State of The Redbeard, Summer Edition 2026

I spent this weekend at ARRL Field Day 2026, which is put on by the American Radio Relay League, the largest Amateur Radio organization in the US. I'll post more about it later this week, but the TL;DR is that it's a contest/activity that's intended to get hams and clubs out into the field and away from their home locations to try to make as many contacts as they can. Just like guilds in MMOs, some clubs are far more hardcore about this than others, but I'm grateful my club is NOT one of those.

Anyway, I wasn't playing MMOs much this weekend --only a couple of hours playing WoW this afternoon-- so I got the opportunity to take a step back and consider what I want to do with my MMO playing.

Well, the first thing I did was to admit that I haven't really been playing LOTRO much at all since the great 64-bit server migration. My oldest, who also had been playing LOTRO far more than me, hadn't been playing much either. We haven't set up a new Kinship house --and in my case I haven't even bothered with setting up a new personal house-- and all I've done the past few months was to login and wander around Bree for a few minutes at a time. 

This theme also follows what I've been doing in ESO, where I'm so out of practice that when I do go out and about and fight any sort of enemy I almost end up dying. That's kind of embarrassing, given that I really used to love ESO's and GW2's limited ability bars, but that's the reality of me not effectively playing either game over the past 6+ years. 

I'm the plain looking Dunmer to the side.
All sorts hang out around a bank vault, I guess.

That leads me to SWTOR, where I bowed to reality here and decided to cancel my in-game subscription. I've gone from logging in once a week and doing stuff in the Vanilla SWTOR zones to logging in more like once a quarter. I can trace my decline in interest with SWTOR directly to the change that impacted companions' pathing, but I also think that the success of Classic WoW lead to the realization I liked the pre-expansion Vanilla version of SWTOR more than its current iteration. If the dev team were to come out with a "SWTOR Classic" with a pre-Rise of the Hutt Cartel version of the game available to play, I'd be all for it. I still love the Vanilla storylines, and I'll miss them a lot,* but paying a subscription to a game I'm not playing is pretty silly.

Some of the other games I've played in the past, such as Neverwinter and Age of Conan, I've uninstalled from my PC. I'd login, look at my toon for a moment, and just logout. The former I couldn't get into after a certain level (I think it was mid-20s) and the latter is still a buggy mess that requires grouping up to finish the main storyline, and I honestly don't know anybody who plays it anymore. That the talent tree for AoC is so obnoxiously huge --it makes Rift's talent tree look really basic by comparison-- I have absolutely no idea what my options really are. If you've ever heard about analysis paralysis, I met that head-on in AoC.

Speaking of Rift, there's so few players --especially in the low level zones-- that you really can't do much. You can quest in a zone to an extent, but the grouping that is expected to happen in fighting Rifts or whatnot in the open world simply doesn't happen. You need a critical mass of players to do that, and that's just not happening anymore. I haven't tried their automated LFD tool, but given my experiences with automated tools in other MMOs I'm very reluctant to try it and group up for their equivalent of a dungeon.

Like most days when I poke my nose in Rift,
nary a person in sight.

I do login to Star Trek Online a bit, but like LOTRO, I just wander around and maybe take a trip from Earth to Vulcan. If I were subscribing to STO, it would have also been on the block for unsubscribing.

And now let's circle back to the elephant in the room, the various forms of WoW.

At this point in time, WoW is the only MMO I'm actively subscribed to. Well, kind of: I buy 60 days' worth of WoW at a time, which forces me to review whether I'm enjoying myself every couple of months. And so far, that has been the case.

Among the versions of WoW I've played, the Classic Anniversary servers are what I've played the most. I still poke my nose into the Retail and Era servers, but I've not touched the 2019 WoW Classic progression servers since 2023 or so. About the only thing I did do there was to occasionally login so I knew what my toons originally looked like when I recreated them on the Anniversary servers. 

***

So, that begs the question: what have I been doing?

The most obvious answer is that I've been doing non-gamer things: amateur radio, gardening, repairs around the house and cars. And eventually I'll get back to making more outdoor furniture since the weather has finally heated up.

But what about gamer stuff?

Oh, single player games: Civ IV, Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Age of Empires.

There's a few other games scattered in there, but I've stayed away from long games that require a lot of attention, such as any of the isometric RPGs (Baldur's Gate 1/2/3, Icewind Dale, Divinity Original Sin 1/2, Disco Elysium, etc.). I simply don't have the time to devote to those games, and I realized that when I came to the conclusion that my BG3 playthrough was long enough in the past that I can't even remember what I was trying to do at the time. Maybe I'll get a chance to play these longer form games another time --I'm looking at you, Planescape: Torment-- but that's not about to happen right now.

Yeah, buddy. I'm done with trying to figure it
out, so you'll just have to wait and I'll recreate you later.

That's the biggest drawback to video games made over the past 10-15 years or so: the hours to completion has become so large that you'd have to devote a significant amount of your free time to playing them, and that in the end works against my enjoyment of the game. While I no longer have kids around the house, that doesn't mean I'm swimming in spare time. And these 100+ hour video games demand enough of your spare time that it becomes increasingly difficult to justify devoting that much time to a single endeavor. If I read a book about an hour a night, for books not named Don Quixote** that'd take me about 40-50 hours to complete. So, somewhere between 1-2 months. But a game such as BG3 or The Witcher 3, with their playtimes of well over 100 hours each***, can take me a lot longer than that. I think that when I played the original Baldur's Gate back in 1999 it took me somewhere around 4 months, and that didn't include the expansion.**** 

There are other games I do want to play, such as Dispatch and Stray Gods, but I suspect that I'll get so invested in the story that when difficult choices come along (and from what I understand, you're given a very short period of time to make a choice in these Telltale-type games) I'll likely freeze and simply stop playing. The old line from the Rush song Freewill "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice" looms large over me whenever I play one of these games. Maybe its my acknowledgement that there are no objectively good or bad solution in these games that causes me to freeze like that, but I do feel bad for all participants in a video game when push comes to shove and I have to let someone down.

I believe this is one of the "easier" choices
in Dispatch. I mean, you could be a selfish jerk
with the left option or have an overinflated ego
in the mid, or just propel the story forward on the right.
Screencap from Dispatch.

***

Does that mean my MMO playing days are winding down?

Not really. Just like everything else, it evolves around here. I expect that as Fall heads toward Winter my MMO playing will go up a bit as I'll be doing less and less outside. Still, you never quite know around here. Who knows what Microsoft might be up to this Fall? More cost cutting? Same thing goes for all of the other game companies, as the "good times" in the post-pandemic world come to an end.

I guess we'll see.

*You know, I still never finished the Agent's storyline. I got mid-way through Chapter 2 and... Just stopped. That's when the pathing issues kicked in, and I couldn't stand it.

**Unabridged version. The abridged version is significantly shorter.

***And I'm here to tell you I do NOT operate at the same speed as the "average" player; I spend way too much time enjoying everything and contemplating my choices before I move forward. What, you thought that I only did that in MMOs? 

****I was loaned the copy of BG1 that I played, so I returned it when I was finished. The guy who loaned it to me kept pestering me to finish it, but I was like "Dude, I have a newborn at home, I'm working 50 hours a week, and I'm wiped. I'm moving as fast as I can."

I'm Sure There was a Door Here

At the University of Cincinnati, among the often bizarre and quirky campus buildings, is the building that houses the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning (DAAP).

This is a small portion of the overall building.
From the University of Cincinnati.

The old building that existed prior to this one was a nasty piece of work whose windows leaked, the colors were abhorrent, and the thing looked like a design nightmare out of the 1950s/1960s. This new building was completed in 1996, when my wife was still a graduate student at the university. Her office overlooked the new building, so one day she took an opportunity to go explore the place out of curiosity. She'd heard the gossip that the building had no right angles in the classrooms at all and that there were stairs that went nowhere, so here was her chance to see for herself. 

She was unable to confirm that first rumor, although the classrooms she did view certainly had non-standard corners in them,* but in a way she did confirm the second rumor. She followed a set of stairs down to where she thought it would lead her to another floor, but much to her surprise when she opened the door it led directly outside, locking behind her so she couldn't get back inside. I'm sure that someone will point out that technically speaking the door DID lead somewhere, I'd argue that a one-way ticket outside is not what most people have in mind when they mean "somewhere".**

I got to thinking about my wife's experience with that building when I began thinking about design goals for dungeons in World of Warcraft. This came out of previous post, when I pointed out the vendor just outside of the exit of The Deadmines' dungeon. That exit from The Deadmines is designed to be a one-way exit, as when you leave you're immediately dropped down a wall to where you simply can't re-enter that nice, swirly dungeon entrance. That's by design, of course, so that you don't skip all of the dungeon just to go to the end. 

Likewise, there's other dungeons that if you run right up and engage the final boss the entire area of trash mobs comes running and will beat you to a pulp. The most obvious examples are Scarlet Commander Mograine and High Inquisitor Whitemane in the Cathedral portion of Scarlet Monastery and Eranikus in Sunken Temple, although I believe it also happens with Emperor Thaurissan in Blackrock Depths. I have never "poked the bear" with Thaurissan, but I've been in the other two instances where someone pulled early either by accident or on purpose.

Yeah, this entry into SM: Cathedral ended
about as well as you'd expect.

When you think about it, those examples emphasize a dungeon design that reflects the dungeon as a "real place": when a boss is attacked, everybody comes running to defend the boss. Other parts of that design philosophy are evident in these Vanilla instances, such as:

• The tendency to not have a single pathway through a place.*** Sure, there's a single path through the various Scarlet Monastery wings and The Deadmines, but Scholomance is an actual house with multiple levels while Blackrock Depths and Stratholme are actual cities with no truly defined pathing.
• Dead ends with no real purpose other than to make a place feel "lived in". Think of the "living quarters" in Blackrock Depths, where there may be some mobs present but they really don't have anything there other than actual beds, dressers, etc.
• Instances buried deep in an external area. Deadmines, Razorfen Downs, and Maraudon are the most obvious examples.
• Instances that have a wide range of enemy levels, so they're designed to be returned to as you gain levels. Uldaman, Scarlet Monastery, and Maraudon are the most obvious examples, although Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire also qualify.

***

This also jogged my memory because of my running some of the TBC instances on the Anniversary server and how much the design philosophy had changed from Vanilla to TBC. Gone are the multipath instances; all of the instances have a single path through them (although it could be argued that The Steamvault has multiple paths to complete the first section that opens up the last portion) with the pathing itself cleverly disguised by twists and turns to hide the single path through the instance. While there are some dead ends to the instances, there are far fewer of them than in Vanilla****. The instances themselves are easily accessible via the main entrance, except for the few endgame instances that require a key to unlock, but even then if someone else has the key you can still enter because they can unlock it for you.***** Finally, the instances in TBC are designed with a specific level range in mind; there's no wide range of enemy levels to be found in a single instance of TBC.

Naga... Nazis... Same difference: I still hate them both.

The change in design philosophy not only highlights the change in instances being less of an immersive RPG experience and more of a stepping stone, but also a change that emphasizes the desire of players to rerun instances, looking for specific gear and drops (and in the case of TBC Classic and later expansions, reputation/renown). Even I'm not immune to rerunning instances, because if it's fun I'll do it again. That's why I still go visit Blackrock Depths so often; it has NOTHING to do with hunting for the Hand of Justice drop that has eluded some of my melee toons for years. 

(Lies! It's all lies, I tell you!)

But still, the shrinking of size and time spent in an instance is somewhat secondary from my perspective because there's less of an opportunity for exploration and immersion while inside an instance. Of course, you'd need a group conducive to such a thing, but even wandering around solo in an instance like I did in the Vanilla dungeons back when I first began playing in Wrath on my first max level toon was quite an experience. 

***

You know, back in 2014 when I was finishing up my original time with Retail, I spent some time in some of the Wrath instances, soloing them just to see what I missed when followed the group (which followed the meta). What surprised me the most were some of the intro areas in the ICC 5-mans that I never encountered, particularly in the Pit of Saron, because there was a specific path all groups took when running the instance so I never knew about other parts of that big open mining pit in the beginning. I didn't feel cheated, exactly, just disappointed. 

That being said, even I can get sick of a place. I remember doing the Loremaster achievement back in 2010, and to complete that it mean I had to go into some instances such as Stratholme and Sunken Temple so many times I got sick of them. Given that you had no in-game maps available, especially for Sunken Temple and the two Blackrock instances, it was an eye-opening experience getting lost to the point where my head hurt. It was at that point that I wished that those instances had modern LFD equivalents. But as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for...

*Fun fact: professors don't like it if you wander by the classroom they're lecturing in and peer through the door. I discovered that one the hard way, although the first time I found this out was in grade school, when I was picked up early by my dad to go to the doctor for an allergy test (the kind where they prick your back about 20-30 times and smear different allergens on the open cut to see which ones you're allergic to). Leaving my grade school, he made a wrong turn and instead of going toward the exit he went toward a 5th grade classroom. I tried to stop him but he ignored me and opened the door, only to find himself the target of the ire of one of the nuns. I wanted to melt into the floor.

**Apparently the architect of the building, Peter Eisenman, did have a stairwell that lead nowhere --as in it ended at a wall-- in the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. 

***Yes, the player base has created their own optimal pathing through a lot of these instances, but you're not locked in to a very specific path in the same way as The Deadmines or the Scarlet Monastery wings are. 

****And they're almost non-existent in Wrath and what I remember of Cataclysm instances.

*****I think this is even the case in Karazhan, the intro 10-person raid in TBC. At least my friends seem to think so, because they've made it plain that they want me to join them in a Karazhan run. But let's be honest, they'd essentially be carrying me because I have quest greens and a few low-mid level instance drops among my toons.

My Not-So-Secret Spot

The other day, when I mentioned that I'd found another fishing spot in Retail and posted this pic...

Shintar of Priest with a Cause (among other blogs) asked me where it was. Well, it was here:

See that circle in the bottom of the map of Westfall, slightly left of center? That's where.

That's the location where, if you come out of The Deadmines, you'll see a dock off to the left, and a vendor there who also sells some cooking recipes. That vendor has remained in place through the Cataclysm reworking of the zone, and he's a handy person to have around if you want to keep questing out here (or running DM again). I suppose you could consider him a vestige of the original Westfall, but since I knew you could stand on the dock and fish without being interrupted by any mobs, I figured it was a good place to try out.

When I went into the Lion's Pride Inn to park for the other night, I was greeted by a disco ball. 

Yes, really:

Told you so.

That's when I decided right then and there to go try my spot in Westfall.

The run there was pleasant enough, and I learned something about the leveling environment in Retail: while the mobs scale up to match you while you're out questing, they also scale DOWN.

Or at least I think they do.

You see, I expected the mobs out there to be in the mid-teens, like they are in Classic, but every mob I encountered on the run out there was L12, just like me. Especially the ones over by the Lighthouse, which in Vanilla Classic are L17-L18. But since they were L12, it was a piece of cake to run over and not be jumped by mobs coming from over the hills after me. 

The thing is, I'm not sure with the level squish if what the actual level is out here, but you know, it didn't matter in the end. I was able to get to my watering hole without incident. So I settled down to fish with nary a soul in sight, and Gen Chat was blessedly silent.

When I logged in yesterday to take a screenshot of the map, I was really surprised when I was logging out that I noted some telltale signs of Paladin activity. Sure enough, there was someone out on the edge of my vision, killing mobs:

Unlike some other servers, on Moon Guard it seems I can't have the entire zone to myself, but at the same time, at least they're not in my business or anything.

What If Everybody Else Was a Bot?

I spent another hour last night fishing in Elwynn Forest. Not a lot going on last night, for the most part...

Except for that guy who literally flopped in the
water there, stayed for about a minute, and then
flew up and away.

And that one Hordie trying to pretend he's not
really there.

Oh, and there were people griping about duels and doing the same old "anything you can do I can do better" refrain, although here it's female toons beating up on male toons.

I was only partially fishing, as I was watching a few videos with interest, such as Pointy Hat's discussion of the D&D setting Ravenloft, its history, and the new D&D splatbook Ravenloft: The Horrors Within.*

Antonio Demico does a great job with his videos, and even this old D&D player learned a thing or two about the most well known Horror implementation in D&D.

But really what captured my attention was this video by Angelikatosh:

I have advocated for more NPCs in-game in the dead areas of Azeroth, but the concept of a WoW private server populated by ONE real person and over a thousand bots generated using Deepseek is taking things to a completely other level. 

And while I share Angelika's concerns about how this will impact our ability as humans to interact with each other, I do wonder whether we're already at that point. I mean, we're seeing the loss of attention spans and issues interacting with people of the opposite sex already**, so this is just a natural extension of those initial problems. 

It does remind me of my parents demanding that I turn off the television and go outside to, you know, go play. Sure, it could also mean interact with people, but I also spent significant amounts of time roaming the woods near our house by myself, riding my bike to play video games down at the local Kmart, or going to the library or the bookstore down the street. All of these activities were solo, but a few of them were at least out in the world where while I wasn't interacting with them directly, other people were present in the background. 

