The Bastards Won

I never really thought I'd ever get to the point when playing an MMO that I would simply not care about the story. Back in 2010, I was shocked when some of the guildies I knew said that once Arthas was dead they didn't really care what happened next. We were on the cusp of Cataclysm, and I'd bought so completely into the narrative of the story that I was leveling two toons --one for each faction-- with the express intention of exploring the story from both sides. 

How did I go from that level of dedication to now, where I really don't care about the story in any of the MMOs I've played over the past 6 years?

There. I finally admitted it. 

I'd been dancing around this realization since at least 2019 when I explored Vanilla WoW Classic and discovered there was no overarching story to Vanilla. Sure, there were some questlines that were pretty epic in scope, but beyond that there wasn't a Main Story that everybody had to follow. No Shadows of Angmar for LOTRO, no OG three faction story in ESO, no vanilla SWTOR story (and class story), no nothing.

And I discovered I liked that lack of story more than I ever thought I would. 

That's not to say that I didn't think the original SWTOR stories were bad --they were awesome-- or that Shadows of Angmar was epic --it was-- but as time has gone on and I've seen expansion after expansion presented to the player base, I've become incredibly jaded. 

It reminds me of how a band pays their dues by playing in clubs, working out songs through endless rehearsals, and finally gets signed to an album deal and releases their first album. That's great, but then they have to turn around and put out another album that doesn't have the years of polish that the first album did, and frequently that second album turns out to be a bit of a dud. If the band is lucky, they land on their feet and figure out a way to write songs and keep the grind going, but otherwise they're destined for the bargain bin by the third album. 

Nothing that the development team has put out after the initial release seems to meet the quality, story-wise, of that original Vanilla release. Sometimes they come close, which is me throwing a bone to the World of Warcraft Legion fans out there who assure me that the expansion was great, but almost every other MMO out there doesn't reach that initial high point. 

"I don't care what they're yapping about," one player once told me in a dungeon in SWTOR, "I'm here to kill things."

"And get the loot," another player added.

That made me more than a bit sad, because I thought they were missing the point of the dungeon. But I decided that you can't please everybody, so just focus on those who do enjoy what the devs created. 

And here I am now, 15 years later, so jaded with modern MMO stories that I've discovered at this point it's better to simply not care. 

***

Before someone says that the stories have all "gone woke" and that's the problem, that ain't it. That's akin to arguing that the OG Star Trek didn't have a social and political angle to it.* What I complain about is twofold: the feeling that the stories were written by committee, and the belief that for an MMO story to work, it has to consistently be bigger, badder, and the stakes more earth shattering that what came before. 

While I don't have any proof that a lot of the more recent MMO stories were written by committee, I've been involved with enough committees at work and at college that I know how they operate. They try to smooth off the rough edges, build consensus, and remove problematic content. All of these are good endeavors to strive for, but the problem is that what each of those means to the individuals in a committee is quite different. Arriving at a consensus, therefore, means less taking a scalpel to a proposal and more akin to taking a hatchet instead. That doesn't mean I want edgier stuff, I just want stuff that has a singular point of view and a single voice presented as the narrative. 

But you know what committees also don't do? They frequently don't present a case where you have something --or someone in the case of a story-- that you can identify with and root for.

Have you ever done a side quest chain that is really satisfying and has someone you can cheer for and identify with? That's because that side quest was likely written by a single person in charge of a questline or three for a specific zone. The NPCs in the quest chain were people you could empathize with and share a common bond with because they were written with that in mind. There is no main storyline about the "Fate of the World" weighing them down, so their admittedly smaller concerns are more important to them. I know that I have absolutely nothing in common with people who occupy the C-Suite or the places of power in government, so there's absolutely nothing relatable to me with their story. But the guy who cuts my hair, or the Dad I talk to while standing in line at the creamy whip** down the street? That guy I can relate to. I'm not going to be able to relate to a Prince, or a King, or The Head of the Conclave of Wizards, or any other sort of Grand Poobah, because I am not them, and their troubles are not mine.

The other problem, the constant need to go bigger than the previous expansion, is one I've harped on before. I was actually thinking the other day that at least Blizzard tried to not top "Defeating The Afterlife" of Shadowlands when Dragonflight was released, and I do applaud them for that, but then I stopped and went "Huh... When is it that the most powerful beings on Azeroth are considered a downgrade for a storyline?" That is the reality we're talking about with the Dragon Aspects as the central point of the expansion, that their expansion is not quite so over-the-top world ending as just about every other expansion with the exception of, uh... maybe Mists and Warlords?

