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Catch the full episode: https://www.wealthformula.com/podcast/371-ask-buck-june-2023/
Buck: Welcome back to the show, everyone. And today it's just me. Like old times. And we're going to take questions from the audience. There's actually no audience here in my room, in my office here. But I'm going to take questions from you. And we'll start with the question from Mike. Mike, here you go. Hello, Buckets. Mike Kaye from Melbourne Beach, Florida.
Mike: I was wondering if you were looking at any opportunities out there in regards to investing in distressed assets. I've noticed that rates have gone up in a lot of operators like Western wealth aren't cash flowing and are actually looking for more capital because they've got themselves into trouble. And if rates stay higher than expected, there could be some some pretty good deals as far as bailing folks out.
Buck: So I wanted to get your thoughts on if you were looking for anything out there as far as funds or whatever it may maybe create some opportunity here. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for the question, Mike. The answer well, let's start with this. Obviously, there's a lot of distress in the system right now. Interest rates have gone up a the steepest slope in American history.
And as you might expect, that has not been good for operators, particularly those who relied heavily on floating debt. You know, and this is important, I think, to understand what's going on a little bit, because you might be wondering why in the world would you use floating debt anyway? Well, if it's a long term hold, it never would really make sense to do that kind of short term debt.
However, and with these larger assets, the problem is fixing debt. If your plan is to, you know, ultimately sell. And, you know, 18 to 24 months, you are going to end up with an extremely high prepayment penalty. And so in those situations, the extremely short hold are the shorter hold models, you know, generally ran on floating rate. So if you're again, your business model is to get in and out in 18 months, it doesn't make sense to lock in the rates.
So obviously now they would be better off if we had. But everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right. That is from Mike Tyson, not from me. But that's that's kind of what's happening across the board here, especially for floating rates. And as for looking into creating this fund, which, you know, maybe you got a rescue fund or something like that, that the answer was whether I, I think that that's potentially something to do is, well, yeah, it's certainly something to consider.
And I have thought about it. These are essentially these sort of preferred equity positions, essentially become the lender. So there's not like any tax benefits or anything like that. But so, you know, I have thought about this, but but before doing anything like that, I want to make sure, you know, the economics makes sense for everyone against, again, perhaps one of the most appealing parts of this fund might actually to be getting into some second positions and maybe be first in line if the property fails and you know it or is distressed, it needs to be taken over.
But I really need to think about it because I also want everyone to have as much dry powder as possible. And because, again, it is no fun to be in this environment and those people who are going to make money are going to be the ones that have like nerves of steel that, you know, are okay to feel like, okay, I'm losing some money on one hand, but there's an opportunity to buy distressed assets on the other side.
And that's where real money is made. And again, it's a psychological thing that happens in every cycle. And the key is to try to keep your wits about you and learn, you know, learn whatever lessons you have to learn and move on and deploy. I certainly am not one who is not learned from this experience. Myself, I absolutely have, and I think it'll make me a better investor going forward.
Unfortunately, we're still in the midst of this mess right now. But anyway, bottom line is the answer is yes, potentially. I've thought about it. And I think like those kinds of preferred equity, essentially debt being in the second position behind the main lender, that is that's potentially appealing. And certainly as an investor, I think it's appealing because essentially you're you're in a lending position. You're not you know, you're not in an equity position, so you're superior to the equity position. Hopefully that helps. All right. Let's go on to the next question here. So it's from John.
John: Hi, this is John Valentino. I listened to your excellent podcast every Sunday morning on my run, walk and find them uniquely interesting and helpful amongst a sea of podcasts that aren't.
Buck: Yesterday you mentioned Terry Loughlin and your late in life swimming experience. I'm 68 now and at 55 I decided to learn to swim. I researched all of Terry's stuff and ended up using a local swimming coach here in Fresno, California, who knew Terry and who had a lot of experience. He had me swimming, breathing and flipped, turning very quickly.
Four years ago when we visited Maui, I did a two mile ocean swim with some master swimmers. I now swam about a mile and a half every Sunday with which the swim coach they taught me. And I do that. I listen to your podcast. I'm sure we could get you swimming and breathing properly very quickly. He Fresno's not too far from Montecito. Good luck with your swimming and let me know if you'd like me to hook you up with Rich. The swim coach.
Buck: Well, John, thanks for that. That makes for a lighter moment in this sea of despair. Ha ha ha. That's funny, kid at sea of despair. He's swimming. Anyway, for those of you who don't know what John is referring to, I'll just take a minute because, you know, taking questions from all kinds.
All types of questions here is back in 2016, I think it was 16, I listened to Tim Ferriss podcast about how he spent his whole life trying to swim and unsuccessfully, I'd say, met up a guy, met up with a guy named Terry Loughlin, who taught his total immersion technique or tie. So I decided, well, gosh, you know, basically Tim Ferriss was talking about my story, like he spent his entire, like, you know, didn't learn to swim as a little kid and then all this and trying to catch up and no one could teach him.
And that was kind of where I was. I do like him numerous, like tries added back in my twenties and thirties, and then I kind of had given up. Then I contacted Terry. He was in New York, upstate New York. So he actually flew out there. I was in Chicago at the time and he taught me to swim in about 2 to 3 hours and it was really unbelievable to me.
And the only thing I didn't learn how to do during that visit was to breathe. And unfortunately, that was so that was like I was there for like a day and a half. And that was the part I didn't get to. So now I can swim, but only as long as I can hold my breath because I can't seem to, you know, I can't breathe and swim at the same time.
Unfortunately, Terry had, end stage cancer. When I saw him and I believe I was his last student before he died a couple of months later, and he'd actually stopped teaching for a while, you know, before I got to be the lucky one that he decided he had enough strength to go back for. So lucky for me. So but yeah, I would love to, you know, John, shoot me an email, you know, where I am and I get well for Malcolm Connect me to your guy.
And I think Fresno might be a little far, but if he's as good as Terry, maybe I could. Maybe I could learn to breathe in a day, too. So, hey, anyway, thanks. Thanks for that. Let's go on to the next question here. All right. This one's from I think it's Garima.
Garima: I am looking to become a real professional on studies. We've been doing real estate for a little bit but wanted to do this. I really need help. If you can guide me well and see.
Buck: Well, I don't know. I can do my best about that, Garima. And first of all, I have to preface this as I always do, that what I'm about to say is not legal or any kind of tax advice. I'm not a tax professional. My degree is in medicine. I'm a former board certified surgeon, but that doesn't qualify me for much. And this in this arena, it's just my understanding of the tax law, which, you know, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about. So it's not like what I'm saying should not be listened to, I think.
But on the other hand, the liability issues, I have to make very clear consult with your own tax professional before anything anyway. So again, probably the best thing I can do in terms of guiding is tell you what I know about the qualification as real estate professionals status. And by the way, I should also point out that the benefits that I'm going to talk about, there's a lot of this similar benefits without having the status in short term rentals.
And that episode, I believe, is 354. So go back and listen to that one. It's I thought that was a pretty interesting episode. But why is agreement talking about this RFP short for a real estate professional So everyone is on the same page? What is the real estate professional designation? Why is it useful? Well, a real estate professional is not the same thing, is in a real estate agent or a real estate broker, which are basically involved with real estate transactions.
They're involved as like the middleman. Right. That's not really the business of real estate. The real estate professional is someone who is who is materially involved with the business of owning and operating business. And the reason that this is important, we'll get to in a minute, but I'm going to go into the qualification parts of this. And again, I'm not giving you advice and basically telling you what I can gather from the IRS website And basically the material participation is one of the first things.
So you can't you can't be a limited partner in a bunch of real estate and call yourself a real estate professional. You have to have some activities that are truly owning and, you know, operating real estate. I mean, you have to be involved in the management operations of your rental properties, right? So the level of involvement is different than obviously if, you know, even if you have a propertyif you have a property manager or whatever, it's still going to be more active than if you're just a limited partner.
But another one of the things that you have to qualify for is you have to spend more than 50% of your total working hours in real estate activities. So in other words, if you know, if you've got a full-time job, you can't really qualify as a real estate professional. There has to be more hours than any other profession. Right? Your participation in real estate activities has to exceed anything else that you're doing in terms of business and employment. There's also something called the 750-hour test, which you must spend at least 750 hours per year on real estate activities. And some of these things that you can do include property management or rent collection or maintenance or advertising, other related issues, acquisitions, underwriting, etc.
I mean, there's a lot of things that, you know, once you own real estate, you can be an active owner, right? So anywhere that's... So why would you want this designation? Because it sounds onerous to go and try to make sure you've got all these things if you're not already doing it. Well, as you may know, the real estate income itself, that real estate income itself is considered passive income.
Right. And similarly, the losses from real estate in the form of depreciation are considered passive losses for most people. Those passive losses cannot be applied to any active income, right? So if you have an income of $500,000 and you happen to have $500,000 of depreciation or paper losses, you couldn't use those losses to offset your personal active income.
The reason is that one is active and one is passive. So you can't do that. And unfortunately, unless maybe you or your spouse, rather, with whom you file jointly is a real estate professional. So in this case, what would happen is those passive losses from real estate would become activated, in other words, their active losses. And you can, you know, you can offset anything with active losses, right.
