Monday, March 18, 2024

Meme Monday: Thirsty RPG Memes

No, I don't mean memes designed by the Hydro Homies Subreddit either.

My poking around in Baldur's Gate 3 has made me wonder a bit about just how horny is everybody out there. I mean, I get it that you're young and whatnot, but more than once I've watched a cutscene in an MMO or RPG and thought "Just how much of this is wish fulfillment?"



No, it wasn't a fluke, Kira.
Wait just a minute; you could have
said something, you know...

Thankfully I began playing BG3 after there was a hotfix to get some of the NPCs to, uh, not get so horny for you so quickly, to which I thought "Holy crap, it was even faster earlier??!!!"

I'm going to have to go in the direction of assuming that a lot of these romances and whatnot are primarily wish fulfillment and they just get hornier quicker. And that I wasn't hanging out with an extremely slow moving and prudish crowd in my teenage/college years. 

Still, RPGs and MMOs do now have their share of very thirsty NPCs these days to match the horny PCs. So in honor of all this thirstiness in the genres, here's a selection of memes on the topic...

You know, the Paladin doesn't have to be the
thirsty one... From dndmemes.


Yeah, that escalated quickly.
From animalnouncomics.


Well, if you ever wondered where
dragonkin really came from...
From demotivational (I think).

Well, that certainly explains Elminster's interest
in... things. No, not in BG3 specifically (yet), but
due to reputation, courtesy of Ed Greenwood's
copious novels about the Forgotten Realms.
From imgflip.


And one bonus meme for the perpetually thirsty:

You see, Moss' description was the
perception of what RPGs were to the
people who didn't play. Trying to convince
some DMs to actually not inject tons of sex
into their campaigns is the challenge I've experienced.
From Cheezburger and The IT Crowd.


Friday, March 15, 2024

Point of Reference

If there's one game that I play more than any other, it's Sid Meier's Civilization IV.

What, you expected an MMO? WoW, maybe?

Oh no, not by a long shot. 

A rare cultural victory for me, from 
back in May 2022. I don't save a lot of
screencaps, but since I almost always win
a space race, this was a notable exception.

I bought the game around 2009 or so*, which honestly works as a counterpoint to WoW, and I ended up re-purchasing the game on Steam a couple of years ago when it was down to $4 or so on one of those Winter or Summer sales. My reasoning was that I'd already gotten my money's worth out of the original game, and I knew that in order to install it on this new PC I'd have to go buy a portable DVD drive, so it kind of made sense to save a few dollars and just buy the game off of Steam instead.

Having played the original Civ back in the day, and then Civ III for several years, I knew what I was getting into. Still, even I was surprised at how much I preferred Civ IV to Civ III. I don't think I've even bothered to try to install Civ III on this PC, and even though I dabble a bit in Civ V and Civ VI, I always return to Civ IV.

Just how much?

Uh.... Whoops.

That little graphic is from my 2023 Year in Review from Steam. That's roughly half of the year I played Civ IV, because some of those sessions went kind of long. 

It's the sort of game where I can play for a bit, go away and do something else for a while, and then return to the same session while it's been patiently waiting for me in the background.

Unlike it's brethren and other civ sim games, a match of vanilla Civ IV can be cranked out in about 3 hours or less, depending on how wars develop and my need to micromanage city building and development. It's when you add systems such as found in Civ IV: Warlords or Civ IV: Beyond the Sword do the Civ IV matches really start extending in length. I guess for immersion those later iterations of the game are better, but I prefer vanilla Civ IV for the overall simplicity and balance. I've gotten to the point where I can play for about 5-10 minutes and immediately decide whether it's worth it to continue a game or start over, something I can't really do in the latter two for a bit longer.

And don't tell Sid Meier this, but the AI in Civ IV is kind of predictable and brainless, so I can switch my own brain off for a bit while playing. That is especially useful during lunch, where I can hop on and play for an hour or so and try to forget anything stressful in the morning.

So... If you ever wonder if I spend all my time in WoW or other MMOs, I guess you'll understand that is simply not the case. Hell, I don't even spend the majority of my video game playing in WoW, but rather in a turn-based civ builder game from 2005.