***

Okay, I've gotten that out of my system. Can I still enjoy an MMO and ignore the story? Yes, I can. I mean, I do fish a bit...

But seriously, I can do it. I can hold my nose in the same way when I accept a quest I personally loathe and then go and do whatever needs doing. 

If I can skip a cutscene, so much the better. If I can't, I'll simply get up and walk away until the cutscene is over. 

I can't even say "Don't let the bastards win" because in reality the bastards already won. I have become like them.

*Free Hint: The original Star Trek did have a LOT to say about society and the politics of our time. If you can't see it, then you're not watching the same show I did.

**It's a Midwestern thing. Although in Wisconsin you get Frozen Custard, in the Cincinnati area you have "Creamy Whip" or "Soft Serve" places. They operate during the Spring, Summer, and the Early Fall months, and they sell various forms of soft serve ice cream. Payment is typically cash only. Some sell burgers and hot dogs in addition to ice cream, but ice cream is the main draw. For the record, one of our favorites is Putz' Creamy Whip:

From Yelp on August 10, 2026.

#Blaugust2026

Meme Monday: Travelling Memes

This past week I found myself on the road a bit. One day I travelled up to Lafayette, Indiana* to me my oldest. Lafayette is right about the halfway point between Milwaukee and Cincinnati, so meeting there for an afternoon is kind of feasible. This past Saturday, of course, I was down in Louisville with my in-laws and my youngest.

And a Mooch.

So, in honor of that travelling, I figured I'd create a Meme Monday out of it.

Uh, no. Traffic says otherwise.
And nice misspelling too. From Pinterest.

It's all relative. I mean, I went through
Indiana on I-74 and I-65, so yeah.
But if I head east from Cincinnati on
US-32, you hit the Appalachian Mountains
before you know it. From Reddit.

I've honestly wondered if Blizz wanted to sell
you on purchasing flying because the automated
flightpaths were so bad. From Facebook.

Then again, just remember that travelling in an
MMO is where the devs want you to go. Not where
you actually WANT to go. From Reddit.

Okay, I laughed. From Pinterest.

And sometimes the journey is almost mandatory.
From Instagram.

*Yes, Purdue University is right next door in West Lafayette.

#Blaugust2026

A Short Sojourn of My Own

Today was busy with in-laws.

Oh, and I got to meet Mooch.

The box behind her is the "if I fits, I sits" box" that she has claimed. I find it kind of funny how cats (and children) will enjoy the box something came in far more than what was inside the box.

Case in point: Calvin and Hobbes.

Amazingly enough, I didn't sneeze or have any other sort of allergic reaction to her. So either I'm getting better at dealing with my feline allergies, or I just got lucky. I'm thinking the latter, but you never know.

#Blaugust2026

Here are Three Things, Pick Two

I sometimes wonder if the "Pick 2" concept has infected gaming to the point where we pretty much expect it these days. 

You know, the "Here are three things, but you can only have two" meme that so prevalent in business these days:

From Reddit.

Yeah, this has been on my mind when it certainly seems that we don't really have that perfect game out there. Companies sacrifice one thing in favor of others, mainly because of cost, and the result is somewhat less than satisfying. 

Look at Mass Effect 3, for instance. The original game had the first and middle parts of the game dead on, but the original ending fell completely on its face. It was so bad that Bioware had to go and do a complete redo of the ending just to recover. 

I can think of previous releases at my job back in the late 90s and early 2000s, where the company threw bodies and money at development but ignored QA issues in the name of trying to get the product shipped on time. I remember sitting in a meeting with all other QA release people, and the suits in upper management kept trying to cajole us into agreeing that the product was ready to ship. 

And it wasn't. Holy hell it wasn't. We even told them innumerable times that it wasn't ready to ship, but they overrode us and went ahead and shipped it anyway after about 2 weeks' worth of crunch. 

Given the foibles of Sony's seemingly endless attempts at creating a live service game, you'd think they would know better, but they don't. They keep throwing jello at a wall, given the teams money and an idea, but never giving them the expertise needed to create a good live service game. Or in the case of Bungie, they had the expertise and money, but not a great idea (Marathon). 

What other "here are three things, pick two" that you can think of?

#Blaugust2026

A Diversion of Sorts

It's been a long week at work, and I'm within sight of the weekend.

