RAWR!
I totally forgot to say why I, after almost 4 and a half years, started playing WoW again!
Partially, I have gotten past some of the personal reasons that I had quit the game cuz of, things like people I had had relationship with dumping me, and a friend dying I played with. I am naming my firstborn son after my friend who died, and I am happily engaged to someone who fills me with contentment about life.
Secondly, I quit because of Cata, and I still look at that expansion and see it as horrible, pathetic, and overall, designed to ruin and take away, from the actual world and from the player. I have gone back and tried the new zones it provided, and mostly, they are ok, some totally against lore (Uldum should have been a mix between titan-ish and dwarv-ish), but ok. I find it amusing that Uldum, the most deviated zone from the lore, period, was the most fun to do in my opinion and most that I know, while Vash(Underwater zone) which is almost all lore based, was the most stunning, yet frustrating to quest in. I think cuz of all the caves, personally, but a lot of people had trouble with the swimming and fighting, I guess.
Cata was a huge mistake, thru and thru. They obliterated awesome zones, they remade dungeons and raids into something, that were fun, worthless, and they totally took away soooo much from the game. I literally hate Cata, to the point that when I go back to zones it wrecked, or play SFK or ZG, I can only taste bitter hatred, and I am playing World of Warcraft.
Pandaria, it was alright, and I liked that they took Chen from Warcraft 3 and gave him a vibrant home world, and an explanation for why we never saw him or his race before in the WoW series, even though he was right there with Rexxor in Warcraft 3. The problem I find with Pandaria, is some of the designs are very cutsie (panda's themselves...biggest offender), and not in the "let's target women" way the fae dragon is. Also, the whole of pandaria is the same scenery repeated over and over again. With BC and Wrath, you got a sense that each zone was it's own mini world, some of the stuff repeated, but a ton of it was unique to where it was born. Pandaria just felt like a ton of repeat with diff colors. I did like a lot of the aspects as far as rewards go, such as the mounts, and CM's were interesting.
Now, I have sooo much to complain about, and I was playing Rift. Why am I playing WoW, again, after such a large break from the game?
Boredom. Every other game I tried, after a few months, became very boring. The worlds are way too small and that is huge for me. Rift did double its world, but it was still too small. GW2 I hope to never play again since they ruined it for me, but who knows, they might pull a WoW and offer an expansion that might be worth it all.
My fiancé also likes WoW, so that helped push me toward it, and all, but really, I am back because my siblings moved far away and this is something we can all do together, catching up has kept me occupied and entertained, and I am interested in WoD.
I have always loved the orig horde leaders, their stories and the era and here is an expansion offering an experience with them. They are REDOING old content WITHOUT taking away the original. Leaving BC alone and making it from scratch is, for me, what Cata should have been. I am SO glad they are doing it this way.
They also are adding Garrisons, which I see so much potential in, and hope they do right. I want to see the new zones and the new storylines, which for me, more than Cata or Pandaria, are fully based on the original lore, with a twist, that the orcs refused the demon blood. I do wish they were removing less from the world as the new expansion prepares to launch, because people who are moving right now, like my siblings, and people who play the game three times slower than normal people because they pet battle every pet, gather ever ore, and read every quest, like my fiancé, won't get awesome things that I have, like the Ahead of the Curve achievie and reward or the CM phoenix. I hate that they are punished for playing the game to its fullest, or having RL going on. Honestly, I just hate any removed content/rewards being removed from any game any time, if it is not due to glitches/bugs. Period.
But, as much as I rant, it is only because I am passionate about what I play, and someday, I want to be able to go back with my kids, once they are old enough, and show them the old great games, and watch their faces puzzle things out, or eyes widen with wonder. I can't if they take things away. I look at the game as it is, and as I hope it will be in 10 years. I always view anything I play in this manner. That is why I care. That is why I rant. And that is why I am playing WoW again.
RAWR! :)
Monday, October 6, 2014
Saturday, September 27, 2014
World of Warcraft: The removal of yet more content... Instead of adding
World of Warcraft.... almost a full 10 years of existence and I still think the worst thing about it now is what the worst thing about it was when I quit the first time at the launch of Cata, and when I played as a noob so long ago at the tail of Vanilla.
The removal of content.
