Meme Monday: Autumn Memes, 2024 Edition

Yes, the Autumn Equinox was a week ago, but with the remnants of Hurricane Helene arriving here this past week it finally has started to feel like Fall. Yes, I know it sounds kind of strange to say that, but the rain and cooler weather has finally broken the drought and heat.

In honor of that little factoid, here's a few memes for the season...

From Bestlifeonline.

And allergies, apparently.
From rd.com.

I miss having pie.
From truebookaddict.

I can really get behind that last one.
From Ebaumsworld.

Time for a Learner's Permit*

On September 29, 2009, Souldat published the very first post here at Parallel Context. 

Fifteen years ago.

In blog years that's pretty old for a continuously updated blog, but not nearly as old as some other blogs I follow. You probably know one of them --The Ancient Gaming Noob-- and there are others that PC is almost but not quite as old, such as Priest With a Cause, but that's the breaks. We're survivors in a field where participants' timeline is typically measured in months, not years, much less decades.

And for the love of God, don't read my early posts. I still cringe at them when I occasionally wander back that far, hunting for something I might have written back then.

*Well, in six months or so, according to Ohio law. You can get a learner's permit for driving at age 15 years 6 months, but you can't pass a full driver's test until age 16.

The Engine of Bureaucracy at Work

Well, it took CurseForge about a month, but they finally updated the World of Warcraft graphics.

It certainly makes the current WoW expansion look like a catfight right out of a night time soap opera (such as Dynasty, to pull an 80s show out of a hat), or the "Good Sister" versus the "Bad Sister", but it's Blizz's artwork.

Forget that 'Builder' Part, How About Being a Governor?

Well, that's the major shift in focus for the newest entry in Pathea Games' 'My Time At...' series, My Time at Evershine.

The Kickstarter is now live, has already passed it's initial goal, and is well on its way through the stretch goals.

I guessed correctly that the events in My Time at Sandrock led directly to the North Development Plan and recruitment of you as the new Governor of the Evershine Settlement. 

In case you didn't know, you're the Govenor now.
From the My Time at Evershine Kickstarter page.

The North Development Plan is an ambitious plan by the Free Cities' Alliance to repopulate the area near the border with the Duvos Empire. That northern border has been empty since the last invasion by Duvos, and you can bet dollars to doughnuts that that area is still coveted by the Empire. The Duvos Empire has not exactly been quiet, given the events in My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock, so you can bet you're going to see them again in this newest project by Pathea.

Judging by the YouTube video, the character design is looking more mature than that from the first two My Time games, but given the switch in perspective from that of a Builder to a Governor, it seems a good time for such a change to be made.

Apparently Pathea has learned a thing or two about tightening things, such as reducing the number of romanceable characters* from a metric ton (my opinion) to a more reasonable number of 8. They are also tightening the story a bit further, which is also fine with me.

Oh, and I won't spoil it for you, but apparently Pathea has learned a thing or two from the last two Legend of Zelda entries. (You can watch the video for those cues.) Given that it seems they've been building the game in-house over these years, that they were able to integrate more capabilities to their series is a welcome addition. 

(Now, can you PLEASE take these learnings and fix the pathing in My Time at Portia?)

***

Will I support the Kickstarter?

Well, they don't exactly need me right now since already they've shot past their initial goals, so I'm content to ride out the development cycle and purchase the game when it goes live. To be honest, I'm rather shocked by the number of people who backed the game at the $500 and higher levels, because that's not exactly small potatoes.** I am impressed, however, and I will eagerly await this release when it gets closer. 

The little crew at Chongqing, China continues to impress me with their vision and work ethic, so best of luck to them in getting this project to completion.

*If you so choose, that is.

**That's not my money, though, so I kind of just shrug and move along.

The Great Blizzard Bank Heist

I kind of keep an eye on Retail WoW, but I don't follow much in the way of details. For example, I couldn't tell you the names of any of the zones from areas after Mists of Pandaria (and probably only half of Mists itself), or any of the bosses in raids since Wrath.*

However, Kurn of Kurn's Corner had a post this morning about what she's calling The Great Blizzard Bank Heist. She also posted a video on YouTube describing the situation and what she'd lost out of her own personal guild bank. A lot of items you simply can't get anymore, such as the various dragonscales that would drop from drakes throughout the pre-Cataclysm world and in Blackrock Mountain instances/raids.

