How About Enforcing the ToS?

Under the header of "that was unexpected", I found yet another Brandon Sanderson video (released yesterday) in my YouTube feed. This one, however, was more related to gaming.

If you want to skip the first half of the video/podcast where Brandon and Dan Wells discuss Magic: the Gathering (I don't play M:tG, so I can't comment here) and a sandwich food heist in Norway, the multiplayer video game portion begins here, at the 11:40 mark.

The TL;DR is that since there are adults/parents who no longer have the reaction skills, but they do have disposable income, is to provide a subscription service to pay for moderators to come in and monitor the chat/voice discussions to remove obnoxious behavior from the game or the lobbies.

When I first heard the word "pay" I thought "Oh crap, he's going to ask for whale-ish items in a cash shop," but then when Brandon fully described his idea I then thought "Oh, you mean like what we're paying Blizzard to (theoretically) do in World of Warcraft?"

I do have to wonder just how much it would cost to actually have real enforcement of Terms of Service of multiplayer games such as Marvel Rivals or League of Legends, not just lip service. Obviously too much, if you see all of the bad behavior in multiplayer games and MMOs that I've seen over the years, because I'm at the point where bad behavior is pretty much expected unless proven otherwise.*

Among other suggestions that Brandon and Dan floated were a "little brother/little sister" mode for multiplayer games (beyond the games that already have it) so that the little kids could play along too. I personally had no issues grouping up with either the mini-Reds or even my Questing Buddy's kids to just goof around, but if you're playing a game such as a Zelda title** and the wee set needs help, having that sort of mode would be a godsend to both the kid and the parent/older sibling. 

Or maybe the parent needs help on Elden Ring, having their teenaged kid zone in and help them out would be a decent solution rather than trying to use third party addons (or simply giving the controller to the teen) to bypass the game.

Anyway, I expected explicit "god mode" pay to win type of suggestions, but got something that should have been taken care of by a game's ToS. Anyway, it was interesting enough of a suggestion that I decided to post about it.

*Yes, I've been told via whispers in the past that they expected me to be an asshole of some sort when I joined a group event but the people whispering me were pleasantly surprised to be found wrong. And no, I don't understand why people would look at my toons or how I was acting and think that I was going to ruin their fun. 

**I almost said Elden Ring or Mass Effect, but I immediately shut that one down. Why on earth would you let a 5 year old play Elden Ring? Or the cutscenes in Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate 3?

Vacation's Over

Well, after a week off, I bought 60 days of WoW game time from Microsoft.

That week away felt good, actually. After a good 48 hours of FOMO, I guess I detoxed enough that it wasn't a big issue any more.

Relaxing while killing things works in my book.
And yes, the guild advertisement and the commentary
amused me to no end.

Playing some other games for a while, such as SWTOR, LOTRO, Rome: Total War, and Stardew Valley were good for the soul as well. I didn't have to read about any raid drama, PvP issues, boosts, or any other shenanigans, so I simply got a chance to relax and do whatever.

Oh, and I read a bit too. 

Here's some proof of that.

But one thing I continued reading was this:

Nowadays, there are three levels:
Technician, General, and Extra.
This is the study manual for the Technician exam.

Yes, after 30+ years of being a shortwave radio listener, I'm studying for my amateur radio license. It's something to do, and to be honest I've forgotten more in the study guide than I care to admit. Until this past year I've never had any desire to get on the air, but some of the more recent natural disasters have gotten me to thinking that I can do some good in a small way by providing communications in this age of extreme climate-change driven weather. Plus, tinkering around with electronics is one of my hobbies. And it gives me an excuse to go about 60 miles north to the annual Dayton Hamvention, the largest amateur radio convention in the US. Whether I'll actually have a ham license before I visit is an open question, but you don't need one to attend anyway. I've gone several times over the past few decades, and I always find something interesting there.

Meme Monday: Taking a Break Memes

Well, as of today it's been a week since I let my WoW game time run out. So, I spent a couple of hours last night going through some old memes I saved about taking a break from WoW, and... 

Let's just say that some of them are a bit dated, and the memes to choose from were a bit sparse too.

I did mention the "dated" part, right?
This is right out of 2021 or so.
From Imgur and the Blizzard Forums.

For the record, this was NOT me.
From Memedroid.

I'm pretty sure that when I come back after this break
I'm gonna be rusty.  From Know Your Meme.

Okay, this wasn't about gaming per se, but about
how WoW players don't sleep (much). I can appreciate
this one, even though it's not about the "taking a break"
part directly. From Reddit.

Hello, Old Friends

One nice thing about this short break from WoW is that I got a chance to play my favorite class in SWTOR for a bit: The Smuggler.

Oh, I've played SWTOR off and on the past several years, but for some reason I've ended up creating force users instead of a Bounty Hunter or a Smuggler.* My first toon was a Smuggler, and here I am playing a Smuggler once again.

Ah, Coruscant. Don't ever change.
Same goes for the Migrant Merchants Guild.

If you stick with the type of Smuggler I tend to play --the Gunslinger-- it's a pretty standard build. And in keeping with modern MMOs, new abilities simply appear on my bar without me having to go train somewhere. It's a bit disconcerting, but it is what it is.

