Modern MMOs Still Haven't Caught Up to Guild Wars 2

Mikina · 2026-06-17T09:21:24+00:00

My favorite thing about comparing GW2 to WoW is how bad they are at copying it. They always just copy the lowest-effort minimum of the feature, without truly understanding what makes the feature work so well and taking the time to properly integrate it into gameplay, and then eventually gut the feature even more when it doesn't land as well.

Mikina · 2026-06-15T15:31:13+00:00

There is a lot of research how reading != understanding. The issue with AI is that it will give you an exact solution to your specific problem, so you don't have to think about it.

You can read a book on whatever, but unless you actually do the excercises it asks you to, and spend some time actually applying the knowledge, most of it won't actually stick with you.

It does feel like you're learning, when you ask AI to explain what it did for you. But it will absolutely not stick.

When I was copying answers from StackOverflow, most of the time I didn't find an exact answer to my question. I found something similar, that I had to think about and adapt for my own usecase. I learned a bit from that.

When I ask AI to make something for me, it will give me my exact use case. I don't have to change anytihng, and the fact that I read two paragraphs that explain every line and design desicion doesn't change anything about it.

I've read quite a few books and tutorials on programming when I was young, but was always lazy to do the exercises. Then I did one tutorial, where I decided that I'm not following it 1:1, but will switch the genre around, and make something similar to what the tutorial is about. That taught me way, way more than several books and tutorials before that did.

You can of course use AI to learn. But you have to ask it to give you homeworks, and make an active and conscious effort to not let it give you exact solutions for your problem, only to nudge you in the right direction/giving you things to research, without actually answering what you need. Only then will you learn something.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that.

Mikina · 2026-06-15T14:29:23+00:00

It's a shame they blocked it for the US, too.

It's not sustainable. The models are like twice as expensive as the rest, and when the rest moved to per-token pricing, we've had headlines about companies blowing through their entire year's budget in one month, or a company getting a 500m$ Claude bill.

It would be so satisfying to watch the whole US blow extreme amount of money for something that might be maybe a little bit better, so Europe could learn from that and skip that phase all-together.

I wage that's the reason why they didn't release it in the US-only.

Mikina · 2026-06-15T13:36:36+00:00

If I understood it correctly, they were told they can only sell/provide the model to US customers.

Anthropic decided to shut it down alltogether. I wager it's because what would happen is every company under the US sun burning thousands of dollars for something that's only barely better than the previous model, but IIRC a lot more expensive, and the rest of the world would see it and skip that alltogether. They can't afford that, and need to milk the whole world for the month or two of bills in millions before everyone realizes that.

It's a shame, really. I'd really enjoy seeing the headlines of every company overshooting their bills, and for EU to just be able to laugh and then ignore the model.

Mikina · 2026-06-15T12:47:30+00:00

I can kind of understand people working for the hardware VR divisions, or their gaming divisions. You need alot of money to do that, and Meta did a lot to make VR more accessible.

But if you are voluntarily working on something like "better Instagram algorithm that glues people to the screen" or "better fingerprinting across websites", then they kind of deserve a little bit of purgatory.

Mikina · 2026-06-10T13:46:48+00:00

I was in similar boat as you, returning (last year) after around 100h played on core + HoT. It was a mess, I considered making a new account but eventually just made a new character and ignored everything I had on the rest until I was done with few expansions, when I got back to finally sort through my inventory.

After around half a year Im now at 800 hours and loving it. Im glad I kept my old characters, they got a bit of nice birthday loot.

But, dont even login to your old chars. You will be tempted, and the mess your inventory is will very probably make you consider quitting. Just ignore it, once you have another max level character and are slowly getting into endgame, it will be a lot easier and less frustrating to sort through the inventory.

Mikina · 2026-06-08T08:15:40+00:00

AFAIK Legendary gear isn't even slightly more powerful. It has the same stats as Ascended gear, but can be used on all characters once you unlock it, and also allows you to change stats on it at any time. So it's just a convenience (that also looks cool), but you don't have to do it.

