On a Clear Day, You Can See L40

Okay, it's not quite that bad.

Card is wearing gear really meant for someone
in the upper L20s, but those bonus Frost damage pieces
have no equal until much higher Tailoring skill is obtained.
The levels as of Tuesday, June 24, 2025.

I mean, everybody is at L34, so only 6 levels to go. I suppose that you could argue that L40 is the true midway point in the leveling process due to how difficult it is to level the higher you go up in Vanilla Classic, but paradoxically more quest areas open up once you get past the mid-30s and mid-40s doldrums. 

I've kept myself busy by fishing for Nightfin, which has come in handy as that gold I've made has now started to go into leveling Blacksmithing and keeping up with all of the toons' ability training. At least two of the toons I'm leveling will get their mounts automatically at L40, but that means I have to pay for 6 mounts in the not too distant future.

So... I'd better have something like 600 gold lying around for that, right? Probably more, given that I want to have a cushion so I'm not totally broke* and that I'll still likely have to pay for the basic riding ability for those other two toons anyway. And then there's all those nice L40 abilities you have to train for as well...

Yeah, I think I'm gonna be mount poor for a long time after L40.

Back when I was originally leveling Az in 2019/2020, it was at this point in the leveling process that her gear was getting pretty long in the tooth --most of it came from The Deadmines, so at L20 or so-- that I began purchasing some items off of the Auction House to replace the oldest pieces. I've held off from doing that for now, but when your daggers came from random drops in Westfall, trying to kill things in Desolace with them doesn't really cut it. 

***

That does lead into an interesting paradox with leveling: I frequently will take gear drops I find in the wild and send them to my other toons to help them out. For example, I don't think Hoots has gotten a bow for herself since Darkshore; instead she's gotten bows as hand-me-downs from other toons that found them out in the wild. The same thing goes for my Druid, Taldanifal, and his items. It's a pretty rare occasion when my three Leather wearing toons find useful gear out in the wild, especially after the embarrassment of riches in Westfall and The Deadmines. All those leather drops there led to what I kindly call "the expectation of riches"; after all, we got a lot of gear early, so why won't that continue in later levels? Well, Vanilla Classic (and life) don't work like that. 

You know the disclaimer: past results do not guarantee future performance? Well, Vanilla WoW is that saying come to life. To be honest, it's much better that it happen in a video game, as opposed to happening in real life with your finances. While you can't depend on gear drops, you can make some educated guesses. And in my case, just prepare for the worst, because that's how my luck rolls in MMOs.

Still, I can enjoy the sights...

Winging by Grom'gol on my way north from Booty Bay.

*Back when I was leveling in TBC Classic and had at least made it to Zangarmarsh (the swampy zone in Outland), one of the guys I knew on our raid team who had pushed ahead and was busy doing all the things had wiped out his entire stash of gold to pay for a fast flying mount, something like 5000 gold. The move shocked me, but he said it was totally worth it.

To be honest, I think that decision to essentially bankrupt yourself in pursuit of a fast flying mount is what turned me off from getting fast flying on any of my toons in TBC Classic and Wrath Classic. I've lived my entire life on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis, and blowing everything for what is pretty much an extravagance simply isn't in my system. 

Meme Monday: Contextual Memes

Yes, there's that classic Doctor Who parody meme where Clara Oswald asks the Twelfth Doctor about whether a particular number is a lot, and the Doctor answers "Depends on the context". I've got a few of them around, so why not have this for a Meme Monday?

Let's get the original out of the way, shall we?
From Incorrectwhoquotes, but really from all over.

Okay, I'd argue yes to both, because I'm old enough
to know I need to do more per day than just game.
From the Facebook Geeks are Sexy group.

Of course I had to go and put a Minecraft
meme in here. I can even here the nasally "huh?"
sound that character makes. From Reddit and
Know Your Meme.

Yeah, as a pencil and paper RPG player, that's
about right. From Imgflip.

Given that I own a few Wusthof knives, I found this
quite funny. From Imgflip.

Absolutely. I saw a LEGO store in the Charlotte airport,
and they told me that they ship internationally, so you
don't have to worry about trying to board a plane with
"extra baggage". From Pinatafarm.

Red Flags

When I logged into Battle.net today, I saw this graphic:

From Battle.net, although a slightly different color tone
than found on the front page.

I typically don't see this particular version of Xal'atath --I think this is from a cutscene or a trailer for the expansion-- because this is more photo realistic than the "usual" version:

It's that "I'm the smartest person in the room"
look that gets you. From Wowhead.

The look she has in the first graphic reminds me a bit of Minthara from Baldur's Gate 3:

Well, except for the white hair and the non-glowing
eyes. And the carvings. And that Minthara is obviously
pissed off. From IGN and Larian Studios.

That middle graphic looks more obviously diabolical to me, while the other two being more understated actually scare me a helluva lot more. 

I've never heard Xal's voice, but Minthara's throaty voice, like she's got a breath mint in her mouth that she needs to work around to speak properly, is properly noble yet demanding. She also carries the baggage of expectations, because the Drow in D&D and The Forgotten Realms have a long history that can't easily be ignored. 

On the flip side, Xal's photo realistic look is scarier due to the red flags I see in them. Like, oh, the carvings in her cheeks. While I've seen my share of facial tatoos over the years, I very rarely see facial carvings; the only people I've ever seen who actually put carvings on their face are those who really don't give a damn about anything.

And let's not forget those eyes. Sure, WoW has tons of races with glowing eyes, but Xal's have a certain... something about them. Maybe it's the shapes in the center that appear to be small mouths. Or that the glowing portion is mainly the irises, unlike entire eyes that glow (looking at you, Sin'dorei, Kaldorei, and Draenei). Or that it makes the eyes look like moons, and not in a "ooo, how beautiful" way either.

Speaking of which, here's another graphic of a Big Bad with similar red flags:

Oh yeah, Ahmanet works. Better than the movie
itself, to be honest.
From 2017's The Mummy (and Reddit).

Ahmanet gives a whole new meaning to the term "four eyes", and those raised tattoos don't endear her to people, either. 

I guess the biggest red flag among them is the malice that to a greater or lesser extent they all inhabit. It doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzies if one of them were to strike up a conversation with me at a bar. Since they all wear their intentions on their collective sleeves, it's kind of hard to look beyond that. Unlike some baddies...

Yes, I pulled this gif from Bedazzled. So sue me.

What is Best in Life?

I'm not exactly sure how Age of Conan is still kicking around, but it still is.

Yes, there it is.

I hadn't installed it in 2021 when I broke down and bought my current PC, and I suppose that my old toon there is still hanging out wherever I'd left it way back when. 

Still, Funcom continues to keep the Conan license alive with AoC, Conan Exiles, Conan Chop Chop, and Conan Unconquered. How do they do it? And while most people know of Conan from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies the original Robert E. Howard short stories are still around.* I can find at least one Conan book at my local bookstore, which is one more than from David Eddings (and until recently Michael Moorcock). What is the appeal of Conan?

Maybe it's because the Sun travels east to west
and the Moon travels west to east. Yeah, I thought
something was weird the first couple of days I played,
but I couldn't put my finger on it until I realized that
the Sun rose in the same area that the Moon set.

The Sword and Sorcery subgenre has its adherents, particularly those in the RPG community who enjoy the "old school" style of 1e AD&D and modern interpretations such as Shadowdark. It's just that for some reason the brutal and brooding style of the Hyborean Age, created by a bookish Texan, has an enduring appeal to this Norwegian game company. 

When I used to play Age of Conan I got the impression that it was far more popular over in Europe than in the US, and my tinkering around with Conan Exiles has only reinforced that perception. 

Taking a rest in a bed I'd built with crude tools.

Both Conan Exiles and Age of Conan have a casual attitude toward nudity that would shock certain sensibilities in the US. Yes, you can play Conan Exiles on a server --your own or created by others-- without turning nudity on, but I'm sure that was put in place to allow the game to be put on Steam. I'm not here to moralize about that, because nudity or near nudity is a staple of Sword and Sorcery along with magic and civilization itself being evil and corrupting, but it is worth noting that Funcom went all in on the aesthetic. Before you ask, no, they didn't add sex to the game, but apparently people created mods to "fix" that.

Why am I not surprised?

A more problematic part of Conan Exiles is that Funcom did not shy away from another aspect of Sword and Sorcery: slavery and thralldom. Here in the US, any discussion of slavery centers, first and foremost, on the slavery of Africans that culminated in the American Civil War. Slavery in Conan Exiles is more akin to that found in the Ancient World, where those defeated in war were enslaved by the victors.** In Conan Exiles, you "recruit" people to your side by knocking them out using a truncheon, putting them on the Wheel of Pain, and having them "work" the wheel until their spirit is broken. 

And despite the "splitting hairs" aspect to the whole thing, holy crap is this something incredibly problematic. 

Yes, it follows with the spirit of Conan's world, but I also think this is something that the devs could have read the room and said "You know, slavery isn't exactly a popular thing right now, maybe we ought to come up with another mechanic other than thralls." I mean, there's plenty of other things that were popular in the Ancient World (and Sword and Sorcery) that didn't make the cut in the game. 

If you are thinking about Conan Exiles as a survival game to play and you find the thrall mechanic a hard line, that's on Funcom. They could have easily changed the game to something less problematic, but by sticking to their guns they limited their game's appeal. 

*Not to mention stories written by other authors, such as L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Poul Anderson, and even Robert Jordan.

**For those familiar with Roman and Greek history may have heard of Epictetus, the Stoic Philosopher, who was born a slave. And there's Spartacus, who led a slave revolt.

Serendipity Surprises

When I logged into Steam today, I wasn't expecting to see this:

Honest!

I guess that makes yesterday's Meme Monday all the more appropriate, I suppose.

It's like seeing a random comment by an NPC and saying to yourself "What the hell was THAT?" Like this one I saw last night in Stormwind on the Anniversary Server:

I can't say I've seen THAT one before, and given the lack of context (and to be fair, Blizzard's company culture's reputation these days) that just sounds so wrong.

There's one last little bit of serendipity that has nothing to do with gaming. I was working away at the end of May when I happened to look outside the nearby window and saw this:

Yes, that's a very young fawn, likely a newborn, since the fawn was still a bit wobbly when moving around. That's something you don't get to see live every day.

Meme Monday: Fishing Memes

A decade or two ago, I had a fishing license. Not to actually catch fish, mind you, but so I could cast with a rod and reel with my kids. Good thing I never had a hook on the end of the line either, because I would have been gouged by said hook multiple times when the kids "cast" their lines. 

Still, I've never forgotten having some fun with them while "fishing". That translates into MMOs, where fishing is very much a thing.

I'm with you on that one.
From Reddit.

This could be my Questing Buddy saying this
too, you know, given that I've been fishing a lot
lately in game. From imgflip.

Heh. I like this. From Midday Memes. 

If you're doing this while listening to Otis
Redding, I can get behind this. From the Facebook
group Final Fantasy XIV: A Meme Reborn.

This one needs no comment from me.
From Reddit.

Tim Cain on Being Happy

I've mentioned this before, but I religiously watch Tim Cain's Cain on Games videos on YouTube. Having the perspective of developing games since the early 80s, and working in a field that I can relate to, is incredibly fascinating. That Tim not only survived the meat grinder but also has carved out a lasting and impactful career is inspiring to me, since my software development career lasted a little over 5 years.* That he worked on games such as the original Fallout, The Bard's Tale Construction Set, Pillars of Eternity, Wildstar, and even Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines speaks to how his games impacted my life as a gamer. 

Tim is also a genial person**, and he has a passion for games and game development. He's opinionated, but he's not an asshole about his opinions. That's something I can get behind.

On his Fun Friday video today, he had a short discussion about Being Happy:

Anyway, his first point of emphasis (and the reason for this post) is to stop rage watching videos and rage playing games. You know, the idea that you watch something that makes you angry --and you know it's going to make you angry but you watch it anyway-- and then you complain about it. It's corollary, rage playing games, is going out and playing a game that you hate and then you go online and talk about how you hate the game. 

This resonated with me because of my personal experience with my health issues and social media. And, well, the news.

Before somebody complains that being a CIS white guy means that I can tune the news out, fine. Yes, I am a CIS white guy. I'm also a CIS white guy who has health issues, especially hypertension, and I need to cut out stress in my life or I won't be around for very long.*** You can't vote if you're dead, even in Chicago nowadays.

One of the things I've done over the past several years was to cut out social media in my life, because first I couldn't stand the misinformation floating around social media with the pandemic, and then because of people within my extended family going down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole when they ought to know better. 

I can draw a parallel to this from a couple of decades ago when I cut out some news channels because their modus operandi is to generate a strong emotional reaction (frequently anger) as those strong reactions can turn into dedicated viewership. It becomes it's own feedback loop: keep throwing out red meat at their viewership, and their viewers get mad and tune in to listen or watch more often. I realized I was getting angry when those channels were on, and when I stepped back and turned them off, I realized I was much happier as a result.

***

But recognizing that rage playing games --or even just playing games that have changed over time into something you don't like-- isn't healthy is one piece of the puzzle. You have to break the chain and go play other games that you might actually enjoy. As Tim points out, there's oodles of games out there on Steam right now, so why not try other games instead? And if you don't like the game, return it and try another one. 

Before you ask, no, I'm not using this as a prelude to doing something drastic such as quitting WoW and playing only Civilization IV or something. After all, I still derive a lot of fun from playing Classic WoW, and yes, I've even enjoyed poking around here and there in Retail**** as long as I limit my interactions to places I'm familiar with and I ignore all the helpful suggestions to try Retail's version of Green Eggs and Ham. 

I will not try Dragonflight in a boat, or with a (space) goat, Blizz-I-Am.

--Dr. Seuss, maybe

Anyway, Tim has gotten me to thinking that I need to work more on trying to be happy, or if I'm not careful I will turn into a "get off my lawn" old guy, and sooner than I'd like.

*I should be clear: I enjoyed that software development part of my life, but I'm glad I'm no longer involved with it. Knowing what I know now about my health, I doubt I would have remained married or even been alive in 2025 given all the stress involved in what was a CAD/CAM software development job. 

**Yes, I know, he presents that way on YouTube, and people might not be like that in real life, but since Tim basically makes his videos in one take it's kind of hard to fake it for over 500 videos without using a lot of editing. Still, I haven't experienced him as either a coworker or a boss, so I can't speak to that. 

***I just had my six month check in with my doctors --both cardiologist and my primary care physician-- and I'm still hanging in there. I wasn't planning on providing an update in a post this June, but the TL;DR is that I need to keep doing what I'm doing, and my primary doc keeps hounding me to take vacations and relax more. Of course, working on projects such as woodworking do help me relax more, so there's that at least.

****Within reason. Without "playing the game" by questing or anything like that, I can simply move around the Old World and enjoy what I see for the art alone.

There's Always Someone

I'm sure that of my stable of toons on the Anniversary server, Hoots gets the most flirts and catcalls because of her name.

The listings as of Tuesday, June 10th.

I could be out fighting Yetis in Hillsbrad Foothills, fishing at Booty Bay, or just running through Stormwind and someone will either whistle or /flirt at her. 

Is it the braids in her hair? Yeah, maybe it's the braids.

Narrator: It wasn't the braids.

Considering that there's a lot more provocatively dressed female toons in Stormwind especially, you'd think that a Night Elf who's not attracting attention to herself would just be able to pass on by without comment, but noooo...

Apparently a lot of people who play WoW like owls.

Yes, I am aware that this is what people think is the likely
inspiration for Hoots' name. From a 2013 USA Today
article about Hooters' restauarant struggles.

Hoots may get the most flirting in terms of volume, but the most provocative flirting I've had on the Anniversary servers has been centered on Shaluna, my Holy Priest.

I have no idea why she gets hit on.

Apparently that Corsair Overshirt attracts attention. Another player on a group I was in commented that Shaluna had "quite a rack", and that she'd make a great dancer. I told them thanks, and that it's the Overshirt from the Deadmines that is doing the heavy lifting, which generated a few snickers. Well, at least nobody asked me to strip or perform ERP, unlike what I've experienced before. But there has been the occasional scoping out of Shaluna by a Forsaken --always a Forsaken, it seems-- while on a boat between Ratchet and Booty Bay. 

I am so looking forward to getting a replacement for that Overshirt, let me tell you.

