Hey all, it's been awhile.

So the last time I posted on this site was... 2017? That can't be right... But it is! It's been awhile. I'm sure a lot of you don't know or remember me at this point, but to those who do: hey there long time no see. I would like to apologize to those who used to hang with me frequently for sort of dropping off the face of the earth. Honestly I was just spending way too much time for a while playing this game and being on the site that it was hurting both my career and social goals, and taking a sharp break from it was definitely good for me. But that doesn't mean I didn't miss the community I was a part of here (you guys are great!)

Just going to premise this with the fact that this isn't my return to the site, visiting countless times a day to comment on nearly every post is something I'm leaving in the past. That was a great distraction back in high school, but probably not the best thing for me at this point (in fact it's entirely likely you won't see any new guides, posts, or even comments from me here again, as much as I'd like to do all that, as mentioned above I tend to get a bit carried away and I don't intend to let that happen again).

What this is (at least to some degree), is a bit of a return to playing Smite.

I've had the craving to play something familiar and nostalgic the last few weeks, and I finally caved and redownloaded the game, and after a couple matches I actually had some legitimately good times. I'm not going to say that I'm committing to sticking with this, in fact my playtime will likely be pretty minimal (at least compared to how it used to be), but given that I've finally decided that I would possibly like to play every now and again, I figured it would probably be rude not to let y'all know so that if you see me online you're not like... "wtf why didn't Zilby tell us he started playing again".

Soooooo yeah. If you see me online I'll be glad to play with some of the ol' and new smitefire crew. I don't know any of the items or jungle camps or even half the characters anymore (and don't really intend to dig in deep and learn everything that's new), but Chang'e seems to play about the same and that's all that really matters to me. I don't know what you guys use to in-game chat these days but feel free to add me to whatever it is if you want to play with me (I'm assuming Curse chat is dead by now. Remember Curse? Man what a time).


And if you're wondering what I've been up to since I last was seen:

• Released my passion project Refraction on steam where it.... exists (lol). Given that I did next to no marketing and the game doesn't really have a hook my expectations were low, but I was still super glad to finally put it out there! In the end, I'm very satisfied with how it turned out.
• Graduated college with a bachelors in computer science and game development, I'm now working in Boston at Proletariat Inc. on a mage battle royale game called Spellbreak as a gameplay programmer (At last my feedback on game design and mechanics is actually heard by the developers, of which I am among!)
• Been playing Overwatch with my girlfriend, as well as Apex Legends with some of my college buds, I've also been playing a lot of Rivals of Aether pretty much solo, which is fun but I'm starting to get a little burnt out (and hence am going to divide its time with some spent on Smite). Also played a lot of Beat Saber the last 6 months, but that's more of a physical activity than a video game haha. And of course I've played a variety of single player games as well (which range from Hollow Knight to Slime Rancher and everything in-between).
• I'm now living on my own, got my own place, my own income, and the ability to decide how I want to spend my free time, it's great!

So yeah. Hope all of you have been well.



Cheers,
Zilby