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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • News of Everwild’s cancellation arrives amid more layoffs at Microsoft; the company is reportedly slashing nearly 9,000 jobs as part of new cuts at Microsoft.

    Wow. It was rumored to be a big layoff, but 9,000 is way over any forecast. And this is what? The third so far since Covid? Is there anyone left working for them, at this point? Or is it all seasonal contractors?

    EDIT: turns out that they gutted The Initiative (the supposedly AAAA studio that never released anything), cancelled Everwild, cut 50% of Turn10, 10% of King, and cancelled an unknown number of unannounced games, including one MMO title developed by the TES Online devs.
    What a bloodbath. But hey, at least Phil is safe.



  • The dip now works backwards. 1 or 2 Paladin/X Warlock.

    Two levels in Paladin grant you heavy armor, weapon masteries, fighting style, Smite and additional spell slots to burn for things like Smite, Shield and whatnot. The rest in Hexblade for the higher level slots and invocations.

    Because of how terribly rushed the development of OneDnD was, there are tons of inconsistencies in how features work, and one of them is Divine Smite requiring a bonus action, and Eldritch Smite being part of the attack. Because of this (and the removal of the level cap on Divine Smite), the best smiter is a Hexblade with two levels in Paladin who can cast both Smites on the same attack and use higher level slots than the class that should use them.

    Depending on how they rework the subclass (we’ve got two UAs that are very different from one another and from the previous incarnation of the subclass in the 2014 rules), it’s got a chance at becoming the best gish build.




  • I totally agree! Reading is such a beautiful experience because half of it happens inside of your head, and you somehow get to experience the words on the page in a more personal way that’s not really possible with any other medium.

    If you ever end up writing a complete book (or have written one already), hit me up. I’ll buy it if I can. I really enjoyed this short story.


  • Thank you for writing this. I don’t know how much of the story happened and how much is fictional, but it certainly made me feel something. I had a pit bull when I was a kid who was the most beautiful and majestic and protective dog I’ve ever known. I still dream of her sometimes. This story reminded me a bit of her.


  • The problem at this point is not so much that they don’t have games - they have released plenty in the past few years and most have been received positively.

    The problem is that they released those games too late, and by that point, the ship had already sailed. After a streak of disappointing years with the XOne, they needed strong titles to pair up with XSeries. Instead, they released jack shit for an entire year, and after that the disappointment just grew further with the likes of Halo Infinite, Starfield and the weird vampire game nobody asked for.

    By that point, everyone already got themselves a PS5, a Switch, a gaming PC or a handheld device. Xbox needed to show their fans they believed in their mission and were capable of delivering strong titles on their platform, but everyone saw their releases and said “Meh”.

    The strong titles eventually came, but by that point they had already decided to port them over to the competition to offset the cost, and everyone saw the writing was on the wall for the platform.

    Spencer can go on stage spewing whatever bullshit he wants, but nobody outside of the most diehard Xbox fans believe that the platform has a future - and it’s very hard to convince people to invest on your platform when it’s not certain how many more years it will be supported, and whether your store will remain accessible or shut down a few years down the line.