I CANNOT understand why a company would waste their money paying someone for man hours to design or create something for the game and then after a few months, or ever a year or two, remove that something. I have always, and will always, think it is the stupidest idea ever. Collectors can NEVER truly collect because of temporary content, only the most elite and rich stand a chance, but even they will never get it all, and the truth is, that now WoW has started posting things they took out of the game on the Black Market Auction House, and announced that in 6.0 they intend to do even more so.
This is good for people who cry over what they can never have, but HORRIBLE news for everyone else, because this means all current content can at anytime be removed and put in that BMAH instead, meaning, you spend hundreds of thousands of gold on something that if WoW had left alone, you could have just done the chain, the farm, the achievement, whatever, for.
The BMAH is proof that Blizz DOES NOT care about giving people an elite feeling for having gotten a mount or title or set before it was removed, and that they are trying new ways of CONTROLING players and their mass saved up gold. It is a money sink, purposefully designed to make people get excited that they can have something removed, when what would have made ACTUAL sense would be to leave it there in the first place.
A game that removes good things just for the sake of removal, without there being a glitch or a bug in it, but to create a sense of 'elite' players who can flaunt their mount, is making a huge mistake.
Firstly, I stated with guild wars 2, that someone saw something I had from their horrible "every 2 weeks we put out something temp again, and never expand the game world we made in our game" and asked me about it. I explained that you could never get that particular pet again, and the person said, "Well, that is the coolest thing I have seen in your game, but no point in playing if I can't get it."
IT LITTERALLY DETERS people from playing the game who have never played to remove content.
Secondly, it makes your current gamers feel like the company is segregating them into "good players" and "casual players". Now the 'good' will think this is great, feel patted on the back, and feel lordly over the other players who have excuses like "life" for why they fail. The casuals, who are the majority of the players, will feel abused, dejected, robbed, and smacked down. Why can't the 'good' players be made to feel great about themselves WITHOUT treating casuals like crap? You could put a badge of the logo of the expansion someone got a mount in, since people complain about only having a date for proof, to their achievie, or you could give titles and transmog sets for doing content at the max lvl for that expansion. Anyone can turn off their xp for a while, and then back on, when they want. You could even just do like with CM's and push the gear lvl's down. But removing content is so unreasonable and foolish.
Another reason to NOT remove it, is this was LITTERALLY my reason for leaving WoW back at the launch of Cata, that and the dailies, but mostly, I had been farming ZG for over a year and a half weekly for the mounts, seen both drop 3 times but lost the rolls, and you were removing them. You already removed the mounts from Naxx when I had just started getting the achievements required, and I won't even speak about ZA. In Cata, you not only were removing the ZG mounts, but destroying the raid and making it a dungeon, which I have tried once since I returned to WoW and it is HORRIBLE compared to the raid. Whoever re-did it made it terrible to even want to try. People like the warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings of content as it is, not ruined redone stuff that shows you are too lazy to create. You lose players every time you take away instead of add. Every single time.
But Cata was, in and of itself, an expansion designed to take away. You took away auberdine, a place filled with some of the fondest memories I have in the whole game, and you didn't even replace Gubba Bump, which my sis in law cries over anytime anyone mentions the ransacked upheaval you have turned that zone into. Not a single change made in the cata expansion made anything that was destroyed or removed better. Nothing. Every single thing you ruined. None of it was improved.
Which is really the point.
Even if you didn't have a single player in your game, which you lose more everyday cuz instead of adding content you keep removing it, but even if there were none, the GAME does NOT get BETTER by removing content. You will NEVER improve a game by taking away rewards, incentives, and things for people to enjoy.
But since you don't seem to care about the game and whether or not it is good, think of it this way: The more crap people have to strive for, the more hours they will waste trying to get the crap, and the more subscription time they will buy. People want more, not less. You want more people, not fewer. This is not hard.
STOP removing good things from World of Warcraft.
The removal of content.
I CANNOT understand why a company would waste their money paying someone for man hours to design or create something for the game and then after a few months, or ever a year or two, remove that something. I have always, and will always, think it is the stupidest idea ever. Collectors can NEVER truly collect because of temporary content, only the most elite and rich stand a chance, but even they will never get it all, and the truth is, that now WoW has started posting things they took out of the game on the Black Market Auction House, and announced that in 6.0 they intend to do even more so.