Being a bit of a packrat myself, I can feel for her and for all of the others who'd been squirreling away rare and no longer obtainable materials/gear/patterns only to find them all wiped out by the data changes made by Blizzard in prep for The War Within.

Yeah, it's all just pixels. I get that. And yes, I'm sure that Blizz has hidden away in their Terms of Service some language meant to protect themselves from problems such as this, describing it as "Best Effort".

That doesn't mean you are immune to the emotional impact of the loss of items you'd been collecting for years --or well over a decade, in Kurn's case-- and being without any recourse other than maybe getting a few items back really sucks. That's the real tragedy here: the accidental reveal by Blizzard that you really own nothing, and despite what we may believe and what attachments we have to in-game items and achievements, they're all just a misclick away from it all vanishing into nothingness. Blizzard pulled that curtain back, and we can't unsee what they showed us. Even if people were to get everything back like they ought, nobody will ever forget that Blizzard could take it all away again in the blink of an eye.

*To be fair, I didn't know the names of many raid bosses at all until I started raiding in Classic WoW.

Meme Monday: The Return of Fake Book Memes

I've had so many of these fake book memes in my file, waiting for the proper time and place, that I figured I ought to bring them out sooner or later.

And that time is now.

I'm pretty sure we had the original book
this is based on as kids, but I can't remember
what it was titled for the life of me.
From Pinterest.

Hey, that's my job!
From Pinterest. (Yes, you detect a trend here.)

Somebody got into the keg of
Hudy 14K in the school's gymnasium
again! (Yes, there were kegs of beer there
where if you were clever you could turn
the kegerator on and have a drink.
Must be a West Side of Cincinnati thing.)
From (you guessed it) Pinterest.

Sometimes my inner Middle Schooler
comes out. The first time I saw this one
I giggled so hard I began coughing.
From Pinterest.

And one extra Fake Book Meme....

I'm pretty sure I'm going to Hell for
putting this out out here. From Facebook.

Video Game Art: The Elder Scrolls Online

It's been a few months, hasn't it?

I figured that for this Friday, I'd like to highlight some art from The Elder Scrolls Online. ESO builds upon the lore from The Elder Scrolls video game series into an MMO in its own right, and over the past decade Zenimax has figured out how to keep the game alive after its own disastrous rollout back in the day.*

Almost all of this art comes from loading screens for the game, which works well in highlighting the style the game intents to evoke.

Can't have an ESO game without a dragon
making an appearance somewhere.

The character models look so much
better than even the Skyrim days.

This is all of the major NPCs --minus
the faction leads-- in the original game.

If you've ever seen the Morrowind expansion
trailer, you recognize these two. Of course,
the Dunmer is everybody's favorite Morag Tong
agent, Naryu.

These login screens always inspire me.

The loading screen between zones when you
fast travel have a quick overview, but I'm here
for the scenery.

Unlike World of Warcraft --and I'm including
Warlords of Draenor here-- ESO has gone all in
on housing. It's actually quite nice, as similar to SWTOR
there's a variety of houses to select all across Tamriel.

In my wandering around today, I stumbled
across this quest area that I'd never seen before.
Boy, was I out of practice on playing.

These three NPCs are found in the original trailers
for The Elder Scrolls Online. The Aldmeri makes
an appearance in the Summerset trailer, and I think
the Daggerfall Covenant rogue shows up in
another of the trailers. (Can't remember which;
maybe it was Elsweyr?)

*This seems to be a trend about MMOs that came out after WoW. Even WoW didn't have the greatest original launch, people who played back then are fond of reminding me, but still a disastrous launch is very difficult to overcome if you don't have any buildup of goodwill from potential players.

EtA: Corrected spelling.

Just Living in Interesting Times

Oh yay, Microsoft got rid of more people from XBox.

And, as Michael Bell pointed out, Microsoft just announced a $60 billion stock buyback at the same time.

So.