Normally I'd be moving forward with getting an antenna set up outside for my amateur radio work, but I'm going to shelve that for a little while.

Why, you may ask?

Because the roof is going to need replacement.

After the storms blew threw here a week ago last Tuesday, I'd wrestled with filing a damage claim on the house. I mean, we had some siding blown off, but I'd recovered them and all that's really needed is that they be put back in place. Still, I decided to go ahead and file a claim just in case there's more damage to the siding than I realized. 

Say hello to the siding section that blew off.
It's about 2' high by 8' wide.

The inspector came here last Saturday and went around the house, checked out the siding and the roof, as well as the small plastic shed that we inherited when we bought the house. It's only 6'x8', and I've been thinking for at least a decade that I'd like to replace it with something big enough that I could actually stand upright inside it, but it was more off in the distant future. 

When the inspector finished, I noted he'd marked up in chalk several places around the roof. I asked him if the roof seemed sound, and he replied that it was. The gutters were also in good shape as well, thank goodness, so I figured that we'd hear about maybe there was enough damage to the siding that we'd get a few dollars out of it once you take out the deductible for our homeowner's insurance.

Imagine my surprise when I got a call from the claims adjuster mid-week that our insurance had deemed four of the six roofing sections* had enough damage to warrant replacement. Now, they did admit that a roofer coming to perform the work would likely want to replace the other two sections as well, and if the roofer could provide evidence of additional damage they were willing to work with the roofer to adjust the claim accordingly. 

Oh, and they also threw in a few hundred dollars to replace the plastic shed with another one.

"Do they even make those any more?" I asked during the phone call. 

"Yes, they do; we checked."

"Huh." That was unexpected.

But since the roof will need replacement, that means that my antenna will have to wait until the roof is done, then I can finish my work up there. I guess that means it'll be late this year, at the very least. 

Now I have to find a roofer that is NOT a fly-by-night group. I've got access to Angie's List, but I'm also going to talk with a few neighbors who have had their roofs replaced in the past several years. The guy who did the roof way back in 2004 has long since retired, so I think that I'm going to have to find someone new.

*Two sections on the house, two on the attached garage, and two on the covered porch.

#Blaugust2026

Time For a Short Catch-Up

I might as well get this out of the way.

As of August 19, 2026.

Yes, if you can count, I got Joan to L70. I was in the middle of the Ring of Blood group quest when she dinged, so I was kind of busy and didn't take a screencap at the time.

If you'll also note from that screencap Neve is at L51 now --and boy have I been dragging my feet with her-- so she ought to reach Outland sometime in late September.

As for what to do next on the Alliance side, I've brought Hoots over and have started leveling her. I realize that the optimal way to level a Hunter is to go and get a Ravager as a pet, but as you're quite aware I march to the beat of my own drummer. In Hoot's case, I probably will not get into very many instances regardless, as I just prefer solo work with her. Good thing, as Hunters are a dime a dozen on the Anniversary servers. Between Hunters and Druids, they make up what seems to be 90% of the gatherers out in the field. 

In other news, for the first time in 2-3 months I logged into Retail.

You don't say...

Of course I just logged in and fished for a bit, but the cry of seagulls and the rolling thunder of the surf was quite pleasant to listen to.

You can tell I'm not serious about doing anything other than fishing because I actually have the "Fishing" command on my main bar (#9). I know that I can move it around wherever I want, but given that I'm not really doing anything else on this toon, why bother? At least she's low enough level that I don't get the "catch up" option when I come back to her after having been away for a while.

Alas, poor Quintalan.

Given that Quintalan hasn't been played since early Cataclysm, so 2010-ish, there'd be a LOT of catching up to do.

From Reddit. Well, and
World of Warcraft on Facebook.

#Blaugust2026

Writing and Re-Writing

There are times when I sit here, writing away, and I have trouble making things click. It's more prevalent when I'm writing fiction, but I've had it happen during regular blog posts too. There's no way around the reality that it really sucks when it happens. 

What drives me bonkers is that I'd write something, decide it really isn't going in a way I want it to, and start over. When I do push through all the way to the end and then go back to edit it, I still end up tossing all that writing for something else. 

I really blame the writing of some 80s era cartoons for some of this. Some of the writing for Voltron, a show my brother really watched but I was kind of peripherally involved with, has shown up in earlier drafts of some of my stories. When I go back and edit and I say "Holy crap does this sound bad! Where did this come from?" I find out weeks later watching some random YouTube video a clip from Voltron or Star Blazers and realize the origin of that dialogue.

