It’s definitely still chugging along, although I will point out that the sub numbers now include not only modern WoW players but also Classic players. If the 7 million number is accurate, that’s 7 million across all WoW versions, not just modern WoW.

Same. A friend and I were excited to play together like we did in D3, but we barely managed to finish the campaign. It’s on the shelf for now unless/until we hear the team turned things around.

True, if it turned into a situation where you had to sub with money for a month every time you wanted to redeem a token or something, that would definitely lessen the value for me. I’d still say it was worth it because I could use the tokens for expansions and other games, but not everyone may have the same opinion.

The WoW token wasn’t introduced until WoD, so if you played that long ago it wouldn’t have been an option. If you’re ever looking to jump in again though, it’s definitely a useful system if you like to make gold in game.

Free trials can’t farm gold anyway because they’re capped to 1k gold, so this really does only impact bot accounts for the most part. There’s likely a small number of people who use tokens because they otherwise couldn’t afford to play, but I expect that’s not terribly common.

As someone who uses gold to buy WoW tokens for both game time and shop credit to make other Blizzard purchases, I have a hard time getting upset over this. I’ve been playing the game without spending money for years, and tokens are also how I buy both WoW expansions and other Blizzard games. Asking me to pay money for a month of sub time every few years seems reasonable, especially if this change makes it even the slightest bit annoying/harder for bot accounts.

That might be better, but I’d still worry about people rep farming (for lack of a better term). Any time you give people a score, title, or other personal metric, you run the risk of people posting to influence that metric rather than to post for the sake of contributing content.

It’s possible the good such a system could do would outweigh the bad, but it will definitely always have elements of both.

While karma might help spam/bots in some ways, I feel like it would also lead to karma farming, which I’m personally happy to not have here. Maybe they could instead allow communities to set requirements for minimum time subscribed or minimum interaction (voting, commenting, etc.) before people could post? I’d prefer that be set per-community, though, and not a site-wide mandate.

Sync! It’s what I used on Reddit, and having it here made switching platforms so much smoother.

Like others have commented, unlimited texting has been available in most phone plans for the better part of a decade now; I’d struggle to name a place that offers plans without it.

As for the accented characters, that’s something I personally don’t encounter much as a native English speaker. I obviously can’t speak for those who do need those keyboards, but for me it’s not a problem.

With regards to encryption/privacy, I can’t say that’s a concern I’ve personally had regarding my texts. Could the government read my messages? Probably, but all they’re getting is cute cat pics and random chatter about games and food and whatnot. Again, that’s another aspect that’s probably more of a concern for people in more sensitive situations, but I can’t speak for them.

SMS text messaging unless it’s a group chat/voice call for gaming, in which case it’s Discord.

This is me. I played at the start and for a bit of Season 1 but lost interest ~60 hours in. Maybe it’ll be good in a couple years, but for now there are too many other fun games available to keep playing this one.

A true desire to be helpful to the people they manage. Not that they need to do everyone’s job for them, but a manager who asks “How’s your work going? How can I help?” and means it is worth their weight in gold.

Same, the subscription page is essentially my homepage. It has exactly the content I want on it, and I can always use the sidebar recommendations if I feel like browsing for something new after my queue is complete.

My response comes down to what I feel the other person’s intent is. If they’re a troll, I don’t engage to begin with - downvote and move on. If we entered into a conversation but I find that they’re arguing in bad faith (they want to argue, not reach an understanding), then I say something like “I’m not going to argue with you about it, but I appreciate your perspective” (even if I don’t). If it seems like it could be a useful disagreement, though, I’ll consciously remind myself that there’s a person behind the text, and I’ll continue the conversation until it reaches an end. It may be uncomfortable, but remembering that we’re all just humans being human helps me tone myself down.

Your comment made me curious enough to go check my /played, and I regret my decision. Over 500 days of play time.

The annual survey linked in the article gives me the impression that this comes down to a lack of understanding about how social security works and what we can expect from it. Apart from addressing the actual issues with the system itself, we also need to ensure people are properly educated on it.

I know the common suggestion is better financial education in schools - although the likelihood of it sticking long term seems low to me - but that would have a greater impact if resources were also more readily available to adults. Financial advisors were mentioned in the survey as becoming more popular with younger workers - perhaps we’d see better success with a combination of school instruction as well as access to resources/advisors via HR benefits?

The vast majority of people I speak with just use regular old text messaging. If it’s someone I meet via networking at work, I’ll occasionally get asked about LinkedIn; same thing but with Discord if it’s someone I meet gaming online.

I’ll be curious to see what these numbers look like once student loan repayments start back up in October. I know I’m personally going to have to cut back my 401(k) contributions - which I increased during the payment pause over the last few years - in order to resume my payments, even with an IDR plan.

As someone who grew up in the US, from my perspective it’s less a question of “how good of a job did they do” and more a question of “did they do so poorly that I’m okay with them not making enough money to pay their bills or buy food this week.” Not that my single tip is going to make that difference, of course, but at least in my circles the thought is that delivery drivers and waitstaff are paid poorly enough that tips are needed even for average service. It’s not a great system and I’m all for changing it to making tipping truly optional, but in the meantime I’d rather tip even subpar service than contribute toward someone’s financial worries.