I don't think I'll ever pine for the days of Bobby Kotick, but Microsoft is basically claiming "poor" and cutting people at the same time as they're pumping in tons of cash to prop up the stock price. Given the (lack of) tremendous cost savings you get from laying off 2550 people --hint, it's not $60 billion-- it certainly seems like Microsoft is trying to starve Activision Blizzard into.... Something.

Submission, maybe?

I'm not sure what Microsoft is thinking about XBox long term, because they're struggling to compete with Sony's Playstation. I do know they're going all in on Copilot, as I can't open up my work email without seeing another missive from Microsoft about how awesome Copilot is. Maybe they're hoping that customer service for XBox games will get so bad that Copilot will seem to be an improvement. But I doubt Microsoft is even thinking that far ahead, given that publicly traded corporations have an obligation to "maximize shareholder value" to the exclusion of all else. 

***

On the flip side of publicly traded corporations, there's private equity.

Basically, it's all of the greed and short-sightedness of publicly traded corporations but in a private format where their activity is hidden from public view.

You know, everybody's favorite business: the Embracer Group.

Well, Juraj Krupa of AJ Investments is going after Ubisoft and wants to take the company private.

I have no pity for Ubisoft itself, but I also have little time for corporate raiders. They call themselves "activist investors" now, which makes them sound like a do-gooder, but the reality is they want to take control of a company, maximize their profit, and then get out while profits are at their highest.

What does AJ Investments want to do? Oh, not much. Just run Ubisoft like how Bobby Kotick ran Activision Blizzard, complete with a focus on only a few properties that pump out products every year and maximize cash shops and in-game purchases.

Ay-yi-yi.

May you live in interesting times, my ass.

In Case You Were Wondering...

...I have confirmed that you can't get XP from Fishing in Retail WoW. Perhaps that isn't news to you, but I was curious enough to check since I figured that leveling by Fishing would be slower than leveling by gathering herbs or mining ore.

Bummer.

At least Eversong Forest is unchanged from TBC.

Yes, the graphics are updated in general, but by and large the quests are the same as they've ever been. The zone is filled with familiar NPCs and enemies, frozen in time.

How do I know this? I took my bank alt Rogue from 2010 or so and ran around Eversong Forest to get enough XP from exploring to reach Level 5, which is the minimum level to train the Fishing skill. I got to see all of my old peeps from around the zone. Yes, Magistrix Dawnstrider and Apprentice Mirveda are still there, as was the Dwarf near the Arcane Sanctum and Antheol's wayward apprentices at the bridge crossing.

I am quite aware that the TBC starter zones are off on their own little area, so have been completely unaffected by the Cataclysm revamp back in 2010. Additionally, there might be further phased changes to the zones so what I'm seeing is the "initial" result before, say, a Legion or Battle for Azeroth change happens. Still, not interested in finding out. (I was there for the fishing.)

If nothing else, the Blood Elf starter zones are unchanged from 2007, and that brings to me a measure of comfort in a changing world.

Meme Monday: Traveling Memes

My wife and I just got back from visiting our oldest this weekend*, so we put in a lot of hours on the road. That got me to thinking about all of the traveling memes out there, so... Here we are.

We also had an ulterior motive for the trip, which was to drop off the rest of her items that she couldn't fit into our SUV the first time around (if you'll recall, the U-Haul was up in Dayton so she could only fit a few boxes in before I left to bring the truck up there.)

Yeah, that.
From supermeme.ai.

And so we tried our best to stuff everything into the CR-V. Somehow, we succeeded.

Away we went.

My brain checked out Friday morning, but
it quickly re-engaged when I got pummeled by
work that came from out of nowhere to land
in my lap. I'm still dealing with the fallout
from all that. From memeshappen.com.

This is a problem that only truly became
an issue after about 2010 or so. But now,
just making sure you have a charger and
cable is half of your packing requirements.
We had those two items, but somehow were
missing other things. Such as toothbrushes.
From mpora.

That's something that does kind of annoy
me. Unless I just get a McDouble from McDonald's
for lunch, you're going to spend more money on
food than you really want to. So when your
wife brings up a restaurant to eat at that you KNOW
she has complained about the prices in the past, you
just know that lunch is not going to end well.