And even W-2 income. So that's the idea. So, again, theoretically, check with your legal, you know, and tax people and hopefully they know what they're talking about. But see, if you're a C, if you're a doctor, you're making, again, $500,000. And let's say your spouse, who's a real estate professional, generated maybe $50,000 in income, but $300,000 of paper losses, you can deduct that $300,000 from the salary, that is earned income on the doctor's side.
So basically, that is what the huge, big deal is about this real estate professional status. And again, I'm not a tax professional, but this is something that a lot of people in our group do, and it is, you know, following the tax code, that's the key. So Garima, bottom line is I don't know how else I can guide you other than to give you information.
But, you know, I guess what I would do if I were you is, you know, try to figure out how you can actually, you know, get yourself qualified as a real estate professional and make sure that, you know, you fit those criteria and talk to your tax person about it. Okay. Next question is from Mark Hammons. Mark's question deals with tax law, and I'm not sure it's appropriate for this forum.
Feel free to pass on if you feel like addressing it. Well, it's another question. Well, you know how I feel about that. I'll tell you what I think. But
don't take it as tax advice in any sort of way. But okay, so here's the question Mark says. He says, I'm a partner in an LLC that was formed for residential development.
Our project is nearing completion, and this year it will take business income to be taxed at a 20% LLC rate. I will receive income from the sale of raw land and taxed as long-term capital gains. I'm a full-time physician and not actively involved in the business of land development. Can I offset any of this income with accumulated passive losses and leases?
Thanks, Mark, for all you do. Thank you, Mark. And well, as you may have gathered from the previous question and the answer that I gave Garima, you are a full-time physician, my friend, and therefore you do not qualify as a real estate professional, and therefore you cannot use those passive losses against your active income as a physician, and you are stuck in that stratification of income hell, which is that you've got these great-looking losses on the passive side and this great income on the active side, and you cannot do anything about it.
So now, if your wife was doing this real estate stuff and qualified as a real estate professional based on the criteria I mentioned earlier, then you would theoretically be able to apply those passive losses to active income, and boom, all of a sudden, you would have what it is you are hoping for. And anyway, but I do have people in our group who are literally, you know, with that spouse set up.
Well, that's why I brought it up, right, where they literally had a spouse quit their job so that they can switch to real estate professional status. And although their cash flow may constitute a theoretical pay cut from their job, the generated losses, paper losses, are being applied to the larger active income stack. There, in many cases, justifies that because they may make a total gross amount of income that's less.
But because of those passive losses, they actually get to keep more. So that's a complicated answer to a simple question. In my non-professional opinion, Mark, you are kind of screwed. Can't do that anyway. All right. So the next series of questions is from Terry. And let's see, let's start with the first one. Is this one. My understanding is there are U.S. dollars held overseas in the United States.
What would be the impact to the value of the dollar if the overseas cash had to be converted to CBDCs, which is central bank decentralized coins? Well, I'm no expert on this, but from what I know, I'm not sure it would have a material effect on anything overseas because as I understand, CBDCs is a little more than using distributed ledgers instead of central ledgers for digital money, right?
Because the thing is, you have to remember that 90% of the U.S. dollars are digital-only already. They do not exist in the physical world already. So what difference does it make if it's on a single ledger or if it's on a distributed ledger? I'm not sure that it does. As I understand it, the idea would be essentially to make it into like a software update almost, right, where the new digital currencies would be CBDCs.
But of course, I could be wrong, and my understanding of the plan that the U.S. has there is it could be wrong. I'm sure there's a larger plan eventually to use this as a way of maximizing tax revenues and tracking people's spending and that kind of thing. But in the short term, I don't really see how it has repercussions for money overseas.
But if somebody knows of something that would cause that, certainly email me. But I don't know that. Okay. This question is also from Terry. He says, "Rising interest rates have had an impact on existing multifamily operators, and it seems like part of the multifamily model relies on interest rate value being lower than cap rates." That's correct. "Combined with the multiplier effect of low cap rates for value-add projects, do you see cap rates going up until interest rates come down?"
How high can cap rates go before the value-add model is no longer viable? Are rents still rising fast enough to offset interest hikes? Okay. So yes, I do see cap rates going up. Remember, in order for debt to make sense, the interest rates must be lower than the cap rate. So if your borrowing rate is 5%, then your cap rate needs to be above that in order to have positive cash flow.
Otherwise, you're amplifying your losses. That said, often, you know, you may have seen in some cases operators buying things and they'll consider buying things like that. If there's an obvious thing that's going to drive up net operating income pretty quickly. But right now we are seeing rising cap rates. Now, as for the value-add model being viable, I would say that yes, the value-add model is viable in all interest rate environments and with all cap rates because remember, folks, real estate was not people didn't just start making money on value-add.
This has been around for some time, right? There are plenty of people who got rich off of value-add real estate in the eighties despite double-digit interest rates in double-digit cap rates. So what has created so much distress in this system is not the absolute interest rates. It's the pace at which the interest rates went up.
They're the moving goalposts. You see, every time you underwrite a property, you have to model in interest rates and reversion cap rates. And if rates are not stable, it's very difficult to underwrite. And that's why these real estate markets right now have been so illiquid. There really are no stable variables to underwrite with. Rightly, you got to have the goalposts, you got to know where the goalposts are so you can play the game right.
Once you have that stability, though, you can underwrite again, and in value-add real estate, the money isn't made based on interest rates being high or low, but it is made by ultimately creating a positive delta in the net operating income. And that can happen in all interest rate and cap rate environments. So I don't see it being an end to value-add real estate at all.
In fact, one could argue that if you're, say, you're buying real estate, which hopefully we are in the fall, and you're getting great deals on it, you know, the rates are high, but the numbers are making sense. You do your normal net operating income, you do your normal value-add program, you try to increase NOI, and you get lucky.
And by the time you're ready to sell, interest rates have actually come down. Well, in that case, you're going to actually probably get, you know, more for your property than you would otherwise if rates were stable. So I actually don't see this as something that is ending anything. In fact, I think those who, again, take advantage of a higher-rate environment and buy into assets that make sense at high interest rates could seriously make money in the next, you know, several years.
So let's see, the last question from Terry is, "What are your thoughts on portfolio allocation between real estate stocks, cash value insurance, gold, crypto, and cash?" Well, I might not be the best person to ask about portfolio allocation because I think my portfolio would make most money managers think, right? I'm about 75% real estate, maybe 5-7% crypto, mostly Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the remaining investments are things that I believe are uncorrelated.
The most stable thing is, you know, I'm a big fan of cash value life insurance in part because, I mean, it is so stable. I mean, seriously, it is incredibly stable. If you look at the environment that we're in right now, it makes you, again, think you should be buying more cash value life insurance. It's extremely stable.
And this is why it was such a big deal during the Great Depression. People lived through the Depression and had no faith in anything except for cash value life insurance, which is what they were buying. But anyway, I think, in particular, I'm talking about these strategies that we're calling, well, formula banking or various leverage dials, wealth accelerators, things like that.
So there's that. I'm also obviously into other things that we have in our group. We're involved with like ATMs, which, you know, don't seem to have much correlation with the economy per se because people who use that still needed it. Good times or bad and did well even through COVID. You know, there's also things that we're doing, like I'm invested in things like, you know, cargo ships that are delivering essential oil and gas to the country, things like that, where again, it's not something that is significantly correlated with the rest of the markets.
And I think that's one of the things to really make sure that you're not... I mean, listen, I guess in my case, being 75% real estate, I mean, it's not a good time to be 75% real estate right now. Right. I probably... I mean, if I did the numbers, I'm probably less than 75% real estate now because I probably lost quite a bit of value in the real estate.
But I'm not even going to look at that right now for this purpose. But ultimately, though, you know, listen, personal finance should be personal. I don't own stocks, although I'm not against stocks. I'm just, you know, not a guy who really owns stocks except for some big, really, you know, asymmetric plays in the energy space, you know, through Mercatus and things like that.
I don't own any physical gold, although again, I've talked about possibly wanting to do that. I don't really want to right now, but I'm hoarding cash right now because I think there are going to be tremendous buying opportunities in real estate with distressed assets, and I think that's going to be the name of the game in Q4. So but again, I do not think it's a good idea to listen to me about portfolios.
I think I think it's if you want those kinds of things, you probably should, you know, talk to others, talk to, talk to, you know, our RIA's, things like that. But to me, again, personal finance is really personal. And for me, I'm, you know, I'm pretty aggressive on some of the things that I have a lot of belief in.
So, okay. Well, I guess that's my last question. Before I go, I want to remind you that there's another actually, there's actually another podcast that I do now, which is, you know, it's kind of just taking something that I was spending a lot of time learning about and and and trying to process myself and turning it into another show so that I could share with you.
The show is called CPO, CPO. You can find it on pretty much all of the ways that you find this show and
hopefully on YouTube soon too. We haven't quite gotten to YouTube, I think, but the show is, I think, very interesting because, you know, we talk about wealth on the show, but I mean, you know, what do what is more what's more coveted than, you know, actually having health because then your wealth is actually useful.
So a lot of Sabio is really about various types of longevity and wellness type stuff on the science that we know out there. Really interesting stuff to me and would love for you to check it out again at Sabio with Buck Joffrey. Check it out and let me know if you like it. Give me a positive review. That's it for me.
This week on Wealth Formula podcast, this is Buck Joffrey signing off.