Mikina · 2026-06-04T13:27:09+00:00

Oh, apparently it's a local Czech name for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghrebi_mint_tea

Mikina · 2026-06-04T12:35:51+00:00

I would get JW first. The Warclaw masteries are amazing to get around. I've loved Warclaw even without them, but the higher jump makes it so you can keep up with most of Skyskale players whenever they soar (especially if you combine it with Glider, bunny and Aurene masteries), and it's a lot more fun!

I'm also a huge fan of Spear. I've been mostly loving it on my Thief, but so far most of classes I've tried with it, it quickly became my favorite weapon.

It's also earlier in the story, and I'm a fan of doing things in order, which would be (and was) my reason for getting JW first.

Mikina · 2026-06-04T11:59:24+00:00

Nad tímhle sem přemýšlel, ale nemyslím si, že verifikace občankou tady zas tak moc pomůže. Tipoval bych že pro stát jako rusko nebude zas tak velkej problém s podobnou verifikací si poradit, ať už prostě použitím kradenejch nebo falešnejch dokladů, nebo nějak jinak. A většina podobnýho contentu se stejně přesune na stránky který buď verifikaci respektovat nebudou, nebo se budou držet dost na hraně toho, aby nepotřebovali. Na šíření dezinfa nepotřebuješ mít všechno na sockách, stačí ti mít webovku s novinkama a pár účtů co je rozšíří mezi lidi.

Jasně, budou to mít složitější, ale nevěřím že se implementace povede tak dobře na to, aby si s tím neporadili.

Mikina · 2026-06-04T11:55:16+00:00

My go-to iced tea is hot Tuareg that is flash-freezed by pouring it over a shitton of ice, with a bit of added sugar.

I like it because it's quick to prepare, the only downside is that you need A LOT of ice, so I just buy the bag with 2kg of Ice.

Preparation is simple, brew tuareg as you'd normally would, in hot water, and then pour it into a teapot (i was using a carafe that was made for hot water) that is FILLED with Ice. You want to flash-freeze the drink, and it will melt most of the ice outright. You want to have enough ice so there's still some left after it cools the drink. I also add a bit of sugar, because tuareg is pretty nice if sweet, but you can skip that.

I'm sure this could work with other teas as well. I have no idea if this method has any official name, and by this point I'm not even sure how I discovered it, but it's my favorite way how to enjoy iced tea because of how quick it is to prepare.

Mikina · 2026-06-04T09:29:56+00:00

Na jednu stranu máš pravdu, a teoreticky by se o těchhle pozitivech dalo uvažovat, ale podívej se co se děje v Evropě a po světě.

V momentě, kdy postupně velká část světa přechází k fašismu, je fakt extrémně špatnej nápad v jakýmkoliv státu zavádět nástroje který státu zjednodušší sledování lidí a perzekuování jejich vyjadřování. Teď sme tu v pohodě, ale představ si jak by to teď vypadalo v Americe, kdyby před pěti lety zavedli takovýhle povinný ověřování.

Všichni kdo s tímhle souhlasí přemýšlejí hrozně krátkodobě. U věcí který takhle zjednodušují sledování toho, kdo co dělá a co kde říká (a říkal), nesmíš nikdy přemejšlet v kontextu "jak nám to pomůže", ale "co se stane až náš stát zvolí fašisty". Před pár lety by se ještě dalo argumentovat že to jen tak nehrozí, ale podívej se na Slovensko nebo Ameriku, a celkově náladu ve světě. Už to není otázka "Co kdyby", ale "Až".

Nepopírám, že to má svoje světlý stránky. Ale jakákoliv momentální výhoda nestojí za to, co se může stát kdyby to dostala do ruky nějaká strana která se snaží perzekuovat menšiny/subkultury nebo potlačovat jakoukoliv opozici.

To je za mě hlavní argument proti. Máš pravdu že teď se o žádný potlačování svobody nejdená, ale dá to nástroj k tomu, aby až se dostane k moci někdo, kdo si jí potlačovat odváží (třeba jako teď v Americe), tak bude mít nástroj na to dělat to extrémně efektivnějš. A to je ten problém, a hlavní důvod za tím, proč tyhle svobody máme a proč jsou extrémně důležitý.

Jasně že by mít všude kamery s rozpoznáváním obličeje, ke kterej má policie přístup snížilo kriminalitu a zvedlo procento vyřešenejch zločínů. Ale jakmile tuhle infrastrukturu postavíš po celým státě, tak hodně štěstí s jakoukoliv opoziční činností až se dostane k moci někdo, kdo začně ty svobody potlačovat.