We used to do this, but apparently the new trend
is to have these large bottles of soap, shampoo,
etc. in your hotel room that are pretty much
locked in place, so you can't walk out with them.
On the one hand it's nice to not have to worry
about having enough shampoo, but on the other
hand I wonder about sanitary conditions. From imgflip.

*It was her birthday.

Channeling My Inner Boss

I've been dipping my toe back into some raiding. Nothing crazy, mind you, just regular old Molten Core on Wednesday nights. One of our little group got into that MC on his Paladin, and when I happened to login earlier than usual on that Wednesday, he asked if I wanted to come. My wife was already beat and was going to bed early, so I said sure.

Hmm... Have I been here before?

It didn't hurt that the Good Twin got a couple of pieces of gear, the Azuresong Mageblade --it's made for a Mage, because it has "Mage" in the name!-- and the (Mage Tier 1) Arcanist Bracers. Between those two pieces of gear --plus an offhand I had obtained as a reputation piece via Alterac Valley-- my damage on an unbuffed per Frostbolt hit went from mid-600s to mid-700s. Which ain't so insignificant when you think about it.

***

There's also been all sorts of sneaky activities that my Questing Buddy and I have gotten ourselves into.

Because I simply can't keep my mouth shut.

She and I --on my old Classic Rogue, Azshandra-- have been sneaking into Zul'Gurub and picking herbs, hoping for Bloodvine to drop. 

In case you're wondering, Az's spec is a customized mixture of Combat and Subtlety. I designed it so that I could go just far enough into Subtlety to pick up Improved Sap and then into Combat to get the bonuses for dual wielding daggers. (Oh no, a Dagger Rogue! And a non optimized one, too!)

Eh, it works for me. She's not raiding. As a bonus, she has advantages in stealth that a regular Combat Rogue would never have, and that means she can help my Questing Buddy with Operation Bloodvine.

When we're not dead, that is.

There's a reason why I'm still hidden.

Those of keen eyesight among you might notice that my Questing Buddy's Druid doesn't have any real gear on, and that's because she'd died enough times that her gear broke.

The idea is that we target an herb node, she casts heals on herself, mounts up, and pulls the nearby mobs. Then I stealth in and grab the herbs and any nearby Hoodoo Piles, then stealth away before the mobs come back. She typically manages to avoid the mobs long enough to find a reset point, but as you can see above she occasionally pulls too many enemies or she runs into one during her escape.

Still, the reward of Bloodvine for some of the best non-raid gear in Classic Era is worth it. The Bloodvine 3-piece cloth set is great for Warlocks and Mages up through Blackwing Lair, and only starts being replaced in the AQ40 T2.5 set pieces. Back in the Fall of 2020, once I obtained my Bloodvine set on OG Cardwyn, I kept it until I began getting replacement pieces in Naxxramas.* My Questing Buddy was hunting for Bloodvine to make the set for herself, but Bloodvine alone is worth a pretty penny on the Auction House. 

So the lure of "free gold" --minus the gear repair bills-- is strong.

When my Questing Buddy is running back from having died, I find myself with time on my hands. So I've taken up dancing and singing while hidden. Because I can.

Yes, I remember Born in the USA quite well.
Between that album, Purple Rain, 1984, and
a host of other classic albums, 1984 was a good year.

***

Oh! And I ran into an old friend in Feralas.

Fancy meeting you here.

It's good to see Rexxar out and about like this, and not tied up at a Horde-only base in Outland.

***

And, uh, this person is back too.

/sigh

Sometimes you just can't win.

*Why is it so good? Because the Bloodvine set has two distinct advantages over most other gear: it has superior spellpower bonuses, and it also has hit bonuses. If you want to go raiding, a Mage has to get to roughly +17 to their Hit bonus to reach the cap and have the greatest chance of hitting a raid boss that's roughly 3 levels higher than you. The Bloodvine set alone gets you a +4 to Hit, netting you a quarter of the bonuses you need to become "Hit Capped". The drawback is that there are absolutely no Stamina bonuses to the Bloodvine set, so you don't have even close to as much health as wearing Tier raid gear will get you. That is.... kind of deadly in places such as Blackwing Lair or AQ40.

EtA: Apparently I can't spell the word "keen". Fixed.

Did You Ever Anticipate THIS, Sir Terry?

For those who are fans of Sir Terry Pratchett, Modiphius Entertainment is going to be bringing an RPG based on Discworld to Kickstarter in October:

From the Kickstarter page.

Here's a link to the announcement on Modiphius' website, and here's the email I received via screencaps:

Okay, here's hoping that this works, but I'm going to put the links for a sign up for Kickstarter updates here, and signing up for the Quickstart Preview here.

Meme Monday: Gatekeeper Memes

You all know about them. 

You've likely seen them in action.

Gatekeepers.

The people who try to make whatever hobby or fandom or whatever an exclusive club, to keep the "riff-raff" out. They're the sort of people that would try to take over a Homeowner's Association just to create rules to turn a local subdivision into their own little fief. 

Video games are definitely not the only fandom or community that has their share of gatekeepers --I have personal experience about that-- so now that I've gone down yet another rabbit hole of a community I'll be posting about sometime in the future, I figured I'll get these memes out there to poke some fun of the "KEEP OUT" crowd.

Yeah, pretty much. The old H.L. Mencken
line about someone somewhere having a good time
springs to mind. From X.

Poor Gandalf. I imagine Gatekeepers imagine
themselves like this. From Twitter and Sales Evangelist.

Like I mentioned, gaming isn't the only
hobby that has its share of gatekeepers.
From Reddit.

Amazing how frequently this pops up
whenever I poke my nose into comics.
From Facebook's Dungeons and Dads group.

Red Needs Water Badly

On September 4th we received our next batch of wood for the deck.

The guy delivering the wood warned me about
some of the pieces. He didn't pull them, but if
he had he'd have gotten me better boards, as he
builds decks as a side job on the weekends.

That meant I worked on the deck this weekend.

I have 42 rows to replace, so I bought enough wood for 21 rows plus a bit extra to compensate for any bad boards.

So today, I put down nine rows.

One more row here will barely fit within the
length of a 16 foot board, and then I'll have to use
combinations of 8 foot and 12 foot boards.

It was also quite the adventure, given that I dropped a couple of things that fell down under the deck, so I had to crawl under it to get to the drill bit and screws. I was sure not going to go on another trip to the hardware store for another countersink bit.

The hardest part of the deck work has been ripping out the old boards:

The damage.

I'm going to have to break those down and safely remove/bend the nails before I can get too much farther along. These 4 inch-wide boards may look pretty, but there's a lot more of them than there would have been if the previous homeowner had used the more commonly used 6 inch wide boards. Sure, I could have replaced the 4 inch boards with 6 inch, but that would have required me ripping out all of the boards so I could properly do it. And I really wasn't going to do that and leave the deck in an incomplete state for a couple of months.

The weather today was fantastic. Almost too much so, because in my focus on my work I neglected to hydrate and even eat some lunch. (I did have a handful of nuts, so I wasn't completely crazy.) Right now, I'm paying the price by nursing a headache while I drink water. 

EtA: It's countersink, not counterstrike. /sigh

Not For Lack of Trying

In case you didn't know, Retail WoW has a new expansion out...

This was what I saw when I logged in on
Sunday night, and it's not the first pop-up
I've had either. I think that this is the second
or third one in the past week or so.

Even on Monday evening, when you login to Battle.Net your main screen on WoW Classic is this:

Just in case you missed it, you know...

I'd say they're hyping the hell out of the new expansion. Not exactly sure just how much interest they're going to get from the various shades of WoW Classic players (the first Classic-oriented news bit is the fifth article on the main page and it's about Cataclysm Classic), but they are trying.

Although I will say that the WoW Classic community is probably not Mythic Dungeon Invitational and the Arena World Championship's target audience. Just a hunch.

Kind of like this, but replace
'MMORPG' with WoW.
From Quickmeme.

How Much Choice is Too Much?

One of the reasons why I prefer an MMO such as WoW Classic Era is that it simply doesn't have that much choice when it comes to in-game activities.

Sure, you can go wherever you want in the two continents, you can go into dungeons, Battlegrounds, and raids (if high enough level), and you can even do some repeatable quest grinding out in Silithus if you're so inclined. Or just hang around and fish or just kill things. It sounds like a lot, but compared to a lot of other MMOs it isn't.