***

Beyond that, I had yet another one of those "conversations" to try to get me to level faster. As seems to be typical, this conversation came after yet another pug some of the gang had where a pugger did one or more of the following:

• Didn't wait for the tank to establish threat
• Didn't use crowd control to handle the mobs
• Would run ahead and pull more mobs to make the group go faster
• Would provide an excuse and leave the group, conveniently after the boss fight where the item that they were hoping for was supposed to drop
• Whine about wanting the group to go faster

I understand the frustration: pugging can suck, especially if some of your puggers are selfish assholes. And if you're a tank or a healer, DPS behaving badly can wreck your evening. Still, they're all pretty much in the same guild now, and I'm sure they could likely find people to run instances with them.

For me, one thing is certain: I'm not joining that guild. To me, it feels too close to what I experienced in TBC Classic, only with more drama (if that were possible). Maybe I ought to create a guild or two for my own toons; after all, I now have enough gold via fishing to afford the cost of paying people for guild signatures.

***

Oh yeah, one more thing: over on Classic Era, I got into a Blackwing Lair run. This is probably the first time I've been in BWL in about a year, and that time they were halfway through when my Questing Buddy asked if I could help out as they were short of people. This time at least I got into the raid beforehand, so I pulled OG Cardwyn out of the garage and sent her to Blackrock Mountain. I was missing some consumes, and like a good Mage I died a few times, but overall it was an enjoyable experience. 

I doubt that experience will make me want to push faster on the Anniversary servers, because if I want to scratch that itch I can go do that on Classic Era whenever I want. But we'll see how things go.

And oh look, this weekend is Alterac Valley weekend...

What on Earth is Red Reading This Time: 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan

Kind of a mouthful of a title, isn't it?

I stumbled on this book when I was browsing the stacks at a local bookstore, and the title intrigued me. I owned a copy of Kind of Blue and played it when the mood struck me, and hearing some of my youngest's high school friends play Freddie Freeloader as part of the jazz band* they put together their junior and senior years only reignited my interest in that era of Jazz. While I'd known about the basics surrounding the lead-up to the creation of Kind of Blue, courtesy of the Ken Burns documentary series Jazz, the detailed biography and intersection of Miles, John, and Bill was relatively unknown to me. 

The book begins with a retelling of James Kaplan's interview with Miles Davis for Vanity Fair back in 1989. As James tells it, his brother somehow convinced an editor at Vanity Fair that James knew all about jazz and so the editor gave him the job of interviewing the often difficult Miles. James promptly freaked out and crammed for the interview prior to showing up for what was originally to be one hour. Apparently Miles was taken with James and was very generous with his time, forming a lasting impression on James which led to this article (found in the Vanity Fair web archives) and a lifelong interest in jazz.

James then proceeds into both a biography of the three men, interweaving their tales with the progression of jazz from the Big Band era into Bebop and beyond. Some biographers would stop at the point of creation of Kind of Blue, but not Kaplan. He puts the album into perspective by showing the direction the three --and jazz itself-- went after that inflection point. After all, 1959 was also the year of the release by Ornette Coleman of The Shape of Jazz to Come, which announced to the world the presence of what is now known as Free Jazz. At that point, jazz began to move toward the avant-garde in the same way modern Classic Music did in the same time general time period. 

If you're a student of the music, or just enjoy music in general, you might find the book fascinating. And more than a bit sad.

Why sad? Because the history of jazz is littered with corpses, slaves to another mistress: drugs.

Miles also noted that the session was punctuated by the arrival of "all these hustlers and dope dealers looking for Bird [Charlie Parker]"--who kept disappearing into the bathroom, then coming back "all fucked up and shit. But after Bird got high, he just played his ass off."

And there it was, inexorably entwined with the growing fame that this album would accelerate, a coded message to young aspirants, the first two premises of a siren syllogism: Bird does heroin. Bird plays like a god on heroin. Young musicians could draw the obvious, but spurious, conclusion. And to the sorrow of so many, many did.  

 --From 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool, Pages 65-66.

There are times when it was difficult to read about these incredible musicians as junkies who could create masterful improvisational pieces night after night, particularly given my personal aversion to needles.** Knowing also that other jazz musicians of that era such as Dizzy Gillespie or Dave Brubeck eschewed drugs and still performed at a high level turns the triple biography into a tragedy, one that you can see coming a mile away.

Another theme of the book is the racism experienced by the jazz musicians, and how they responded to such racism. You could draw a direct line between the racism experienced by all three and their consequent drug addictions, and from there to their eventual decline and death. 

Still, there's the music. Oh god, the music.