*Just a guess, really. No idea as to the exact year.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Behind the Curve

My son informed me the other week that he'd finished Baldur's Gate 3.

Considering that after that first week's worth of excessive playing my time in BG3 had shrunk to practically nothing for a month, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'm not into rushing into new content when an MMO expansion hits, but that initial week's worth playing BG3 gave me enough dopamine hits that I could understand the urge to keep playing.* When I realized I was eschewing work to play BG3, I had to dial it back for my own sanity. (And to keep my job, but that kind of goes without saying.)

My son didn't have those issues, since he was able to fit in most of BG3 before his current semester of grad school started, and more power to him for that. 

I'm not going to lie and say I was totally fine with all this; I felt a pang of jealousy at how he cruised through the game while I'm plodding along. It's not as if I'm savoring the game, either; at times it feels like when I was speed leveling that Draenei Shaman when TBC Classic came out: I'm constantly plotting my next move and trying to figure out how to progress further through the story.**

Yes, my MMO playing is at exactly the opposite inflection point from where I am playing a single player RPG. You could say that I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 like other people play World of Warcraft, and you'd not be wrong. 

***

It's the equivalent of reading a really exciting novel: the pages fly by and you want to get on to the next part just to see what happens. 

I get that, I really do, but I think that I need to be reminded of that from time to time that people who blitz through content aren't doing it "just to get it over with", but genuinely like the content so much that they're constantly turning that next page to find out what happens. 

I guess I get cynical about things when, like in TBC Classic, everybody was supposed to follow a playbook to get themselves raid ready as soon as possible. I thought it was only my guild that did that, because a few people I met out in Outland while leveling had completely different (and better) experiences with their guilds in terms of pacing and prepping for raids. However, on further reflection those better experiences had more to do with helping their own leveling Shamans to get leveled and not abandoning them to their fate when the Dark Portal opened. Those guilds, while more helpful to their Shamanistic (and Blood Knight) brethren, still had goals to achieve and raids to prep for; they were just a tad nicer about it, that's all. There were quite a few guilds raiding Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon while I was somewhere out in Terokkar Forest***, plodding away. 

A blast from the past, from June 18, 2021. If I were in
the "sweaty" raid, I'd have only a little over
two weeks to get to L70 and through the attunement
gauntlet. Our raid team was the one with the
"casual" reputation that I despised and started
raiding in the last week of July, 2021.


If I were in those guilds, I'd not have been abandoned, true, but I'd have also been pushed into the regimen all of those other guilds were doing. 

So why am I okay with it when I'm playing a video game such as Baldur's Gate 3?

***

As is typically the case, I believe it has to do with agency.

Typically, the way to get me to do something is to let me figure it out on my own and I'll likely end up doing what needs to be done. If I'm forced into doing something by some external force, then I'm going to drag my feet and refuse. Think of it of how people approach taxes: everybody in the US has to file their income tax by April 15th, and a lot of people will procrastinate until the last possible moment to do their taxes. I know people who do that on principle, complaining about their tax rates and whatnot, but I am one of those who simply don't like being told to do their taxes, especially if I'm given some sanctimonious bullshit like what I got as a kid when being told to eat my dinner "because it's good for you."

From Calvin and Hobbes.

Likewise, at work if I'm told I have to do something, I'm probably going to be one of the last people to actually get it finished. I would not do well in a highly regimented environment, such as the military. 

Hawkeye is my spirit animal.
From Imgflip (and M*A*S*H).

From that perspective, you can see why I clashed with progression raiding in an MMO format. When I joined the progression raid team, I did so willingly and pushed myself to get up to speed both gear wise and add-on wise. There weren't requirements for how exactly I went about getting my toon(s) ready for progression raiding; just that I get myself ready. And yes, I willingly went to SixtyUpgrades, Wowhead, and Icy Veins to see where my gaps were. It wasn't a directly communicated expectation, but rather something I did on my own to become a member of the raid team. 