Having returned to the Republic side for the first time in a while, I can see the bugs and roughness out there that haven't really been cleaned up over the years --or in the case of the companion pathing, bugs added over the years-- but the visuals and the sound are still fantastic. The sound alone makes you feel like you're outside in a city where the skyscrapers create canyons, and there's just that urban sound that you hear when you're walking around a downtown area. The sound at Ord Mantell is also excellent, and really immerses you in the game. 

And those cutscenes. Can't forget the cutscenes.
This one starring Senator Kayl.

The more I've gone into leveling this Smuggler, the more I realize that there's issues where a new player would get confused, such as getting a Training and Skills quest only to find yourself on the Republic Fleet long before you're supposed to arrive there. At least I knew how to get back to Ord Mantell, but if I'd been a new player, I'd have been screwed. 

Oh, and as you can tell from my top screencap above, I turned off that new map overlay and went with the traditional minimap, just like how I turned Corso into the Tank he always was meant to be. 

It was kind of like seeing old friends again, such as talking to Pat-aK once more:

And Senator Whats-her-name.
Yes, I'm ready to be your Black Bisector, Pat-aK.

Even when I return to WoW Classic, I have to keep this player going. Not sure how, but I've developed a better tolerance for the pathing issue this time around, but we'll see how long I tolerate it. If I get to Balmorra, that'll be farther than I've gotten in a long time.

*Creating that one Smuggler for the screencaps of the intro quest a year or two ago for a post here doesn't count. I went back and played a Jedi Sentinel instead and got as far as Taris for I grew tired of the pathing issues.

EtA: Corrected Pat-ak's name.

How About a Lecture for a Friday?

I realize that I don't point out videos the way some other bloggers do --gaming blogs or not-- but it's not that I don't watch YouTube videos. Yes, I watch my share of music and sports and gamer videos, but I delve into whatever piques my interest. You know, topics such as solar power, blacksmithing, cooking, and other stuff.* Right now, I've been going down the rabbit hole of pellet smoker grills**, but something I also have been keeping an eye on is written SF&F, because I'm a nerd who grew up reading Tolkien, Eddings, Moorcock, Asimov, James Blish, and Fred Saberhagen.

So when a video from Brandon Sanderson's YouTube channel popped up in my feed, I was curious:

I'd never actually heard Brandon Sanderson speak until now***, but yes, he is planning on recording his entire series of lectures in 2025 for the Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy class he teaches at BYU. Apparently he's done this before, but since the first entry in the series is only 14 days old or so, I'm catching this right at the beginning. 

I found his lecture to be engaging and honestly a lot of fun, which bodes well for the rest of the lectures.

Me, I just want to know how he cranks out these mammoth novels as if it were effortless. I know it's not that easy --I do write, after all-- but I also know he's been doing this for quite a while now and so he's got a good cadence down. One thing he did mention in that first lecture about outliners versus discoverers**** was that he mentioned that discoverers have issues with over-editing, where you are constantly going back and editing what you've written. And, dammit, he has me pegged right there. I am a discoverer, and I have issues constantly going back and tweaking my written work before I've actually finished the damn thing.

(If you ever wondered if there's more fiction in the pipeline, yes, there is. And now you know my Achilles' Heel.)

Maybe I ought to create a Friday lecture post as a recurring item, pointing to an online lecture that I found interesting. I can't really take "Friday Fun Day", since that's the informal title Tim Cain uses for his Friday YouTube posts. So, watch this space to see if I do anything with it, and if you write or are interested in the craft of writing, go watch the video. It is definitely worth the hour's lecture.

*No, not so much on makeup (sorry), but I do watch videos about sewing and cosplay and historical/fantastical clothing. Hey, it's engineering with cloth and thread!

**I'm sure my Questing Buddy can give you an earful about how I've been pestering one of our friend group about his Pit Boss smoker since I've been thinking about having a proper smoker to use on the deck once I'm finished rebuilding it. Right now I have plenty of time to narrow models down, since it's not even late Winter yet and there's snow covering the deck at the moment.

***John Scalzi is from Ohio, and he periodically makes visits to our local independent bookstore for readings and signings, so I have heard him before. I've also heard Kim Harrison at the same bookstore quite by accident when I didn't know she was doing a signing; her Hallows books are set in a Fantastical version of Cincinnati. Yes, before you ask, she does have quite the following here locally, even though she's not a local herself. She's from Michigan, which amuses me to no end. Why, you may ask? Because of the rivalry between The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan.

I've also attended signings by Anne McCaffrey, Terry Brooks, and Robert Jordan, among others.

****In terms of writing style: do you have an outline you follow or you just wing it?

The Passage of Time Can Be a Bitch

Yesterday I spent the afternoon getting my eyes checked out. I'm nearsighted and have been wearing bifocals for about a decade or more now, so I make a point to have my eyes checked regularly anyway, but ever since my Type 2 diagnosis these visits have taken on a greater amount of importance. 

The TL;DR is that my eyes are fine, and no evidence of deterioration due to diabetes. Thanks for asking.