I get it: jazz isn't for everyone. I'm not about to make any converts here, because like, say, an Irish Stout or an India Pale Ale when you are exposed mainly to American Lagers, it takes some getting used to.

Jazz and popular music split a long time ago, much longer than I've been alive, but I've made a living of finding music, books, and games off the beaten path.*** The beauty and tragedy of Jazz is wrapped up in the beauty and tragedy of countless artistic endeavors, and as long as there's music to be made, Jazz will endure. 3 Shades of Blue was a great book to absorb, and I spent way too many late hours reading it before I realized I had to get at least some sleep before I had to wake up for work the next day.

*The band's name was called Kinda Jazzy, in a self-deprecating fashion. They played in at least one jazz club around Cincinnati, somehow managing to be allowed to play despite none of them being old enough to actually drink at the establishment. 

**Yes, I know, I have to deal with needles due to my medical conditions, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

***If you don't think MMOs aren't popular, just remember that WoW had at its peak 13-14 million subscribers globally in a world of 8 billion people. That's less than 0.2% of the global population.

Meme Monday: Goth and Goth Girl Memes

Okay, this Meme Monday came about because I was hunting for something for another post and a couple of goth girl related memes popped up. Well, I thought, I already have a few other goth related memes lying around, so let's roll with it.

Yeah, this was the primary culprit.
From Reddit.

"I am the Keymaster."
"I am the Gatekeeper."
From Reddit.

Here's the second culprit. I guess it's
inevitable that with WoW's current baddie
as an Elven Goth Girl. From Reddit. Again.

Goths aren't limited to WoW fans.
From FFXIV and Imgflip.

The historian in me found this incredibly
amusing. From Facebook.

I've been sitting on this for so long I don't
know where I found it. That being said,
there's a "Goth IHOP" guild on the WoW
Anniversary Dreamscythe-US server.

Even the fake book memes got in on
the fun. From Facebook.

Building a World to Inhabit

One thing I loved about game worlds, whether in MMOs or RPGs or even tabletop games, is that it's a world to inhabit. There are (or ought to be) spaces where people can be free to just do whatever. Some people roleplay, some people goof around, and others just hang around waiting for a queue to pop* while soaking up the scenery or the chat that's flowing across their screen.

For example, about eight or nine months ago my Questing Buddy, her middle kid, and I played hide and seek in Stormwind. I thought I knew Stormwind in Classic Era, but my Questing Buddy had discovered places that people never go to so she could hide in.

Such as this place.

To get to Cut-Throat Alley (above), you have to go through another building and out the back, and from there you can go into another building or two that are completely empty. I'd imagine that some people roleplay in these spaces away from the crowd, but this particular time there was nobody there except for the three of us.

I was curious just how many of those places remained in Retail WoW, so I hopped onto Livona and took a look around. 

Well, whaddya know...

Yes, Cut-Throat Alley is still there, although with flying being allowed in the Old World now it's not quite so isolated as it was before. No, I didn't see anybody else there, but anybody flying by can find the place from above quite easily. 

It's quite remarkable that this remained intact in a post-Cataclysm revamp when so much throughout Azeroth was rebuilt (just look at Hillsbrad Foothills, for example). In fact, the only change to the entire area was that while in Vanilla Classic the building you go through to get to the Alley is empty, in the Retail version the building is actually inhabited with NPCs.

Filling in some of the gaps like this is something that I've occasionally advocated for in the past, to make these old areas feel lived in a bit more. Just go to Silvermoon City and realize just how empty the place is, and you wish that there were maybe three times as many NPCs wandering around than what there are. And yes, I did check months ago when I went to go try to see if I could get XP merely by fishing, and the NPCs are the same as always. There's something comforting about it, but still there could be more Sindorei around the sole remaining major Elven city.**

While I was clowning around with Livona, I took her via tram to Ironforge to see if some of the Dwarven housing is still there. You know, the empty "houses" carved into the insides of Ironforge, typically more well known today as the place where Horde raids hide out in when they invade Ironforge.

Cardwyn and Azshandra have died many times
assaulting the Horde in this exact place.

Again, these areas remaining intact is quite comforting. By comparison, some areas changed quite drastically:

Where'd it go?