This is good for people who cry over what they can never have, but HORRIBLE news for everyone else, because this means all current content can at anytime be removed and put in that BMAH instead, meaning, you spend hundreds of thousands of gold on something that if WoW had left alone, you could have just done the chain, the farm, the achievement, whatever, for.
The BMAH is proof that Blizz DOES NOT care about giving people an elite feeling for having gotten a mount or title or set before it was removed, and that they are trying new ways of CONTROLING players and their mass saved up gold. It is a money sink, purposefully designed to make people get excited that they can have something removed, when what would have made ACTUAL sense would be to leave it there in the first place.
A game that removes good things just for the sake of removal, without there being a glitch or a bug in it, but to create a sense of 'elite' players who can flaunt their mount, is making a huge mistake.
Firstly, I stated with guild wars 2, that someone saw something I had from their horrible "every 2 weeks we put out something temp again, and never expand the game world we made in our game" and asked me about it. I explained that you could never get that particular pet again, and the person said, "Well, that is the coolest thing I have seen in your game, but no point in playing if I can't get it."
IT LITTERALLY DETERS people from playing the game who have never played to remove content.
Secondly, it makes your current gamers feel like the company is segregating them into "good players" and "casual players". Now the 'good' will think this is great, feel patted on the back, and feel lordly over the other players who have excuses like "life" for why they fail. The casuals, who are the majority of the players, will feel abused, dejected, robbed, and smacked down. Why can't the 'good' players be made to feel great about themselves WITHOUT treating casuals like crap? You could put a badge of the logo of the expansion someone got a mount in, since people complain about only having a date for proof, to their achievie, or you could give titles and transmog sets for doing content at the max lvl for that expansion. Anyone can turn off their xp for a while, and then back on, when they want. You could even just do like with CM's and push the gear lvl's down. But removing content is so unreasonable and foolish.
Another reason to NOT remove it, is this was LITTERALLY my reason for leaving WoW back at the launch of Cata, that and the dailies, but mostly, I had been farming ZG for over a year and a half weekly for the mounts, seen both drop 3 times but lost the rolls, and you were removing them. You already removed the mounts from Naxx when I had just started getting the achievements required, and I won't even speak about ZA. In Cata, you not only were removing the ZG mounts, but destroying the raid and making it a dungeon, which I have tried once since I returned to WoW and it is HORRIBLE compared to the raid. Whoever re-did it made it terrible to even want to try. People like the warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings of content as it is, not ruined redone stuff that shows you are too lazy to create. You lose players every time you take away instead of add. Every single time.
But Cata was, in and of itself, an expansion designed to take away. You took away auberdine, a place filled with some of the fondest memories I have in the whole game, and you didn't even replace Gubba Bump, which my sis in law cries over anytime anyone mentions the ransacked upheaval you have turned that zone into. Not a single change made in the cata expansion made anything that was destroyed or removed better. Nothing. Every single thing you ruined. None of it was improved.
Which is really the point.
Even if you didn't have a single player in your game, which you lose more everyday cuz instead of adding content you keep removing it, but even if there were none, the GAME does NOT get BETTER by removing content. You will NEVER improve a game by taking away rewards, incentives, and things for people to enjoy.
But since you don't seem to care about the game and whether or not it is good, think of it this way: The more crap people have to strive for, the more hours they will waste trying to get the crap, and the more subscription time they will buy. People want more, not less. You want more people, not fewer. This is not hard.
STOP removing good things from World of Warcraft.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Rawr: Spore
Rawr!
I was thinking, and it would be cool if they made a spore mmo.
Obviously with seriously updated graphics and wayyy more to do, but think about how fun it would be to start as a protozoa in a puddle with other people, and then you later have to convince friends to join you to fight enemies, or finally, taking over planets as a guild while other guilds that live there fight you off cuz they don't wanna pay your taxes. (but some of them secretly turned to you so you convinced a civil war to go on).
There would need to be way more development, and way more to do at max form, and maybe a little of the customization should be choice based instead of so totally managed, but for the most part, I was thinking about it, and thought it would be a fun game.
Meh, the mind of me. :D
Rawr :)
I was thinking, and it would be cool if they made a spore mmo.
