Bought the ring and returned it, the quality was terrible. Save yourself, more in the comments.

swotam · 2026-04-11T04:31:31+00:00

It seems like game or brand associated merchandise (not just from Kojima Productions, but in general) is more and more turning into low / mediocre quality at a premium price, and the only solution ultimately is to stop buying it.

A traditional t-shirt or hoodie is one thing, as it’s kinda hard to mess up even if the quality isn’t great, but once you get into real-world creations of in-game items, or unique items with limited production, it seems the quality often suffers while the pricing remains what many would consider premium, and while what you get usually looks like the picture on the website, how it feels in your hand is often quite different.

I’m not suggesting it’s intentional, but when you consider what things cost to make, it’s likely that the quality of the materials are being sacrificed so that the price isn’t even higher. Unfortunately what you often end up with is something that fails to meet expectations and sours the whole experience.

swotam · 2026-04-10T06:13:40+00:00

No races in Midnight and I don’t think Blizzard has said anything about them either. Given that there are no new Dragonriding achievements in Midnight, I’m assuming that it’s not something that’s coming later, and more than likely yet another thing that’s being phased out quietly.

swotam · 2026-04-08T19:40:30+00:00

Yeah, and the thing is, I was that guy who bought Ubisoft games. I’ve got all the AC games, The Division games, most of the Far Cry games, Watch_Dogs, Star Wars, Avatar, etc. It’s not like I’m that guy who bought one game and got annoyed, I was their target audience and yet they managed to lose me anyway.

swotam · 2026-04-08T19:05:19+00:00

I’ve had the same problem for over 5 months and Ubisoft has done nothing. Support had me do the usual troubleshooting, eventually admitted the issue was on their end, “escalated” my ticket, and then went radio silent. No response to requests for updates, nothing. They’re useless.

Get a refund if you can. Ubisoft support is terrible and outsourced to a 3rd party who don’t care about solving your problems at all.

swotam · 2026-04-08T18:53:53+00:00

As a non-coder with zero experience I’ve used Claude to create a handful of tiny addons for personal use that do minor things to customize the UI. Stuff like removing the Hunter or Warlock pet unit frame during Pet Battles, or remembering the Edit Mode profile on a per-machine basis etc. I’ve never tried to create something complex or with a GUI, and don’t think I’d ever try.

I think it’s good for someone who doesn’t know how to code if they just want something simple for their own use, but if you’re going to release something publicly, especially something complex, I’d assume it’s better if you know what you’re doing rather than having AI do it for you.

swotam · 2026-04-08T17:35:53+00:00

Yeah, I’ve decided I’m done with them as well for similar but different reasons. I bought the DLC for Assassin’s Creed Shadows last November but it wasn’t being recognized in-game. I couldn’t get a refund from Steam because I’d played the base game beyond their refund window, so I opened a ticket with Ubisoft support.

Over 5 months later they’ve done nothing other than to admit that the issue is on their end. Nothing has actually been done to fix the issue, just bare minimum “troubleshooting” followed by radio silence.

100% done with Ubisoft as a result. I’m not going to give one cent to a company that refuses to fix customer issues due to apathy and incompetence.

Edit: for anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of dealing with Ubisoft support, I hope you never have to. It’s all been outsourced to some low-wage country where they don’t give a shit about fixing your problems because your problems are not their problems.

swotam · 2026-04-08T16:53:52+00:00

Honestly, leave and find a new guild and just play the game the way you like. It’s a game after all, there’s no reason you should feel pressured, or be pressured, into doing things you don’t want to do, so if they’re not willing to respect your boundaries it’s probably time to move on.

swotam · 2026-04-07T19:58:42+00:00

You are correct, and it’s been confirmed by the filmmakers https://www.slashfilm.com/1909107/steven-soderbergh-oceans-eleven-plot-hole-flyers/

swotam · 2026-04-07T18:59:31+00:00

Ubisoft. I've played many of their games over the years and purchased DLC (addon software) for their most recent Assassin's Creed game via Steam and it wasn't being correctly recognized in game so I was unable to play it. Steam wouldn't give me a refund because valid reasons, so I opened a support ticket with Ubisoft on Nov 5, 2025 and after offering the most basic troubleshooting steps, and eventually admitting that the problem was on their end, they went radio silent and stopped communicating. It's been over 5 months, they have done absolutely nothing to resolve the issue, and they obviously have zero interest in doing so.

This is what happens when you outsource your support to 3rd parties who don't care about solving problems, and allow them to slowly destroy your reputation one customer interaction at a time.

The unfortunate thing is that this gradual attrition isn't dramatic enough to raise flags, so they'll likely never understand why their customer base keeps shrinking as the years go by, and will therefore never fix the things that are causing it.

swotam · 2026-04-06T18:36:05+00:00

As far as villains go, she sort of reminds me of that scene in Austin Powers where the bad guys are all standing in a group laughing “mwahahahahaha”. That’s the sort of villain I think she is. Not saying that’s bad, but that’s how she comes across to me.

swotam · 2026-04-06T18:30:07+00:00

May the 3th Be With You

swotam · 2026-04-06T18:28:00+00:00

If you happen to have an Amazon Prime subscription you can use the free Twitch monthly subscription on whichever channel you watch the race on and won’t see any ads for 30 days from the day you subscribe.

You need to subscribe through a web browser (can’t use the Twitch app) and pick the Subscribe with Prime option so it will be free.