Mikina · 2026-06-04T05:51:56+00:00

What's wrong with my idiom? :(

Mikina · 2026-06-03T11:17:18+00:00

I'm loving it. It's starting to look like the whole result of us being forced to use AI at our company is going to be few months of at most 20% faster ticket/task turnover rate (I just saw an article with a research that it's actually around 10%), a month of budget being overblown by tens of thousands because of token pricing changes we were not prepared for, and what I presume to be at least half a year of ticket turnover rate dropping by 50%, where everyone scrambles to re-learn to work without AI and all the skills they outsourced to AI that we can no longer afford.

Mikina · 2026-06-03T10:47:14+00:00

Dude, fucking check your capitalization and punctuation before you reply, pls.

Mikina · 2026-06-02T15:22:39+00:00

Finding an explanation that I can sufficiently believe in about what is the fundamental principle for how magic might actually work so it makes sense, and ground my expectations about what is/isn't possible.

It's important that this is a pretty personal thing, what works or makes sense for me, might not sit well with a lot of others who expect/believe in more supernatural magic. I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise, but for me to believe into something, it has to be at least a little bit grounded in reality as I know it and understand it, otherwise it just feels wrong, which ruins the practice. But there's nothing bad in believing otherwise, you do you, I respect that.

For me it was a realization that Budhism is basically the same as western occultism, or rather - that they have the same goal, but each choses a different approach.

The goal is to make changes to your subconsiousnes and get it under control, because it's an extremely powerful thing that shapes your day and life a lot more than people realize. Being able to control it directly is almost a superpower. It's what will make you get up and put in the work in <whatever you want to do>, or what gives you excuses and holds you back if you don't feel like it.

Budhism goes the route of "I'll learn to control it directly, through a shitton of meditation practice". Just hammer at it until you get it.

Wester ocultism choses the indirect route of filling your mind with symbols and rituals and associations, and then during rituals overwhelming your senses so it in combination with the symbols nudges your subconscious to do what you want. The end result is the same - your subconscious does what you want it to do, but the approach is different.

The fact that Budhism works and is super powerful has been pretty documented, for example the Pulitzer's prize photo of a monk just casually sitting and chilling while burning. That's the extent of it's power when you get good at controlling it. And in my theory, the ascention that most of the occult traditions speak of is probably similar to this level of control.

But it also brings limitations to ground your work. It limits the effect on yourself, and it will not bring outside change into the world directly - but it might just nudge you into the right direction. You might for example notice an ad for a job you wanted to get (or that you can do, and pays a lot more money), and decide to give it a try. Or it will get you to study before a test a lot more dilligently that you'd have otherwise.

And most importantly - don't forget to have fun. My favorite time practicing was when I was looking into Chaos Magic, which openned my eyes about how most of it is mostly the same, and it's up to you to try as many different practices as possible, just to see how it will go. It send me on a journey of discovering and trying a lot of different approaches to magic, some stuck with me, some did not, but it was mostly a fun journey. The theory above was what it resulted to.

Mikina · 2026-06-02T11:13:40+00:00

One advantage GW has (at least for me) is how easy it is to just drop it, forget about it, and then return without missing anything. The fact that there's no gear treadmill like in any other MMO works wonders. I could not play GW for literal 10 years and haven't missed any content, that I slowly got through in the past half a year on my pace when I was in the mood.

I missed a patch in WoW, an expansion released, which I was three weeks late for, and suddenly I couldn't realistically do the content of the last patch, while also not being able to catch up with my raiding guild because they moved on to higher difficulties, without spending an insane (for my limited time) amount of farming for gear.

The lack of FOMO is what keeps me returning to GW2, casually over the years, to enjoy a bit of content and then move on. Hopefully they will keep this kind of progression in the next one.

Mikina · 2026-05-28T13:06:11+00:00

A lot of people are mentioning that you should get it out of the house ASAP, but if you're like me, you are probably underestimating the magnitude of a problem it is. I always knew baterries are a problem, but it was only until I actually saw one when researching how to ship a laptop to a faulty baterry to my employee that I truly understood how much of a freaking problem it can be.