The morning of October 17th 2019 was a cool and bright autumn day, two words rarely used to describe the treacherous Hanoi’s weather, when Lê Hải An arrived at his workplace, the Ministry of Education on 35 Đại Cồ Việt street, Hai Bà Trưng district, Hà Nội. Normally, he would have had a big breakfast at the office canteen then head off to his office at the second floor where he would spend the rest of his day trying to solve the numerous problems plaguing Vietnam’s education.
At 7:10 AM, someone spotted a figure falling from the 8th floor. There was a blood-curling smash; the figure was declared dead on impact. It wasn’t hard for people to identify the man.
In just a few hours, public media across Vietnam would declare that Vice Minister Lê Hải An had died. The reason?
He slipped and fell off the balcony.
The story I am about to tell you is not just a simple fall.
The story I am about to tell you sounds like something out of a conspiracy theory, the one spewed by tinfoil hat wearers on the street, the one peddled by shock websites and fringe extremist forums, the kind that would make you think it was a rejected Hollywood script and not real life. And I must admit, I have to work with secondary foreign sources with many being biased and some outright spewing baseless conspiracy theories. Many original sources had been removed or edited, forever lost into a memory hole resembling that of 1984. In trying to be faithful, I've removed a lot more "fantastical" elements that have no proof to be cross-checked; I will do my best to paint a complete picture of not only who Lê Hải An was, but the treacherous world around him, a nightmarish jungle of political infighting.
To those who don’t believe, I ask you to just give me the benefit of the doubt and remember this one thing:
“This is Vietnam.”
PART 1: The model teacher
In Vietnam, we have this saying: “Tôn sư trọng đạo” meaning “To worship your teachers and to respect your study.” A teacher was not simply a teacher; he/she was the paragon of society, the enlightener, the one who upheld all the virtues of society, who embodied such virtues, and who passed on such virtue to younger generations.
Lê Hải An was one such man.
Born in April 1st 1971 in Hà Nội, An was the son of Lê Hải Châu, a famous educator whose mathematics book was once the golden standard of Vietnamese mathematics education. In fact, if you were in Vietnamese highschool in the 90s to early 2000s, you would have used one of his books. For his contribution, Châu was awarded the title “The People’s Teacher,” a once highly prestigious prize reserved for the most devoted teacher. Given his family’s background, An was said to be set for life.
But An did not take the easy way. He challenged himself continuously, was handpicked as a government-sponsored student to study Mining and Geology at Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography. Even late in his career, he still pursued his passion for the mining industry, successfully defending a thesis on the application of neural networks in the oil industry at the Heriot-Watt University.
Given his background and training, Lê Hải An was made a professor at the Hanoi University of Mining and Geology. At first he was a teacher at the Petroleum department, but rose steadily through the rank. To his students, he was a knowledgeable yet compassionate teacher who never sought to exert his authority; to his colleagues, he was a man of honor, of dignity, representing the paragon of teachers thought to have been lost. Nobody complained when he was made the University’s principal; nobody complained when Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc appointed An to be the Vice Minister of the much troubled Ministry of Education.
Well, maybe not nobody.
PART 2: You have to go to Hà Giang and take the national exam
For every Vietnamese students, nothing struck the fear of God in them worse than the word "National Exam." Not as competitive as the Chinese Gaokao or the Korean Suneung, it is the stuff of nightmare that have made and broken life. Students competed for the sweet sweet spot at the Police Academy and Military Academy (It is in fact more difficult to become a cop or an army officer in Vietnam than to become a doctoteacheengineeIT technician); parents wait anxiously for their children's performance to show off to friends and families; educators wait for the top scores to make their annual achievement look good so they can attract better students to their high school.
Exam season rolled around, and the results were released by July 11th 2018. As soon as the scores came out, all of Vietnam was shocked.
Of all the 64 cities and provinces, Hà Giang scored the highest in the national exam, with the highest number of “Thủ Khoa” or “The top scorer.” This, to many, was a surprise: not only Hà Giang was the poorest province in all of Vietnam, it traditionally had high illiteracy rate, high dropout rate, low graduation rate, low university admission rate, and so on and so forth. The fact that during the same year Hà Giang had the highest rate of failure to graduate from high school also raised eyebrows.
And Hà Giang was not the only province. Sơn La and Hòa Bình, two other terrible performers, also scored suspiciously well, outmatching province such as Thanh Hóa-Nghệ An-Hà Tĩnh who have been known as "Đất Học" or "The land of the studious."
Immediately, people began to cry foul. There was a lot of anger: a lot of students who had worked their whole lives were in danger of losing their spots to some “irregularities.” A common saying began to emerge: “Em phải đến Hà Giang thi đại học” or “You have to go to Hà Giang and take the national exam.” Investigations were launched into the Ministry of Education just one day after the score was released.
Quick investigation revealed that this was not just some "irregularities" but a systematic scheme, raising scores for test-takers: some exam takers received a nine points out of a total of ten points boost for individual exam, and some had their total points raised by thirty points out of a total of forty. Not only that, the exam-takers who benefitted from this were some of the most powerful people in Vietnam. Take the case of Hà Giang: one of the person whose scores were raised was Triệu Ngọc Mai, daughter's of Triệu Tài Vinh, General Secretary of Hà Giang. The Triệu clan ruled Hà Giang as a fiefdom of their own, holding most important positions; they had strong ties with the Minister of Education Phùng Xuân Nhạ, a widely-hated and despised figures for his bare-faced corruption and mismanagement, and the President of Vietnam Trần Đại Quang. People were expecting the investigation would go to nowhere - afterall, who dared to incur the wrath of the President of Vietnam?
Then, out of nowhere, Trần Đại Quang died.
On September 21st 2018, the fit and healthy Trần Đại Quang suddenly passed away from “a rare and unknown virus which he contracted during his trips.”
No more explanation was given. One month later, on November 3rd 2018, Lê Hải An received Decision 1475/QĐ-TTg from Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc himself, making him the Vice Minister of Education and in charge of the National Examination scandal
PART 3: His final moment
For the next year, An worked with diligence, doing his best to hold the perpetrators accountable. By the numerous newspaper articles, it was clear he was the one leading the charge while his superior, Nhạ, kept a low profile and only appeared on the media every now and then to make some empty speech. He worked hard, showing up at his office early and having breakfast in the office’s canteen to save time, then immediately dived into work in his office on the second floor. His work yielded results: 16 bureaucrats were arrested, 222 exam takers were exposed, large sums of bribes were confiscated. To many, perhaps An included, it wasn’t enough. Everyone knew the big fish Nhạ was still out there, and everyone was itching to see him fall.
It was on the morning of October 17th 2019 when Lê Hải An arrived at his workplace, the Ministry of Education on 35 Đại Cồ Việt street, Hai Bà Trưng district, Hà Nội. We had little idea of what had happened on that day, but what we knew painted a very strange picture.
Normally, An would go straight to his office on the second floor, rarely having any reasons to go anywhere else. And, given the early hour, most other offices would be empty.
Yet, on that day, An seemed to have gone to the eighth floor. There was no record of what he was doing there or who he was meeting; the floor also had no camera. Photographs of the crime scene showed a table which supposedly An had sat - this table had an almost empty glass of cold tea, a cigarette pack, and an ashtray with ash in it. Another table was photographed with an old red gym bag and a nylon bag containing non-descript items; next to this table was a chair with another plastic bag containing non-descript items on it. All the tables were seated next to a balcony which was about 80 centimeters tall. An was described to be 180 centimeters tall, and when his body was discovered it was lying parallel to the building from which he fell from next to a tree but seemingly did not hit it.
Given all the evidence, by 8:30 AM it was concluded that An slipped and fell. No more investigation was made
PART 4: The truth won’t set you free
Of course, the conclusion did not satisfy anybody.
On one hand, there is very low trust for the Vietnamese police who have shown their ineptitude and willingness to fake evidence time and time again. With miscarriage of justice cases such as Hồ Duy Hải and Huỳnh Văn Nén fresh in every one’s mind, the police’s conclusion lost even more credits. The fact that the police quickly concluded An slipped and fell only at most two hours after they were notified of the accident and refused to investigate any further reek of a cover-up.
But, even with the benefit of doubt for the police, the idea of An slipping and falling was deemed unthinkable to many. For one thing, people did not understand why An went to the eighth floor when his office was on the second floor. If he was there on business, what business could it be at such an early hour (government offices in Vietnam often begin work at 8:00 AM if not 9:00 AM.) If he was there to meet someone, who was that someone and why was he not investigated? No investigation was made into his phone or email either.
Then there was the balcony.
The balcony was described by some to be eighty centimeter tall, which would make slipping a feasible case for someone 1.8 meter tall like An. However, images from the crime scene show a police man standing next to the balcony and the balcony reaching his chest. Given that the minimum height to be accepted to the police academy is 1.64 meters, we are looking at a 1.2 meter tall balcony at the very least. It will be very hard to slip and fall over, unless someone was leaning over it. But why would anybody do such a thing? Some suggested he was drunk and tired and this could have been the case, but with no toxicology report done on him there was no way to make sure.
Some commentators also pointed out that even if An leaned out and fell, his body would have landed in a perpendicular angle with the building block he was falling out from. Yet, in the crime scene image, he was shown lying parallel to the building, as if he had rolled over on his side. There were no obstacles on the way down so his falling body could not have hit anything. The only thing in his way was a tree, but the branches were very frail and images did not show any conclusive evidence that he hit the tree on his way down.
So, if he did not slip and fall, what else could have happened?
Suicide was also suggested and has remained a strong contender. It must be remembered that An was an important man being surrounded by enemies. He had a very heavy burden to shoulder and had to endure political shenanigans from all sides. Perhaps, the pressure had broken the hitherto earnest teacher who had not had a taste for the wild political arena. So, he decided to go to the eighth floor, climbed over it (which could have required him to drape over the balcony, explaining why his body was found parallel to the building) then let himself fall.
Of course, some don’t agree with the idea. They pointed out he was a very happy, very respected man with a long and promising career, a loving family, and a dedication towards a higher calling. Men like him, they said, rarely killed themselves. While this could be true, this “proof” is very weak as many successful men have committed suicide. Perhaps, he was only showing himself to be happy; perhaps there was something else going on with his life that we would never know.
Finally, and perhaps the most pervasive, is the idea An was killed. Of course, given that this theory was born out of circumstantial evidence not any real evidence, this belongs more to the conspiracy theory bin. The temptation was there: An was leading the crusade against some very powerful individual, many of whom had both the power and desire to get rid of someone like An. If the former President himself could die so mysteriously while in office, who was to say An was safe? The police’s quick conclusion and refusal to investigate any further as well as the image of a supposedly official letter from his wife begging for police protection (now scrubbed off the internet) only added more flame to the fire.
So, assuming An was killed, who had killed him?
The obvious answer to many would be Nhạ: he was An’s boss, he was investigated by An, he could’ve lost his power and friends and influence. He wanted An dead, had the means to do so, and was therefore the prime suspect. The many clans whose children’s road to power An had dashed such as the Triệu clan also had axes to grind with An.
However, there was another suspect.
Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc, the man who had appointed An to the position himself.
Before this all happened, Phúc was rumored to be in a power struggle with President Trần Đại Quang and the Ministry of Public Security. After Quang’s death in 2018, Phúc was trying to court Quang’s Department of Public Security to his side. The new head of this Department was Tô Lâm (The man who was videoed eating at Salt Bae’s place in London while Vietnam was under lockdown and starving.) Perhaps, as a gesture of peace, Phúc sold out his subordinate as an “apology.”
Ultimately, given that these theories are born out of the lack of evidence and the coincidence, we cannot accept them as “reasonable.”
PART 5: Farewell
On the 21st of October 2019, Lê Hải An’s funeral was held. It was a simple affair and yet it attracted thousands of mourners, ranging from the Vietnamese elites to his students. To many, the loss of An was a great loss to this world. Even without his work to clean up the Ministry of Education, he was an honest, hard-working, humble man who had always tried his best to live up to the image of the model teacher that had become so rare in modern Vietnam. The fact that such a good man had to die so early only rubbed more salt into the open wound.
But time will fly. Life will move on, heals will wound, stories will be forgotten, people will forget. Lê Hải An will one day fade into obscurity, and with him the question:
“What happened to Lê Hải An on October 17th 2019?”
Source
[1] https://canhco.net/lo-hinh-anh-hien-truong-tang-8-va-loi-khai-nhan-chung-khi-ong-le-hai-an-nga-xuong-tu-vong-p329165.html
[2] https://tuoitre.vn/thu-truong-bo-giao-duc-dao-tao-le-hai-an-qua-doi-vi-nga-tu-tang-cao-20191017084152884.htm
[3] https://kienthuc.net.vn/xa-hoi/su-that-ve-thu-truong-bo-gddt-le-hai-an-nga-lau-qua-doi-o-tru-so-bo-1291388.html
[4] https://nld.com.vn/thoi-su/dieu-tra-nguyen-nhan-tu-vong-cua-thu-truong-bo-gd-dt-le-hai-an-20191017102746586.htm
Shameless self-promotion
In the next episode of "The Mysteries of Vietnam," we will return to a re-write and updated version of the first case I wrote about years ago: did Hồ Duy Hải murder two innocent postal workers at Cầu Voi post office, or was it the work of a serial killer on the loose? And why is the Vietnamese government intervening in the case?