What you don't see above is the side area of the Cathedral of Light where the Paladins would hang out. You'd find the trainers there, opposite the First Aid trainer area to my right (and off screen). In a post-Cataclysm world, the now non-functional Paladin class trainers*** are lumped in with the First Aid trainers (now called something else, the name escapes me) in a single side area. Obviously this was done for ease of use, but changing the formerly well-used Cathedral to make interactions quicker made the space feel somewhat less impressive than it used to be.

Of course, you could say that Stormwind in general kind of got the short shrift as far as dramatic changes go because Orgrimmar's visuals are significantly different:

Vanilla Classic...

...and post-Cataclysm. I borrowed the
original Quintalan, still in his Tier 9 armor set with
Quel'Delar strapped to his back, for that screencap.

Despite the changes, it's those little things that go to make up a world, make it feel lived in, and less of a game than a place. Wander into Blackrock Depths, poke around the city of the Dark Iron Dwarves, and you'll see what I mean. When I still ran instances with Valhalla back in Vanilla Classic, a group of us were in Blackrock Depths when someone piped up that Blizzard would never made an instance like this again. "It has that grandeur of a real city and you can lose yourself inside for hours," he said. I can't speak to a post-Mists Retail, but I agree with the sentiment that Blackrock Depths and Maraudon are two huge living places that take a long time to navigate. They bear a closer resemblance to an old D&D module such as the Slave Lords or the Giants modules than a modern MMO dungeon.

*Think of it as a glorified lobby for a multiplayer game such as Call of Duty.

**I think it's the sole remaining Elven city, given that Darnassus is kind of crispy.

***I discovered that the class trainers were non-functional when I visited the Rogue Class Trainer, Syurna, in Darnassus. Because I'm a glutton for punishment.

Red vs. Birds, Part Whatever

I'm only being semi-facetious with that title, because I've had quite a Spring dealing with birds. 

My involvement with birds is mostly two things: don't let them get into the house, and set out seeds for them in the birdfeeder. They don't bother me, and I don't bother them. However, each Spring there is an ongoing battle to keep the birds from building a nest in the porch.

It's the robins that are doing that. Always the robins. 

One year, the robins made a nest in the bush right next to where our cars are parked, and one of them would sit on the side mirror of one of the cars all day long, making noises at it's reflection, and crapping all over said side mirror. I had to hose off that side mirror every couple of days until the baby birds in the nest grew up and flew away. 

However, for the past several years, the robins have been trying to build a nest in our porch, which would prevent us from actually using said porch until they left. (They have a habit of dive bombing us if we come close to where their nest is.) To prevent this, I've turned on the overhead fan on the porch for several days to keep the birds from landing on the fan and trying to build a nest there. This also keeps the robins from building a test on the rafters next to the fan by blowing away the twigs and whatnot.*

This year the robins were unusually persistent, but they eventually failed to build a nest and moved on. I thought that my work was done and I could turn my attention to staining the deck boards I put down last year. The rain had been unusually persistent this Spring, so for much of the past Spring the weather had either been too wet or too cold to allow me to go out and stain the deck boards. Finally, however, the weather turned and I got four days of clear weather for the deck to dry out and I could make a go of staining it.

Then the robins decided to take their revenge by finding a nice perch on the deck and start crapping all over it. 

I was planning on using a deck cleaner/prep solution on the boards anyway, but the appearance of bird poop all over the deck was quite unwelcome. I spent the better part of a day scrubbing the thing down, clearing it out, and then the next day there was more poop to clean off.

After two days of this, I finally said "Fuck it," and decided to stain the deck after work.

Partway through the staining, I finally remembered
to take a photo.

Using a paint pad as opposed to a roller made for a lot less splatter and made the process go more quickly than it had in the past.

The view from the porch after it was completed.
Yes, the screen is ripped, but that's an artifact
of the original screen that enclosed the porch. That's
a story that I'll have to discuss in another post.

I know it's not perfect; I can see the overlapping coats of stain in plenty of spots, but the entire point of this was to protect the wood, not look perfect. I can go put another coat of stain on later, but the current problem is fixed.

Now, I have to work on the stairs, then address the railings. My budget might not permit either to be complete this year, because I had surprise car bills this Spring. I also decided to pass on finishing up my amateur radio license this year because buying ham radio equipment was out of the question too. Oh well, one thing at a time.

