Just Who Are the MMO Players, Anyway?

Ben Milton, of the YouTube Channel Questing Beast and the creator of the RPG Knave, had a video up a couple of days ago that got me to thinking.

It's about 21 minutes, and he does a great job
discussing this particular topic.

The big theme that he had in this video was that D&D is going to be the top dog in RPGs not because of a superior ruleset but because it is the game people think of first that satisfies what he calls Rule 1: "To play the game, you simply describe what your character is doing, and then that conversation, that description affects the game world."*

Ben references Mike Mearls, one of the major creators behind D&D 4e, and even provided a clip of a recent video Mike had released concerning why D&D 4e failed. What Mike discovered during playtesting for 4e was that people would have these character sheets full of powers, and they'd look down them and say "I swing my sword," instead of using said powers. This led Mike Mearls to the realization that the majority of D&D players aren't there for the ruleset, but for their friends and to have a good time.

While watching this video, I swear you could have swapped D&D for WoW and a lot of this stuff would still track.

There are the people who want complexity and all the crunch and huge rotations and mechanical difficulty out of their MMOs, and then there are the folks who are just there to chill, slay a few internet dragons, and enjoy the show. Those who are into min/maxing, utilizing all their abilities in interesting ways, are a minority of players but a majority of the crowd found on the company forums, on Reddit, and on the hardcore websites.

WoW will always be the number one MMO, and in general it remains so, because people will equate MMO = WoW in the same way RPG = D&D, and it satisfies that itch to allow you to pretty much go wherever you want to go in a massively multiplayer world that makes MMOs a distinct genre from other video games. You're not going to "beat" WoW by having superior raid fights or ability combos, but rather you get enough people who just want to chill with their friends to come along and hang out.

Now, this doesn't exactly map to WoW, because I believe the WoW Endgame playerbase comprises a larger portion of WoW players than the hardcore RPG crowd does to D&D, but that's also a function of WoW catering to that crowd as the more ephemeral casual crowd ebbs and flows over the course of an expansion. D&D itself was temporarily eclipsed by Pathfinder in the early 2010s because, well, RPG players wanted to keep playing D&D 3e and Pathfinder was essentially D&D 3e with some minor changes. Once Wizards of the Coast pivoted back to a more traditional design for D&D with 5e, they reclaimed their top spot and kept it as of date of this post. 

The video does strike me as having a salient point: don't shoot for the Moon, shoot for a niche. That is something that both tabletop RPG and video game designers can heed, particularly AAA designers who think that they'll make World of Warcraft amounts of money by creating their own WoW-killer. You're much better off carving off a niche and making a somewhat smaller amount of money. 

*From "It's time to face reality..." by Questing Beast, at the 6:18 mark.

Why is it Just the Way I Like It, Anyway?

After my post last Thursday, when I said in so many words that I prefer the peace and quiet in my MMOs, I spent some time in reflection. Why, after all this time, do I prefer a quiet and empty world so much?

I enjoy group content, and I've often complained about how changes to games to make them more solo friendly* haven't led to an enjoyable time for me. I also enjoy --to a certain extent, I might add-- reading Gen/World chat in MMOs. Yes, often it reads like watching a train wreck in real time, but other times the flow of snarky and humorous conversation brightens up an otherwise dull day. 

Still, despite all of this, why do I prefer the solitude of empty zones while questing?

***

Part of it is my history, I suppose.

When I first started playing WoW in 2009, Wrath of the Lich King was in full swing. What I didn't know at the time was that the vast majority of players were at max level in Northrend while I was toiling away in what is now standard MMO behavior: empty zones save for the occasional new player or leveling alt. To me, the world seemed so huge that I didn't run into too many people while leveling, particularly in the Old World or Outland. 

To be fair, when you cut your MMO teeth on a PvP server, the fewer people you encounter the better. I still get twitchy when I'm near Tarren Mill**, despite I've not been on a PvP server in well over a decade. Encountering anybody out in the field while on a PvP server is a cause for concern unless you know the person is on your faction, although that's not always a guarantee of safety as there are people who create "spy" toons to find lone targets to hunt. 

