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Sharks have been discovered to be living in the acidic waters of an active volcano. “ The sharks were observed with the use of disposable robots, underwater cameras, and National Geographic’s deep-sea Drop Cam—divers who have tried to go near to the crater when it is not erupting have suffered acid burns, or backed away simply because of the heat. But in this inhospitable environment, there are numbers of hammerhead and silkly sharks, hanging around and going about their business.”

By Helmight

Let’s talk a little bit about the recent Nexus article, shall we?

Starting from the top, Riot’s announced that they won’t be producing any more temporary game modes a la PROJECT: Overcharge or Star Guardian: Invasion anymore. The biggest takeaway I get from this is that the RGM (Rotating Game Mode) Queue is finally dead for sure, which has been the de facto experience anyways, so not a big deal. Events will certainly feel not as exciting as they did with an event-specific game mode attached, but hopefully Riot is putting the resources they used for temporary game modes into creating something else (like something besides League of Legends, perhaps).

Next up, TFT got confirmed to be a permanent addition to the game, which surprised exactly nobody. We all knew TFT was going to be a forever addition when it skipped the beta phases that Nexus Blitz went through and got microtransactions added to boot, so I’m not sure why Riot felt that they needed to make an announcement. I don’t necessarily dislike this, but I do think that TFT is less of a savior for Riot and more of a stopgap that will drop in popularity over time.

ARURF+ and Nexus Blitz coming back is certainly a welcome surprise, as I assumed both modes would be killed alongside the RGM Queue. Evidently Riot are alright with some temporary modes coming back and not others.

And finally, let’s talk about Twisted Treeline. After many, many years of neglect, Riot will finally be pulling it off life support and sending it the way of Dominion before it. They gave a bunch of excuses like low player count and poor pacing, but let’s be real here - the mode is dying because Riot chose to not devote resources to it. They released it and didn’t support it, then reworked the map and didn’t support it. Without support, a mode won’t attract a playerbase - and without a playerbase, it won’t get support.

And at the end, it’s the players at large that suffer. Twisted Treeline was a valuable addition to the game for multiple reasons - it was a shorter game mode that still felt strategic (unlike ARAM), it had a different meta that brought out different compositions and champions, and it was one of the few ways in which players could experience the different areas of Runeterra. TT’s removal is just another way in which Riot have homogenized the League of Legends experience and brought it away from what it used to be.

Source: [x]

Halloween 2: Michael Myers returns, murdering people across his former hometown.

Halloween 3: The owner of a latex mask company sells masks with microchips inside, each containing a fragment of Stonehenge, and each chip will summon a swarm of murderous insects once triggered by a Halloween commercial that will kill the wearer and help bring witchcraft back to the world.