So yeah, between holidays and a work trip in January, I've not updated this yet... So expect an update in the next few days that includes all the Wintersday stuff FROM TWO MONTHS AGO!

Argh....

Phew... finally updating...

So, back in December, we had Wintersday as per usual. However, this year they introduced a Wintersday specific raid... How weird is that? Pretty weird, I know.

All in all, it was honestly a pretty fun little raid. It's not what I'd, personally, have called a raid, as the term "raid" implies something more challenging and the Wintersday raid was a total push-over. But it was fun anyway.

Also in December, Ben/Waffmula, a long-time friend of mine from FFXI days, crafted his first legendary, Astralalalalallalalaria.

I love being present when my friends craft their legendaries... especially when it's their first one. He also got super lucky with a BLC and got the fucking orb back item.... grumble grumble. Anyway, he's got a cool look now including Astralalalalalaaria.

So we had some sad news last week, that got even sadder this week. Last week Kotaku broke the story that Anet was planning some mass layoffs. Since then there's been many, many, many more articles on it. On Monday, those layoffs happened, and over a quarter of their staff was let go. Really super sad news.

WP has a video up on it, that does a decent enough job covering some of the notable layoffs:

Really sad news. I'm not all doom and gloom on the prospects of the game, as I still think the game is pretty damned popular and doing well, but I do worry about how things will shake out with parts of the game I feel are neglected (like WvW and SAB). Mainly, however, I'm just super sad about all the great people who lost their jobs yesterday. #Love4ArenaNet

In addition to that, SAND/DTOP got some bad news last week of a very personal nature:

I can't say I ever really new Mel. I'm certain we ran into each other at various Dry Top events, but I don't really remember them specifically. But from what I've heard, they were loved and will be missed.