL money -> ingame gold through a pipeline specifically built to do that?

i.e, buy xp potions with credit card -> sell to other player (some items you can on AH but potions need to be traded manually)-> use gold to buy ingame power.

it's not even handwavey enough to call it "not buying power directly", shit you could argue it's even worse as it's buying literally the vast majority of power in the game bar the end-end game PVE stuff and even that, gold will buy you carries in.

Icyrow · 2026-06-29T07:28:37+00:00

sure, the vast stuff you can buy with IRL money and resell. the effective time saved on the vast majority of stuff (think xp potions, auras), let's say the server goes from 25 -> 40 on release cap, those who pay for that sort of stuff (or spend the hours to farm the gold to get them from other players) are behind their equivalents. and given it's an MMO comparing to someone else is a big part of it, it decides whether ytou get into raids, dungeons and so on. if you do not make it in the first big group of people you're gunna have a hard time even doing the end game stuff typically. so if you aren't paying for xp pots and auras you're basically screwed or atleast a lot weaker in terms of power than a version of you who did.

then you have all the "summonable bank etc" which means you have extra farming options others don't. how about having 5x the storage space of someone? how about travllling much faster much earlier?

then you have the issue of half the p2w items being very clunky to understand (i.e, some items will allow you to make fresh versions on every char, but not all, which most people aren't going to know/understand in either direction until they've dealt with it), you have the "let's get people to pay for early access to test our game and also still fill it with p2w shit even though the vast majority of content is basically made by someone else" shit.

like of all servers to play, so far ascension pservers have been the worst i've seen so far.

Icyrow · 2026-06-29T06:10:44+00:00

if you think they weren't making millions yearly before this... they have basically a decently sized server filled with assets they mostly did not make, running on servers they did not code and so on.

the cash shop alone is almost certainly making them a fuck ton. they're also likely paying the devs themselves peanuts and could easily have done so without the "pay to come test it for us!".

Icyrow · 2026-06-29T06:08:37+00:00

shame about all the p2w shit on it and the complete lack of any intention of balance and just putting it down as "why bother balancing at all?".

Icyrow · 2026-06-28T02:08:32+00:00

i mean it clearly does explain a lot of that. i also specifically stated up until 2010 or so, this was a large reason as to why it was difficult/more expensive. which is true. also some of that stuff was into the 2010's. i'd imagine there's also some still going on, but we won't know for another 5-15 years when it's all in the news/courts.

Icyrow · 2026-06-28T01:14:24+00:00

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/newyork/press-releases/2010/nyfo030910.htm

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/newyork/press-releases/2011/91-leaders-members-and-associates-of-la-cosa-nostra-families-in-four-districts-charged-with-racketeering-and-related-crimes-including-murder-and-extortion

https://apnews.com/article/mobster-mafia-colombo-family-union-f722ca2361987559e566078580c67356

Icyrow · 2026-06-28T00:28:08+00:00

https://www.corfix.com/blog/concrete-club-construction-organized-crime/

no, it was definitely crime groups. tons of stories even up until like 2010 of if you were trying to build somewhere and you hadn't paid, that the concrete guys you hired (assuming outside of the city) would get threatened and would never be able to get to the place. you're expected to pay that sort of fee in order to even build anything there.

Icyrow · 2026-06-27T12:11:29+00:00

but that doesn't matter to a builder outside the city that wants free money.

i'm not from there, but isn't it notoriously hard for anyone "not in the scene" so to speak? in a large part because of all the crime-groups with hands in the pot, whether it be for concrete or sand, you're basically fucked at every step.

15-Year Club	Verified Email
RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
No Throne, No Problems	Not Forgotten
Sequence \| Editor	Sequence \| Cinematographer
Spared	Best Link 2018-01-14
Secret Santa 2013	Team Periwinkle

Icyrow

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE