More Surprise Email

Hey, did you know there's some convention going on this week?

Oh, sure, there was some political convention that happened in Dallas the past few days, but I'm pretty sure that there was something out in Anaheim, California. 

Oh look, someone sent me a nice email reminder...

As of 11:50 PM EST on September 10, 2026.

Yes, I too can watch BlizzCon! All I have to do is hook my Twitch account or my YouTube account to Battle.net.

And here I thought they were going to use Discord, since they were wanting me to connect Battle.net to Discord a short while ago.

Was There a Full Moon Out?

I had a distinctly weird experience the other day.

I'd gotten on Neve and was mainly working on things such as leveling Tailoring when I figured that I had enough time that evening that I could try to squeeze in an instance. And by saying "squeeze in an instance", we're talking an hour or two's worth of an instance, such as Blackrock Depths or Sunken Temple. Since I was relatively close to Sunken Temple at the time, I decided to try to get into a group for that. 

Sure enough, being a Mage meant Neve didn't wait long for an invite.

As I was the only one nearby, it was a few moments before I arrived at the Summoning Stone and waited for someone else to appear so we could summon the rest.

I waited.

And I waited.

I also spent some time dancing with a nearby Night Elf.

I took a look at the map, and everybody else was scattered throughout and... They weren't moving.

"I'm at the stone," I announced. "I just need another person here and we'll summon the rest."

Again no response. And no movement on the map.

Finally one person began moving on the map, and they got to Booty Bay, and... That person dropped.

Then two others dropped.

"WTF?!" The remaining person asked.

"I have no idea," I replied. "It was as if nobody wanted to actually travel and they were waiting for somebody else to do it."

It was at that point I just made an executive decision to not bother with a dungeon that night and just spent the evening crafting and questing instead.

And flying. Can't forget that.

Meme Monday: Book Memes

This past weekend my wife and I ended up at a couple of bookstores, at whom I found several items I took photos of and shared with my Questing Buddy. She's a Romantasy fan, so I knew that she'd find them interesting.

You get the idea.

Oh, you want to know what I found?

The historian in me had a field day when I discovered this...

He also has a new book out about
Bablyon, but I'm going to wait for the
paperback edition...

Anyway, that got me to thinking about book memes. I mean, it's technically Meteorological Fall, so I could get away with Fall Memes, but I think Book Memes is a better choice today.

Here's a counterpoint: have you READ HP Lovecraft's
works? From Pinterest.

This is why I don't read George RR Martin.
From @jkcomics.

Ha! I'm absolutely sure that when I finally
start reading the Fourth Wing books, my
Questing Buddy will have this expression on
her face. From Kindlepreneur.

Um, I need bigger walls first.
From Pinterest.

I've mastered this look. From Instagram.

I have been there, only that I reach that point
in the novel around 4 AM for some reason.
From Thunder Dungeon.

Saturday Morning DIY

Saturday mornings are my crafting time.

No, I don't mean crafting in an MMO or any other video game, but in real life.

After I'd outgrown the Saturday Morning Cartoons as a kid and sleeping in until noon for my college years, Saturdays became another sort of video-related ritual.

Our local PBS station had the following television shows on Saturday mornings back in the 90s:

•  8:30 AM - The Woodwright's Shop
•  9:00 AM - This Old House
•  9:30 AM - Hometime
• 10:00 AM - The New Yankee Workshop

For a guy who liked to work with his hands, it was like mana from heaven. 

I'd sit in our apartment, newly married, and watch these shows and dream about being able to work on a house of my own.* Or maybe I'd dream about radio related projects, or even what we'd now consider to be cosplay or renaissance fair related projects.

Yes, I'm the sort of person who likes to do things with their hands.

Those days of the 90s are long gone, but in their own way my Saturday morning craft binging still continues. The only difference between now and then is that I can no longer watch This Old House --the projects are far too expensive for me to dream about-- Hometime's last show aired in 2016, The Woodwright's Shop's last show aired in 2017, and Norm Abrams has since retired from all of the shows he helped shepherd: This Old House, Ask This Old House, and The New Yankee Workshop.

Enter YouTube.

For starters, the late Russ Morash of WGBH Boston and the legendary producer of many classic shows** created a YouTube home for all of The New Yankee Workshop episodes. They've been able to upload a ton of them, upscaling them and utilizing AI to correct and improve the visuals, so that they're in as good of a condition that they can be at this time. Some of the videos were on videotape that was in poor condition, so the work performed on them is quite amazing.

The episode shown above was the inspiration for a lot of my feverish work on what a grill cart of my own should look like. I will be making some changes to the design, notably the wheels so that I don't necessarily have to lift up the cart any time I want to move it around, but the basic design will remain the same.

There are other creators on YouTube who regularly post on Saturdays (or Fridays so that I watch them on a Saturday morning) who scratch that "maker itch" that I have. People such as Shara McCuiston of Shara Woodshop Diaries...

And Brad Rodriguez of Fix This Build That...

both of whom give off real engineering vibes to me when I watch their episodes. 

You get the idea here: I get some interesting ideas as well as some tips about how to create things from a wide range of creators and topics. Shout out to Bernadette Banner for her videos that are more inspiring and amusing than anything else, because I don't have even a tenth of her design and seamstress skills...

And to Max Miller who intersects his interest with history with his interest in cooking with Tasting History...

*Of course, once you own a house you end up doing a lot more involuntary work than actual projects meant to improve the house, but I was in blissful ignorance of that reality.

**Which includes Julia Child's The French Chef and Crockett's Victory Garden.

A Short Diversion into IT Space

Allow me a diversion from anything gaming or geeky related to dealing with one of my jobs around the house: the IT guy.

My wife's PC has been having a strange symptom: her PC won't go to sleep. When I try to find out why, I discovered that her Sleep option under the power icon simply isn't there. Since there's no Sleep button, it doesn't time out and go to sleep at all.

I've been chasing this down for a while now, and after diving down the rabbit hole of Microsoft forums and Stack Exchange and all sorts of other places, I think I've figured out what's going on.

And, naturally, it comes down to AMD.

Unlike my PC, which has an NVidia GeForce 3070, she has an AMD Radeon graphics card. That distinction is important here, because on my PC I have it set to inform me when new NVidia drivers are present while my wife's PC automatically installs new Radeon drivers. That's mainly because NVidia has a history of having some janky driver updates, and I figured that if I didn't want to get involved with being the IT guy even more than I already am I'd just let it roll on her PC.

Well, as it turns out, if the AMD Radeon drivers get too far ahead --version-wise-- of the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, then the Adrenalin Edition craps out and the Sleep option vanishes. If you then go and manually fix the drivers and the version of the Adrenalin Edition, the Sleep option comes back and everything behaves normally. 

It's one thing if the version/corruption issue is strictly AMD's fault, but come on. Why does it affect Microsoft Windows 11 and its freaking SLEEP option? Are you telling me that there's a memory leak somewhere in one of these two areas that's big enough to drive a truck through that's causing this?

/sigh

Meme Monday: Raiding Memes

Yeah, it's been quite a while since I've raided, even in a one-off, but I've got my share of raiding memes I have around. So after my chat with my Questing Buddy the other day, it reminded me about those raiding memes that needed a post.

So here we are.

Can confirm that I was mentally freaking out whenever
that was my job. From Reddit.

My Rogue only got MC hand-me-downs, so
I can confirm this exists. From Reddit.

I have the original around somewhere, but
I kind of liked this updated version.
From Reddit (again). I think I detect a trend.

And yeah, I've listened to raid leads behave
like this. Some of them really do love to hear
themselves talk. From imgflip.

Every time I hear people talk about how easy
Classic raids are, I'm reminded of this little fact
from back in the day. From Reddit.

And yeah, I couldn't resist. Redbubble put
this on t-shirts! From Redbubble and Midsummer1942.

#Blaugust2026

How Much of Raiding is Psychology?

The lions sing and the hills take flight
The moon by day, and the sun by night
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool
Let the Lord of Chaos rule!
--From Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan

My Questing Buddy broached the topic again the other day.

She asked me if I was interested in raiding.

"Somehow I don't think your guild is at a loss for raiders," I replied. Her guild may not be at the top of the pyramid, but for the time they raid (evening Pacific Time, so their 8 PM start is 11 PM here) they're likely one of the top guilds on our Anniversary server. In my experience, top guilds have no problems getting recruits.

Well, my Questing Buddy informed me they have three open slots right now: Shaman, Mage, and Paladin. And, ironically enough, all of whom I had gotten to max level. 

"Even if I wanted to, it would take a lot to get even one of my toons geared enough to not be a carry, and I absolutely refuse to be carried," I replied to the feeler. "And by the time I got geared enough, you'd be on to the Sunwell."*

"Can you blame me for trying?" she responded.

"No, that's fine. It's also that my toons aren't even close to geared for Karazhan let alone any other raids, and I'd have to get pre-raid gear just to not be a carry in that place."

***

I decided to change the topic, and I at least thought it polite to ask how the new raids went with her guild. Those were the first raids that back in 2022 I'd never participated in, because I had to quit progression raiding a week before those raids were unlocked. 

"We're stuck on the same part we were back then," my Questing Buddy replied.

Huh. I wasn't expecting that. "Are you being caught by the same problem that you don't have enough Shamans [in the raid]?"**

"Yes," she replied. She also informed me that people didn't know where to stand and it was becoming impossible for her to heal the tank while everybody else was close by. "We got detailed instructions with [the guild we raided with in 2022] but here it was 'everybody spread out' and people still clumped together."

Oof. Yeah, that hurts. "I figured that since you'd blasted through everything else up to now that this wasn't going to be a problem."

The conversation continued quite a bit, with me hearing some of the same complaints she had back in 2022, and I decided that some things about certain raids never change. Good thing I'm not involved, or it would likely drive me nuts.

***

On reflection, that does bring up an interesting thought about the psychology behind MMO raids and other associated group content: do we all end up falling for the same traps on our first instincts that we then have to overcome by explicit training?

If the idea is to spread out, why do people end up clumping together anyway? Do they all run to the same places? 

Do people always have the same initial reaction to specific raid mechanics, and do MMO design teams make use of those psychological tendencies when designing that content?

I have to think that devs do make use of those psychological tendencies, whether explicitly or not, simply because forcing a player to go against their initial reaction is a more powerful mechanic than just about any other actual mechanic you can throw at a person. Sure, add-ons such as Deadly Boss Mods can give you a warning as to an incoming mechanic, which smooths out the initial reaction, but if you're not using DBM (or aren't allowed to, given your specific MMO) you're pretty much on your own to wrestle with your psychological tendencies. 

The thing is, you can eventually overcome your tendencies if you work hard at it, in as much the same way you can overcome your biases in other areas. Yeah, it's not easy, and I know I have a hard time overcoming my own biases that I grew up with, but I've found in the end that it's worth it to make the effort. As in real life, overcoming your raiding tendencies makes the victory sweeter.

***

There's still one thing that does make me wonder: if everything in group content is readily available on YouTube or TikTok, how does an encounter designer compensate?

Chaos, that's how.

If a boss gets to a special mechanic portion of the fight, they shouldn't telegraph what mechanic they're going to execute. The boss perform should instead perform the exact the exact same way every time ("Let me show you a taste of my power!" or some other thing) but then randomly pick one of, oh, 12 to 15 mechanics to utilize. If the boss does the same thing every time, the initial reaction can be easily overcome to create new psychological tendencies. If, however, you simply don't know what's coming that wreaks havoc with people who like steady, predictable mechanics. Sure, you can just weather the storm, but you pretty much have to at that point. 

Another possibility is to do what's always done, lead with an intro that goes into a specific mechanic as is defined in most boss fights, but have a 30% chance that you get a completely different mechanic instead. "What, you thought you knew me? Guess again!" would make a good tagline to go with that.

These are just starting points, because I doubt that the average player on the Anniversary servers really wants any extra challenges than what's there already. Sure, there are those who push the envelope and there are the speedrunners, but between where my Questing Buddy is and where I am lies the average player, and they really don't need any extra challenges right now.

So, maybe we don't tell my Questing Buddy about these suggestions, okay?

*Sunwell Plateau is the last raid in The Burning Crusade. The second last progression raid tier, with the Battle for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple raids, dropped just the other day.

**Apparently there's a mechanic in a boss fight in the Mount Hyjal raid that pretty much requires you to have a Shaman per 5 person group within the overall raid of 25. For those not in the know, an entire raid is broken down internally into 5 person groups, so a 25 person raid has 5 groups of 5 people each. A 10 person raid has 2 groups of 5 people each. So... a Shaman's totems only work within the group they're part of, not raid-wide. That means that because a shaman's totem is used to counter the boss mechanic, you have to have a shaman per group, so in a 25 person raid you need 5 Shamans.

#Blaugust2026

Me and My Big Mouth

Thursday night I thought the monitor was "back to normal", and so I wrote as much and set it to post on Friday at 6 AM EST.

Then Friday dawned, and after I took care of my overnight work emails, I turned on my PC to play some music and got up to go make coffee. When I came back, the screen was blank.

Again.

Okay, I've seen this one before. I unplugged the monitor, plugged in the old one, and sure enough there was a picture there. I then waited while I took care of some more work (including a few meetings), and tried plugging the power cord and HDMI back into the monitor and turning it back on.

Unlike last time, no dice.

Well, crap.

It was at that point I saw the coax budget for my outside antenna sprout wings and fly away. I took a short break from work, punched up the Microcenter website, and quickly scanned monitors that fit the size I needed. I found a couple of potential options but really struck out on monitor reviews online. When most of the so-called "reviews" looked like they were generated by a couple of prompts from an LLM, I kind of gave up and went to Microcenter over lunch to talk to the staff. 

An hour later and a very nice chat with one of the staff later and I was home with a new Samsung monitor. Yes, it's a "gaming monitor", but it's not one of these $1000 4K gaming monitors.* I just wanted something that is an equivalent of what I had bought 5 years ago, and that was merely entry level gaming stuff, just a bit larger than the monitors I've used in the past. 

So, here's hoping that this thing lasts at least 5 years. It's not like I'm pushing it to the limit or anything, since my hand-eye coordination isn't what it once was, so games with a high dexterity requirement (which also tend to be the ones with the most advanced graphics) are pretty much off the table for me. That makes my gaming requirements modest enough to keep my costs low. Thank goodness.

Now, I have to get used to more vibrant colors than what I've had before, because these newer monitors have better HDR than what I had on my old monitor.

*Far from it, to be honest. Oh, those $1000 monitors looked pretty, but I have neither the money nor the space for one of those. 

#Blaugust2026

A Brief Moment of Panic

Ever have that sudden nightmare that you wake up from and go "Whew!"

Yeah, I had one of those while I was awake.

Last night I took a break from puttering around on the PC and got up for a bio break. I came back, and... the monitor didn't.

Restarted the monitor, and no dice.

"Okay," I thought, "the PC is in a hung state. No big deal. I'll reboot it."

After rebooting, I heard the telltale Windows startup tones, but... still nothing on the screen.

So I shut down everything and waited a minute, then tried again.

Still nothing.

I was beginning to panic, because I've seen what graphics cards cost these days, and if it was the graphics card that was gonna hurt. A LOT.

Stepping back, I decided to go ahead and lug up an old monitor that doesn't even do 1080i (it does 1024x768) but does have an HDMI port, turned it on, and then plugged in the HDMI output from the PC.

Voila! A screen!

Okay, so it was the monitor, not the graphics card. Before I began going down the rabbit hole of pricing out 32" curved monitors as a direct replacement for my current one, I decided to unplug it and let it be for a good 15 minutes. In the meantime I began perusing prices at Microcenter, and for my needs the monitor was going to cost between $200 - $300. It was doable, but obviously something in my monthly budget would have to be pushed out until October.

But first, let's try the monitor once more.

I plugged in the HDMI cable, then the power brick, and...

Whew. At least I don't have to go running to the store tomorrow at lunch.

#Blaugust2026

If You Can't Beat 'Em

I have been going through AI training the past few days. While it's also going on at work, I've been doing some stuff on the side for the better part of a week in addition to whatever I have to take for my employer. 

For the record, I'm not going to comment on anything that goes on at work, as that's neither the point of the blog nor is it appropriate for discussion in a social context. Therefore, I'm going to stick with what I've discovered during my personal explorations and learning while on my home PC, typically late in the evening.

For starters, here's the first thing I asked of OpenAI's ChatGPT when I got the chance:

This is OpenAI's ChatGPT's response to my prompt:
"what is the parallel context blog about". Interesting that
TTRPGs got top billing, but not bad. Definitely
better than an average Google search for PC.

(You knew that was coming, right? I mean, if Google can't find PC, what does ChatGPT say? Just as long as "What does the ChatGPT say?" doesn't end in "The ChatGPT says 'Moooo....'", I suppose.)

The first thing I realized is that you have to approach LLMs such as Chat GPT and Claude like a logic puzzle, or maybe a better approach is that of a programmer. You have to be specific enough and yet frame the query in such a way that the LLM knows how to proceed. 

This is Anthropic's Claude response to my prompt: "what
is the parallel context blog about". Note that Claude asked
a clarifying question that ChatGPT did not ask. And before
you yourself ask, I performed both queries on the two LLMs
within a 1/2 hour of each other.

This is Claude's response after I selected the proper
answer, which was Option #2.

***

The second thing, and to be honest it's the one that bothers me the most, is that when writing queries you have to explicitly tell an LLM that it's okay to say "I don't know". Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I'd expect any LLM to state that up front if it didn't know something, not have to explicitly TELL the thing that it's fine to say "I don't know". To me, that seems to be such a fundamental flaw that I really have to wonder what the devs were thinking when they didn't build pure honesty into these LLMs from the beginning. 

If anything, it should be Law Zero before the rest of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics come into play:

A robot must always speak accurately, and if a robot does not know the answer to a query posed of it a robot should respond with "I don't know the answer given the data provided."

For reference, here's the actual Three Laws that Isaac came up with back in the 1940s*: 

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

***

The third thing is a corollary to the first two, and that's the old adage "Trust But Verify." 

It's pretty much a given whenever someone --especially a salesperson, an executive, or a politician-- opens their mouth to assert something you go and check it, but the way LLMs are designed lend a certain amount of authority to their statements that humans can instantly warm up to, no matter if the statements are wildly inaccurate. 

That feeling of trust that you build out of an LLM is an emotional response, and that is a problem. When you start to trust the LLM, you make mistakes and stop verifying results. That's a pretty bad headspace to be in, because you will get burned. And if you're using that for work or to manage relationships, far more people will get burned too. 

And that's not even counting the potential to have a romantic emotive response to an LLM. This isn't the movie Her or even one of Asimov's robot stories, but real life. But even a short conversation with an LLM can easily show how seductive that is. 

Here's a snippet from a conversation I had with Claude about inspiration. 

NOTE: the "Ha" in my prompt was caused by Claude acknowledging my starting up the app by stating "You're up late tonight." Obviously Claude doesn't know my sleeping habits...

As you can see, Claude not only provided information in a bullet point style, it also presented things in a conversational way; this is the sort of conversation you'd expect at a coffee house or a bookstore in the evening. While the conversation itself is pleasant, it's also friendly in a sort of way that lets your guard down when you ought to have it up for verification purposes. 

It was in that moment I instantly realized the seductive appeal of becoming emotionally attached to an LLM.

"Holy Shit!" I blurted out. Thankfully this was late at night when my wife had gone to bed or I'd have to explain myself. 

***

In the end, I intend to keep moving forward, but I have to remain vigilant to the potential pitfalls here. LLMs can be useful tools, but we shouldn't assign more to them than what they already are. This might be self-evident, but you'd be surprised at what might happen if you're not paying attention.

*Yes, I know, I Robot came out in 1950, but it was comprised of short stories that Isaac wrote in the years prior to that. In the case of the Three Laws, Isaac created them for the story Runaround, which originally was published in 1942. I perused a recent printing of I, Robot at a bookstore and discovered that the references to the original short stories had been removed in the information. Bad move on the publisher's part, if you ask me.

Here's my copy from the 80s.
I originally read a copy from the library,
so that's why my copy is still in great shape.

#Blaugust2026

The Girl from Sevier County

Everyone I know goes away in the end.

--from Hurt by Nine Inch Nails (and Johnny Cash)

I knew this day would come, but it still was a bit of a shock.

Dolly Parton died yesterday at the age of 80.

Here's a message from the family:

I will not say I'm a fan of Country Music; to the contrary, if there's one music I tend to dislike in general, it's Country. Of course there are exceptions, such as some Kenny Rogers songs, but by and large the biggest exception was for Dolly Parton. 

She was something else. I'd call her a force of nature, but when people typically think of that they think of people who went through life like a tornado, wreaking chaos and destruction in their wake. Dolly was most definitely not that. Born into poverty, she rose up to be the person she became, and yet she never forgot where she came from. 

People born outside the US may have absolutely no idea of the impact Dolly had on reading. Through her Dolly Parton's Imagination Library* that she founded in 1995, she put books in the hands of millions of children. The Imagination Library was a book gifting program that mailed a book per month to children from birth through age 5 completely free of charge. Dolly initially focused on her home of Sevier County, Tennessee, but the program quickly expanded beyond that nationally, and then later internationally to include Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia. 

The thing that made this endeavor work was that the gifting was completely unconditional: it was open to all children regardless of family income. Dolly just wanted children to read, to have the chance to succeed in life. 

***

I grew up in the late 70s to early 80s, which coincided with Dolly Parton's rise to superstardom on the pop charts. So yes, I was quite familiar with Dolly. And yes, hitting puberty in the early 80s meant that of course I knew all about Dolly's most famous assets. If you were a boy of that age at that time, there was no way to not know about them.

From Know Your Meme.

Dolly, of course, played up on that quite a bit. 

From The Chive.

Still, she had undeniable talent beyond her physical assets. She was a great songwriter and singer, and on one fateful day back in 1972, she wrote both Jolene and I Will Always Love You. The former is always tied to Dolly, and the latter was re-recorded by Whitney Houston and became a complete smash in 1992.

From iFunny.co.

And that's not even counting Nine to Five or her duet with Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream.

***

Dolly was one of those people who was beloved by everybody. I don't think I've ever heard someone say a bad thing about Dolly Parton, and that's saying something. 

Farewell, Dolly. You had a much greater impact than you may have ever realized.

*The website is understandably swamped right now, so don't be surprised if you have issues accessing it.

#Blaugust2026

The Bastards Won

I never really thought I'd ever get to the point when playing an MMO that I would simply not care about the story. Back in 2010, I was shocked when some of the guildies I knew said that once Arthas was dead they didn't really care what happened next. We were on the cusp of Cataclysm, and I'd bought so completely into the narrative of the story that I was leveling two toons --one for each faction-- with the express intention of exploring the story from both sides. 

How did I go from that level of dedication to now, where I really don't care about the story in any of the MMOs I've played over the past 6 years?

There. I finally admitted it. 

I'd been dancing around this realization since at least 2019 when I explored Vanilla WoW Classic and discovered there was no overarching story to Vanilla. Sure, there were some questlines that were pretty epic in scope, but beyond that there wasn't a Main Story that everybody had to follow. No Shadows of Angmar for LOTRO, no OG three faction story in ESO, no vanilla SWTOR story (and class story), no nothing.

And I discovered I liked that lack of story more than I ever thought I would. 

That's not to say that I didn't think the original SWTOR stories were bad --they were awesome-- or that Shadows of Angmar was epic --it was-- but as time has gone on and I've seen expansion after expansion presented to the player base, I've become incredibly jaded. 

It reminds me of how a band pays their dues by playing in clubs, working out songs through endless rehearsals, and finally gets signed to an album deal and releases their first album. That's great, but then they have to turn around and put out another album that doesn't have the years of polish that the first album did, and frequently that second album turns out to be a bit of a dud. If the band is lucky, they land on their feet and figure out a way to write songs and keep the grind going, but otherwise they're destined for the bargain bin by the third album. 

Nothing that the development team has put out after the initial release seems to meet the quality, story-wise, of that original Vanilla release. Sometimes they come close, which is me throwing a bone to the World of Warcraft Legion fans out there who assure me that the expansion was great, but almost every other MMO out there doesn't reach that initial high point. 

"I don't care what they're yapping about," one player once told me in a dungeon in SWTOR, "I'm here to kill things."

"And get the loot," another player added.

That made me more than a bit sad, because I thought they were missing the point of the dungeon. But I decided that you can't please everybody, so just focus on those who do enjoy what the devs created. 

And here I am now, 15 years later, so jaded with modern MMO stories that I've discovered at this point it's better to simply not care. 

***

Before someone says that the stories have all "gone woke" and that's the problem, that ain't it. That's akin to arguing that the OG Star Trek didn't have a social and political angle to it.* What I complain about is twofold: the feeling that the stories were written by committee, and the belief that for an MMO story to work, it has to consistently be bigger, badder, and the stakes more earth shattering that what came before. 

While I don't have any proof that a lot of the more recent MMO stories were written by committee, I've been involved with enough committees at work and at college that I know how they operate. They try to smooth off the rough edges, build consensus, and remove problematic content. All of these are good endeavors to strive for, but the problem is that what each of those means to the individuals in a committee is quite different. Arriving at a consensus, therefore, means less taking a scalpel to a proposal and more akin to taking a hatchet instead. That doesn't mean I want edgier stuff, I just want stuff that has a singular point of view and a single voice presented as the narrative. 

But you know what committees also don't do? They frequently don't present a case where you have something --or someone in the case of a story-- that you can identify with and root for.

Have you ever done a side quest chain that is really satisfying and has someone you can cheer for and identify with? That's because that side quest was likely written by a single person in charge of a questline or three for a specific zone. The NPCs in the quest chain were people you could empathize with and share a common bond with because they were written with that in mind. There is no main storyline about the "Fate of the World" weighing them down, so their admittedly smaller concerns are more important to them. I know that I have absolutely nothing in common with people who occupy the C-Suite or the places of power in government, so there's absolutely nothing relatable to me with their story. But the guy who cuts my hair, or the Dad I talk to while standing in line at the creamy whip** down the street? That guy I can relate to. I'm not going to be able to relate to a Prince, or a King, or The Head of the Conclave of Wizards, or any other sort of Grand Poobah, because I am not them, and their troubles are not mine.

The other problem, the constant need to go bigger than the previous expansion, is one I've harped on before. I was actually thinking the other day that at least Blizzard tried to not top "Defeating The Afterlife" of Shadowlands when Dragonflight was released, and I do applaud them for that, but then I stopped and went "Huh... When is it that the most powerful beings on Azeroth are considered a downgrade for a storyline?" That is the reality we're talking about with the Dragon Aspects as the central point of the expansion, that their expansion is not quite so over-the-top world ending as just about every other expansion with the exception of, uh... maybe Mists and Warlords?

***

Okay, I've gotten that out of my system. Can I still enjoy an MMO and ignore the story? Yes, I can. I mean, I do fish a bit...

But seriously, I can do it. I can hold my nose in the same way when I accept a quest I personally loathe and then go and do whatever needs doing. 

If I can skip a cutscene, so much the better. If I can't, I'll simply get up and walk away until the cutscene is over. 

I can't even say "Don't let the bastards win" because in reality the bastards already won. I have become like them.

*Free Hint: The original Star Trek did have a LOT to say about society and the politics of our time. If you can't see it, then you're not watching the same show I did.

**It's a Midwestern thing. Although in Wisconsin you get Frozen Custard, in the Cincinnati area you have "Creamy Whip" or "Soft Serve" places. They operate during the Spring, Summer, and the Early Fall months, and they sell various forms of soft serve ice cream. Payment is typically cash only. Some sell burgers and hot dogs in addition to ice cream, but ice cream is the main draw. For the record, one of our favorites is Putz' Creamy Whip:

From Yelp on August 10, 2026.

#Blaugust2026

Meme Monday: Travelling Memes

This past week I found myself on the road a bit. One day I travelled up to Lafayette, Indiana* to me my oldest. Lafayette is right about the halfway point between Milwaukee and Cincinnati, so meeting there for an afternoon is kind of feasible. This past Saturday, of course, I was down in Louisville with my in-laws and my youngest.

And a Mooch.

So, in honor of that travelling, I figured I'd create a Meme Monday out of it.

Uh, no. Traffic says otherwise.
And nice misspelling too. From Pinterest.

It's all relative. I mean, I went through
Indiana on I-74 and I-65, so yeah.
But if I head east from Cincinnati on
US-32, you hit the Appalachian Mountains
before you know it. From Reddit.

I've honestly wondered if Blizz wanted to sell
you on purchasing flying because the automated
flightpaths were so bad. From Facebook.

Then again, just remember that travelling in an
MMO is where the devs want you to go. Not where
you actually WANT to go. From Reddit.

Okay, I laughed. From Pinterest.

And sometimes the journey is almost mandatory.
From Instagram.

*Yes, Purdue University is right next door in West Lafayette.

#Blaugust2026

A Short Sojourn of My Own

Today was busy with in-laws.

Oh, and I got to meet Mooch.

The box behind her is the "if I fits, I sits" box" that she has claimed. I find it kind of funny how cats (and children) will enjoy the box something came in far more than what was inside the box.

Case in point: Calvin and Hobbes.

Amazingly enough, I didn't sneeze or have any other sort of allergic reaction to her. So either I'm getting better at dealing with my feline allergies, or I just got lucky. I'm thinking the latter, but you never know.

#Blaugust2026

Here are Three Things, Pick Two

I sometimes wonder if the "Pick 2" concept has infected gaming to the point where we pretty much expect it these days. 

You know, the "Here are three things, but you can only have two" meme that so prevalent in business these days:

From Reddit.

Yeah, this has been on my mind when it certainly seems that we don't really have that perfect game out there. Companies sacrifice one thing in favor of others, mainly because of cost, and the result is somewhat less than satisfying. 

Look at Mass Effect 3, for instance. The original game had the first and middle parts of the game dead on, but the original ending fell completely on its face. It was so bad that Bioware had to go and do a complete redo of the ending just to recover. 

I can think of previous releases at my job back in the late 90s and early 2000s, where the company threw bodies and money at development but ignored QA issues in the name of trying to get the product shipped on time. I remember sitting in a meeting with all other QA release people, and the suits in upper management kept trying to cajole us into agreeing that the product was ready to ship. 

And it wasn't. Holy hell it wasn't. We even told them innumerable times that it wasn't ready to ship, but they overrode us and went ahead and shipped it anyway after about 2 weeks' worth of crunch. 

Given the foibles of Sony's seemingly endless attempts at creating a live service game, you'd think they would know better, but they don't. They keep throwing jello at a wall, given the teams money and an idea, but never giving them the expertise needed to create a good live service game. Or in the case of Bungie, they had the expertise and money, but not a great idea (Marathon). 

What other "here are three things, pick two" that you can think of?

#Blaugust2026

A Diversion of Sorts

It's been a long week at work, and I'm within sight of the weekend.

Normally I'd be moving forward with getting an antenna set up outside for my amateur radio work, but I'm going to shelve that for a little while.

Why, you may ask?

Because the roof is going to need replacement.

After the storms blew threw here a week ago last Tuesday, I'd wrestled with filing a damage claim on the house. I mean, we had some siding blown off, but I'd recovered them and all that's really needed is that they be put back in place. Still, I decided to go ahead and file a claim just in case there's more damage to the siding than I realized. 

Say hello to the siding section that blew off.
It's about 2' high by 8' wide.

The inspector came here last Saturday and went around the house, checked out the siding and the roof, as well as the small plastic shed that we inherited when we bought the house. It's only 6'x8', and I've been thinking for at least a decade that I'd like to replace it with something big enough that I could actually stand upright inside it, but it was more off in the distant future. 

When the inspector finished, I noted he'd marked up in chalk several places around the roof. I asked him if the roof seemed sound, and he replied that it was. The gutters were also in good shape as well, thank goodness, so I figured that we'd hear about maybe there was enough damage to the siding that we'd get a few dollars out of it once you take out the deductible for our homeowner's insurance.

Imagine my surprise when I got a call from the claims adjuster mid-week that our insurance had deemed four of the six roofing sections* had enough damage to warrant replacement. Now, they did admit that a roofer coming to perform the work would likely want to replace the other two sections as well, and if the roofer could provide evidence of additional damage they were willing to work with the roofer to adjust the claim accordingly. 

Oh, and they also threw in a few hundred dollars to replace the plastic shed with another one.

"Do they even make those any more?" I asked during the phone call. 

"Yes, they do; we checked."

"Huh." That was unexpected.

But since the roof will need replacement, that means that my antenna will have to wait until the roof is done, then I can finish my work up there. I guess that means it'll be late this year, at the very least. 

Now I have to find a roofer that is NOT a fly-by-night group. I've got access to Angie's List, but I'm also going to talk with a few neighbors who have had their roofs replaced in the past several years. The guy who did the roof way back in 2004 has long since retired, so I think that I'm going to have to find someone new.

*Two sections on the house, two on the attached garage, and two on the covered porch.

#Blaugust2026

Time For a Short Catch-Up

I might as well get this out of the way.

As of August 19, 2026.

Yes, if you can count, I got Joan to L70. I was in the middle of the Ring of Blood group quest when she dinged, so I was kind of busy and didn't take a screencap at the time.

If you'll also note from that screencap Neve is at L51 now --and boy have I been dragging my feet with her-- so she ought to reach Outland sometime in late September.

As for what to do next on the Alliance side, I've brought Hoots over and have started leveling her. I realize that the optimal way to level a Hunter is to go and get a Ravager as a pet, but as you're quite aware I march to the beat of my own drummer. In Hoot's case, I probably will not get into very many instances regardless, as I just prefer solo work with her. Good thing, as Hunters are a dime a dozen on the Anniversary servers. Between Hunters and Druids, they make up what seems to be 90% of the gatherers out in the field. 

In other news, for the first time in 2-3 months I logged into Retail.

You don't say...

Of course I just logged in and fished for a bit, but the cry of seagulls and the rolling thunder of the surf was quite pleasant to listen to.

You can tell I'm not serious about doing anything other than fishing because I actually have the "Fishing" command on my main bar (#9). I know that I can move it around wherever I want, but given that I'm not really doing anything else on this toon, why bother? At least she's low enough level that I don't get the "catch up" option when I come back to her after having been away for a while.

Alas, poor Quintalan.

Given that Quintalan hasn't been played since early Cataclysm, so 2010-ish, there'd be a LOT of catching up to do.

From Reddit. Well, and
World of Warcraft on Facebook.

#Blaugust2026

Writing and Re-Writing

There are times when I sit here, writing away, and I have trouble making things click. It's more prevalent when I'm writing fiction, but I've had it happen during regular blog posts too. There's no way around the reality that it really sucks when it happens. 

What drives me bonkers is that I'd write something, decide it really isn't going in a way I want it to, and start over. When I do push through all the way to the end and then go back to edit it, I still end up tossing all that writing for something else. 

I really blame the writing of some 80s era cartoons for some of this. Some of the writing for Voltron, a show my brother really watched but I was kind of peripherally involved with, has shown up in earlier drafts of some of my stories. When I go back and edit and I say "Holy crap does this sound bad! Where did this come from?" I find out weeks later watching some random YouTube video a clip from Voltron or Star Blazers and realize the origin of that dialogue.

For an example, this particular snippet of dialogue took me about 3 weeks to write to where it's in this form. Obviously it's still a work in progress, so it'll likely look different than at this point, but at least I like the flow and the direction of the dialogue.

“Hmmph.” My sister sat down next to me and stared out over the pond. 

 

If she thought I was going to overshare, which was the sure sign of a guilty conscience, she was going to be waiting for quite a while. Still, I figured I’d lay out the one thing that Linna likely most feared. “I’m going to have Zarg do it.”

 “Do what?” She tore her eyes off the far end of the pond to look me over.

“The investigation that needs to happen. I’m not an idiot, you know, and I’m quite aware I’m not healthy enough to do it myself.”

 Linna’s face twisted; not quite disgust, and not quite disapproval. “And you’re going to let her do it.”

“Yes. She knows a lot about the Cult, after all, and people always underestimate her.”

My sister involuntarily glanced over at the slumbering Neve.

“I already cleared her,” I supplied. “What about your Draenei friend?”

“She’s safe as well.” Linna had a long pause as her face went through a myriad of emotions.

“You’re thinking of that place, aren’t you.”

Her expression settled on anguish. “Card…”

“They don’t know her like they do me, so it’s safer for her to do it.” I felt strangely at peace with that admission. I’d always done things myself, and relinquishing the responsibility for investigating my curse was a difficult step to take. It was also going to be quite dangerous, dealing with the Cult of the Damned, but if there was one thing I was confident about it was that Zargala could handle herself. “If you get a chance, can you carry a note from me to Mathias? He deserves to know about what happened here.”

“Yes.” Another pause. “I don’t want to lose you.”

I nodded. “Nor I you. But you have to trust me.”

“You don’t make it easy.”

“My name wouldn’t be Cardwyn if it was.” I looked around. “Carys should be back soon.”

“I told her she could come back when I was done talking to you.”

“I bet you didn’t make sure the other two weren’t snooping.”

Linna stared at me for a moment. “Shit,” she blurted and split.

I heard her footfalls fade, then I turned my focus back to the pond. “Okay, Lewys, I know you’re out there. Come on out.”

There was a rustle in the brush, and a very guilty-looking nephew emerged.

I raised an eyebrow as a smirk crept across my lips. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to explain what we were talking about.”

“But…”

“Sometime later, but not now.” I patted the ground next to me. “Sit.”

He dragged his feet a bit, but Lewys eventually sat down. “Take my other rod,” I told him. “I loaned it to Briganaa, but she’s not here right now.”

Lewys picked up the fishing rod and began casting with me. “Aunt Linna was really mad at you,” he finally offered.

“Yeah, I know.”

“How come?”

“Why does everybody think I’m going to tell them that?” I sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you this much: she was scared.”

“Scared? Aunt Linna?”

“Yes, she was. She was scared of what I might do, because I sometimes do things without thinking. And in our little talk that you so conveniently eavesdropped on, I assured her I wasn’t going to do anything like that.”

“Oh.” He made a face. “This is all hard.”

“Yeah, life is hard. Even when you’re all grown up.”

"That doesn't seem fair."

"It isn't. But I'll let you know if it ever does turn out fair; I think I'd like that every once in a while." 

 

I suppose I ought to have saved an earlier draft to show you what I wasn't keeping, but still I wanted to share a bit about the difficulty I face in writing. It can be a lonely and humbling process, and agonizing over something as simple as this is a guaranteed way to drive me nuts. 

But the thing is, I derived some inspiration from the fact that many famous people --geniuses, really-- agonize over their craft in their own way.

Here's a short clip of Maximillian Schell and Leonard Bernstein discussing Beethoven and what made him a genius. 

Speaking of geniuses...

The fact that Beethoven struggled and agonized over the creation process makes me feel better about my own struggles. Not because I think I'm a genius, but because people of Beethoven's stature struggled to come up with their works of art. And here I am, just struggling to put words on a page that made even a smidgen of sense. 

So many other modern creators, particularly those who loudly proclaim their own genius, loudly trumpet the ease at which they make their creations. Yet I think it is more humbling to see the real struggles people have --and what they have overcome-- that inspires me to try harder. In that case the real genius is perseverance. 

#Blaugust2026