But regardless, the vast open expanse of the Barrens and other places in WoW are made even larger when there are so few people out and about. By nature, a game world can't approximate the real world because the size would become unplayable for those wishing to interact with others --not to mention the amount of storage and horsepower required to keep a fully realized world-equivalent running-- so the limited size of Azeroth is made larger by artificial means, such as the more modern layering systems.

When I finally arrived at Dalaran in Northrend***, I was both overwhelmed and stunned by the sheer number of toons roaming throughout the place. I now understood just how many people actually played WoW: enough people that when Dalaran was busy, the resulting lag would drop framerates down to the mid-teens or single digits. It took a short time before I grew used to the crowds, but it never quite felt home to me in the way some of the lesser populated cities, such as Silvermoon, were.****

***

As much as I want other people to actively play in the MMOs I participate in, I'm also perfectly happy that they are all off somewhere else. I don't have to deal with random invites to either group up/join a guild, worry about my quest targets being overwhelmed by people rushing to level past me, or bots farming everything that isn't nailed down.

Being an introvert does mean that I'm perfectly happy doing my own thing and being social when I want to be, not when it's foisted on me. 

***

I can understand people who do not like lines.

From Icy Veins' Facebook page.

Me, I grew up attending Kings Island, the local amusement park and home of several iconic roller coasters, such as The Beast...

The ride on the world's longest wooden roller coaster is worth it, in my opinion, but some people are put off by the 1+ hour wait on the weekends.***** Me, I don't mind if I'm with friends; there's plenty of time to chat and dry off from getting splashed in some of the water rides. (And to be fair, there's plenty of women in bikini tops on a hot Summer day, so a lot of views as well.)

Still, I get where people have places to go and people to see when they're playing WoW, so waiting in line isn't for them. 

In WoW, waiting in line isn't for me for another reason. The last time I did that, in Classic WoW Era, the number of random whispers for guild invites was highly annoying. So, it wouldn't be so bad were it not for the crowd itself. 

From what I've observed, courtesy of social media and anecdotes, I'm perfectly happy to avoid all that in WoWF. Holding out until Christmas might seem a bit excessive, but it's not like I'm not doing anything at all. I've got toons to level on the Anniversary server, so there's that, and I have some other games to play as well.

*Such as the removal of 4-person Heroic events out in the world in SWTOR or the removal of group quests in a post-Cataclysm WoW. Or the removal of elite mobs entirely.

**For those not in the know, Tarren Mill and Southshore, the Horde and Alliance hubs in Hillsbrad Foothills, have been a traditional spot for PvP in WoW. The Horde players are typically about 5-10 levels lower than the Alliance players, so while there are far more Horde players in the area due to the proximity to The Undercity, they are also cannon fodder for the Alliance players. PvP fights also escalate quickly to where one side invades the other home base, often with max level toons, and wreaks havoc on the area. There were plenty of times when I'd login to WoW and a Horde toon in Tarren Mill, only to find myself almost instantly killed. I learned very quickly to avoid certain spots on the map, such as Tarren Mill and the entirety of Stranglethorn Vale.

***It bears a repeat explanation that I was always confused when I'd do a "/who" on a player and find them in Dalaran, when I knew where Dalaran was in the Old World map and saw a crater whenever I visited the place. It was only when I finally made it to Dalaran as the central hub in Northrend did I fully understand the meaning for the crater: the Mages of Dalaran had used the arcane to basically turn their city into a floating citadel.

****The irony is that Silvermoon is now the main hub (or it was, anyway) for Retail's Midnight expac. 

*****If you want to avoid the lines, go midweek during the Summer. Tuesday and Thursday work really well.

How to Spend a Weekend on a Roof

So.

About that Meme Monday.

I was up on the roof for this:

Yes, I finally set up an outside antenna for my VHF/UHF transceiver. It was certainly an adventure.

For starters, I had to wait for the roof to be replaced before I could even start, so there was that...

Note the siding that still needed to be reattached.

Then there were family things I had to take care of, so that set me back yet another week. Then I had to wait for the weather to turn nice for several days before I could begin. 

***

Let me get this out of the way right now: I'm scared of heights. 

