A Blizzard of Trouble

Last week must have been the worst for Activision-Blizzard, particularly the Blizzard part.

Chances are you've already heard about this as international media has reported on it but here is the Blitzchung drama.

On Monday the 7^th of October, Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai, won a Hearthstone grandmasters tournament and in the interview that followed he said: ”Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age”. The livestream was immediately shut down.

In very short order Blitzchung was stripped of all his winnings and slapped with a one year ban from Blizzard e-sports. The two shoutcasters (commentators) were also suspended by Blizzard for a year.

So, an American corporation punishes a Hong Kong citizen for showing solidarity with his people in their fight for human rights and democracy? Hang on now... A press statement in the west calmly stated that Blitzchung had violated the rules of the tournament by talking about something besides the game... and that's why they took everything away from him? Well read on.

In the East, Blizzards message was a bit different. There are a couple of different translations of the Mandarin Chinese message but the content is essentially the same: We are very angry and we will always uphold and defend the dignity of China. I'm paraphrasing but that's essentially what it said.

So now the American corporation is punishing a Hong Kong player on behalf of Communist China? Not good...

This blew up in an incredible storm of fury all over the world. A Norwegian member of Parliament wrote to Activision CEO Robert Kotick, asking him to do the right thing. U.S. politicians on both sides have condemned Activision-Blizzard. Human Rights watch groups are furious and fans are boycotting, canceling their subscriptions and even deleting their Blizzard accounts in protest. The amount of cancellations got so bad that Blizzard either tried to stop it by shutting down the pages where you delete your account or the system crashed under the load.

The fury continued to grow and all Activision-Blizzard said was: We're evaluating our situation. Then on Friday the 11^th just before the closing of business, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack issued a statement.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament

Not only is this a weak non statement, but the language is so grammatically weird that some are suspecting that is was written in Chinese and not in English. I have no evidence either way. However, phrases like:

“We now believe he should receive his prizing” is not really how an American normally writes.

So now Blitzchung gets his prize money and is “only” suspended for six months as are the casters.

To make the whole mess messier, a U.S. Hearthstone team in another league held up a sign during a tournament stating “Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizzard”. The camera was pulled away from them but they received no punishment whatsoever, even though their message was harsher than Blitzchungs.

In protest, the American University team forfeited the match and dropped out of the tournament. This does illustrate that Blizzards actions had nothing to do with the rules and everything to do with appeasing China.

Some Blizzard employees have protested via a walkout and even covered up the parts of the statue outside Blizzard HQ that says “Every voice matters”.

Now with Blizzcon only a couple of weeks away, peaceful protests are being organized so it might be an interesting convention.

That's the story in a nutshell, if you want more, Youtube has dozens of videos on the subject. But, what's the bottom line here?

China is an enormous market for both mobile and PC games, and Activision-Blizzard is obviously very keen on not offending the Chinese government, because those who do, are not welcome to do business there. The CCP can, have and will throw out any and all companies that they deem unsuitable.

It is sad that Activision-Blizzard is so keen on nothing but money that this event has taken place but perhaps it's a good thing that we know the truth.

That's it for me, join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

Bills of Mortality

We all know being alive is dangerous. No one has ever survived being alive. Nope, everyone who ever lived, died. End of story.

But how did they die? That's a good question, even if I ask it myself to set up the next part.

Introducing Bills of Mortality.

Started in 1592 in London as a record of burials, it was published on and off until 1819 when the parishes adopted a new system. Usually it functioned as a record of how many died that week and from what. Now as a disclaimer, I'm aware that this is pretty macabre, and that these were real people, but some of these entries are really funny out of context.

I first heard of these in an episode of 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, but a quick Google search finds a bunch of these. So lets take a look.

The first page I found is from the week of August 15-22 1665, during the Great Plague:

Plague: 3880 (no surprise there)

Consumption: 174

Dropsy (a form of heart failure): 40

Aged: 54

Fairly normal stuff so far, right? Let's keep going:

Frighted: 1

Lethargy: 1

Sore Legge: 1

Stone: 2

Winde: 8

Then we get very specific:

Found dead in the Street at St. Bartholomew the Lefs: 1

Killed by a fall down the stairs at St. Thomas Apostle: 1

Apparently going to church is dangerous...

Another list is for the entire year of 1665 and is therefore more detailed:

Drowned: 50

Executed: 21

Leprosie: 2

Murthered (Murdered) and Shot: 9

Killed by several accidents: 46

King's Evil: 86 (this is actually TB not the acts of an evil king.)

And finally, my favorite entry as a cause of death:

Suddenly: 1

So there you have it, stay away from the King's Evil or you may die Suddenly! Until next time, have a great (and safe) week!