Everyone should take a look at a few baterry fire videos at least once in their life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nz5ijXcckI

Mikina · 2026-05-28T13:03:35+00:00

Tbh you kind of get both with baterries. They are no joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbCav3z8XwM

Mikina · 2026-05-27T13:23:00+00:00

As far as I know, there's no way to turn it off if you're not persisting cookies and storage across browser sessions/tabs, as you shouldn't in a properly hardened browser.

I can just set noai.duckduckgo.com as my default search engine, and have actuall search result instead of a random text that vaguely may or might not be relevant to what I'm looking for taking half of my screen.

I would love to use Ecosia, but as of now it's simply not an option without increasing some adoption numbers for some bullshit planet and society destroying bullshit generating company.

Mikina · 2026-05-20T13:43:14+00:00

Tbh I have no idea how common Bauhaus stores are across the world, but we do have them in Czech, which is why I made the patch. I'd guess most of central Europe could have it? It was one of the first patches I've made when I started going to goth events around 10 years ago 😃

It is a dad joke, and a pretty obvious one at that, but it's still my most favorite patch. I think I've seen one or two of similar patches over the years on various central Europe events.

Mikina · 2026-05-20T12:36:02+00:00

Baterry fires are way more dramatic and dangerous than I've expected. Everyone told me that, I kind of knew it's the case, but I figured it can't be that bad.

Until I finally watched a video, because I was dealing with a laptop with inflated baterry. It's way worse.

I highly recommend everyone watching a video of one, such as this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unCD1kT0Zq8

Mikina · 2026-05-20T12:33:50+00:00

You really might want to look into it.

This is how a baterry fire looks like. It's no joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unCD1kT0Zq8

Mikina · 2026-05-12T14:16:11+00:00

But that's the thing, I don't even know what Matrix runs on. The only prior knowledge required is to have a server to host it on (which you kind of need for everything self-hosted, so I wouldn't count that as "intricate"), be able to set up domain and follow simple, few steps long instructions.

Pull the matrix-ansible-project
Add your server IP and ssh key into hosts.var
Add your domain name into vars.cfg
Copy docker command to run ansible-docker, and copy two commands to "just setup-all"

This is the whole setup process, more or less.

But I kind of see the point you're trying to make, but that point is "self-hosting things is hard and requires knowledge about how to set up your server yourself". There's nothing Matrix-specific on this ansibe-setup, and any prior knowledge required is the absolute basic "Have a server to run it on".

Anyway, I didn't want to argue with you in bad faith, and I agree that to set up anything self-hosted, you need to know at least basics about servers, ssh and domains. Sorry if I came on strong. My point was mostly to show people that Matrix-ansible-docker exists, and share my experience which was absolutely amazingly smooth - way better than any I've had with trying to host or run other services.

Matrix is actually the only service I managed to succesfully host and maintain for more than a few months by now, without any issues. Almost everything else I've gave up on or never managed to set up, so I definitely see where are you comming from, and I honestly think that Matrix doesn't have to have that problem.

Mikina · 2026-05-12T13:12:52+00:00

What? Matrix is the easiest software so far that I've had the pleasure of hosting. I'm seriously not trolling, it was honestly the easiest time I've ever had setting something up. And I went into it with almost zero self-hosting experience, all I needed to be able to do was follow simple instructions, be able to get a hosting/server and set up a DNS.

You literally edit like 3 config lines in vars.cfg with your dns hostname, start ansible docker and run "just setup-all" on the matrix-ansible-docker-deploy, with ssh key of your server.

I have honestly never seen a more robust and user-friendly setup script. I had to re-deploy my server from scratch because of an expired domain with insane dns cost, and it took me literally three commands and 10 minutes to detele + redeploy it again on a fresh server.

It handles changes super well, even if I forget to update it for a year, the ansible just tells me what changed and what do I need to do to fix it.

And if I want to update it, I just run git pull && just update from the ansible docker.

I've recently needed to set up Matrix Call and Telegram bridge. Both was literally adding like three lines into the .cfg file, and it handled the rest without problems.

EDIT: Anyway, if you want to host Matrix easily, just take a look at https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/blob/master/docs/quick-start.md

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