I had just mentioned this in a similar post, but Discord culture has really killed multi-player games for me. Especially guilds in MMORPGs. I remember joining one before 2010 felt like this very regal thing. They were these sacred orders of gentlemen with cool names like “The Iron Wolves”, “The Order of Light”, or “The Knights Templar”. Upon initiation you were inducted into a fellowship and granted access to private forums to stay in touch and keep up with the guild. You’d get to know the more productive members who would forge you equipment and look after you. You would gather in great halls beneath the severed head of the world dragon and discuss official guild business. Somewhere along the way that magic just died.

Now the guilds are all edgy and gamey, like “HATE”, “FURY”, “APEX”, “FIRST IN”, and “METHOD”. Initiation involves two paths. You either remain in relative obscurity in the fringes of the guild, never really growing much or forging meaningful relationships, or you take the other fork; walking closely with the sweaty, most egotistical edge-lords of the guild who don’t actually care about or support you, and spread toxicity throughout the ranks. Both paths tend to require you to live in Discord, partaking in constant banter with a group of perpetually online sigma males. It’s like plugging yourself in directly to the guild hive-mind and permanently altering the game’s atmosphere. You’re just playing “ENVY” now, or whatever your dumb guild is called. I’ve joined guilds that want you to have Discord on your phone so you are connected even while offline. That’s fucking nuts.

Anyway, that garbage doesn’t exist with single-player games. I can read dialogue at my own pace, toggle walk through the entire village to take in the sights/sounds and slow down the pacing, and truly absorb every last bit of that wonderfully thick atmosphere. Single-player games are so much deeper for me.

Take a heavily modded playthrough of Skyrim for example, with camping/tenting mods. Dusk begins to fall and you hear the call of a northern flicker in the forest around you. Better make camp. You find a clear spot outside or town and pitch a tent, raise a tanning rack, and build a fire. Now it’s getting dark. You walk to the river’s edge to fill your waterskin and return with a large salmon to cook over the fire. Now the stars are out. The score is swelling to inspiring highs that move your soul. The aurora dances above you in brilliant colors. You sit beside the fire and thumb through your inventory, deciding which lore book to read first. After some time you study a spell or record your thoughts into your journal, then quell your fire and sleep.

That’s my shit right there. That’s a single-player game.

Mushroom and pepperoni.

Being an entire bear being eaten alive by an entire bear must be awful.

I only enjoy multi-player with my wife. Our Valheim settlement and world progression is something beautiful to behold. Even vanilla WoW for me is solo or bust. I just don’t like people or Discord culture.

He’s pretty closed-minded about aliens as well for a man who has wrapped his head around the scale of our universe.

No, that’s a woman’s specialty.

Maybe it’s high time to start fucking people like this up. Like, really fuck them up.

Cernunnos is a loving god and would never ask for such blasphemies.

Would love to see the original video if anyone has a link to it.

I don’t find it particularly funny, but I certainly enjoyed the vibe of the entire skit.

I’ve been paying $25 CAD to support five family accounts and prevent my daughter from seeing ads during her monitored viewing. If that price goes up 30-50%, I’m fucking done. This was an expense I was willing to incur, as YouTube is literally the only media platform my family even uses anymore. Better price than cable and multiple streaming platforms, and (again) I’m paying that for five active accounts.

If anyone knows of a way for me to adblock through my Roku TV so that we can continue watching YouTube on it without a Premium account, I’m all ears. The TV is the only reason I’m not just using uBlock to begin with. I’m really not into the idea of hooking a laptop up via HDMI if I can avoid it. Just feels like a sloppy user experience for anyone else in the household wanting to watch YouTube on TV.

For me it’s less about my knowledge vs. theirs, and more about get the fuck away from me and stop trying to make a sale.

They’re like horseflies circling around your head repeatedly, even though you’ve politely shooed them away multiple times. There is a furniture/appliance chain in Canada called The Brick that is hands-down the worst offender for pushy salesmen. I haven’t gone into one in years because every time I do I wind up wanting to scream and hurl an ottoman through the front window.

I firmly believe this is one of the main reasons retail is dying. I’m willing to pay the markup for the convenience of buying a product and having it in-hand today, but when I enter a mall and there are vultures on every corner trying to make small-talk and casually direct me to today’s hot deals, I want nothing to do with it.