Even compared to other video games it isn't that much.

In the early part of the Summer, I played through My Time at Sandrock, the sequel to My Time at Portia. 

That was about the best I could do to create
another Redbeard. Considering I was supposed
to be a "youngster" of about 18-20-ish, it'll do.

Compared to the original game, the new one has several quality of life advancements and presents more of the post-apocalyptic world than ever before. The story, while a bit grimmer than that found in My Time at Portia, is well done.* If you've ever played a sort of building / creating game such as My Time at Sandrock, you know that romancing and potentially marrying a character is a big part of the game. 

And that, my friends, is where I fell down on the job.

There are potentially 21 romanceable options to choose from, and based on my own personal preferences I've whittled it down to 9.** Well, I couldn't make a decision, so I kept putting it off and putting it off, and then... The game ended. 

Damn.

That wasn't what I had in mind. I was going to focus on someone, but I found the options presented to me so appealing that I couldn't make a choice before the game ended.*** All of the characters spoke to different aspects of my personality and what I found attractive, yet no single option presented itself above all others. 

Again, in my experience real life doesn't operate like a video game in that manner --the Tinder-fueled appeal of hookups notwithstanding****-- so when you get right down to it, I had nine options to choose from and I couldn't select one. When everything has a certain level of appeal, trying to decide which option to choose leads to a form of analysis-paralysis.

***

This is not a new phenomenon, as it's been studied before. One of the more recent studies, conducted by researchers from the University of Buffalo's Department of Psychology, discusses how trying to make a choice between options that have a high level of importance make people freeze with indecision based on the number of choices presented. Maybe selecting what you want for dinner from a menu may not be a life altering choice, but if you present it in the context of a first date or a business lunch with a client, the stakes are raised and selecting poorly may cost you in other ways.

Or, to put it another way, take a look at Covenants in a recent Retail WoW expansion, Shadowlands.

You'd think that Blizz or Wowhead would have a usable
graphic, but nooo.... I had to go to a boosting service's
website, Boosting Ground, to find a good version.
Still, just remember that you're DEAD if you're looking
at this. Well, theoretically so, and handwaving is involved.

When you reach the end of the main questline where you have visited and quested in all four Covenants, you're asked to choose one. One of those four would provide a good buff to your abilities, but if you choose the wrong one, you originally had to work hard in-game to be able to switch Covenants to the "correct one". 

If you don't have any knowledge of which Covenant to select --"What is this Wowhead you speak of?"-- you kind of just have to wing it. Knowing WoW players as any MMO player worth their salt does, if you don't pick the "correct" one you're going to get crapped on in group content. And let's be honest, switching Covenants as originally designed would have put you far enough behind any friends you play with that, well... Yeah, the stakes are pretty high here.

Sucks to be you, homie. 

                    --Blizzard, probably

So while the number of choices isn't high, the stakes were high enough that the potential was there to simply freeze with indecision.

Blizzard eventually learned their lesson and eased the restrictions on Covenant selection, lowering the stakes a bit, but one place where they haven't really learned their lesson is in the volume of activities found in Retail WoW.

***

In Retail WoW you don't suffer from a lack of things to do.

This is no means an exhaustive list, but off the top of my head as a Classic Andy here's what you can do in Retail WoW:

• Quests
• Main Questline
• Leveling Questline
• Max Level Questline
• Side Quests
• Daily Quests
• Weekly Quests
• Monthly Quests (are these still a thing?)
• Grind Reputation(s)
• Darkmoon Faire
• Transmog Collecting
• Professions
• Crafting Orders
• Weeklies (no more dailies, is that correct?)
• Just craft/gather to sell (or wait for a queue to pop)
• Delves
• Dungeons
• Normal
• Heroic
• Mythic+ (Coming soon!)
• Raids (Coming soon!)
• LFR
• Normal
• Heroic
• Mythic
• Battlegrounds
• Arenas
• Various 2x2 through 5x5
• Solo Shuffle (have I got that right?)
• World PvP
• Marked as PvP (or whatever it's called now)
• Duelling
• Are there flying races that could technically be put in here?
• Pet Battles (Is this still a thing?)
• OLD STUFF
• Things to do from previous expansions
• Level an alt
• Sit in a capital city and talk smack on Trade Chat

On the face of it, all of this choice must be good, right?

