I just took a look at PC's design last night, and it's pretty out of date.
Well, not the overall design, since that's pretty much a blog design in a nutshell, but more like the references are dated and ought to be revamped.
Geek and Sundry? That place kind of imploded when founder Felicia Day and then Critical Role left.
The About Me section? Hoo boy is THAT dated.
Some parts of the blog design I can't get around Blogger's limitations, such as it's inability to provide the latest YouTube content in the same way that you receive blog feed content. You'd think that Google owning both Blogger and YouTube would want better integration in the same way that Google+ worked, but nooo.....
Still, I'm not giving up on the platform right now. I just need to freshen this place up a bit.
I was getting on one of my toons on the Anniversary servers when my Questing Buddy whispered me and asked if I could join her in exploring AQ40 in Retail for a bit. I knew that the lead-in to the opening of AQ40 --formally known as The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj-- had begun on the Anniversary servers, and she wanted to poke around inside to make sure she had the cadence of the raid down.
Having actually completed AQ40 before, she could pick my brains a bit as needed.
"What do you need?" I asked, thinking of the Retail toons that could get into AQ40..
"Doesn't matter."
"Which faction?"
"Doesn't matter, because cross faction grouping."
So I hopped on Neve, who was simply loitering around Silvermoon City, ported to Orgrimmar, and then took a flight down south. I had to make some adjustments to the UI, however.
Yikes. That was embarrassing.
I felt it wasn't going to be that big of a deal, only there was one thing...
"You'll have to timewalk a bit," she informed me.
"Do I need to do that? I haven't played Neve since Mists."
"Yeah, you will. The giant sword is in the middle of Silithus."
What sword?
The irony, which I called out midway through the raid, was that she was on a Draenei Warrior, and I was on a Blood Elf Mage.
"TBC forever!" I said.
Yes, this is the same gear Neve wore when I last ran a BG with her in Cataclysm. Or thereabouts.
My Questing Buddy's warrior was significantly higher level than Neve, because Neve was still at L32 (where she landed after the level squish, going from L85 down to L32), and with the mobs there around L31 or so, my aggro radius was pretty broad. On more than one occasion I'd be typing something in and I'd get shellacked by a mob that wandered vaguely close to me. Even when I behaved myself and hid away from the fight, such as the final fight against C'Thun, one of his tentacles magically appeared in front of me and tossed me into his inside, where I died quickly.
Story of my life, dying to C'Thun.
Obviously, one shotting mobs and bosses don't give you a good feeling of how the fights really progress, and so I was just there to bounce my experiences off of her. However, I believe she's going to have a bit harder of a time of it in spots than we did in the fall of 2020.
"You have to be able to decurse here, so casters can't just sit at the top and then DPS. You need to put them on the stairs so they can reach people for decursing."
"That means me, because our Mages don't decurse."
I was pretty disgusted at that behavior. You do what you can to help the raid. "If they behave like that, they'll die very quickly in Naxx, let alone here."
Still, for a brief diversion, it was fun. I really didn't do terribly much other than comment on how much things had changed, such as the Blizzard spell behaving completely differently in Retail versus Classic, and how you could now use any mount you wanted inside AQ40 whereas back in the day you could only use those Qiraji battle mounts, which worked only within the raid itself.
Also, I have no idea why raid frames didn't appear like they're supposed to. When we were in a regular party, things looked normal, but as soon as my Questing Buddy converted the group to a raid, the frames vanished. And for the record, I don't have any addons in Retail, because this PC didn't exist when I last played Retail.
Speaking of not playing Retail...
NOTE: I don't want to hear anything about the cluttered nature of my bars. I haven't touched them in 13 years, so they're bound to messed up.
I've been on a bit of an exploration kick lately in Retail, where I just poke around areas looking for people while I'm on my lowbie Rogue. This is all within reason, of course, since she's roughly L13, but I did poke my nose into Northrend and all sorts of other areas on the Old World.
Needless to say, it's all pretty empty.
Eh, I took the portal anyway.
I don't know where half of these portals go nowadays.
Ever had the feeling that you're lost in your hometown? Retail is like that to someone who hasn't played since Mists (and even then mainly BGs). Oh, I did recognize a few people around...
Wait, I thought Cardwyn was your only apprentice. When did all this happen, and does Card know about this?
And I couldn't go more than a few feet without it being suggested that I check out various things...