This got censored on the WOTLK Classic Reddit so I'm hoping I can post this here.
Going into Season 7 of the WOTLK PvP season we need to have a serious talk about cheating with third-party programs such as AHK (Auto Hot Key) and I'll like to share my knowledge on the subject and the importance of a public statement from Blizzard going forward.
Excuse me for using shooting games as an example but I think there's some important information here I can translate over.
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For those of you unaware of the current situation should read this, otherwise skip to the next line of text. Throughout the First WOTLK PvP season, aka season 5, the majority of players to my knowledge, including myself were unaware of the players of the private servers coming to our WOTLK Classic with what I would refer to as 'soft cheats.' Soft cheats. Cheats only give you a small advantage and are harder to detect. In the case of WOTLK, players use this to spam click their buttons for them to perfectly execute their rotation exactly when it goes off cooldown. If you wish to see more I recommend you check this thread posted earlier. https://www.reddit.com/classicwow/comments/12xriyb/wotlk_arena_and_cheaters
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A few years back I was very into a shooting game called Rust & and throughout my experience with this game I've encountered cheating of all types. I could not believe throughout my time playing this game, this cheating-related issue never really got fixed despite the popularity of the game. I also heard how it was just as bad in Counter-Strike. This lead me on a personal journey to investigate how this worked out of curiosity.
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Players' reputation in Rust depends on the number of hours they've played in the game as there's no ranked or arena setting for players to verify their skill. I also notices a different style of sketchiness depending on what type of account I suspected of cheating.
there seemed to be a common pattern of players with few hours in the game often being throwout accounts with no other games purchased on Steam for people using strong hacks. Strong hacks as in everything you can think of. See-through walls, 0 recoils, gun snapping to someone's head, and 3x head shotting them to instant death.
Accounts using Hard cheats usually get banned pretty quickly, which is why soft cheating as I'll like to call it is "smarter" if you do not wish to get banned. Soft cheating such as Scripts to manually do the recoil for you (or simply help with some of it) and only turn on the actual hacks for short periods or when needed.
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Rust is a game where you gather gear like in Minecraft. Dying late-game is like losing a fully enchanted diamond armor and in Rust there was a common pattern where the more important the fight was the more sketchy the fights became, as you'll lose everything when you die. Here you have the regular normal players, the throwaway accounts which was obviously hacking, and the 1+ hour players who often knew exactly when to strike and just seemed to have their fights be a little too convenient for them, which is what I am referring to as Soft hacking. The fight is important so they have 1 player turn on GPS telling them how many and where other teams are, and the rest are either good on their own, or all have an aim helper to soften the worst of their gun recoil.
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How is this related to WoW? Well In WoW I believe the automatic system is good enough to detect actual hard hacks, but not what I would refer to as soft cheats. Soft cheating is using Third-Party programs to advance your gameplay just a little to get an advantage & possibly not turned on all the time, just when you need it.
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Let's say we'll like to make a Kick-bot. Well, how would we do that without being detected? Well, you gotta be smart. You don't need to kick a spell when you're in high health or they are, but what if it's only in use below 30%? Seems like a pretty good time to make it so that your kick-bot won't fuckup, wouldn't it? I do not know if kick-bots are a thing currently, but I've heard various friends talk about them lately and how someone has been buying them as well as the AHK scripts.
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The guns in Rust & Counter-Strike have recoil patterns that are always the same, making them extremely easy to script with programs such as AHK. You can learn to do them manually, somewhat, but you'll only be able to do so if you practice them often and use them often enough to keep up a decent muscle memory for it. However, there is also another thing closely related to this which I would like to point out. Mouse-Macros for something as simple as spam clicking.
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In any shooter game, you'll have guns that require you to spam-click your mouse. Such an "issue" is easily dealt with by making a mouse macro to do it for you. Originally I did not think this was a big deal, but I kept having issues with fighting players shooting Semi-Automatic-Rifles like they were AK-47s and I know they were cheating with at least a mouse macro to do so because you can literally hear the shooting pattern having 0 pauses between each shot. After 2k hours of legit rust, I decided to finally go try a mouse Macro on a shooting practice server just to see what it was like. What I discovered was insane.
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Normally when you spam-click and have to control your re-coil you have to multitask, but being able to hold down a button and only focus on the gun recoil, It was suddenly much easier to control my re-coil because I no longer had to multitask, and I knew my gun was always firing at Max-Speed. I was speechless at just how easy this was to do and how much of an advantage it gave, plus I got really curious if any other game I've played with had the same in them. The majority of them did also allow a mouse macro, but I did see 1 game that automatically locked my gun if I had an inhuman amount of clicks, which is exactly what AHK players are currently doing. Meaning that Blizzard is possibly able to do the same if they don't wish to ban it which I think they should.
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This leads me further into this conversation. I'm playing a warrior and I sure as hell can find my hand getting fucked when playing long matches of 2v2 if I do not remind myself often not to spam-click my buttons as hard as I do sometimes. I do believe that this is a flaw in the game's design. I'm currently ranked 2 Arms in the world https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/characteeu/earthshakenexolez a R1 retail player and WOTLK Gladiator in both seasons. I do not use any Third-Party-Programms and would highly prefer never to.
I do however have an advantage over the majority of players as I've been lucky to end up playing WoW with 20 ms. I'm also aware of what Lag-Tolerance is which to my knowledge majority of WOTLK players are unaware of, while every hardcore Retail player knows what is.
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TLDR: Your spells are currently delayed due to the high default lag tolerance set to 400. I recommend you check this thread for more information. https://www.reddit.com/wow/comments/624y53/attn_custom_lag_tolerance_was_automatically_set
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU CHECK THIS IF YOU WISH TO INCREASE DPS EVEN IN PVE. Or simply google WoW lag tolerance yourself.
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Luckily I got myself a recording of a player admitting to using AHK which made me curious as to how much faster he was casting his spells. To my surprise, I couldn't catch a difference between a player standing still and spamming his abilities. Skip to the end if you're not interested in the context. https://youtu.be/Fr9PNG7YN-o
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Upon discovering this, It made me wonder exactly what kind of advantage players are getting from using this, as it apparently seems to "feel" better or whatever to those using it. I think my example from earlier with the Gun-Macro to auto-spam-click is the perfect example. If you do not have to spam click your buttons and the AHK does it for you, you'll not have to visually check if your abilities go off and therefore your focus can be used elsewhere. But this is not where I think it benefits players the most.
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I can tell you as a PvP warrior the hardest place to DPS right now is when players try to hug pillars & run around them or to dead-zone you. (Dead-zoning means to deny both your charge & auto attack at the same time by finding a perfect spot in-between.) I find myself often not landing my abilities because I did not manage to click my abilities in the perfect short gap in which I could, which is where I see AHK's advantages shine like a motherfucker.
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If I knew that soft cheating, as I call it would be a thing interfering with WOTLK PvP I would never have started to play WOTLK, and it only makes me wonder how much of it we have in TBC that I was unaware of.
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I made this post to spread information & awareness on this topic for Blizzard to take it more seriously. I've always seen the World of Warcraft as a game where cheating wasn't an issue. I've never had my experience ruined by players using Third-Party Programs as far as I know & Third Party Programs have always been against Blizzard TOS.
More importantly however, if Blizzard decides not to ban AHK due to whatever reason, I want them to publicly make a statement so every player out here playing legit and awaiting justice knows that we'll need to get it too if we want to play on an equal playing field. I feel abandoned by Blizzard more than ever on an issue that is important to a small part of blizzards community, but still an important part of it.
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The season has just ended and we have just been given a 3-week break from the arena which is the season's end time Blizzard usually uses to check through the PvP ladder & ban players. Blizzard still seemed to take TBC seriously enough to at least ban piloting. and I hope that Blizzard steps up this time and makes an example out of players, including streamers known for using AHK & whatever else might be out there.
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I personally think if Blizzard does not handle this situation currently, it'll set a precedent for their poor future in the competitive scene.
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Thanks for reading if you got this far. At the end of the day, I think it's important to wake up and be able to look at yourself in the mirror and respect what you see. I'll like to thank all of you who avoided this temptation to cheat and kept the game real. Thank you. <3