That being said, being "normal" in your mid-50s means your response times aren't what they once were. One of the eye tests involves me looking through an eyehole at a square dot on a screen, and when squiggles become visible around my peripheral vision I'm to use a clicker in my hand. I don't believe I missed any of the squiggles, but I did notice that my response wasn't what it had been in the past. I was assured I was well in the normal range for my age, but if you're a gamer or an athlete you're used to comparing yourself against people who are decidedly NOT normal for their age.

From Reddit.

I came out of the appointment with a serious case of mixed emotions. Yes, it's good to have eyes that aren't showing signs of diabetic deterioration, glaucoma, and anything of that ilk, and my prescription didn't change enough that I didn't have to get a new pair of glasses this year. (Yay!)

But.

It's also depressing to know that what is "normal" for my age is the equivalent of "git gud scrub" in gamer terms.

Remember how I'm not a fan of Heroic or Mythic/Mythic Plus modes of group content in MMOs? The knowledge that I simply no longer have the physical skill to perform at a level necessary to be competent at them is the depressing part. When I read or watch videos online about Mythic+ this and Mythic+ that and the people are all about "this is too easy" or "this needs to be tweaked" or "I got [fill in the blank] achievement" or "we downed XXX on Mythic", all I can think of is that they're talking about a part of MMOs I simply can't play. It's not a matter of choosing not to play that, but that I simply can't do it at all.*

This was me at times in progression raiding during
TBC Classic. Sometimes, The Simpsons hits the
nail on the head. From Pinterest (and The Simpsons).

It's akin to the time I was attempting to repair my wife's old Kindle and I discovered to my horror that my eyes could no longer focus close in for me to do the job; I had to give up and get a magnifying glass to attempt to complete the repair.** For a guy who prided himself on his ability to tinker with electronics, it was a real blow to have to rely on magnifying glasses to see details properly. What's next, needing one of those light up magnifiers to read a menu?

The Light Up Menu Magnifier does exist.
"AS SEEN ON TV!" From Amazon.

Or worse, using The Clapper to play video games?

I guess this is a reality about aging that people have to come to grips with, not just gamers. It's easy to forget this when you're in the middle of something, and you don't notice the long term gradual deterioration of skills. It's only when you go away from something and come back some time later that you realize just what had happened. Or if you're a data nerd and have kept track of details for so long that you can see the gradual deterioration in your own data. (Seriously, that'll take years, and good luck with keeping that data collection going for that long.)

An ex-coworker of mine is the father of a famous League of Legends player, and he once told me that his son realized that he has maybe 4-5 years at best of being in the position he's in, so he was saving all of his salary so that he can do what he wants (such as go to university) when his skills deteriorate. At age thirty at latest, or most likely in the mid-late 20s.

I'll get over this, but it was still a nice kick in the nuts for a Wednesday and I needed to vent a bit.

*This also begs the question just how much of MMO game design is for people both skilled enough and young enough to perform well enough in that high end aspect of the game? If you watch YouTube videos you'd get the impression that this subset of the game is all that's important about World of Warcraft. Those content creators --and the high end guilds-- are the loudest voices in the room, and they undoubtedly have an influence over WoW's game design. It also becomes a feedback loop where the game is tailored toward people who play in that niche so they attract people who only play in that niche and demand more content for that niche, and so on and so forth.

**I did not succeed in repairing said Kindle. That was also a blow to my ego.

Well, THAT Didn't Take Very Long

I sat down for lunch yesterday, opened my personal mail, and....

"Oh, this ought to be good," I thought, and opened it.

It kept going after this part...

I mean, I know it's an automated system to detect when a certain amount of time had passed since a subscription ended, but I was still surprised they didn't give me a full day. My game time ended at 7:30-ish in the morning yesterday, yet I kept noticing the "Time Left" marker bouncing around with "XX Hours Left" growing and shrinking at-will, which I thought considerably odd. At one point I did login just to see if I got to the loading screen, and yeah, it actually worked about six hours past when it should have stopped. 

At that point I just shrugged and let it be, and several hours later Battle.Net finally admitted my time had logged out. I did note there was some maintenance going on Monday, so that might have been it. However, it also wouldn't have surprised me if Blizzard had configured people's accounts to actually grant a few extra hours just on the off chance that someone had messed up and wasn't paying attention to their looming ending time. 

Well, you can't say that Blizzard doesn't try to keep people subscribed, because they started throwing mounts and pets at me in the latter half of the email:

Apparently Era and the Anniversary Servers
are known as "World of Warcraft Classic games",
and the version currently on Cata Classic is called
"World of Warcraft Classic Progression realms".

If they only knew I really don't care much about mounts or pets, but since that takes an absolute minimum amount of effort to hand out to people, that's why they're acting like it's Halloween candy.

I wonder what Blizzard would think if they knew that when I play SWTOR I use a speeder I've had since 2011 or a regular horse in LOTRO and ESO in the same way that I use a basic mount in various versions of WoW since 2010? I'm the sort of player who if I played a Battle Royale game I'd use the default skin because, if nothing else, it means that other players would underestimate me.