It was only when TBC Classic came along and raid/guild leadership began making exact demands on the gear and process of getting raid ready did I rebel. The concept of raiding went from only being concerned with the end result ("raid ready") to trying to dictate how it should be done, and those demands weren't limited to my guild. Almost all of the actively raiding guilds on Myzrael-US were guilty of making the same demands on their members starting in TBC Classic, and whether their demands were cloaked in a velvet glove or not, the demands were pretty much the same iron fist: do it or you're not on the raid team. The lone exception that I was aware of was one guild who basically told its members to go do whatever for a month when TBC Classic dropped, and they circled back after that month to see where the guild stood before getting ready to raid. 

***

Okay, that's just raiding. Still, there's nothing that says you can't do whatever you want in an MMO in general. 

At it's core, that's correct. The design of an MMO is to allow a player to do a variety of activities without saying "you must conform". You could make the argument that modern MMOs have a ton of alternate activities designed with this player choice in mind.

This old chestnut highlights the player choice
the modern MMO has versus good ol' Classic.
Can't even recall who first made this meme.

The thing is, MMOs are not merely the sum of systems: there's a social element to them as well, and that is how the problems creep in. 

In any social endeavor, certain niceties are expected if you want to fit in. Just like proper social etiquette in real life, there's an MMO version of social etiquette when interacting with people. The Wil Wheaton saying "Don't be a dick" is just the bare minimum for social interactions; beyond that MMO interactions are a bit more complex. If you want to do group content in an MMO --especially in today's age-- you're expected to have done the "correct" things to maximize your output. What that entails varies between guilds and groups, but there's a measure of commonality driven by the knowledge that in the "group finder" MMO environment players are interchangeable: if you don't have the right specs/gear/systems settings, you can be painlessly replaced by someone else. And in a pre-group finder MMO, be prepared to submit for inspection if you want in on some group content.

Developers have attempted to circumvent such social restrictions with new ideas --LFR raids being the most notable-- but that's a technical solution for what is inherently a people problem. And when I play any group content in an MMO, I feel the social pressure. I never used to, but once you've crossed the Rubicon and been on the progression side of things, the veil of obscurity has been ripped away and you now see things from the lens of those who are judging whether you're good enough to join their raid team.

The best way to find good candidates for your organization is to create what I call positive encounters. Actions speak louder than words, so you need to ensure that these potential new members have some actions by which they can judge you. When you need a specific class, get your best group runners together and advertise that you need said class in order to do an instance. Once you get them in your group, don't mention recruitment. Just run that instance and do your job well. If they do well, tell them you hope to group again and then part ways. If they aren't in an organization, you may subtly mention that you are looking for their class. Do this enought times with enough people, and word will get around that you're a solid outfit. You can't buy better publicity than that and it creates more opportunities for you to use the soft sell. 
--The Guild Leader's Companion by Adam "Ferrel" Trzonkowski, Page 41.

The irony is that I thought this way before I bought The Guild Leader's Companion, because I'd be on guild runs in an instance and guild chat during the run would have a lot of commentary on any pugger's technique, both good and bad, and what their prospects were as a potential member of the raid team. I never saw it myself until I formally joined the progression guild immediately before TBC Classic, and there were plenty of times I wished I had remained ignorant and just enjoyed a dungeon run or a raid.

***

I guess that's where the irony creeps in. A single player game, such as an RPG, doesn't have that sort of social pressure. There's nobody looking over your shoulder, judging your gameplay, dropping comments and/or hints about how you could have done better. Nobody is pulling you into a Discord chat about how you could up your DPS a bit more so you could overcome that last fight more quickly. Nobody is telling you what extra gear pieces you should farm for. Nobody is suggesting a link in Wowhead to go check out to improve your gameplay. In a single player game, the only person you have to please is yourself. 

And Garrus. You ought to please
Garrus too. From Tumblr.

Because of that, I can focus as much or little of my time on the metagame without any recriminations.****

I haven't gone and pulled up walkthroughs or YouTube videos or gone to other websites that would cause spoilers in BG3, but the plotting does remain. I know that there's an optimal way of doing things --that's a drawback to any game, really-- but I don't seek it out. Most importantly, I don't have people telling me (or others in a chat I'm not part of) that I'm not playing it right in one form or another.

To a certain extent ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

Now, about that Arcane Tower in BG 3...




*Sort of. I still don't quite get people who took off for a week's worth of vacation when TBC Classic (and other WoW expacs) released, given that at least here in the US paid vacation isn't very copious to begin with, and if I told my wife I was going to burn a week's worth of my vacation time playing video games for upwards of 18 hours a day she'd have a conniption fit. If I were retired that'd be a different story, but I think I'd be expected to travel a lot, and I'm not as big on that these days either.

**For the record, yes, my character has been immersed in the other party members' backstories. Let's just say I was surprised at how easily certain relationships "progressed", which made me wonder if there was something I was missing out on in real life if fictional relationships moved at this sort of speed.

***The Terokkar Forest zone was exactly in the middle of the Outland leveling experience. So, while I was halfway through, I still had a ways to go.

****Unless you're streaming, I suppose, but I don't stream because I don't like having a peanut gallery watching my every move.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Meme Monday: Hunter Memes

Hunters, Rangers, Wardens --whatever you want to call them-- are a mainstay in Fantasy MMOs. They're characterized by an animal companion that attacks (or tanks) enemies while you stay back at distance and rain arrows/bullets on the baddies. 

That style of play has a lot of appeal to it, not the least of which is that a Hunter can solo a lot of enemies that other classes (::cough:: Mage or Paladin ::cough::) would have difficulty with. Of course, that Hunter mentality tends to create... Issues...

While raids may designate Hunters
as the puller, it helps to coordinate
with the Raid Leads. From ifunny.co.


So, without further ado, some Hunter memes for this March Monday:

Although there are a ton of pets to choose
from, Hunters in WoW tend to follow the
crowd. I've been told that Petopia is the go-to
for all things Hunter. From Imgflip.


"About those more mobs..."
From @skeletonbooty.


...this is what those extra mobs lead to.
From Pinterest (and likely Demotivational.)


Of course, Hunters do name their pets, and it can
sometimes get awkward. From Quickmeme.



Can't argue with that one. From Imgflip.



And one extra Hunter meme...

Because Hunters do have that reputation of
rolling on everything because "It's a
Hunter Weapon!" From imgflip again.




Thursday, March 7, 2024

Random News and Notes for a Thursday

If you post coffee memes, beware: your readership will explode.

Given that there's literally hundreds of coffee memes out there, why on earth I got a sudden explosion in views on PC when I posted a few of my favorites is beyond me. It's not like they're that new, either, but oh well.

I'm not above using one of the ones that missed
the cut for a few extra pageviews. What I find
disturbing is how close the 'After' picture looks like
David Tennant. From Laugh Lore.


***

Under the header of 'video games getting a board game treatment', there's a beloved Bioware franchise that has a boardgame in the works:

This landed in my Inbox on Monday
from Modiphius.


Yes, Modiphius is going to publish Mass Effect: The Board Game, a cooperative and story-driven boardgame designed by Eric M. Lang and Calvin Wong Tze Loon for 1-4 players. It sounds interesting at first blush, and given how Modiphius tends to have high quality plastic pieces in their games, this ought to look pretty too. Here's the signup page for more info and to receive emails about the release of the game itself. Just make sure you fill out the correct info for US vs UK/Europe so you end up with the correct website.

***

You know, the Dracthyr race in Retail World of Warcraft has taken some lumps for it's decidedly un-dragonkin-like look.

From Wowpedia.


I was perusing some RPG sites the other day, and I came across some artwork from RuneQuest that made me go "hmmm..."

Look vaguely familiar?
Found on Glorantha Bestiary, Pages 36-37.
Verified with my copy. Also found here at Artstation.


These are Dragonewts, as drawn by Cory Trego-Erdner back in 2016-2017, for the RuneQuest Glorantha Bestiary. 

In RuneQuest, Dragonewts claim to be the oldest sentient species and are one of the races found in the main starting area in RuneQuest, Dragon Pass. Now admittedly there's only so much an artist can do with the basic dragon design, but the reason why I don't mind the look of the Dracthyr is that they do evoke a similar look as that found in RuneQuest. The lore is obviously very distinct, but given that nobody seems to bitch about the lore of Dracthyr so much as that they don't look "cool enough", that's my two cents on the matter.

***

Finally, I wanted to mention a long departed podcast that really sucked me into RPGs back in the day.

Before "modern times" and the proliferation of podcasts in their current monetized form, Chuck Tinsley and Lonnie Ezell created the Dragons Landing Inn podcast back in 2005. They kept it going for about 126-130 episodes, and then Steve and Rob kind of picked up the mantle for a dozen episodes or so in a relatively unmoderated format until the podcast faded away. When I asked my brother-in-law what good RPG and gaming podcasts were out there, he said without hesitation "Dragons Landing Inn".

I've tried to find a better version
of their graphic to no avail.

With the tagline "Gaming Goodness", Chuck and Lonnie would espouse on RPGs, whatever the news was in RPG space, and eventually would broach RPG specific topics on running a campaign and having a rules set fit the type of campaign you wanted to play. Although the news is quite dated --it began in a time before D&D 4e and Pathfinder existed-- the old podcasts are still available via the Internet Archive at this link. I don't believe they're complete, as the original podcasts start at Episode 27, so you'll have to search the Internet Archive for individual episodes to complete the entire run of DLI.

I still have my old downloads of DLI on my desktop. I've dutifully backed up and transferred them over the almost two decades that they came out, and have no intention of ever deleting them. Given how podcasting has evolved as a format since DLI's heyday, it's refreshing to find a podcast in a raw, unmonetized state (and low bit-rate) still providing entertainment. 


EtA: Corrected grammar.

EtA: Corrected more grammar. Sheesh.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

What is the Point of a Legendary Item if Everybody Has One?

Or rather, if the game assumes everybody has one?

Of course, that question is predicated on a lot of assumptions, such as "Why do people play the game?" and "What do the developers believe the players want?"

A college acquaintance had the LP and
insisted I listen to it (among other LPs of his.)
I'll admit I listened to part of it.

Although it wasn't a Legendary item in and of itself, my first experience with an item that "everybody" seemed to want actually predated MMOs and video games by years: the +5 Holy Avenger from AD&D.

Among players of 1e AD&D, the +5 Holy Avenger was the ultimate weapon in the hands of a Paladin, at the time one of the hardest classes to roll for --and play-- in AD&D. Sticking to the straight and narrow of Lawful Good --in TSR's original Deities and Demigods sourcebook, Galahad was considered a 20th Level Paladin and Lancelot a former Paladin and now merely a 20th Level Fighter-- meant that you couldn't really participate in anything resembling a heist adventure. Or really, depending on how strict your DM was, anything that involved stealth. You were very much the stereotypical Knight riding up to the cave mouth to challenge the Red Dragon inside.

The Paladin's quest* for a Holy Avenger, either the sword itself or something earth shaking enough to warrant the sword as a reward, was one of the high points of an AD&D campaign. The adventure Fedifensor in Dragon Magazine #67 --reproduced here on Wizards' website in PDF form**-- was notable in that it was one of the first published adventures featuring a Holy Avenger (Fedifensor) as well as the first adventure featuring Gith (Githyanki in this case) as the baddies who stumbled upon the sword in the Astral Plane.

The first page of the Fedifensor scenario
by Allen Rogers, from Dragon
Magazine #67 Page 37
. (November 1982)

Still, despite the (supposed) rarity of a +5 Holy Avenger, it wasn't nearly as rare as the Artifact/Relic section in AD&D. Those were one-of-a-kind items that had boatloads of special powers but equally risky side-effects. The Hand and the Eye of Vecna --back in the day when Vecna was merely a powerful Lich who was supposedly dead-- were two artifacts whose first side effect upon grafting them to your body was to turn you immediately Neutral Evil. And the problems only got worse from there. Artifacts and Relics were nothing to be trifled with, even among mortals.*** By contrast, the Deck of Many Things was just a rare Miscellaneous Magic item, not a Relic of considerable power by itself that merited an entire D&D supplement.

Having the ultimate item in an RPG adventure has persisted through the years --what Witch or Wizard wouldn't want the Elder Wand, for example-- and so I suppose it's only natural to covet what is best. But if everybody has one, is it really something to covet versus just something to just acquire as part of the normal progression of things?