*SIGH*
But I found some Honor Hold personnel at the bottom of the Mage Tower and I saw they could port me to the Dark Portal.
"Aha! I can go to Outland. That'll work!"
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...
What the hell is going on? You know what, I think it's smarter to just go back to the old Lion's Pride Inn and call it a day.
Ahh... Much better.
Still, there was one thing on my mind. After the roleplaying post from the other day, I was reminded that the old Moon Guard - US server was where most Alliance RP took place. And yes, I'm quite aware of Goldshire and the Lion's Pride Inn's reputation. Well, the last time I visited Goldshire on Moon Guard, I wasn't that impressed. This was back in 2013 or so, and some of the worst offenders of ERP back then had been purged from the server, so it wasn't what I'd call "busy". Still, I've seen enough YouTube videos that show an active RP scene, so I got curious and made a toon on Moon Guard just to see what's going on.
Sorry, but she's not named Cardwyn. I did check to see if Deathwyn was available, but alas it was already taken. It actually took me about 10-15 minutes of hunting for available names that I liked before I got to this one.
I wasn't planning on doing any RP myself; I don't have any RP addons installed on Retail, and if anybody were to whisper me I'd politely decline. Hey, it's their world and it's the proper thing to do.
Well, at least this looks normal. Full Disclosure: I ran back last night to get this screencap, because I forgot to take one on Sunday.
I did find actual people questing in Northshire Abbey, so that's an improvement over what Livona experienced.
Instead of doing those initial quests, I figured it was safe to run straight to Goldshire and see what I could find.*
Remember the proverb "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it?"
Yeah, about that...
Holy crap.
I got over to the inn, saw THAT, and immediately logged for the day.
That was a bit overwhelming. The inside if the Inn had to have the most people I've seen in one place in Retail since... early Cataclysm, maybe? It certainly wasn't in Mists, because Ysera-US was pretty empty, even with the server "merges"; on Area 52-US --a 10:1 Horde server-- I think everybody was either raid logging or just hanging out in the Horde Pandaria hub, but since I never leveled a Horde toon to max level that expansion I never made it there.
So, I decided it couldn't have been that bad, and that I just happened to show up at a specific event or something, so I checked Goldshire and the Inn again tonight...
"Do I really want to know what your rates are for a room, Sir?"
And stepping outside, there was this:
I ran back to Northshire Abbey, because it was a LOT quieter, and it was there that I discovered two things.
The first is that it's now a default that if someone whispers you it's put in a separate tab, and two... well...
I'm almost 100% certain that person wasn't talking about Enterprise Resource Planning.
I didn't respond, because at first I wasn't sure how long that whisper had been there --it could have been about 10 minutes old for all I knew-- and I'll be honest in that I should have known that sort of whisper would happen. But... Did you see the size of that crowd? Given the mob inside I figured it would have been hard to pick me out, especially without me having installed any RP addons and only running out of the place, but a female toon still managed it in the minute or so I actually spent in Goldshire. This kind of puts a lie to the concept of "If there's a crowd, nobody is paying attention to you." If there's a way to make my anxiety spike while playing a video game, that was it.
Well, I guess you could say I finally found where the people are in Retail when they're not sitting around wherever the endgame area is: they're in Goldshire on an RP server.
*You have to be paying attention if you do this in Classic, because the Defias and hostile animals lurking near the road could kill you. In Retail, it's not very likely.
EtA: Added the comment on the last graphic because I can't not see the business version of ERP when I see that acronym.
Everybody gets an earworm every so often. I've been dealing with this one from 1976 the past day or so:
Since I really need to get this out of my system, I figured I might as well invoke the Meme Monday gods and see if that works...
I feel ya, bird. From the comic strip Speed Bump via Reddit.
I think I prefer Boz Scaggs' earworm to Katrina and the Waves. From Metzgercartoons.
Back in the early 2000s, a local radio station did a stunt where they played this Kid Rock song for 24 hours straight. I was not amused. From Imgflip and something else, but I can't read it.
You know which generation you're part of by which song pops into your head first. From 9gag.
Oh yes, that is SO me. From Reddit.
Yeah, sorry about that, bird. From Memebase.
Well, something must have worked, since I no longer have that song stuck in my head...
Oh, not in real life. IRL, I'm a softie who enjoys romance. Not necessarily Romance novels, mind you,* but I meant the concept itself. Yes, yes, I know, somebody alert my wife.**
I also don't mind having romance in video games, because for me that's a personal choice. If you want to romance an NPC, go ahead. If you don't, you don't.