I never knew that until the day (over 30 years ago) that my wife and I decided to walk across the Roebling Suspension Bridge just for the view.

From Facebook's Old Cincinnati group.
It's a much better pic than I've ever taken.

About halfway across, my brain started freaking out because I didn't think that the fence would keep me from falling over if, oh, my brain decided I wanted to lean over the edge. 

I'm sure it's legal --or it was at one point-- but yeah, that fence
doesn't look like the safest thing out there. Especially for kids.
From Travel Inspired Living.

So yeah, I got only about 1/3 of the way over before I had to turn back. Ever since, I've had issues about being in high places, such as up on a roof. Conquering that meant getting up on our garage's roof to put up that antenna. 

***

If you're familiar with radio or television antennas, you know that you want them as high as possible. Therefore, I ought to put it up on the roof of the house, not the garage. However, I was willing to get up on the garage's roof, NOT our house's roof. Besides, I don't even have a ladder long enough to do that. My ladder only goes up 24 feet, which is about 3-4 feet short of being useful. Why the small ladder? That's because we bought it to use at our first house, not our current one.

Yeah, to hell with getting on top of the house. A garage roof antenna will have to do.

The mast I used for mounting was made of 304 stainless steel, so I wouldn't have to worry about rust so much.

The other prep work, running the coax from what was the girls' room to the far side of the garage, took a LOT longer than I thought it would. I'm not going to show any pics, because who wants to see the inside of the garage attic? Let's just say that once I was done with running that coax, I was more than ready to shower and wash my hair.

All that coax work took Saturday, so Sunday was set aside for the roof itself. 

And, as is traditional for me, I had to make some adjustments on the fly.

See that wooden base? Or rather, the TWO of them?

Yeah, I miscalculated on the orientation of the wood so I could attach the mount properly. If I had rotated the mount, it would be sticking out at a 50 degree angle rather than vertically, so I had to cut another 2"x6" pressure treated piece of wood, paint that, then coat it in the Gorilla Glue equivalent of Flex-Seal, then use some putty underneath to properly seal the holes as I punctured my nice new roof. 

Although I assembled the mast and the antenna before climbing up onto the roof, I had to attach the two together while up there. Then attach the combined antenna and mast to the base.

So I went up the ladder. Down the ladder. Up the ladder. Down the ladder. 

Yeah, that was fun. /sarcasm

Once that was complete and the antenna kinda-sorta vertical*, I then had to spend about 5-10 minutes moving all of my tools and equipment back off the roof and back down to the deck before I could tackle attaching the coax (and the ground wire) to the bonded ground rod below.

The device the two pieces of coax are attached
to is the lightning arrestor, which shunts energy
to ground in the event of a nearby lightning strike.
If there's a direct strike, well, not much you can
do there, but it will protect against indirect strikes.

So this is what it looked like when I was finished:

Yes, I know, I need to attach the
coax and the ground wire to the siding.
I've got a few days before the next storm.

The little loop there on the antenna is for both strain relief and provides a little bit of an RF choke. If I wanted to really choke any common mode current on the coax, I'd have to use something quite a bit more robust than a single loop. I'll probably have to consider a choke at the entrance to the girls' room, which I've claimed as my radio room for the time being.

Somewhere along the line I noticed that I'd scraped up my hands a bit and I was bleeding all over my right thumb's knuckle. (Sorry, I'm not showing any pics.) My left index finger's knuckle was bleeding too and hurt far more, but the right knuckle was the one that made me grateful I'm up on my tetanus shots.

Anyway, once everything was attached I went into the house and checked the SWR.

The SWR, or Standing Wave Ratio, checks for the amount of power being transmitted versus being reflected back into the radio from the antenna. If an antenna isn't matched properly to the frequency you're transmitting on, some of that transmitting power will be reflected back into the transceiver. That ratio is ideally 1:1, but you can probably get away with a 2:1 ratio before you start to worry about frying your transceiver by transmitting with a poorly matched antenna. Newer transceivers do have protection circuits, but I'd rather not find out the hard way that mine don't.

Anyway, I tested the SWR, and got a 1.1:1, which given the hoops I went through to connect and mount the damn thing, is very much a miracle. (Or I had the meter miscalibrated.)