But to me, I look at this list and kind of mildly freak out. It's like going to Jungle Jim's here in Cincinnati and trying to figure out what hot sauce to buy:

Look, this is only half of their display; the other
side has just as many different hot sauces.
From Reddit, but since I go several times a year,
I can confirm that this is accurate.

If you know what you want, great. If you're planning on following whatever Wowhead or Icy Veins tells you to do, kudos. If your guild has already mapped out what you should do --and you're fine enough with being told explicitly what you're supposed to do with your time-- go for it. But if you're new, interested in trying something new, or you have no particular choice in mind, well... Good luck with that.

Yes, this list above does cover a wide range of activities, but if you're new/returning to the game, the number of choices alone can induce analysis-paralysis.

Or you feel like you have to do all the things, and that induces burnout. Just ask Battle for Azeroth or Shadowlands veterans about all of the activities you were expected to do if you were on a raiding team, as if you were just checking off boxes on a daily checklist at work, and they'll tell you the burnout was real.*****

All of these choices might not be readily apparent to long-time players, because they've slowly been added to over the years and as a consequence they're used to them. It's only when you take a step back, walk away for a while, and then return do you realize just how much there is to do and how it can easily confuse people. And that's not even counting all of the systems changes over the years. 

The problem is that the game is going to be 20 years old in a few months, and 20 years is a long time for a video game to acquire baggage. But every time Blizzard actually cuts things from the game --didn't this happen with trimming abilities back in Warlords or Legion or something?-- you get a certain subset of the player base who goes absolutely ballistic. 

The thing is, to grow the game Blizzard will have to do something about this huge list. Something will have to get trimmed out, and some players are going to get butthurt about it. Otherwise, Blizzard will only cater to those who have kept up with the game, and that's a finite number of people. Those people over the years have already prioritized and ranked what they're going to focus on, so they don't have the analysis-paralysis that new or returning people will have. 

Unless someone already has things planned out for you...

To be honest, I'd imagine that there will be
a Generative AI solution for all of this work
in a year or two. Just have an addon play
the game for you and do all of the busy work
before you need to re-engage in time for raiding.
From Maru and Reat via Reddit.

*I can see that --in terms of gameplay-- people may look at Sandrock and think it's pretty much exactly like Portia. That being said, story-wise there's quite a few differences. Well, that and the personalities involved. The moment I arrived at Sandrock, I took an instant dislike to my new boss and I liked the other new builder, which was the reverse of what I experienced at Portia. There are twists and turns to the story, and there were at least a few times where it went in a direction I didn't expect. 

**Of course, real life doesn't work like that, but bear with me on this one.

***Yes, the game does apparently continue after the credits, but... Come on. The game ended. That's like the "Just one more turn..." option in Civ IV after you win the game. You've already ridden off into the sunset, so to speak, so whatever you do doesn't really change anything.

****I could go into a long post on how my psyche works in terms of the hookup culture and how on the surface it might seem fun but that hookups aren't appealing to me, but that's not something I'm going to talk about. Besides, My Time at Sandrock isn't a hookup-fueled game anyway; you first have to become a friend with the person and then you can move into a relationship. That is, if the person agrees to do so, as some of your romance options can push you off and say "nope, not now, I'm busy" or "maybe later" or something to that effect. In that respect, that can be more representative of real life than the "you hit 8 hearts and now they'll say yes" that you get in some games such as Stardew Valley. Even if you do enter a relationship, there's no guarantee that they'll agree to marry you in the end either. (I found that out in My Time at Portia.)

*****As in most expansions, if you come back to it after it's been supplanted by newer expacs, you'll find things not that bad. That confuses the point, however, since you don't have to grind and grind and scrape your way through upwards of two years of doing similar things on an endless treadmill, so yeah it feels better. I discovered that doing the Quel'Danas grind was not my cup of tea in TBC Classic when you have people in guild and outside of guild yelling at people to DO YOUR DAILIES! to progress the story in the Isle. But when I did it on my own back in Cataclysm, I had fun just noodling around Quel'Danas. My past self would never have believed you if you told him what happened in TBC Classic.