Nearly every server is different, but the ones my friends/wife and I always did (10+ years ago) were like role-playing kingdom building maps. Server owner (usually me) would hold the title of King/Sovereign and appoint their friends to specific roles. I would oversee the general development and expansion of the kingdom, as well as decide and manage a system of ore-based currency (or would at least create the mint and appoint someone to running it). Afterward I would introduce and gradually roll out phases of a larger storyline for anyone who cares.

My left and right hand would build/manage the keeps/barracks/military structures, or the government buildings/libraries/cultural centers, etc. These would all be injected with their own lore and staffed by the person in charge of them. Everyone else would receive more minor roles, but typically be given monopolies in certain types of goods or commerce. Maybe Bob wants to be a trapper. Sure, anyone else can legally go and gather leathers and animal parts, but Bob is the only one permitted to sell those items in his shop in the city. Things like that just to try to keep it interesting. When Bob isn’t trapping or trading or being involved with the kingdom, he’s pretty much just playing Minecraft on his homestead.

The idea is to open it up to the public (via applications and careful vetting) and watch people run amock in the simulated medieval economy. We used to have a blast doing it. Especially with mods installed that added skill progression, abilities at milestones and other MMORPG-esque mechanics.

Normal people, however… They just do what they do in single player but occasionally trade, work together, tackle bosses, and show each other their latest creations.

I’d kill for a spin-off that’s centered around the daily business of the shamans.

I tried to get into it a number of times, and the three major things that always wear me down are, first and foremost:

The obscene lack of difficulty in overworld content (next to running completely gearless or taking on group content/bosses solo to create an artificial sense of risk or danger). Most enemies are so easy that you never need to maneuver or use your full array of combat abilities. You end up mashing the same two or three hot keys on every single enemy while your HP remains at 99%.

The weird choice of classes and themes that do not accurately reflect what The Elder Scrolls has always been about. Rather than building classes based on my preferred weapon class, skill sets (Sneak, Lockpick, etc.), and magic classes (Alteration, Restoration, etc.), I have to be locked into a holy javelin-chucking warrior of light, a lightning-slinging daedric sorcerer, a fire magic dragon warrior with wings and spikes growing from my back, or some other weirdly themed class that didn’t need to be a core archetype in the Second Era. Like, fuck man… Base classes could have easily been born under the Warrior, Mage, Thief, etc. and then built upon from there.

The absolute clusterfuck of major/DLC quests that start the moment you walk into town or pass an NPC. It feels like navigating a fever dream as a new player, and it’s overwhelming. A thousand tangled threads and no room to breathe. Even the main quest no longer has level requirements at each stage, so the Prophet will bid you goodbye and immediately call out again the moment you leave the cave. It’s an absolute mess.

I could go on, but these are the worst three.

That’s the Fart Monster 2k.

It’s crazy to me that people are still watching TV and tuning into things like new episodes of The Simpsons. My wife and I just drove out to Vancouver last week and stayed in a few hotels along the way. Using the TVs at each one (with a living, breathing TV Guide Channel) felt a little surreal. We were supposed to have sex the one night and instead I fell asleep watching the Paralympics.

Veggie ball is full of pieces of corn, bell pepper, onion, etc. It’s colorful inside and out. Tastes heavily of those things too. The plant-based ball resembles a brown meatball in both appearance and consistency, but made entirely with plant-based ingredients. They’re awesome on a bun with marinara and mozzarella.

It’s actually wild how insecure people get over the subject of veganism. I still browse Facebook as a lifeline back to my friends and family back home, and for some reason my algorithm serves me up pro-meat posts jam packed full of rednecks losing their minds over vegans and making piles of meat and juice their personality. I eat meat myself (albeit in very small quantities compared to before) and I just don’t get the insecurity.

Maybe it’s being married to a lifelong vegetarian that helps, but man, I’ve honestly come to enjoy a lot of meat alternatives. Beyond Burgers/Sausages are great. IKEA’s plant-based balls are too (their veggie balls still suck ass and just taste like bell peppers). Gardein’s supreme chick’n nuggets/fillets and 7-grain tenders are also delicious.

Shit has really come a long way and it’s gotten to where larger portions of meat actually rip my intestines apart and give me disgusting bouts of gas and bloating. Basically just down to the occasional fast food burger, chicken quesadillas and seafood. Meat is still really tasty, but the vegans are right. At this point we’re just eating it because it tastes good. The longer I go without relying on it, the more fucked up the entire industry becomes to me.

STOP POSTING PICTURES OF THE SCROLLS! I swear this generation is reckless for upvotes. I only caught a glimpse and I saw the position I’m going to be shitting in when I die.