What I meant was romance in pencil-and-paper RPGs, although to a lesser extent romance between two players in an MMO as well.***
This was sparked by a video that popped up the other day concerning D&D and romance:
Yes, I follow Ginny Di's YouTube videos. No, I didn't get into her videos from Critical Role, but rather I stumbled on her channel when she progressed to other RPG topics. The algorithm looked at my viewing history and thought "You know, there's this woman who dyes her hair that you might find insightful..." and here I am. She does have some great and insightful comments on a variety of RPG topics, and between her, Pointy Hat, Stephanie Plays Games, Kelsey Dionne, Bob World Builder, and several other 20s and 30s content creators, I feel that our TTRPG hobby is in good hands for the future.****
***
I guess the reason why I watched Ginny's video was due to my own "experience" with romance in a D&D game.
If you've been around this blog for a while, you might recall I was part of a long-running D&D 3.0 campaign. As in a 20+ year old campaign. When our DM got together with us to hash out what the campaign would be about, there were a few ground rules we decided upon: low to mid level magic, use the Greek and Egyptian Pantheons for the campaign and world building, some roleplaying in character but not pure amateur thespian hour, and absolutely no romance. That last one was a hard no from us players, as we were all dating and/or married*****, and we really just wanted to focus on a campaign with no romantic escapades involved. We've had romantic subplots in our campaign back in college, and when it's involving people who are actually dating IRL who then break up, it gets really ugly really fast. Therefore, just keeping things platonic would make it easier for everybody.
We players figured that with the ground rules set, we were ready to play.
Things worked out okay for a while, and outside of us using IM to play (this was 2001-2 after all) things seemed to progress decently well. After a couple of years, however, our DM began trying to slip in romantic subplots. And the occasional Conan-esque nudity into the game. We all knew our DM, who was a bit of a horndog back in college, so we just figured it was him being him and we didn't take the rather obvious bait.
We kind of kept things at bay until a new player joined the group for a few years. He was a coworker of the DM, and he wanted to play a Bard.
You can see where this is going, right?
Yeah, they both went there. The Bard started wanting to screw every woman he met, and this began to wear on us. This isn't what we wanted, and we definitely didn't ask for it, and it kept diverting us from the actual campaign. Then the DM started having NPCs hit on my character, and I began having to be more forceful in my nipping of those subplots in the bud.
The rest of us began talking among ourselves about whether we need to take a stand with the DM, and then the problem solved itself: the new player had to stop playing, and just like that the division mostly evaporated.
Mostly.
The DM still would try to sneak in some opportunities for romance here and there, but we ignored them and kept the game focused on the campaign. In the last few months of our campaign before it ended, however, the DM began to ratchet up the opportunities and the PG-13 nature of those "encounters". I won't lie and say otherwise, but after 20 years we players had had enough. There were several other things that contributed to our decision to want to end the campaign, but one of the top complaints on our list was that the DM kept pushing the romance and sexual angles on us.
I think it needs to be said that we're all adults, and we can handle adult themes.****** However, people have to buy into the concept of romance and shenanigans or you're risking a lot by trying to push it on people when they don't want it. I personally would have to be in the right frame of mind to accommodate an RPG campaign with romance, and I'll also freely admit that I am not an actor in that I would have issues separating the character(s) from the player(s). I probably could do it if I were in, say, a play or musical or something, but in a TTRPG? That'd be harder.
***
Okay, that's tabletop RPGs, but MMOs?
Hoo boy. That's an entirely different kettle of fish.
If Asmongold's your dad, Nixxiom,
I'm a Jelly Doughnut.
Outside of occasionally being hit on by some oversexed player, I've never been in a romantic situation with another MMO player before. And you can't not realize that there's another player on the other end, which separates it from NPC romances, such as the companion romances in SWTOR. MMO RP romances are going to be with another character, and the specter of ERP (and Goldshire's Lion's Pride Inn) hovers over everything.
There's this too. And yes, I've kept this from an old Meme Monday just because.
Some people can make it work, but I'm almost completely certain that I can't.
But if you (not me, for certain) want more detail about doing Romance RP in MMOs (yes, it's WoW but applicable in all of them), there's this:
I guess knowing my limitations is a good thing, and that I'm not planning on putting myself into a situation where they would get tested. If you can handle it, more power to you. I think I'll just go do my own thing instead and leave the romance in MMOs to y'all.