And what are game designers to do with game balance when accommodating an item of legendary power?

***

MMOs have a particular problem with this design, because the persistence of the game world and the constant addition of new content mean that what is currently game breaking may be no better than a basic quest reward a few years later. Or, worse, due to game design, that game breaking item might actually be worse than a basic quest reward.

Yes, I'm bringing out the old Nerfnow.com
comic again for this post.


This was a particular problem in Vanilla Classic WoW, where it turns out that some quest rewards or dungeon gear drops were better for your class and spec than the raid specific "Tier" gear. For example, while the Mage's Tier 0 or Tier 1 set might look pretty, a variety of crafted gear and dungeon drops were better for Mages overall. This had its drawbacks, as the three piece Bloodvine set had no Stamina bonuses which meant a Mage or Warlock wearing it was extra squishy in a fight****, but there was no denying the superiority of the damage potential for that set.

However, there were two items that it seemed everybody coveted: the legendary items Thunderfury and Atiesh. 

This meme is so old hat that
you can now get it on a t-shirt.
Yes, really. From Redbubble.

Thunderfury looked awesome, but Atiesh, not so much. It looked like a sulphur ball set atop a cane unless you looked closely.

I was not impressed.
From Wowhead.

Still, there was the general perception that since the work involved to get either item was involved --and in the case of Atiesh it came in the Naxxramas raid, which very few raid teams back in the day completed-- only a few people ever got either item. Even in Classic WoW, guilds usually designated a few select people to be those to work on either questline. 

Between that scarcity and the potential for guild drama, both items were rarely found in WoW.

I'm not sure where things changed, but gradually the desire for an item of legendary rarity became normalized to the point where access to such legendary items became easier to obtain.

When I started playing WoW back in 2009, I became aware of legendary items as a "well, unless you raid and you're of the right class and status within a guild, you're not going to get one" sort of item. However, by the time I reached max level the "Fall of the Lich King" patch was released. Yes, everybody remembers the Icecrown Citadel raid, but I remember the decidedly unsexy Patch 3.3 name for two items: Shadowmourne and Quel'Delar.

That first item, Shadowmourne, is the two-handed legendary axe that people could obtain after completing quests in Icecrown Citadel. I can't speak of the scarcity of Shadowmourne, but one of the last things to do before completing the questline and obtaining Shadowmourne was to actually kill Arthas, the Lich King. Given that took a while for a lot of guilds, and I've mentioned numerous times how smashing your head against ICC for months on end ruined guilds (including mine), I can't imagine a lot of people obtained a Shadowmourne in original Wrath.

Quel'Delar, on the other hand, was more obtainable although still a bit of a rarity.

***

While not a legendary item per se, in order to obtain Quel'Delar you had to complete a questline once you obtained the ol' Battered Hilt, which was a rare drop in the Heroic ICC 5-person instances. 

Although the Wowhead entry for the Battered Hilt mentions a 1-2% drop rate, due to a bug in Patch 3.3 the initial drop rate was a bit higher, and a ton of Battered Hilts dropped before Blizz fixed the bug. I wasn't high enough, gear wise, to get into the instances where the Hilt dropped before the fix, so I had to wait for said Hilt to drop at the "proper" drop rate.

And wait. 

From Wowhead.

And wait.

After several months of only seeing exactly one Battered Hilt drop (and losing that roll), I finally got tired of waiting and scraped together the 5000 gold necessary to buy one off the Auction House. It took me a month of steady dungeon running and selling ore to do so; I was going to buy Epic Flying then, but... To me, the questline was very epic, and since my Paladin Quintalan was a Blood Elf it fit perfectly into my race's lore.

Yes, I'm pulling out this old screencap
from Eversong as proof.

***

Judging by how the game has progressed since December 2009, it seems that while Quel'Delar wasn't a legendary item in the same vein as Shadowmourne, Quel'Delar was enough of a success that it seems that Blizzard decided to move more in the direction of using the sword as a model for how to handle legendary items in WoW.

And with that has come a sense of entitlement from some MMO players that I find both confusing and off-putting.

