OwnedCore Report #68: The Elders of OwnedCore <Sponsored by MMOGOLD4USA>

**Kenneth** · 03-31-2019

Greetings OwnedCore and welcome to our 68th OwnedCore Report! This week had a ton of fun gaming news including Apple Gaming being announced, Borderlands 3 reveal, Classic WoW spell batching confirmed, and much more. Also we have a new addition to the Report that I am calling The Elders of OwnedCore where I interview every elder rank member who is willing to participate. Is anybody playing Sekiro and if so what are your thoughts overall?

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The Elders of OwnedCore

OwnedCore has been around for over 10 years and with that people have come and gone while some have stayed. The community is ever changing, gaming is ever changing, and OwnedCore is ever changing. Being that we are an older website and one of the last of its kind that has a strong community I wanted to help highlight some of our most decorated members, the Elders. Now as most of you know the reputation system has been in place on OwnedCore for a very long time. It was a way to give people credit for their submissions to the community. In most cases somebody with a lot of reputation has put in a lot of work here on OC for a very long time and in some cases acquired it in short bursts when certain games blow up. The highest rank you could achieve is Elder with a whopping 1,000 reputation. Some of these Elders of OwnedCore have seen the site from its infancy and some just have great stories to tell from their time here on OC. I wanted to share these stories so every week until I have been denied or gone through all of them I will interview 1 Elder rank member of OwnedCore to shine some light on how they got there and who they are. This week we have a bawx chat favorite Confucius.

Q: What attracted you to OwnedCore in the very beginning?

A:I was 11 years old and looking for WoW exploits then discovered emulation and became interested in that.

Q: Did you join and immediately begin posting and try becoming a part of the community or did you start off as a lurker and slowly work your way in?

A:I joined and my first thread was infracted for being a repost by Matt. Then I became interested in the emulation section and read guides from there and became active in that section.

Q: I did some digging through your started threads and found an amazing submission called The Great Addon Archive that is thousands of words long with tons of addons. What made you decide to archive all of these addons and how long did it take you to put together such a massive list?

A:I wished there was some archive of useful addons with descriptions that I could search through in one spot, but I couldn't find very many up to date ones, so I made my own. I hoped that the community would contribute to the list and some did but eventually the post died off.

Q: Was getting to a certain OC rank like Legendary or Elder a goal of yours or did you just organically accumulate by just being yourself and submitting things you found interesting?

A:Getting each rank was defintely a goal and I made many posts with the goal to advance my rank, but I tried to do the best work possible in all my posts and always contribute quality content. A lot of my reputation gained on the site was not through threads but just helping people out and being part of the community, back when the community was much more active.

Q: What was the atmosphere of OwnedCore like back when you joined compared to what it is today? Was it much different?

A:I don't play WoW too much now days so I'm not sure of the exact state of the site right now but the shoutbox sure was more active. There was also a scamming section and more questionable things were allowed on the site. That was a big issue when outside factors influenced the admins to shut down that section. I have never been a fan of scamming people and was happy to see the section go, and I think most of the community was as well. The private sections of the site were way more active than they are now days, probably because a lot of older members with the reputation have moved on from the site.

I was a lot younger when I first joined the site and spent all my teenage years on it so my perspective on the site has probably changed naturally as I went through adolescence. One thing that has definitely changed is certain sections being much more active such as the emulation and exploration sections, but I guess those have moved to more niche websites.

Q: Have you taken anything you learned on OwnedCore and applied it into the real world?

A:I learned to program from OwnedCore with a lot of help from people like Stoneharry, 2dgreengiant, drakefish, and some other names I probably have forgotten. When I was part of the news team, back in 2011 or so, that helped me practice my writing skills.

Q: Who is Confucius outside of OwnedCore? Can you give us a little bit of your background?

A:My life has mostly been defined by mental illness and major events related to it. In my sophomore year of highschool, which must have been 2010, I had my first nervous breakdown. Later, in 2011, I was diagnosed with autism, before that I had a diagnosis of OCD and a slew of other anxiety disorders. In the fall of 2011, I returned to highschool full time, after doing it from home because of my condition. I made friends and functioned well during this time. My senior year I developed clinicial depression and had another nervous breakdown; during this time, I went through many **********s trying to find one that worked for all my conditions. I missed months of school at a time the last semester of my senior year, but schoolwork always came easily to me and I graduated with a high gpa.

