Chaos and Crystal Archives: Frigging Regions, How Do They Work?

This is a more technical post for people who are interested in the inner workings of systems they use. For the kind of people who, upon buying a laser printer, go to Wikipedia for a popular explanation of how it actually works. (Spoiler: similar to a photocopier, which is why the two are often combined into one device.)

Chaos Archives Goes Multi-Region: Introducing Crystal Archives!

Today I pushed a really important update to Chaos Archives. It’s almost invisible to users of Chaos Archives themselves. The only clue that something has changed is the character selection dialog.

Warcraft Retrospective 14: Day of the Dragon

This week we’re looking at the novel Day of the Dragon by… (sigh) Richard A. Knaak. Now, I could have cheated with this one, since Ramses already did a chapter-by-chapter review years ago, but I have some things to say about this book that he didn’t. And at any rate, I cannot ignore this novel, as it introduces one of the foundational concepts of the Warcraft setting as we know it now: the five Dragon Aspects.

New Security Features on Chaos Archives

With the recent spree of Discord account theft by hackers, I implemented some security features I long planned to add to Chaos Archives. In light of this, I’ve renamed the “My Account” page to “Account and Security” to better indicate its function.

Warcraft Retrospective 13: Of Blood and Honor

We’re now taking a break from games.

Warcraft Retrospective 12: The Game That Never Was

Warcraft Retrospective 11: Interlude: Warfare vs Adventure

Warcraft Retrospective 10: Nobody Expects the Alliance Expedition!

We’re almost finished with Warcraft 2. All that’s left is the human campaign of Beyond the Dark Portal. But since this is my last chance to talk about that game, first I’d like to deal with a couple of topics about Warcraft 2 in general that don’t really fit anywhere specific.

Warcraft Retrospective 9: Grand Theft Artifact

So the orcs start the Beyond the Dark Portal story in a position mostly worse than they were in back at the start of Warcraft 1. Half their clans have been lost to the Second War, Orgrim Doomhammer has been captured, and the Dark Portal destroyed, so the remaining clans are left on a dying Draenor. One silver lining is that Gul’dan is dead too, so there’s nobody to drag the Horde back to its demonic days.

Warcraft Retrospective 8: Beyond the Dark Portal, the Manual

Beyond the Dark Portal is the first expansion pack ever released for a Blizzard game, and is in many ways an unusual one. For one, it doesn’t change the gameplay at all, introducing no new units¹, buildings, or mechanics. It only adds two new campaigns, one per faction, and several multiplayer maps.