If a legendary item is supposed to be rare and difficult to obtain, why does it seem that a lot of players expect to obtain one over the course of an expansion?

From this Reddit r/wow thread.

Perhaps this thread by itself doesn't cover the sense of entitlement per se, but...

From this thread on r/wow.

I could keep going, but you get the idea.

***

Perhaps Blizzard is at fault for this sort of behavior, because a lot of their modus operandi in WoW's design is "Awesome players doing awesome things", and what isn't more awesome than having a legendary weapon?

Well, the funny thing is, if Blizzard designs its systems around teams having one or more legendary items, if you don't have one you suddenly feel like you're behind the curve.

This really just covers commentary around
this phenomenon, so you don't have to read it.

This isn't just a Retail WoW phenomenon, because Classic WoW is infested with it too. Just look at all the people who lusted after Thunderfury or Atiesh or Shadowmourne and went back to Classic WoW just to get that. Or their Scarab Lord title and associated mount.

From Reddit.
(And SpongeBob Squarepants.)

***

I guess the ultimate question is "Why should we care about motivations when playing an MMO?"

Well, ordinarily I'd be saying that it doesn't matter what others want to do, what you do matters, but when the game design focuses around certain game behaviors, it does matter.

Think about the Legion expansion and the Artifact Weapon:

Yep. Another blast from the past.

The concept of everybody getting an Artifact Weapon didn't appear out of nowhere. If you're going to be an awesome player doing awesome things, what better way to combat the (then) ultimate power in the WoW-verse than for everybody to have their own Ashbringer (or equivalent)? It was the desire for a Legendary item for everybody baked into an entire expansion. While that fed the desire for a legendary item, it also introduced the so-called Borrowed Power systems into Retail WoW, which had a huge impact on the game's enjoyment and understanding.

Good luck trying to explain Borrowed Power to a new player, for instance.

From Reddit.

So... What now?

Hell, I don't know. I'm just gonna do my own thing, but I worry about whether the player base in general --and Micro-Blizzard# in general-- aren't repeating old mistakes with each new expansion. Why would I think that?

Oh, no reason...





*Yes, Paladins would call them quests back then, denoting their outsized importance to the Paladin. Nowadays, people just call any task a "quest" of some sort, but back then a quest was very much in the realm of "rescue the maiden from the Evil Big Bad" sort of thing. No Kill Ten Rats here.

**I saved a copy locally on my PC just in case Wizards ever yanks the adventure, so I can upload it for future use.

***And yes, in the era of Elves living 4000 years, they were considered mortal.

****I was once in a Blackwing Lair Raid while wearing my Bloodvine set, and I kept dying during a specific set of trash pulls. A healer whispered an apology to me, saying that she'd keep throwing heals on me but I'd die before they landed. I told her I wasn't angry or anything because the Bloodvine set, while powerful for damage, meant I had absolutely no extra health to me at all. She was much relieved that I wasn't one of those asshole Mages who demanded that healers TRY HARDER for something out of their control.

#My inner Middle-schooler: "Micro-Blizzard... *snicker*"


EtA: Uploaded a larger version of the Nerfnow comic.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Meme Monday: Coffee Memes

While tea has it's afternoon slot, particularly within British culture, coffee is first and foremost a morning ritual. Bowing to our caffeine overlords is a rite of passage in both school and work*, so in honor of coffee's importance in American culture, here's a few coffee memes...

When people ask how are you feeling
in that meeting at 7 AM...
From sheideas.

Self-explanatory. From dump-a-day.


I also drink coffee on the weekend when
I have to get up early for some project.
From Voltage Coffee.


If a woman told me that, my curiosity would
know no bounds. Alas, my wife only drinks tea.
From Ruin My Week.


And one bonus meme:

I knew a guy my Freshman year of college
who drank coffee and took No-Doz to stay awake
studying for a test the next day. He looked a bit
like this the next morning. From Remote Tools.




*True story: when I was in high school, one of the people campaigning for Student Body President ran on the platform of having coffee introduced into the cafeteria. He was laughed at back then --it was the 80s, after all-- but now? In the era of a Starbucks on every corner, he'd likely win the election on a platform like that.