I did get on the 2 meter National Calling Frequency and requested a mic check...

I didn't have the lights on in the room, or it
would have been a better photo.

...and I almost immediately got a response from someone in West Harrison, Indiana, about 14-15 miles away. He told me I was booming in from where he was at, and we chatted briefly before I told him I had to go shower and clean myself off.

Monday morning, I turned on the transceiver and listened around the repeaters, and I was getting reception from about 40-50 miles away without much issue. I didn't try to talk to anybody, because I was getting ready to work, but it was nice to know that I got far better reception than I did on my mobile antenna attached to a pizza pan.

***

Would I do it again?

Yes, absolutely, even with my fear of heights. In fact, my brain is already saying "You know, if you'd have gotten a bigger antenna or a longer mast, you could reach even father..." And my body has to tell it "NO EFFING WAY. NOT NOW." My right thumb was incredibly stiff and slightly swollen Monday morning, but it feels much better now. And Sunday night my back and legs were really feeling it, but they recovered by Monday evening. 

But no, I'm not adding to that antenna just yet. Some of my ham friends have asked me when I'm going to put a tower up, and I've laughed that off, but I do understand the appeal. And the cost, which single-handedly keeps me from being more interested.

*"Close enough for government work," I grumbled as I gave up and just accepted it wasn't going to be good enough for my standards.

Meme Monday: Fall Color Memes for 2026

I was up on the roof --a lot-- yesterday, so I got a good view of the fall colors. That wasn't why I was up there (that will be a topic for another time), but I still got a chance to enjoy the best of what Autumn has to offer. 

So, for those times when you go outside and aren't playing video games, here's some Fall Color memes.

Heh. From Digital Mom Blog.

I can get behind this. From Digital Mom Blog. Again.

Okay, I laughed. I suppose it's also because I grew
up when the Cincinnati Reds won baseball's World Series,
so a lot of those Octobers were 'Red Octobers'.
From Rival Regions.

I'll have to defer to the women who read
this blog. From Pinterest.

Gotta watch out for those cat heads. They're spooky!
From Pinterest.

Hey, I found Mooch! From Cheezburger.

No Pressure. Absolutely None at All.

None indeed.

It was even larger earlier.
Last night, November 7, 2026.

Kudos to the lone Retail person there. 

Where am I, you may ask? 

I don't want to hear about the Wanderer's Stitched
Trousers. I know what they look like. And so does
Neve, who bitches about them every chance she gets.
Little does she know that the Dragon Queen herself
wears a version of them, but that's an expansion off.

Fel Reavers notwithstanding, I'm going to forge my own path. 

The Morning After

Throughout the WoW Anniversary servers, there was peace and quiet.

Just the way I like it.

It was this morning, but it was just as empty
last evening.

And here's Orgrimmar for reference purposes.

I found a more people out in the wild, questing, but a complete dearth of farming bots. (Good riddance, and have fun in WoW Forever.)

My friends' list last night was completely swamped with people on WoW Forever, and if that's any indication a lot of people from Retail were there as well. My suspicion is that the Retail players will gravitate back to Retail first, but it'll probably take a few months or more before the Classic players start to fade away.

I'm going to make a prediction, merely based on past performance, but that in about 3-4 months the Era servers will experience an uptick in interest due to players either missing the old Vanilla Classic or disliking the changes made to Classic. You can't please everybody, so whether WF* is what people expect in Classic Plus or not remains to be seen. 

As for me, I've decided I won't need to reserve names because of the last name capability. I've discovered in the past that the only toon name of mine has been used throughout Retail or Classic is "Azshandra", and all I need to make mine unique is to use a decent enough last name. So, I'm good. Maybe I'll create a toon before Christmas, maybe I won't. Odds are good that I'll be busy with other things.

*I've got to come up with a better way of shortening WoW Forever that doesn't just say "Forever", because it still feels damn pretentious. The problem with WF is that it is also shorthand for Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

The Empty Zones are Coming...

That's my snarky take on the next 3 minutes and change, because of this...

From my Battle.net front page.

For those that will imbibe, have fun!