Obviously with seriously updated graphics and wayyy more to do, but think about how fun it would be to start as a protozoa in a puddle with other people, and then you later have to convince friends to join you to fight enemies, or finally, taking over planets as a guild while other guilds that live there fight you off cuz they don't wanna pay your taxes. (but some of them secretly turned to you so you convinced a civil war to go on).
There would need to be way more development, and way more to do at max form, and maybe a little of the customization should be choice based instead of so totally managed, but for the most part, I was thinking about it, and thought it would be a fun game.
Meh, the mind of me. :D
Rawr :)
Monday, January 6, 2014
mmorpg's
RAWR!!!
So, today I have a little story before my rant :D
Yesterday, we were shopping for Mexican food night ingredients, my gf, brother, and I, and the check out clerk was a young male, about 22 or 23. He noticed my LoL shirt, which says 'Don't Feed the Champions', and said, "Is that a gamer or a nerd reference?"
I responded, "Both, LoL".
He paused and then continued, "I was just wondering what game then."
I said, "League of Legends; LoL"
He said, "I didn't know if it was a Halo drop out of the map ref or LoL. I thought you might mean LoL, but then I didn't know if it was lol. Kinda like how WoW used to be, ya know, wow or WoW."
I nodded and then turned to my brother, remembering something I wanted to comment to him and hadn't yet. I told my bro that WoW only had 6mil players last year, and were losing an average of over 100k a month, and that a lot of mmo's, Rift amongst them, were gaining players in troves.
The guy behind the register interjected, "Doesn't surprise me at all about WoW. All mmo's will be obsolete in a couple years. If it isn't a game that has people combating, then it won't succeed, so mmo's are gonna be gone. Ya know what I mean about combat?"
I said, "games which include some form of PvP."
He finished with "Yeah, that."
We checked out, and went on our merry way to eat our yummy Mexican delights. But my brother said that guy was a moron. I shrugged and said maybe he didn't understand fully, but I understood what he meant, even if he hadn't.
Online gaming, the history, according to LyL (WoW was the first MMO!!! fail troll is fail):
With the dawn of the usefulness of the internet, also came the understanding that we could interact with others far away and feel warm and fuzzy inside. yay.
So we started making chat rooms and lo, we were bored with just talking. We were used to fun and wonderful games that we could type commands on and watch our pixelated little person do fun things, or lay a card or chess piece out and feel smart, or even pong our pong or roll our marbles through mazes of daring. So, online gaming began with three major flavors.
Flavor one was card/board games
Flavor two was puzzle games
Flavor three was Muds.
Now the first two are rather self explanatory, and you can find common examples of them everywhere, for they are still very much used, especially in the app world. I know of no tablet or pad that lacks such wonders as puzzle and card/board games, be it solitaire, poker, mahjong or chess. Likewise, who hasn't played something like candy crush saga, bejeweled, blah blah. You get it.
Muds were wonderfully diff. They were interactive, by making someone who represented yourself accomplish things. Whether it was traversing a maze while being hunted and hunting or it was fighting some creature with pure numbers, it was great.
These three things all had babies. Puzzle games and board games made wonderful babies with muds, such as 2d puzzle world games (example, puzzle pirates), the joys of pvp in larger ways, and combat games where you took on monsters like in a normal game, but with friends. First person shooters online appeared, right alongside Real time strats and dungeon games. But Muds also had their own baby on the side, the wonder of the mmo.
As general computer gaming moved from a King's Quest 4 where you typed command to King's Quest 5 where you clicked with your mouse, so did online gaming move forward, and started to have massively multiplayer online wonders, for some people began to want to escape to wonderful, large worlds, where you no longer felt like you were playing with someone, as much as engaging with a giant world with others you could meet. Early MMORPGs were things like Everquest and Ultima Online, places where you engaged in the joys of gaming with others, but also, could play the same game alone, and it was open ended, being a world for you to make whatever you wanted to happen, happen, if you were skilled and determined enough (with a decent helping of lots of time).
People say all mmorpg's copy one or another (WoW often by trolls just to get rises out of people) but the truth is that they all copy each other in bits, because they all came from the same place. Just like all people look more alike to other humans than other animals, because we all genetically came from one source (proven with science, whether you are religious or not), mmo's are the same. They have cores to their gameplay, that cause them to be mmo's
Now, the thing is, I DO NOT think mmo's are going anywhere. I DO think they are dropping down from their throne of 'most people who play online play us'.
Apps have jumped into first place, in my personal opinion. Fps's and moba's are doing amazing. The guy at the store was right in that mmo's are not the top dog of the internet as they used to be, but there will ALWAYS be core players hugging mmo's, and there will always be people who, as much as they enjoy pvp, will also be compulsive collectors and gatherers and Auction house players and want to do quests and raids and dungeons and so on. Mmo's are not going to be obsolete, so much as they helped birth new fun things just like every other type of game does.
Mmo's that will continue to be popular are the ones who adapt to the new way of gaming. Subscriptions, for instance, are becoming less common. Most games who do subs, start out with them, and then create a f2p model later. Free 2 play is just more of a money making cash cow. Most people want that. Subscriptions on a lot of games that are keeping them, are being reduced in price, because they cannot compete with the amount of FREE on the market. Games are including more novelty items and fru fru costumes to cover up gear. People don't care as much about showing off their leet top tier raid set as looking adorable or like the grim reaper. Having homes that you can decorate, mounts as unique as there are creatures in the world, things that do not grant prowess in combat at all, are becoming the norm.
People are turning into online hoarders. They can collect their games to one single log in, their movies, their music, to a solitary account username and password. If a game is not convenient, it won't matter that it is filled with new worlds each zone, engaging storylines, and deep character creation. Fun to play trumps graphics. Easy to learn overrules long term content. Endgame is more vital than any of the leveling it took to get there.
Games are not just about getting a new game anymore, but about keeping and gaining new players. The more who play your game for the longer a period of time, the less you have to spend developing a new one. Everyone wants to be the game everyone wants to play. And more and more games want to be part of MLG, including mmo's.
And why not? Sports make crazy money, so why not gaming competitions? Companies will go for what makes them the money, and MLG is internationally, good money. PvP is good money.
It is sad to me that mmo's are starting to not be the most talked about games out there, because I love them, and might choose one day to be part of that core who continues to play them til I die, but I don't disregard the new path of games, or the games that are being born just cuz I love the old.
Truth is truth. The true true is that gaming is growing again, and that is good, but there are some people who still play muds, still play puzzle and card/board games. There are still people who love retro, and tablets love older, low graphic games.
Mmo's are more likely to become handheld than to become obsolete.
So don't cry, mmo lovers, they are not going anywhere. They just aren't king anymore.
RAWR! :)
So, today I have a little story before my rant :D
Yesterday, we were shopping for Mexican food night ingredients, my gf, brother, and I, and the check out clerk was a young male, about 22 or 23. He noticed my LoL shirt, which says 'Don't Feed the Champions', and said, "Is that a gamer or a nerd reference?"
I responded, "Both, LoL".
He paused and then continued, "I was just wondering what game then."
I said, "League of Legends; LoL"
He said, "I didn't know if it was a Halo drop out of the map ref or LoL. I thought you might mean LoL, but then I didn't know if it was lol. Kinda like how WoW used to be, ya know, wow or WoW."
I nodded and then turned to my brother, remembering something I wanted to comment to him and hadn't yet. I told my bro that WoW only had 6mil players last year, and were losing an average of over 100k a month, and that a lot of mmo's, Rift amongst them, were gaining players in troves.
The guy behind the register interjected, "Doesn't surprise me at all about WoW. All mmo's will be obsolete in a couple years. If it isn't a game that has people combating, then it won't succeed, so mmo's are gonna be gone. Ya know what I mean about combat?"
I said, "games which include some form of PvP."
He finished with "Yeah, that."
We checked out, and went on our merry way to eat our yummy Mexican delights. But my brother said that guy was a moron. I shrugged and said maybe he didn't understand fully, but I understood what he meant, even if he hadn't.
Online gaming, the history, according to LyL (WoW was the first MMO!!! fail troll is fail):
With the dawn of the usefulness of the internet, also came the understanding that we could interact with others far away and feel warm and fuzzy inside. yay.
So we started making chat rooms and lo, we were bored with just talking. We were used to fun and wonderful games that we could type commands on and watch our pixelated little person do fun things, or lay a card or chess piece out and feel smart, or even pong our pong or roll our marbles through mazes of daring. So, online gaming began with three major flavors.
Flavor one was card/board games
Flavor two was puzzle games
Flavor three was Muds.
Now the first two are rather self explanatory, and you can find common examples of them everywhere, for they are still very much used, especially in the app world. I know of no tablet or pad that lacks such wonders as puzzle and card/board games, be it solitaire, poker, mahjong or chess. Likewise, who hasn't played something like candy crush saga, bejeweled, blah blah. You get it.
Muds were wonderfully diff. They were interactive, by making someone who represented yourself accomplish things. Whether it was traversing a maze while being hunted and hunting or it was fighting some creature with pure numbers, it was great.
These three things all had babies. Puzzle games and board games made wonderful babies with muds, such as 2d puzzle world games (example, puzzle pirates), the joys of pvp in larger ways, and combat games where you took on monsters like in a normal game, but with friends. First person shooters online appeared, right alongside Real time strats and dungeon games. But Muds also had their own baby on the side, the wonder of the mmo.
As general computer gaming moved from a King's Quest 4 where you typed command to King's Quest 5 where you clicked with your mouse, so did online gaming move forward, and started to have massively multiplayer online wonders, for some people began to want to escape to wonderful, large worlds, where you no longer felt like you were playing with someone, as much as engaging with a giant world with others you could meet. Early MMORPGs were things like Everquest and Ultima Online, places where you engaged in the joys of gaming with others, but also, could play the same game alone, and it was open ended, being a world for you to make whatever you wanted to happen, happen, if you were skilled and determined enough (with a decent helping of lots of time).
People say all mmorpg's copy one or another (WoW often by trolls just to get rises out of people) but the truth is that they all copy each other in bits, because they all came from the same place. Just like all people look more alike to other humans than other animals, because we all genetically came from one source (proven with science, whether you are religious or not), mmo's are the same. They have cores to their gameplay, that cause them to be mmo's
Now, the thing is, I DO NOT think mmo's are going anywhere. I DO think they are dropping down from their throne of 'most people who play online play us'.
Apps have jumped into first place, in my personal opinion. Fps's and moba's are doing amazing. The guy at the store was right in that mmo's are not the top dog of the internet as they used to be, but there will ALWAYS be core players hugging mmo's, and there will always be people who, as much as they enjoy pvp, will also be compulsive collectors and gatherers and Auction house players and want to do quests and raids and dungeons and so on. Mmo's are not going to be obsolete, so much as they helped birth new fun things just like every other type of game does.
Mmo's that will continue to be popular are the ones who adapt to the new way of gaming. Subscriptions, for instance, are becoming less common. Most games who do subs, start out with them, and then create a f2p model later. Free 2 play is just more of a money making cash cow. Most people want that. Subscriptions on a lot of games that are keeping them, are being reduced in price, because they cannot compete with the amount of FREE on the market. Games are including more novelty items and fru fru costumes to cover up gear. People don't care as much about showing off their leet top tier raid set as looking adorable or like the grim reaper. Having homes that you can decorate, mounts as unique as there are creatures in the world, things that do not grant prowess in combat at all, are becoming the norm.
People are turning into online hoarders. They can collect their games to one single log in, their movies, their music, to a solitary account username and password. If a game is not convenient, it won't matter that it is filled with new worlds each zone, engaging storylines, and deep character creation. Fun to play trumps graphics. Easy to learn overrules long term content. Endgame is more vital than any of the leveling it took to get there.
Games are not just about getting a new game anymore, but about keeping and gaining new players. The more who play your game for the longer a period of time, the less you have to spend developing a new one. Everyone wants to be the game everyone wants to play. And more and more games want to be part of MLG, including mmo's.
And why not? Sports make crazy money, so why not gaming competitions? Companies will go for what makes them the money, and MLG is internationally, good money. PvP is good money.
It is sad to me that mmo's are starting to not be the most talked about games out there, because I love them, and might choose one day to be part of that core who continues to play them til I die, but I don't disregard the new path of games, or the games that are being born just cuz I love the old.
Truth is truth. The true true is that gaming is growing again, and that is good, but there are some people who still play muds, still play puzzle and card/board games. There are still people who love retro, and tablets love older, low graphic games.
Mmo's are more likely to become handheld than to become obsolete.
So don't cry, mmo lovers, they are not going anywhere. They just aren't king anymore.
RAWR! :)
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