Oh, and because I couldn't resist, here:
Now you'll never hear that old Sonny
and Cher song the same way.
*Although I have made some attempts to check out the genre, because the only way to know if you'll like it is to try it.
**Ironically enough, I think that between the two of us I'm the romantic one. That doesn't mean that I'm not as clueless as the next guy in trying to figure out if someone is hitting on me; actually my son --nicknamed "Mr. Oblivious" or "Captain Oblivious" due to his cluelessness about such things-- is a chip off the old block.
***Spouses and significant others who are playing the other toon you're romancing kind of get a pass on this, since you're obviously thinking of the other person who you're already romantically involved with.
****They don't need me to tell them that, but consider it just an observation that I'm happy the next generation has taken the reins from us older folks and run with it, in the same way that I'm proud my kids have engaged with the hobby over the years. For all of the "get offa my lawn!" sort of behavior from the old guard (who are as old or older than me), I just wanted to get it out there that I'm happy they're showing their love for the hobby and contributing to its overall success. And maybe this year I'll get a chance to run into one of them at Gen Con.
It also goes without saying that some of the Old Guard have opened their arms to the new generation of content creators. People like Matt Colville, Professor DM, and Baron de Ropp could have circled their collective wagons and been assholes toward the new blood, but they haven't. And our hobby is all the better for it.
*****The DM was married to one of the players, in fact.
******If you're NOT an adult, it goes without saying that parental guidance is strongly suggested. My oldest once attended an RPG game session in high school with some acquaintances, and ALL of the guys there tried to hit on her character (and by extension, her). She got really creeped out, and that was the end of THAT.
With the Summer Doldrums in full swing, I've been busy taking care of some yardwork as well as other small projects. That doesn't mean I've been neglecting Operation Spread the Love, mind you, but I've had my mind on a lot of other things than just leveling toons on the Anniversary servers.
I may have to move Azshandra's hearthstone location away from Darkshore, although it does provide me a quick way of reaching Darnassus. The levels are current as of July 9, 2025.
When the weather reaches 95F/35C with the heat index soaring to 102F/39C, being outside isn't that pleasant. I can't have honest-to-goodness real lemonade (sugar, you know), but I've made do with the "zero sugar" variety.
You know what also makes this weather miserable? Bugs. Lots of gnats and mosquitos and other bugs that annoy and sting and bite at you while you're trying to get rid of weedy shrubs that are choking out the shrubs and trees you'd planted years ago. I'd not really had a chance to maintain that part of the yard very much over the last few years*, so it had gotten into such a mess that I could put it off no longer.
Hacking through the weeds with a reciprocating saw and a generic cutting blade** made my job a bit easier, but with the miserable heat on the July 4th holiday I was pretty much spent by around 11:30 AM. And I still was stubborn enough to want to finish cutting part of the grass as well before I called it a day, so I retreated inside and drank some fluids to recharge a bit.
There it was, World of Warcraft, tempting me to "just go and play for a little while" inside the air conditioned house.
Because of course it was.
I'm still not sure how I fended off that urge to just play for a couple of hours away from the heat and humidity, but I finished my drink and went out and got the grass cut before mid-afternoon rolled around.
***
The leveling process in Operation Spread the Love can feel like that yardwork at times. You know it's a grind, but it's part of the process. Once you get through, you'll feel better and more confident in understanding how to play your class. None of the quests in the L30s or L40s are earth-shaking by any stretch of the imagination, and to my mind that's a good thing. The world doesn't have to be in the balance to have an enjoyable time, and even if the grind can feel oppressive at times, once you get through you'll be able to look back at how the effort was worth it.
But that grind can get annoying. There's no sugarcoating that. It's also not helped by Mages and Warlocks rounding up mobs in the area and wiping them off the map while you're unable to finish the quests you're on. On days like that --and there have been a lot of them-- it's good to have another place to go to in the meantime.
Such as Gnomeregan.
I'd originally thought I might hit L50 on toons by August, but that might be optimistic. Maybe October at this rate.
*Gee, I wonder why...
**Like an idiot I didn't go out to the hardware store and get a wood cutting blade until Monday, which then made the trimming process go much faster with a lot less effort. I still had to haul away the brush to one side of the yard, where it'll stay until I can break it down for removal. It'll likely take 3-4 weeks' worth of trash removal to get that stuff all cleared out.