As I've been lurking around this forum for quite a while before going, I thought I'd write a report of how our trip went to give back to this amazing community.
First of all, I'd like to say thanks to everyone here for all the extremely useful information!
Me (M30) and my wife (29F) had the chance to travel through Japan for about 18 days. We are both Muslim so we kept to a halal food regime (seafood and some halal places here and there).
General tips: - JR Pass: I'd say the JR pass is only worth it if you use the shinkansen (bullet train) for long distances a lot. That being said, it also provides a form of comfort and ease of mind. We had an unexpected change in our itinerary which made us stay an extra night in Tokyo, having the JR pass made this easy for us to just go on another train the next day. We also used it quite a lot in Tokyo and Osaka for smaller distance trips (protip: use the Navitime app to see if your itinerary is covered by JR pass). You could just take a 7 day pass and activate it during the period you would be doing all the long distance travel.

• Get an IC card (Suica/Pasmo). Easy to use and charge and can be used in convenience stores and in a lot of other places.
  
• don't overcharge your itinerary. Japan is beautiful and has a lot to offer, but try to keep it cool and enjoy the things you will visit. We did an average of 20-25k steps daily and we were not even rushing things.. (pack decent shoes)
  
• Navigating through train stations might be hard and overwhelming at first (especially the big ones like Shinjuku) but just find your base point and always follow the colors. Google maps is also very handy as it provides detailed information about platforms and what exits to use, etc..
  
• Google lens came in quite handy at times!
  
• luggage forwarding! Such a thing of beauty. Most hotels will help you with the procedure but if they don't, you can just go to a post office or most of the convenience stores help you out with it as well. The prices depend on the size of your luggage from what I've experienced, the distance doesn't seem to matter.
  
• Reservations: so basically, if you know you wanna go somewhere in Japan, try to book as soon as possible. Almost all of the activities we did (Usj, Disneysea, karting in Tokyo, Teamlab, Ghibli museum) needed reservations well in advance. In kyoto, we even had a hard time finding places to eat because all the good looking restaurants were constantly fully booked. Keep this in mind when going.
  

Halal food tips : - Honolu Ramen (Osaka) - we only tried the one in Osaka and the ramen with the chicken karaage was really good. Highly recommend. - Curry Coco (they have locations everywhere) (not halal but provides good curry and seafood/veggie options) - Osaka PANGA Yakiniku (Osaka) - halal, good food and they have halal Wagyu.
Alright so here we go :
15/05 - 20/05 Tokyo
We stayed at the APA Hotel Higashi-Shinjuku Kabukicho Tower. Rooms were pretty small compared to European standards (no closets) but overall the room was clean and all the amenities you'd need (wifi, hair dryer, tooth brush, shampoo, etc). As for the location, Shinjuku station was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel and Shinjuku is a cool place to be at generally speaking. It does get a bit hectic at night so depending on what you're into, you may or may not appreciate the vibes.
15/05 - arrival day:
We arrived at 6pm at Haneda Airport and immediately took a shuttle bus to Kabukicho Tower. Just ask the tourist information point at the airport and they'll guide you. It was 1300 yen per person and it led us almost straight to our hotel. After a long flight, this was a welcome comfort. We checked in and went for a walk in the neighbourhood but we were pretty tired so we went to sleep pretty early.
16/05 - Shinjuku neighborhood, Sumo fighting and karting through Tokyo
We started off our day having some Japanese brunch in Shinjuku, visited the Don Quijote and went to ryogoku to go see Sumo wrestling (really cool experience and if you stick around the arena you'll see the Sumo wrestlers walking to the arena, they are mostly very friendly and they will accept to take pictures with you). After that, we headed to the karting office and we went for a karting ride through Tokyo (shibuya, harakuju, etc) which was an amazing experience. It was already dark out so driving through these streets with all the flashy Tokyo lights is a must do in my opinion.
17/05 - TeamLab, Asakusa and akihabara
We headed to teamLab in the morning. It was a fun experience and I certainly don't regret doing it. Some of the exhibitions are really impressive. It was a bit crowded. We headed to Asakusa and wandered around the streets while heading for Senso-ji temple. Really cool temple. After that, we headed to Akihabara to stroll around and see some anime/manga/gaming related stores. We saw a few cool things and spent some time in the arcades but I was a bit disappointed by the lack of merch for the older manga and games. Everything seems to be about the new and popular anime which was a bit of a let down for me. Headed back to Shinjuku for dinner and called it a day.
18/05 - Disneysea Tokyo
My wife was super excited to go and see Disneysea so we did and boy we did not regret it! Sunny weather, not too many people and an overall fun experience. Contrary to what most people seem to be saying here, we actually arrived around 10.30 am and the gates were empty. We walked in, downloaded the app and just went to the attractions that had the less waiting time and we ended up doing almost all of them. Thrill wise I'd say we have way better attractions in Europe, but the scenery and details of the park are incredible. The rides are very immersive and beautifully done. I'm not a Disney fan at all but I really enjoyed my time there. A lot of the rides are meant for children as well so you can skip those. I really enjoyed the Indiana Jones, the horror tower and the volcano one.
19/05 Ginza & Shinjuku
Originally, we had planned quite a lot for this day, but my wife wasn't feeling great in the morning so we decided to sleep in and head out a bit later. We went to Ginza, visited the huge Uniqlo and did some shopping there. We then headed back for a calm night, had some fun in the arcades and finished up.
20/05 - Kawaguchiko
We took a bus in the morning at Shinjuku station to kawaguchiko and stayed in a Ryokan with a public onsen with a view on Fujisan. We really loved the atmosphere here as it was completely different from Tokyo. So calm and peaceful. We stayed at the hotel, we booked a private onsen and had a relax day/evening.
21/05 - kawaguchiko lake & arakura Sengen Shrine
We checked out of our hotel, headed to the station and took a train to the arakura Sengen Shrine stop. We went up the stairs (not too hard but it was hot so stay hydrated!) and enjoyed the magnificent view of Mt. Fuji with the shrine. It was a bit crowded and it was getting worse as time passed on. We decided to head down and go to Honcho Street. Nothing special about the street in itself, it just has a pretty cool view of fuji. Please be aware that fuji can get shy at times and is not always visible on a cloudy day. Don't lose hope, the clouds move around and you'll get to see fujisan. After that, we decided to head to the kawaguchiko station, rented some electric bikes (highly recommend) and we did the full tour of the kawaguchiko lake. It took us about 2.30 hours with stops and the electric bikes made it an easy and enjoyable experience. Cycling around the lake with the different parks and the mountains and mt fuji in the background is a magical experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone going to this region.
We headed back to the station, took a bus back to Tokyo and we were supposed to head to Kyoto but due to traffic delays, we missed the last shinkansen and booked an extra night in Tokyo.
This is the first part of our trip, I'll get back to the next part (Kyoto and Osaka) another time but please feel free to comment if you want more details on some aspects.
Edit : I forgot to add, for the karting you will be needing an international drivers licence or you can get yours translated in Japan. Someone did it for us so unfortunately I don't have the details on where exactly you can do it but I could find the info if needed, just send me message and I'll see what I can find out!