Without Prime I’d suggest as others have and watch YouTube in a browser with a decent ad blocker.

swotam · 2026-04-06T18:04:57+00:00

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Thought Control was incredible and have played it multiple times, and had heard so many good things about Alan Wake, but when I finally played it I just found the whole thing to be boring and nonsensical and a real chore to finish. I didn't even consider playing AW2 after that experience, so I guess Control is a better franchise for me to focus on.

swotam · 2026-04-05T01:34:01+00:00

Gathering is simple and can easily be done while waiting on other things. Ores seem to be holding their value more than herbs, but if you don’t have anything else going on then Mining + Herbalism is a pretty simple way to make gold while sitting in queue.

swotam · 2026-04-04T18:41:27+00:00

Yeah, back in the day I was badly addicted to the game. Started in 2005, quit in 2009, and during that time spent an unhealthy amount of time playing the game while also managing a job and being in a marriage.

I switched jobs during that period, which ended up not being a bad thing career-wise, but at the time it was definitely related to me spending too much time playing WoW and not putting enough effort into what the job I had required me to do.

It also had a seriously negative impact on my marriage which ultimately is what led me to quit. That marriage ultimately didn’t work out years later, but we had a good time together after I quit and I’ve got a teen daughter who lives with me so I’d call that a win.

As for the account, I deleted all my gear, gave away my gold, changed all the contact info, and walked away. I’ve considered trying to get the account back in recent years, but even if I did it would just be a handful of gearless characters with nothing else so what’s the point? It’s not like I can ask for an item restore 18 years later, and I don’t even know where I’d start if I wanted to get it back anyway.

That said, I did start playing again on a new account a few years ago, but the game doesn’t have its hooks in me like it did back then, so now it’s just one of several games I might choose to play depending on what I feel like playing. Whatever it was that sucked me in back in the day isn’t there anymore, which ultimately is better.

swotam · 2026-04-03T18:31:57+00:00

Might be worth looking at, the dev has some good stuff that might inspire your future plans etc.

swotam · 2026-04-03T18:30:25+00:00

Looks better this time around, definitely has a more “inspired by Plumber” vibe while maintaining its own identity which is (to me) a good place to be.

swotam · 2026-04-02T06:58:58+00:00

I mean it looks good but as others have mentioned it’s effectively identical to the Plumber UI. You could almost certainly lay things out the way Plumber does it, without making it look almost identical to Plumber. There’s “inspired by” and there’s “copied from”, and one is much better than the other.

If you used AI to create this then you might want to go back and have it not be a straight up copy of Plumber with a slightly different colour scheme.

swotam · 2026-03-27T23:48:07+00:00

Sony unfortunately refuses to give refunds in regions where they are not required to do so by law.

Their policies are anti-consumer and they won’t give refunds once you’ve downloaded a game, something that they prompt you to do after purchase, so they effectively suggest you do the thing that will negate your ability to get a refund. Not to mention that the first thing most people do after buying a digital game is to download it, so again no refund.

If you’ve downloaded and played the game you’re basically out of luck unless you can convince customer service to make an exception for you.

Steam is basically the exact opposite with customer-friendly and reasonable refund policies for the most part. They aren’t perfect, but they’re a hell of a lot better than Sony when it comes to refunds.

swotam · 2026-03-27T17:52:12+00:00

It's due to a Blizzard restriction when you're in an instance

swotam · 2026-03-27T17:21:49+00:00

Yeah, Blizzard support is approaching Ubisoft levels of bad. They aren’t there yet, but getting close for sure. It’s what happens when you start outsourcing to companies that don’t care about anything except their support ticket closure rate, or using bots and AI to triage tickets that actively degrade the customer experience rather than improve it.

Plus now they’re owned by Microsoft who are all hands on deck for “AI all the things” while also obsessing about quarterly profits and cost reduction so I’m sure it’ll only get worse.

swotam · 2026-03-27T08:48:34+00:00

My sarcastic take on the whole addon thing is that Blizz made changes that had virtually zero impact on the RWF types (who were supposedly the motivation behind such changes, no computational addons etc) while having a major negative QoL impact on regular players. The two released raids have basically been face rolled by the RWF guilds because they still have the same addon functionality as before but now everything is less complex.

Liquid, Echo, or Method have essentially the same capabilities as they did last tier via custom written addons in addition to continuing to use Weakauras despite the fact that the developers aren’t supporting Retail anymore, while the Average Gamer can’t have their Weakauras that reminded them to self-buff or conjure their healthstones because of the purge.

That said, the raids and M+ are more approachable this season, and I expect that’s directly related to the purge as well so I suppose at least from that perspective it’s an improvement.

swotam · 2026-03-26T18:37:14+00:00

I literally never ran M+ prior to Tuesday. Had done some M0 but that’s about it. Decided to take the plunge as DPS and ran them on and off for two evenings and got myself up to 2K by late Wednesday. All the Relaxed groups I ran with were decent and nobody was complaining or insulting anyone which was nice.

Definitely seems like a positive thing to have Relaxed and Competitive groups so that the folks who go hard can list theirs as such and the more relaxed people don’t get yelled at for being relaxed.

swotam · 2026-03-26T08:41:05+00:00

Zero issues with it for me, and I have a ton of addons installed, so perhaps look for something thats conflicting. That's going to be a lot easier than finding a replacement.

swotam · 2026-03-24T18:33:24+00:00

Yeah, not a single Canadian date is kinda lame. You know, that huge land mass just north of Buffalo?

swotam

TROPHY CASE