So relaxing

Okay, so I had another post planned for today, but yesterday I pulled a muscle in my back. It's almost recovered but it helped ensure that I woke up constantly throughout the night. Then I was woken up by the delightful sound of several chainsaws and edge-trimmers singing a chorus outside my house. As a result, my brain is foggy to say the least, and I had to come up with another plan.

And then it hit me. You see, when I have one of those “too tired to think straight” days I'm usually also fairly sensitive. I can't follow complex plot-lines and I'm definitely not in the mood for anything nasty, stressful or emotionally difficult. So today I'm sharing some of my secret (and not so secret) relaxing channels on Youtube.

Channels that are fun, friendly, positive and just make me feel good. A warm cup of tea for the brain so to say.

First up we have emmymadeinjapan.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzqbfYjQmf9nLQPMxVgPhiA

Emmy is a super positive woman who delights in testing weird old recipes, old kitchen gadgets, depression era food etc. I've learned a thing or two about cooking from her, but my main takeaway is the incredible positivity she radiates.

Next up is How To Drink.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCioZY1p0bZ4Xt-yodw8_cBQ

This channel is all about cocktails and history. How drinks are made, when they were invented, even fictional drinks from shows like Game of Thrones and Star Trek. The smooth jazz music, the lighting and the almost pornographic slow motion pours are a soothing salve for a tired brain. It's charm and information wrapped in a warm blanket, even if you don't really care about cocktails.

Finally I want to share Black Magic Craft.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2Rlv-ug-mtnXuMwlpcqFgg

This is all about model making. Mainly terrain and buildings but he dips into other stuff as well from time to time. Again, the atmosphere is ultra relaxing but here it's coupled with seeing something take shape in front of you. Foam, paint and glue comes together to create something incredible. Well worth giving a shot even if you have no interest in models or table top gaming.

There are of course others, but these three should be a good starting point if you want more. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to relax a little. Until next time, have a great and soothing week!

Exploring Pripyat

Ever since the amazing HBO show Chernobyl, I've been mildly obsessed. If that's possible. To be mildly obsessed that is... Let's say it is and move on.

I had previously read some articles on Wikipedia and seen photographs of the place, but today there are other options.

Below is a link to a really interesting list of seven videos about a bunch of guys who went to the city of Pripyat and have a look around earlier this year. It's been 33 years since the disaster and it's pretty cool to see what remains, what's been destroyed and how dangerous it still is.

They have a second list of more Pripyat exploration, but I haven't had time to watch it so I don't know if it's good.

Note: video number 2 in the list has nothing to do with Chernobyl, so just skip it. It must have been included by mistake.

So, without further ado, have a look and until next time, have a great week!

The list:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GLfmDmBa9Q&list=PLy2hD4SJVJr3yKHj6yAKru4LUKvqe1tBQ

Trivia Time

Did you know that the moon has a bishop?

Well, it does. According to Catholic law, newly discovered territory falls under the jurisdiction of the bishop from whence the expedition left. Since the Kennedy Space Center is in the Orlando bishopric, the bishop of Orlando is also the moon bishop.

This makes the Orlando bishopric the biggest one in the Catholic Church, by quite a margin. The moon's surface is after all about 38 million square kilometers (14.6 square miles).

Speaking of space stuff, did you know that the reason why we count down on New Years Eve has it's roots in the space race?

It turns out that before the U.S. put its first man in space, countdowns weren't very common. But with Alan Shepard going to space on May 5^th 1961, America got space fever and since the launch and indeed all launches have a countdown, people started to countdown lots of things.

But why do the space launches have countdowns? They are practical, sure, but it turns out there is a specific reason. You see, the man who headed up the U.S. space program was a man called Wernher von Braun who was a rocket expert. He got his expertise from designing and building V2 rockets for Hitler. Then after the Americans grabbed him under Operation Paperclip he went to work for NASA. Well, von Braun's favorite movie was Girl in the Moon (1929) by Fritz Lang.

Lang is of course better known for his Metropolis (1927) and M (1931), but interestingly his Girl in the Moon, although science fiction, got a surprising amount of the science part correct. So correct that the Nazis tried to suppress it for security reasons. One of the less relevant parts were countdowns before launches, which von Braun liked so much that he wanted them at his real life launches and then their popularity soared.

Another interesting part around the New Years Eve countdown is the dropping ball. You have probably seen footage of Times Square in NYC, right? Ball drops, people count down and then sing Auld Lang Syne.

The ball has nothing to do with space though. It has to do with maritime navigation. Observatories like Greenwich had them to show mariners when it was exactly midday so that they could set their watches and not sail off course. Since observatories usually aren't directly on the coast, but always up high on hills, the ball was easily visible from far away. Today, it's not a common practice, but a dropping sphere was a common symbol for an exact moment back in the day, and this way it's still relevant, if only a little.