Hi all,
Played vanilla wow back in the day and finding the itch to come back. Retail doesn't interest me so am stuck deciding between Classic Era or the current Classic WOTLK.
My main agenda is to be able to PvP quickly and casually. Whether thats world pvp, BGs or arenas - I'm just looking to get into it quickly. If that was your situation, what would you go for - Classic Era or WOTLK?
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Thanks

I’ve got both a PS4 and an Xbox Series X. I recently played all 4 Uncharted Games back to back and watched tons of videos comparing the two series and most of the time people say Uncharted is better but holy sh-t do I disagree. I wanted to give Lara and Tomb Raider a fair shake since they did it first anyways (in the 90s). 2013 Tomb Raider was an awesome but flawed game, I personally think the combat was more fun and intuitive than the First 3 Uncharted Games which relied heavily on super scripted arenas or awful hand to hand. I’ll admit there are a lot of things Nate can do that Lara can’t as a controllable character (shooting while hanging or balancing etc.) but the actual world in the 2013 TR was really cool because there was actual reason for backtracking and rewards for exploring. In uncharted “off the beaten path” was taken a bit too literally in the linearity of the game. There would often be 1 smaller path that has 1 or 2 collectibles. They expanded on it a lot in each game but still felt incredibly linear. In the 2013 Tomb Raider I felt none of that restriction with most areas being semi open area with an obvious direction you’re supposed to go. I found it fun to just explore around for 30-40 minutes before heading to the next objective.
I’m not here to talk about 2013 though. I’m currently on Rise and wow they improved nearly everything to the point where this game is significantly more fun for me than even Uncharted 4 so far. The open areas are even bigger and the increased emphasis on stealth like climbing trees and a better detection system/colors to know if enemies can be spotted makes it fun to sneak around and take out enemies. There are still scripted battle arenas but there’s a LOT more player choice than the first game AND the entirety of the Uncharted series. They increased the amount of tombs and added several caves that aren’t tombs to explore. One of my biggest complaints about the Tombs in the last game was the rewards felt meaningless. Now Lara gets abilities from the Tombs, though the ones I’ve gotten haven’t been anything revolutionary I think it goes a long way towards my enjoyment knowing the reward will be more tangible for completing the tomb.
Adding crafting into the game (even though I think it’s kind of annoying) further incentivizes players to engage with the mechanics of the game. Lara had little to no reason to hunt in the first game outside of XP Gain. Giving you a reason to hunt to upgrade your weapons and use resources in the environment to craft weapons and bombs is genius and I’m sure was ripped straight from TLOU but is 100% welcome and makes sense for this universe too. I’m not too far into the story of Rise yet but these are just some of the many improvements I’ve seen over the gameplay from the first, and a lot of reasons why I think these games are just as good if not better than the Uncharted ones for me. Obviously I think Uncharted wins in terms of spectacle, and climbing mechanics (Uncharted 4) but minute to minute gameplay? I’m surprised more people gravitate towards the Uncharted Series. I was a bit disappointed with UC 1. 2 was amazing. 3 dragged on longer than it should have and 4 was absolutely phenomenal. But TR 2013 for me came out swinging attempting to fix the flaws of past Tomb Raider games and Uncharted ones. And Rise is a true return to form improving basically everything.
My only complaints about Rise is that Lara still can’t perform any actions while balancing or hanging. I understand not being able to craft/shoot while gaming but you should 100% be able to craft and shoot while in the trees. Maybe these are upgrades I’ll get later so please excuse me if I’m wrong on that critique but I tried to shoot someone with an arrow while standing in a tree branch and she wouldn’t do it, nor would she craft the arrows while standing up there. I could also do without the translation thing. It doesn’t feel as natural of a reason to backtrack as getting a new tool or weapon does. And speaking of tools. I appreciate the ability to buy old upgrades at shops but I also think it’s wild. Most of those upgrades were earned through story progression or optional challenges in the last game. Taking them all from us then making us buy then back opposing to earning them or getting them when the story provides is crazy. Once again not super far so maybe I’m wrong but like the Rope Ascension Tool should not be locked behind a purchase I should get it once it’s needed or better yet put items like those in secret areas. It’s a small nitpick I think I just appreciated Lara’s naturally progression of acquiring these tools and felt let down about them all just being in a shack in Rise.
Sorry for the novel just wanted to get these thoughts out. I’m toying around with idea of being one of those YouTube video essayists but that’s a lot of footage to edit 😂.

I guess I've come full circle on Sugaring. I had a wonderful 1st date today with a lady from WhatsYourPrice: 22F, just graduated from a top UC (Univ. of California) school with a double STEM major, on her way to medical school. We talked until the restaurant closed and kicked us out. I asked her to have dinner with me again and she was very eager. Nothing in her profile suggested sugar: just "casual dating, looking to meet new people, networking, etc". I raised the idea of a sugar relationship and she wasn't comfortable with that, just wants to date for now. I think we had a good connection. Why? Well, a bouquet of flowers and simply listening to her and focusing on her the entire date made a big impression compared to the guys her own age. I told her "Look, I'm 53. If you date me, my goal for us is that you'll say "wow, I wish there was a 22 year old version of this guy. I'd date him in a second". She said "That's exactly what I was thinking when I saw you with the roses. Nobody my age gives me flowers".
Maybe she's a scammer but i doubt it. She gave me her real name and I googled her. Yes, she graduated from UCx, she's on her sorority social media page, going to medical school (with pictures, same girl). She could easily get an SD if she wanted one by simply going on Seeking and asking for it.
BUT, after learning so much on this forum, it occurs to me that a 53M dating a 22F without sugar is not sustainable. Sooner or later she's going to realize "Waitaminute, this guy is literally older than my father. This is crazy". Sugar justifies the relationship so that it makes sense, investing in her future. I'm thinking of just continuing to give her the WYP date incentive for future dates, whether she asks for it or not and explaining why. Thoughts?
UPDATE: May be a misconception in the responses that I'm hiding my marriage from this 22F. I'm not: I am upfront about my married status on Seeking and WYP. I spoke with this young lady about my marriage in detail and what I'm looking for in a girlfriend. She was fine with it. I like the ideas in posts about: forget trying to give her cash. Take her shopping; figure out what she likes and help her get it.

While I was still a student, I paid probably too much attention to the Reddit NG Firm tier lists but after working full-time as a QT for a while I don't think they're all too accurate. First of all, how do people even compare JS/OptiveSig/Cit Sec in the same tier list as HRT/Two Sigma/Citadel when they do very different things, it's like comparing apples to oranges. Also why is there so much emphasis on NG pay and not as much emphasis on training and progression, NG pay is just a fairly small fraction of the pay a fairly decent performer will be making in just a few years in. Sig also doesn't seem to get too much respect on quant forums (a lot of people think sig is two sigma...), while option traders in the industry think they're legit af. And also while the pay for quant is pretty lucrative, the expectations and stress scale accordingly... I quickly went from "wow Jane Street is paying 600k+" to "yeah now I know why they pay 600k".

And by boss level I literally mean my toddler has turned into an unbeatable bossy boss.
I have no XP to give this level as i somehow levels up overnight. At this point, I’m just button smashing with my mouth agape to try and figure out how to just stay in the game lol. I never thought I’d be so humbled by a two year old.
Jokes aside, my 27 month old has gone from her sweet, helpful demeanor to a very bossy and independence-seeking toddler literally overnight. I’m happy because I know this is a crucial stage in her development but wow it happened literally overnight! I never thought we’d be here.
For example: - she tells me where to sit, what to wear etc - she says no to everything. Sometimes nothing. - her wanting something and not wanting something simultaneously - she screams and throws herself on the ground when she doesn’t get what she wants - She wants things immediately - she blames the poor dog for everything. - she purposely misidentifies everything if you ask her what something is - her bombastic side-eye is enough to defeat you
So far, some strategies I’ve been trying are ones I’ve gathered from this forum and from big little feelings on instagram:

• holding boundaries. We say no and mean no even if she tantrums offering hugs when she’s ready
• being kind but firm
• modeling what we’d like her to say or do instead of screeching like a banshee. “Please ask using your big girl voice. Say:please can I have…”
• giving choices…max 2 choices. If she doesn’t choose we choose for her and that decision is final.