*It's not as if the robins don't have trees and bushes to build nests in nearby; there's a bunch of them around.

Time for a Bit of Scrabble

If you ever wondered if you could just go off script and do your own thing in Retail WoW, yes you can.

However, it's not easy.

If you do what I did and deleted the Dragon expansion seed quest because I decided I was going to ignore what Blizzard threw at me and just go my own way...

Guess what happens when you log back in?

Note the lack of a "Close" button or an X in the top right corner.

Yep. You're forced into accepting the quest again. Even if you hit the Escape key, you get this:

I'm really starting to dislike the sound of his voice.

So you have to either accept the quest and then simply ignore it, or you are in a constant state of having to abandon the quest only to have it automatically reappear. Apparently this has been a thing for quite a while, judging by the Blizzard forums:

As of June 2, 2025, although this was posted in 2023.

The best I can do is accept the quest and then untrack it, and that's that. 

When you think about it, simply going off script appears to be an option that Retail WoW doesn't know how to handle. Player driven fun, such as what I described at the end of this post here, is something that Retail WoW isn't really built for. And I'll be honest, I doubt it's very much on Blizzard's mind at all.*

It certainly seems that there's a dual problem in Retail at this juncture with regards to unscripted play: the player base is simply not interested in that, and Blizzard takes the lead in providing things for players to do. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue here as to which came first, but it certainly seems that players are fine with following whatever tasks or events that Blizzard sets out. This puts the onus on Blizzard to provide "fun" for the players, rather than the players taking the initiative to work out fun for themselves. 

I get it: that pendulum toward player directed fun can swing so far that it could be a disaster. Just look at Fallout 76 and how Bethesda was so sure that players would come up with their own content that it simply fell flat on its face when that didn't happen. You need to provide some structure to a game world, and I think Bethesda finally realized much too late that they'd better get some NPCs and traditional quests in there right pronto. Still I wonder if the pendulum has swung so far toward doing whatever Blizzard hands out without questioning whether we, the players, could make up something better to do.

But judging by all the hoops I have to jump through to just go off in my own direction, I don't think Blizzard really wants me to do that either. It's almost as if people who decide to go investigate what's over the next hill are relegated to the Classic side of the fence, where all the malcontents who won't do as their told reside.**

***

As for Livona, I did take a flightpath through Kalimdor just to see another place that no longer exists in the current state of Retail:

Yeah, I think I'm going to not do any more recent expansions. I might be living in the past, but at least there's a damn World Tree here. I can guarantee that Cardwyn would have said "fuck it" years ago and given the middle finger to any starter quests, echoing a certain parody novel...

Just then a soft knocking came at the door.

"Dammit," muttered Frito, roused from his reveries. "Who's there?"

There was no reply save another, more insistent knock.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming," Frito went to the door and opened it.

There on the stoop were twenty-three lyre-strumming nymphs in gauzy pant-suits couched in a golden canoe borne on the cool mists of a hundred fire extinguishers and crewed by a dozen tipsy leprechauns uniformed in shimmering middy-blouses and fringed toreador pants. Facing Frito was a twelve-foot specter shrouded in red sateen, shod in bejeweled riding boots, and mounted on an obese, pale-blue unicorn. Around him fluttered winged frogs, miniature Valkyries, and an airborne caduceus. The tall figure offered Frito a six-fingered hand which held a curiously inscribed identification bracelet simply crawling with mysterious portents.

"I understand," said the stranger solemnly, "that you undertake quests."

Frito banged the door shut in the specter's surprised face, bolted, barred, and locked it, swallowing the key for good measure. Then he walked directly to his cozy fire and slumped in the chair. He began to muse upon the years of delicious boredom that lay ahead. Perhaps he would take up Scrabble.

--From Bored of the Rings by The Harvard Lampoon, page 149.

*I actually do know something about what's on Blizzard's mind, but I'm not allowed to divulge that information right now.

**That's not necessarily a surprise, as were it not for the malcontents there wouldn't be a WoW Classic in the first place. And to be perfectly blunt, if WoW Classic didn't exist, there wouldn't likely be a Dragonflight or War Within, because Retail WoW would have died when BfA and then Shadowlands' poor design and execution caused subscriptions to plummet. It was Classic WoW that kept Retail afloat during those days.