Well that's it for me. A small bit of trivia to start the week with, and until next time, have yourself a great week!

Unusual druggies

There's a lot of talk these days about drugs and drug users, but did you know that many of the top nazis were on meth?

Please enjoy this documentary on the subject, and until next time, have a great week!


Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw-JP37q62Q

WoW Classic and Beyond

Blizzard has finally released World of Warcraft Classic and I want to talk about it.

A bit of background first. I started playing WoW in 2004, two weeks after launch. I played all the way through the first expansion, The Burning Crusade in 2007, the second expansion Wrath of the Lich King in 2008 and through the third, Cataclysm in 2010. That was when I finally burned out.

I had taken breaks from the game, sure, but I always came back, until I couldn't do it anymore. The game had changed too much while at the same time it was too much of the same old. I canceled my subscription and moved on with no regrets after 6-7 years of playing.

When the fifth expansion Warlords of Draenor was released in 2014, Blizzard gave away the fourth expansion Mists of Pandaria (2012) for a fiver, and I went back, but quit again after a few days. It completely failed to excite me. Since then Legion (2016) and Battle for Azeroth (2018) have been released. I basically know nothing about them, but Blizzard changed things around and now you get the entire game sans the newest expansion, in this case BfA, if you subscribe.

So, Classic. When they announced it I was a bit excited and then I lost interest. Then I got some interest back and lost it again, so on and so forth. Classic went live on August 26^th, and the day before, Sunday the 25^th I was still feeling pretty cold towards it. As the launch timer slowly ticked down towards zero, I went to Twitch.tv to have a little look. It turns out that I wasn't the only one. 1.2 million people watched Classic go live, which was pretty crazy. I watched as my chosen streamers intro camera zoomed across the undead starting area and we could see a literal army of undead swarming across Deathknell (undead starting area).

Most of the starting quests are either 1. Kill X amount of Y monsters, or 2. Collect X amount of things that drop off Y monsters, or 3. Find and gather X amount of Y items that spawn around the map. There must have been ten players per monster. It was a glorious madhouse, a cacophony of chaos and I do not understand how anyone could stand to play like that.

The following day however, I subbed and jumped into World of Warcraft Classic. It wasn't as bad as day 1, but it was pretty rough. It has since evened out.

I've played a week now, and to be perfectly honest, it's a mixed bag. It is a lot of fun, but it is so insanely old school in design.

It's hard to find where you need to go as the map is little help. I rely on memory more than anything else.

It's hard to make any money, and you pay for everything. Hitting a new even level and having to train four new spells at 15 silver a piece when you have just managed to get two gold together is rough. Want to fly from Orgrimmar to Stonetalon? 5 silver please... it's hard. Add to that the fact that on level 40 you get to pay a total of 100 gold to get a mount and the money troubles are real.

The combat is slow, you have a lot of downtime getting health and mana back. My undead mage must have died a dozen times before level 20. The slowness is also compounded by the amount of players. Blizzard have put up a ton of PVP servers, but only three PVE servers so it is hard to find all the mobs you need, especially named boss mobs. Some areas are lousy with players desperately trying to grab that named guy to complete the quest. Luckily the players are so nice.

Seriously, the player base on my PVE server at least are super friendly. People are helpful, polite almost to a fault, and even generous. A warlock gave me a wand for free, just because I gave him an intellect buff. So while the game is slow and grindy, the players are great. Sure, I've run across a couple of jerks, but nowhere near how it used to be.

So what are the good parts? Well to be honest it's mostly nostalgia, but there is a kind of purity in it as well. It feels clean and all the things that annoyed me about Cataclysm and forward are not there. It's how it used to be and in a sense how it should be – but only in a sense.

On Saturday, my wife and I became curious and wanted to know what regular WoW is like now. So we jumped over to retail and rolled up a couple of characters. After all, it's all included in the subscription.

I have to say it's weird and intimidating as hell. Everything has changed since I played last and I understand nothing. But in order to be fair, we actually played a bit and it's super fun. At least on low levels. My paladin is almost level 20 out of 120, so I make no comments about what the later game is like. It might be awful for all I know.

The thing is though, without playing Classic with no rose tinted glasses on, I wouldn't be able to see retail for what it really is. It also helps that I'm on a brand new account so all the emotional baggage that my old characters have is not there.

All the things my wife an I complained about when playing Classic are gone in retail. The map shows you where to go, there is no competition to kill named mobs, training is free and automatic, but the server economy is insane. Inflation rules the roost and even low level green items go for hundreds of gold a piece.

I'm glad I played Classic, and I'm going to play some more but to be honest, I'm having more fun in retail (at least on low levels).

I've gone on seriously long enough so until next time, have a great week!