I don’t want to be permissive of these behaviors and I also don’t want to be overly authoritative so I feel like I’m constantly pushing different buttons to see what works all while trying to maintain composure and sanity. I hate when these things happen in public and I hear snarky comments.
Hoping for solidarity and please send your best cheat codes 🫠.

"you have to move on" "get over it" "the abuse made you who you are today" "oh you think that's bad? Well listen to this ______" "why don't you have any proof?" "yeah but they still are your parents and you gotta respect them" "you're giving them power by letting what they did to you affect you so much"
Shut up. Shut up. SHUT THE FUCK UP JUST SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH! You privileged piece of worthless shit who had everything served to you on a golden platter, who never had to endure a second of their life being abused in any form ALWAYS say the most stupid bullshit. Acting like a humanification of those ridiculous life coaching quotes you see on social media from people who never once suffered any kind of tragedy personally or have a mental illness.
Wow thanks, I'm cured! You telling me to get over it and move on just undid all the altered brain chemistry from the abuse I endured my entire life. Wow thanks, telling myself to forgive my abusers for their actions totally made me feel like a million bucks.
You're right, I should embrace it all with open arms and accept it that will magically make me become a saint of pure happiness. It will open the flood gates of sunshine and rainbows for the rest of my days!
Yeah my abuse totally made me stronger! That's why I have over anaylize people every day to make sure I keep them happy with me so they don't hurt me. That's why I cry myself to sleep or when I'm alone so no one can gaslight me or get mad at me for having emotions that isn't being a people pleaser with a stupid happy go lucky attitude to keep myself safe while the only thing I can hear is my heart beat pounding out of my chest. Oh yeah I am so tough look at me go! Look at me fear being in public thinking someone is out to get me! Look at me jump, hide, and shield my face when there is loud noises or someone raises their arm or voice around me.
You're right maybe I should go and forgive my abusers for taking my childhood away from me, was it really my mom's fault for raping me and letting her friends rape me as a child? Should I go tell that adult man that got with me when I was a minor that it is okay that he beat me and kidnapped me torturing me with my mom and forced me to have sex with him after he had sex with my mom? Should I go tell my stalkers that it's okay that they groomed a disturbed child online and offline and make forums discussing me and the things they would do to me?
Just give them a round of applause because that's suppose to help me right? Will I reach nirvana if I decide to no longer hold them accountable? Or are you really trying to say that you're a abuse enabler and apologist and you are just like them?
Because I can't think of any ANY good reason to even do anything positive towards to those who took advantage and hurt me giving me a life time of problems that will never go away. Unless that positive thing is them being six feet under and I can watch them burn in hell I am not interested.

City councilors on Wednesday will discuss and possibly vote on whether to pay $1 million or more to settle a lawsuit filed by a former elementary school art teacher who was arrested on a public street outside then-President Donald Trump’s June 2020 campaign rally at the BOK Center.
The City Council is required to approve settlements of $1 million or more. The matter is scheduled to be discussed in executive session at the council’s 4 p.m. meeting, with a possible vote in open session, according to the City Council agenda.
Sheila Buck filed the lawsuit in Tulsa County District Court in June 2021 against multiple defendants, including the Trump campaign, the city of Tulsa and two Tulsa police officers, C.J. Rhoades and Matthew Parker, alleging various civil rights violations.
The lawsuit — which was later moved to federal court — claims that Trump’s campaign had no legal basis to give the Tulsa Police Department power to arrest Buck and that Trump’s rhetoric before the rally toward those who might oppose his political message factored into how the Trump campaign, and by extension Tulsa police, treated her on the day of her arrest.
Buck had a ticket to the event and passed through security on her way into a cordoned-off area outside the arena when a member of Trump’s campaign staff asked the Secret Service, a private security firm and Tulsa police to remove her from the premises, according to court filings.
When she was told she was not allowed in the cordoned-off area, Buck showed her event ticket and insisted that she had a right to stay, at which point she was informed that she would have to leave, according to court filings. She eventually was arrested by Rhoades and Parker and taken to the Tulsa County jail, where she was booked on a misdemeanor complaint of obstructing a police officer.
At the time, Buck was wearing a black head covering and a black T-shirt with the words “I Can’t Breathe” on the front — a reference to words spoken by George Floyd in Minneapolis and Eric Garner in New York during fatal encounters with police.
In an opinion and order issued last year in response to the defendants’ motions to dismiss, U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan noted that the Trump campaign did not apply for a city permit, “which is generally required to block public street access around the BOK Center.”
The judge also wrote that Buck “has plausibly alleged that she was removed because of the content of her protected speech.”
“That is, government actors — acting at the direction of the Trump Campaign, a private organization that did not have authority to control or restrict protected speech — removed plaintiff from a public forum because of her expressive attire," Eagan wrote.
The Trump campaign and the campaign's manager were dismissed from the lawsuit early in the proceedings.
Eagan also referenced a Tulsa Police Department Facebook post stating that officers at the location “will remove individuals only at the direction of campaign staff.”
Police also released footage from Parker’s body camera, which showed him telling Buck the campaign had a permit that allowed it to control access to the perimeter.
A city spokeswoman said previously that the campaign would not have needed a permit because of an exemption within city ordinances on special events for activities by a government agency “acting within the scope of its authority.”
The city told the Tulsa World in 2020 that the rally for Trump had been considered a private campaign event and also a federal government activity.
"The city can confirm the lawsuit was negotiated outside of court through mediation and will go to the City Council for consideration," a city spokesperson said Friday.
Daniel Smolen, Buck's attorney, did not respond to a request for comment Friday, but he has said previously that Buck, who is in her 60s, decided she had to move out of Tulsa after her arrest was televised across the globe.
A Tulsa County District Court judge threw out the misdemeanor police obstruction charge against Buck last month.

New player here, want to try wow in 2023, bought the subscription, downloaded the game, selected a server, and when I try to create a new character, the game crashed. Just like the snow falling from Alps mountain, smooth,unexpected and fast.
“Error message #138 Exemption: Access_Violation ”
Searched on internet, browsed 30+ threads in Wow offical forum about error 138 for solutions, tried all the suggestions in the thread. Yet still crashes when try to create new character.
Furthermore, I can’t even post on official forum and ask for help cuz I don’t have a lv10 Wow characters on any realms.
Got a good end pc, 32gb of ram, good for wows minimal requirements.
Pls, if there is any possible solutions, shared ur wisdom in this post , and save a desperate man that just want try wow for a little while.

Welcome to Reddit, home of the weekend madden mobile tournament.
Please make sure to read all instructions carefully and post your comment as instructed including play by play text for your drives. Some folks were disqualified in previous tournaments because of not following that detail.
***********************************************************

• DO NOT CONTACT DISCORD MODS ABOUT GIVEAWAYS
• Your entry may be forfeited if you do not follow the rule above
• DM u/vol4life9911 with any issues

***********************************************************
This week's theme: **#36 Summer Vacation"
Take a touchback, and:
Target: ...spell SUMMER while scoring at least 3 points on your opponent
Challenge: ...spell SUMMER VACATION using first letters of play names while scoring at least 6 points on your opponent and using no duplicate plays.
***tip: the E in T(E) counts as an E
How to Enter

• Play by play needs to be written in your comment showing spelling
• Show screenshots of your game film showing plays used to spell the word(s)
  • Upload images to Imgur (imgur.com/upload). You can select multiple images at once. Then copy paste the album link into the comments below.
  • Need help? A full, detailed explanation is posted here.
• **Also, you must mention "Challenge" in your comment if you beat the Challenge objective. Otherwise, we will assume you beat the Target Objective only.

Prizes
4 randomly selected entries will win IN-GAME CARD PRIZES, courtesy of the EA Madden Mobile team!

This week's prize & Grand Prize:4x Foil Select Player Packs

• If you beat the Target Objective, you'll get 1 chance to win the above prize.
• If you beat the Challenge, you'll get 5 additional chances to win the prize.

This tournament ends Sunday night, anytime after 11:59 PM ET. You have the entire weekend to play but the tournament will close without warning after that time. The flair will display "CLOSED" and winners will be randomly selected. We will try to announce & message the winners sometime on Monday.
Rules & Clarifications (H2H)

• You do need to win the game. There are unlimited tries.
• You can play only in human opponent modes such as Unlimited H2H Arena mode and League vs League tournaments ONLY. You cannot play someone intraleague or use daily arena.
• One entry per person/device. If you want to resubmit, delete or edit your first comment.
• Games must be played this Fri-Sun only. You must follow this week's theme in order to win.

So I played for a little bit last night before I went into the first cellar and my laptop literally just...stopped. It completely died, including no power lights at all. I managed to reboot it after about 5 minutes of browing this sub and the forums to see if anyone else has had such an issue. I removed all overlays and updated all drivers just to get past the Blizzard logo, and then it crashed after leaving the starter town. Wonderful.
I called it a night and woke up this morning to try and play again before work. Sadly, I forgot to kill Geforce Experience so the game crashed at the login screen. CTRL ALT DEL didn't work. I had to manually turn off the computer via holding the power button down, and now...nothing.
It's been half an hour now and my laptop is lifeless. I've tried everything and I cannot get the laptop to boot at all. There are no power lights on the case.
After having no issues with any other game beyond the occasional crash to desktop, this game has killed my laptop. Now before all the naysayers so it's my laptop: I've never had any other issues with any other games or programs, especially to this extent (and I play lots of WoW too!).
What is my recourse here? Clearly, a buggy and rushed out game has caused an issue with my laptop that I cannot resolve, and yet I will most likely be out of pocket to either get my laptop fixed or even purchase a new one? I do a lot of work from home which I now cannot do either...
FYI - my laptop is a Metabox (rebranded Clevo) with an RTX 2070, 16gb of RAM and an i7. The game ran pretty smoothly for the short time it worked...even the fans were relatively quiet. It just catastrophically died out of nowhere.
Anyway, end rant. Hopefully I come home from work and it magically starts again and I can simply refund the game and be done with it. If not, where do I go from there? Play Immortal on my phone for my Diablo fix (not a chance)?

