The Culture: No Fun Allowed Still

This is not at all surprising.

Blizzard is Big Corpo. They answer to their parents, who in turn answer to Private Equity and PE gets assmad over anything at all resembling a Brand Risk.

Having seen several of the names people come up with, oversensitivity to Brand Risk must have had a fainting spell or 42 over the last few days. Slurs, pro-Commie faggotry, and more go on without issue; it's only those left of Mao or otherwise disliked by the mods. (Someone go for "Izzat Juggaad" and see what happens.)

Hell, I still remember when I got forcibly logged out just because some faggot didn't like that I named my Hunter's pet Gorilla "Harambe" (it was a white Gorilla too).

Therefore, shitposting via names must be done with subtlty and a bit of class. This is not the game of Tiggole Bitties anymore, and it hasn't been for many years.

The Business: Network Effect Convergence In Action

The shill channels are cutting videos on the new WOW tie-in book for Official Edition.

Told you that this was a defacto merger strat. Now you're seeing it in action.

You can expect more of this when the Mouse Wars book hits.

The Networks are merging.

The end goal is that THERE IS ONE ENTERTAINMENT MONOCULTURE where all IP engagement is corpo-controlled across ALL media.

People refuse to look past their own noses, so I won't be surprised to see people being unable to comprehend this being the objective, but it is.

WOW Forever pioneeers official controller support for the MMO. That can be done with a Steam Deck, which means it's a half-step away from being playable on mobile.

Tabletop, via Official Edition, is also moving to being playable on mobile.

The mobile app for Official Edition is a few years away. The merging of the two games into a single property briding over multiple media is even further away, but it is now clearly on the table; Fortnite paved the way, and this is the next step in that same business model.

I underestimated how bad the commercial side of the cataclysm that came upon the Cargo Cult is, and how devastating this damage shall shake out to be.

The Business: Welcome Back, Leeroy

This is a good sign for the official Classic Plus realm.

LETS DO THIS

LEEROY JENKINS pic.twitter.com/wLNvEfebme

— Leeroy Jenkins (@leeroyjenkinsol) September 19, 2026

The legend returns. This man couldn't be bothered to stay with Retail all this time, and he wasn't around much for the Classic releases, but here he is now for this.

Yes, the memes flowed.

But if someone who, now middle-aged, is willing to come back into the public sphere then there's sufficient enthusiasm to carry the launch forward into the long-tail business model that Blizzard promised.

Reports out of the Beta confirm that this edition of the game is sufficiently changed to make this no-FOMO, no-GOGOGO play paradigm practical and achievable. Explicit shutdowns of whines by Retail Andys about things in the Classic vein, coupled with implementation of systems that guarantee economic stability via strong gold sinks (Black Market Auction House) and solid price ceilings (vendors selling rare materials at a fixed gold cost, making it impossible to corner the market on them to jack up the price- no more Devilsaur Mafia bullshit).

I am impressed with what's there so far. I even think Air Elves are going to be fine, especially if they do tie them into the Thunderfury story somehow.

WOW 2 is here.

The Culture: Death To The Prussian Schooling Scam

I'll put up a longer thinkpiece on this video at another time, but for now know that the woman who exposed Lester Del Ray as the man who made "Fantasy" a thing has a new (and very good) video- especially if you have children or grand-children under your care.

I may narrow this down into something for gaming in particular, since there is so much remedial work that needs to be done.

Do note that other language cultures have works of similar seminal status; if you're in or of that world, adjust the plan proffered above accordingly.

The Culture: The Rune Sparkles Again In September

Your annual reminder that Kawamori somehow pulled off this "inspiration".

And no, this is not one of the times that the "cover" is better than the original. Cuteness only goes so far, and damn did Minori turn up the cute for this.

The Culture: More Professional Wargaming Is Good

Did not expect this, but I should have.

"With this federal grant, faculty plan to weave wargaming more deeply into the intelligence curriculum, allowing cadets to encounter simulations throughout their four years rather than only near the end of their studies." https://today.citadel.edu/learning-how-to-lead-under-pressure-and-in-a-crisis-new-250k-federal-grant-expands-wargaming-at-the-citadel/

- Wargaming Weekly

Read on Substack

It's not like the beneficial effects of professional wargaming are not known.

What is not known is that there remains a relationship between Professional and Hobbyist wargaming. The dysfunction of one side is mirrored in the other.

"Anecdotally, after interacting with new game designers, the greatest difficulty is the equivalent of "writer's block". Getting started from a blank piece of paper or empty whiteboard is a significant challenge. An effective method to overcome this initial blockage, kickstart the creative process, and inject the art into the wargame is by way of the Red Team." https://www.mors.org/publications/phalanx

- Wargaming Weekly

Read on Substack

What I've seen by observation is that, while it is not flashy or fast-acting, you are far more likely to get effective and lasting (if not permanent) results by working indirectly and doing things via manipulation of Second Order Effects. A lot of the faggotry and stupidity we see in the commercial and hobbyist sphere can be, and will be, solved by fixing the professional side and thus creating the incentives and pressures that will make the commercial and hobbyist spheres get back in line.

The Culture: Castalia Publishes The Most Popular Three Kingdoms Version In English

Castalia House continues to innovate.

In this case with machine-aided translation work, making it far easier and thus cheaper to translate non-Anglophone literature into English (and vice-versa).

In the last week, one of the biggest such projects hit the stands: fff

THE EPIC RETELLING OF A CHINESE CLASSIC

Yoshikawa Eiji's Sangokushi is the most widely read retelling of the Three Kingdoms saga ever written. Serialized from 1939 to 1943 in the Chūgai Shōgyō Shinpō newspaper, it was read by tens of millions and has remained continuously in print for over eighty years. Where the original Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a historical chronicle, Yoshikawa reimagined it as a living novel: his Liu Bei is not a symbol of virtue but a complicated man struggling with ambition and doubt, his Cao Cao is brilliant and terrifying in equal measure, and his Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are as vivid as any characters in modern fiction. It is through Yoshikawa, more than through any other writer, that East Asia's greatest epic entered the mainstream of modern Japanese culture and, from there, inspired the manga, anime, films, and video games that have carried the Three Kingdoms story around the world.

The Peach Garden begins in the last days of the decaying Han Dynasty, when the empire is rotting from within and peasant rebellions are consuming the provinces. In a marketplace, a straw-sandal weaver named Liu Bei meets a fugitive butcher named Zhang Fei, and shortly after, a warrior named Guan Yu who is on the run for killing a corrupt official. The three men swear an oath of brotherhood in a peach garden to live and die together, and to restore justice to the realm, then set out with nothing but their pledge and their weapons to make a place for themselves in a world that is coming apart. From that oath, everything follows: the rise of warlords, the burning of cities, and the first stirrings of the war that will tear China into three kingdoms.

This original Castalia House translation is the first volume of a complete English translation of all ten volumes of Yoshikawa's Sangokushi.

Currently available only in Kindle, you can expect a print version to become available at a later date- thought you may want to subscribe to Castalia's newsletter to ensure that you get told when it happens instead of relying on Amazon.