When I thought about going to college, I recalled my experience at a local liberal arts college I went to for math classes my senior year and how much I disliked it, because it was exactly like highschool. I decided I wanted a college that was both more rigorous and "intellectual" however you define that, so I applied to the University of Chicago and Reed College. I wanted a liberal arts education because I think it's important to be educated in a broad range of things and Chicago and Reed are known in academia as being two of the most rigorous undergraduate educations and more intellectual, where you go deeper into the subject matter than you would at a normal college. I was accepted into both and chose to attend Reed because it seemed to generally be thought to be more rigorous and had better prospects for graduate school. It was also a much smaller school and the small class sizes attracted me. So, I started Reed in the fall of 2014.

In the fall of 2014, I had another mental breakdown and started to develop psychotic symptoms. I took medical leave from school and was pretty much bed ridden for the year of 2015. During 2014 I had also developed rickets due to not eating properly because of my mental condition. I was diagnosed with an unspecified psychotic condition that was later reclassified to schizophrenia, something it turns out 1 in 10 autistics develop.

After a lot of work with therapy and psychiatrists I was pretty stable by 2017 and moved out of my parents’ house to try living alone before returning to college. It went fine and, in the fall of 2017, I returned to Reed.
Since then I have struggled often with psychotic symptoms, but it's probably as good as it's going to get, and my classes have been going great. I have made many friends and am much more social than I was when I was younger. I hope that if anyone can learn something from my life so far, it's that if you have mental conditions to not give up. Therapy and psychiatry really do work and even though it will remain a constant struggle you can still achieve the things you want to.

Q: What does Confucius do with his free time in 2019?

A:I don't have much free time because of how high the workload at my college is, but I do weightlift every MWF. I like to listen to music, talk to my friends, play with my cat, and read comics. I try to play video games but I don't enjoy them much anymore unless I am playing with friends.

Q: Now for anybody that doesn't know Confucius he has a soft spot for pandas. I have to ask , when did this start? Is it just a meme or do you really love pandas as much as you give off?

A:Well, a symptom of autism is obsessions with certain things. It started out with polar bears because that was my dad's favorite animal but then in grade school a friend showed me a book about pandas and ever since then I have been crazy about them. I like all bears in general, but the panda is the best because he is the best looking and a vegetarian. I’m not sure if the amount of joy the panda brings me could be understood by neurotypical people, but it is immense.

Q: What are some changes you would like to see on OwnedCore if any?

A:I would like to see a section for homework help because I like to help people with schoolwork but in general there are not any big changes I would make. I just hope that classic WoW brings more people back to the site.

Q: I'm not sure if you remember but back in late 2017 you were one of the first people I interviewed for the Report. In that interview I asked you if you were interested in Classic WoW and you said yea because you want to play with your real life friends. Is this still your plan or have things changed since then?

A:Yes! I plan to play it with my real life friends and am trying to get some other friends who have never played it before to play it as well.

Q: Are you looking forward to anything in gaming's future near or far? Could be tech, VR, etc.

A:I do not get that excited about the direction gaming is going. I wish mmorpgs would become big once again, but they seem to be being replaced with more casual or quick games.

Q: You mentioned how you made a lot of friends these days and are more social than when you were younger. Do you think having OwnedCore during some of the years that might have not been great for you socially helped?

A:OwnedCore let me have many friends through the internet during times that I would not otherwise been able to interact with people. The community has definitely helped me through some tough times and that’s one of the reasons I still visit the site daily.

Q: I'm excited to hear you say you plan on playing Classic WoW and hope OwnedCore can revive some with it. Have you been keeping up with some of the latest news on Classic? It really seems like it might be coming out early summer just based on the sheer amount of updates were getting on stuff these last two weeks.

A:I’ve read some updates, but I don’t keep up with the news that much. I will be very happy if it is released late May or early June, that would give me a lot of time to play on break.

Q: Do you have a suggestion on who I should interview next among the Elder ranks?

A:I would like to know what Stoneharry is doing but he is a mod still, so I don't know if he counts. In second place I would like to see an interview from Jadd. We used to be great friends even if he denies it or doesn't remember it.

Gaming News from Around the Globe

Borderlands 3

We covered the teasers in the Report over the last couple weeks and it is finally here. Borderlands 3 was officially announced at PAX East and it was pretty hype. One of the oldest shoot and loots is going to be coming back to us...but when? In the big announcement we didn't get a release date but we did get a "Visit Borderlands.com on April 3rd for more information". On top of all this Borderlands 1 is getting a game of the year edition. Overall pretty big news for Borderland fans.