I'm beginning to find this weird as hell. Me and my sister have been playing on the same PC for the last few weeks (mind you, it's a low-end PC so not the best) and she uses a different account. When she plays, everything loads out perfectly and the game has low FPS, yes, but it doesn't stutter or freeze in the same screen for 10 seconds.
Whenever I load into a BG enemy players take 20 seconds to load and my game stutters like hell. Same issue happens on arenas. I can't even dragonride without the game teleporting me or freezing while I'm flying.
It's an Intel machine, it has 6gb of RAM and a 255gb SSD, both upgrades I did. It's not great by any means but for some God-forsaken reason the game plays worse on my account than it does on hers. Even when I put the graphics on potato settings and set the rendering scale to the point it looks like Minecraft, I might as well be playing a turn-based RPG because it doesn't change anything. In fact, my sister plays with better graphics (set on 3) and it doesn't impact her performance at all.
I'm beginning to get really frustrated with this because I've had this issue for YEARS now. I upgraded my laptop multiple times and tried everything. Surprisingly, it played other WoW clients pretty well, but Blizzard's WoW runs like dogshit. What could be the issue?

Im aware there would be several issues but I can see several upsides with this decision

• ranked rewards for brawl dedicated players vs 0 currently
• further growth for brawl (from direct challenge to paid rare event to playque to now ranked)
• further differentiation from commander (BO3? sideboard to utilize learn mechanic??)
• improved play quality (less players scooping on T0/T1)
• auto ranking (uncommon commanders stay in lower ranked, S tiers end up in mythic anyways, more natural ranking environment vs waiting for WOTC to figure out where Atraxa belongs)
• interesting stories (making mythic with some uncommon jank possible??)

Help make it happen, suggestion thread below for upvote:
https://feedback.wizards.com/forums/918667-mtg-arena-bugs-product-suggestions/suggestions/41888185-brawl-ranked
recent CGB video on the idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjjej5YGZ80

x6 WoW Gladiator
The account is clean of bans/suspensions
Country - UK Battle net Currency- GBP
Notable Titles - Arena Master, Battlemaster, Tactician, Hand of A'dal
Notable Mounts -
All Vicious Saddle Mounts Alliance and Horde Prestigious Bloodforged Courser - Honor level 500 Unchained Gladiator Soul Eater - Shadowlands Season 2 Corrupted Gladiator Proto Drake - BFA Season 4 Brutal Nether Drake - TBC Season 4 Vengeful Nether Drake - TBC Season 3 Notorious Gladiators Proto Drake - BFA Season 3 Relentless Gladiators Frost Wrym - WOTLK Season 7
Also lots of unobtainable PVP Transmogs/Tabard/Weapon Enchant
https://retail.safe-armory.com/en/account/6459e69e705e1/mounts
If you have any questions message me here or Discord at Cogswell#0001
Thanks

Hey there! Chaotic Neutral on Turalyon Alliance is in need of more solid DPS to add to the roster for Aberrus, we're a semi-hardcore guild that raids Tues/Weds from 7:30-10:30 pm EST and an optional day on Saturdays at the same time frame if there's enough interest (usually used for alts or extra prog at the beginning of the tier).
**Info:** Our guild is comprised of a range of players, from ancient vanilla Molten Core headbangers to players just starting the game in recent history. Our guild has been raiding on Turalyon since 2005. We raid mythic, but with a goal toward more casual progression. We expect raiders to play responsibly in their chosen role, but if you can do well with off-meta specs we don’t demand flavor-of-the-month class/spec combos.
Overall we are a bunch of older raiders who like having a relaxed raid environment while also seeing how far we can get into mythic before the next tier, pushing CE isn't something we promise but we can promise that we're not a hardcore play-perfect-or-get-kicked guild, we prefer to keep our chill raid environment that's been around for a long time.
We also ask raiders to give us a heads-up if something comes around that makes them unable to raid for a night or going forward, It isn't too important of detail since most members do this already but we've had some people just not show at all and it can create frustration if it's ongoing.
For more info about our guild, please visit our guild website, guilds of wow page, or our forum post.
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Prerequisites:
Come to raid prepared, with whatever resources you need to do your best
Let us know if you won’t be able to make raid, if we notice you have a tendency to flake out without saying anything, your spot may be revoked
Be aware of boss fights/mechanics
DBM/Big Wigs/MRT/alternative raid encounter add-on(s)
Weak Auras 2 is also recommended
Have a working microphone, and be prepared to orally communicate
Regularly attend raids
Be able to mesh and jive with the group (ideally no try-hards or massive egos, we're not like that.)
18+ only
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**Open Spots:**
**We have a raid-leader slot open, currently our GM is holding that rank but it's not a role they want to keep forever, please add me for more info if you're interested about this role.**
Tanks: Tank spots are filled, but we will consider flex tanks.
Healers: Healer spots are filled, but we will consider flex heals.
DPS: [High Prio] Mages, WW Monks, Rogues, Spriests, Warlocks, Warriors [Med Prio] Enh/Ele Shammys, Devokers, Boomy/Feral Druids, Havoc DHs [Low Prio] Ret Pallys, Hunters
Any solid performers feel free to apply anyway, even if your class/spec isn't listed!
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**Dragonflight Progress**
9/9N & 9/9H Aberrus.
8/8H & 3/8M Vault of the Incarnates. 19% on Sennarth before our break!
For past progress, please see our Wow Progress link below
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Guild Site: http://www.cnguild.org/ (We have an app you can apply with on this site if you'd prefer)
Forum Post: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/aturalyon-chaotic-neutral-1111h-211m-cross-realm-faction-welcome-lf-healsranged/1112178
Wow Prog: https://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us/turalyon/Chaotic+Neutral
Warcraft Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guild/id/15584
Raider IO: https://raider.io/guilds/us/turalyon/Chaotic%20Neutral
Guilds of WoW Page: https://guildsofwow.com/chaotic-neutral
Btags: Recruitment - GingerHeals#11438

We just had our first Syndicate infiltration attempt in weeks, and wow did that go badly for them. Chief Lau had a lot of aggression to work out after her stint away, and we love her for it. I got to see her new whip skills in action, and as expected I'm both impressed and horrified. Take that back to your friends, Syndie scum!

• A new release went out early this week with some pending fixes and features.
• One of those fixes turned out to cause compiler crashes in most SS13 codebases, as a result of some unanticipated code that got copied down from another era. So a new release was put out, but I implore all of you to stop calling text() directly.
• Late in the game, a problem was discovered with the threading implementation in Linux, but a new test build appears to have solved that.
• I've been getting code in place for the call_ext() upgrades and learning what I'll need for developing future API support so you can interact with parts of byondcore.dll/so more directly.
• Thanks to all of those who support BYOND through your Membership and donations!

There's more on the BYOND forums. This week's early-access Patreon post revisits the post from two weeks ago, discussing how that string parsing fix led directly to the new compiler crasher and how that was fixed. Yes I have a little shade to throw there over that cursed text() code, but it's all from love because I've been there too. Seriously, mad respect to all of the SS13 devs who tangle with this code and all you players who breathe life into it to bring us never-ending misadventures. Be well, enjoy the nice weather if you have it, and I'll see you next week.

Hello all, like many of you I've been eagerly awaiting Respawns release and now here we are. I'm grinding away endlessly and mostly chasing storylines at this point as well as ascending evos.
I'm worried about the game however. At the moment the server population is thriving and healthy, but that's common even with niche games when they first release. I'm worried about the longevity here. I'm seeing at least two major problems with Respawned.
1: you must have a Netflix subscription to play. Wow ...with all the choices in streaming nowadays is this even feasible? Is it permanent? And lastly, if it is permanent, who thinks this is even remotely a good idea? Netflix is known for canceling even good tv series if they don't have enough popularity criteria to warrant continuation. How long before they decide this game isnt worth platforming? This is a lot of time sink just to get deleted in a few months or couple years, something I've had happen in the past btw!(see shadowbane, dragonsoul, star wars force arena off the top of my head).

1. No stamina required, no sim keys. No stamina is great, but holy chit I'm missing my sim keys. Anyone's dreading the thousands and thousands of manual mission farming on trivial (boring) missions just to farm the same gear again you did in OG dungeon boss? Sim keys are needed, and desperately.

Anyways, I'm enjoying myself. But these are very valid concerns. This game doesn't have the biggest user base to pull from and the things I've listed here cry doom in my mind, especially if you look at things from a modern game company perspective (where's my millions of dollars in monthly income?!cancel this unprofitable game immediately!)
Just wanted to add, I actually VERY much love the non pay-to-win aspect!!