For an example, this particular snippet of dialogue took me about 3 weeks to write to where it's in this form. Obviously it's still a work in progress, so it'll likely look different than at this point, but at least I like the flow and the direction of the dialogue.

“Hmmph.” My sister sat down next to me and stared out over the pond. 

 

If she thought I was going to overshare, which was the sure sign of a guilty conscience, she was going to be waiting for quite a while. Still, I figured I’d lay out the one thing that Linna likely most feared. “I’m going to have Zarg do it.”

 “Do what?” She tore her eyes off the far end of the pond to look me over.

“The investigation that needs to happen. I’m not an idiot, you know, and I’m quite aware I’m not healthy enough to do it myself.”

 Linna’s face twisted; not quite disgust, and not quite disapproval. “And you’re going to let her do it.”

“Yes. She knows a lot about the Cult, after all, and people always underestimate her.”

My sister involuntarily glanced over at the slumbering Neve.

“I already cleared her,” I supplied. “What about your Draenei friend?”

“She’s safe as well.” Linna had a long pause as her face went through a myriad of emotions.

“You’re thinking of that place, aren’t you.”

Her expression settled on anguish. “Card…”

“They don’t know her like they do me, so it’s safer for her to do it.” I felt strangely at peace with that admission. I’d always done things myself, and relinquishing the responsibility for investigating my curse was a difficult step to take. It was also going to be quite dangerous, dealing with the Cult of the Damned, but if there was one thing I was confident about it was that Zargala could handle herself. “If you get a chance, can you carry a note from me to Mathias? He deserves to know about what happened here.”

“Yes.” Another pause. “I don’t want to lose you.”

I nodded. “Nor I you. But you have to trust me.”

“You don’t make it easy.”

“My name wouldn’t be Cardwyn if it was.” I looked around. “Carys should be back soon.”

“I told her she could come back when I was done talking to you.”

“I bet you didn’t make sure the other two weren’t snooping.”

Linna stared at me for a moment. “Shit,” she blurted and split.

I heard her footfalls fade, then I turned my focus back to the pond. “Okay, Lewys, I know you’re out there. Come on out.”

There was a rustle in the brush, and a very guilty-looking nephew emerged.

I raised an eyebrow as a smirk crept across my lips. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to explain what we were talking about.”

“But…”

“Sometime later, but not now.” I patted the ground next to me. “Sit.”

He dragged his feet a bit, but Lewys eventually sat down. “Take my other rod,” I told him. “I loaned it to Briganaa, but she’s not here right now.”

Lewys picked up the fishing rod and began casting with me. “Aunt Linna was really mad at you,” he finally offered.

“Yeah, I know.”

“How come?”

“Why does everybody think I’m going to tell them that?” I sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you this much: she was scared.”

“Scared? Aunt Linna?”

“Yes, she was. She was scared of what I might do, because I sometimes do things without thinking. And in our little talk that you so conveniently eavesdropped on, I assured her I wasn’t going to do anything like that.”

“Oh.” He made a face. “This is all hard.”

“Yeah, life is hard. Even when you’re all grown up.”

"That doesn't seem fair."

"It isn't. But I'll let you know if it ever does turn out fair; I think I'd like that every once in a while." 

 

I suppose I ought to have saved an earlier draft to show you what I wasn't keeping, but still I wanted to share a bit about the difficulty I face in writing. It can be a lonely and humbling process, and agonizing over something as simple as this is a guaranteed way to drive me nuts. 

But the thing is, I derived some inspiration from the fact that many famous people --geniuses, really-- agonize over their craft in their own way.

Here's a short clip of Maximillian Schell and Leonard Bernstein discussing Beethoven and what made him a genius. 

Speaking of geniuses...

The fact that Beethoven struggled and agonized over the creation process makes me feel better about my own struggles. Not because I think I'm a genius, but because people of Beethoven's stature struggled to come up with their works of art. And here I am, just struggling to put words on a page that made even a smidgen of sense. 

So many other modern creators, particularly those who loudly proclaim their own genius, loudly trumpet the ease at which they make their creations. Yet I think it is more humbling to see the real struggles people have --and what they have overcome-- that inspires me to try harder. In that case the real genius is perseverance. 

#Blaugust2026