Spell Batching confirmed for Classic WoW

Another blue post about Classic is upon us and this time it covers Spell Batching. This was an issue that was brought up when the Classic Demo from Blizzcon was released and people noticed there was not spell batching.

So what is spell batching?

Before Warlords of Draenor spells were processed every server tick instead of happening in the order they were performed. This means before WoD things like two mages sheeping each other at the same time could occur where as in today's WoW that is nearly impossible. Some more notable mechanics brought up by reddit user xjum are not being able to fear opponents kidney shot, frost nova and jumping your opponent's stun, vanishing a death coil, and any other interaction between spells that would be exclusively possible on the old system. An example he links is this time stamped video of a rogue gouging a mages blink because he predicted when the mage would use it.

At the end of the day having spell batching is a necessary component to make Classic WoW's PVP as authentic as possible and when the demo didn't have it people were a little worried.

But have no fear

Blizzard states this in their Blue Post

as with many other areas of WoW Classic, authenticity is our primary concern.

For WoW Classic, we’re moving spell casts to a low-priority loop that will cause them to be processed at the frequency that best fits how the game actually played in version 1.12. Two mages will be able to Polymorph each other somewhat reliably, resulting in two sheep nervously pacing around at range. Two warriors will be able to Charge one another, and the end result will be both warriors standing stunned in each other’s original location.

This is a massive announcement for Classic's authenticity. These last 2-3 weeks have been a breathe of fresh air when it comes to communication from the Classic WoW team over at Blizzard. We have had 3+ blue posts and all of them not only address concerns but announce a fix to them that seems to be the most vanilla route they can take.

Apple Arcade

So last week was the Google Stadia announcement and this week we got Apple Arcade. It looks like these big tech giants are trying to really take a huge space in the thriving gaming industry. In our last Report we talked about how Google was ditching physical gaming all together and moving toward a cloud based system. Apple Arcade on the other hand is just bringing you iOS titles to your iPhone, Mac, and Apple TV for a monthly fee. This already seems like it can't possibly compete with Stadia because Google Stadia will work on ANY device that runs Chrome where as Apple seems to be just sticking with its own devices. Google Stadia is coming with AAA games including NBA 2K and Assassin's Creed while Apple has a ton of indie games like Sonic Racing and Oceanhorn 2. The big difference is Google Stadia is streaming and Apple Arcade is download. We don't know how much either of these will cost but we do know that Apple Arcade is a monthly subscription.

Now which is better? Personally I think its easy to speculate that Google is taking the biggest leap here in changing gaming and not only that but it just looks way more appealing than Apple Arcade. I have an Apple Phone myself but no MAC or Apple TV. That limitation is going to be such a turn off for somebody who doesn't own each of Apple's big tech products. Google's Stadia not only working on their own products but ANYTHING that can run Google Chrome is huge. I would have to say Stadia is looking more and more appealing if they can pull it off and the pricing is not outrageous.

Warcraft 1 & 2 are on GOG

Diablo made its way to GOG less then a month ago and now Blizzard has formatted Warcraft 1 and 2 to run on modern OS as well. Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft 2 are on GOG! This is great news for the classic Blizzard titles. Right after the Diablo ones came out there was a ton of love given back to these games and how much they formed modern day ARPGs. Ironically Diablo 2 still had a very healthy player base even before it hit GOG. It is a style that no modern ARPG really gives you anymore. Now we can check out the same thing with the old Warcraft games. Going back to some of the very first RTS games that boomed a future industry.

Pricing is $6 for Warcraft and $10 for Warcraft 2. You can get both for $15 if bought together. Now the question is. Will Warcraft 3 be next? Could be.

Classic WoW Guide for Picking a Class

For those of us that played Vanilla it has been a LONG time and for those of you have not the game is VERY different. With this in mind I decided to look for a guide on picking a Class for Classic WoW. Now this one by Kargoz is by far the best one I have found. Not only does he go into detail on each class and spec but once you decide on which maybe 2-3 you are interested in he has a ton of individual and in depth leveling guides for that class on the same channel. The Classic WoW experience is a lot more refined than it used to be with how active its private servers have been over the years and some classes and specs that you maybe thought were bad back in the day might actually be top tier today because people have figured out how to get the most out of them. Overall if you are stuck going back and forth thinking of a Class then this video is for you.