So, I'm not sure what to make of these private servers that people have cooked up. On the one hand, it could be fun having a thriving game world with more realistic NPCs, but on the other it could also be a prelude to a real life Westworld.

Oh, and for the record, I think I've found my new favorite spot to fish in Retail's Old World:

*I kept wanting to correct him that it's THE WAR WITHIN, but that's a "me" problem.

**Although to be fair, part of that stunted development could be laid at the feet of the pandemic.

Finding My Happy Place

The last time I did something other than be a passive observer in Retail was about a month or two ago, when I got a toon to L12 over the course of an evening. Still, it wasn't an urge to actually do much of anything, but kind of just sit around doing the modern equivalent of "nothing": fishing.

I haven't fished in Retail since that time back in 2024 that I'd speculated whether you can level while fishing in the same manner that you can gain XP by gathering ore and herbs.* It had been a while, and my fishing experiment back then was limited to one of my old Horde bank toons and a visit to the pond just outside of Silvermoon**, so I figured why not go fishing at the pond near Goldshire? 

If there's one thing I've discovered about fishing in Retail, it's that you have to pay attention to the mobs near you. You can't simply outlevel them and their aggro radius then shrinks to nothing; that'd be too easy. No, you have to find a spot where you know the mobs aren't going to be close enough to aggro you as if you were either at or slightly underleveled for the area.

Hence the pond outside of Goldshire. 

If it were Classic, as soon as possible I'd be over at the creek near the logging camp for the peace and quiet, but some of the mobs there do wander close enough to the Alliance guards near the road that I'd have to pay attention rather than simply relax, so the outskirts of Goldshire it was.

Of course, that did come with some risks. 

Such as dodging a bunch of Horde who'd decided to drop in and say hello...

I guess they wanted to have some fun too...

And then once I arrived at my spot, I discovered that I hadn't trained fishing yet...

This is after I "trained" Classic Fishing.

The old system still found in Classic WoW is really simple: line go up. Once you reach that maximum for an expansion, go train and you can make the line go up even more. This new system? It confuses me, and no amount of explanation can soothe the disquiet in my soul that says "nothing in this game matters except where they want you to be."

At this point, why don't they simply have a "Train Fishing" selection to train the skill itself, and eliminate the leveling process entirely? The cost in gold is absolutely minimal*** so why not do away with it entirely for the secondary skills in the same way they eliminated weapons training in Cataclysm, over 15 years ago?

But I digress.

Once I trained Classic Fishing, I then had to actually find the skill to add it to my bar.

It's not where it usually is in Classic.

It's in its own separate selection button. Before
anybody says that it makes sense this way, I'd
like to point out that the option above this one is
still called "Spellbook" even though those selections
have absolutely nothing to do with spells at all.

Okay, after having found the Fishing option and added it to my bar, I had to go back to the vendor and acquire a fishing pole, then return to my spot. Again, the Horde made it entertaining, because I was obviously not flagged for PvP**** but they did try to encourage me to do so by waggling in front of me. If I were truly a new player, that would have freaked me out in as much the same way as it did back in 2009 when an Alliance max toon found me while questing in Tirisfal Glades on the Stormscale PvP server and weaved around me to the point where I simply hearthed out of there. But now? Eh, no big deal. And besides, if I'd have given them a few rude gestures that might have encouraged them to follow me.

I finally arrived at the dock once more and began fishing.

I spent a good half an hour just casting and relaxing. Of course, the Horde did try to intrude a bit...

The fighting got close enough that I even acquired a Moonkin buff...

Is this a global buff that is proximity related?
I obviously wasn't grouped with anyone, so I did wonder.

And once in a while an Alliance toon just popped up next to me, curious as to what I was doing, but since I never got a whisper or an emote I ignored them, and they went away.

Were it not for the ongoing PvP just next to me, I'd say that it was fairly quiet overall, and that suited me fine. I might level this toon a bit more just so I can go over to the dock in the far SW of Westfall (assuming it's still there) and fish there, because it's not only out of the way but also far enough from any mobs that they're not going to crash my party. At least I hope so.

*Spoiler alert: you can't. Fishing does not grant you experience in Retail.

**Saying you're visiting Silvermoon is now as complicated as visiting Dalaran. If I'd a dollar every time I saw somebody I knew on BNet playing Retail being in "Eversong Woods" or "Silvermoon" and thinking they were starting a new Blood Elf, I'd have paid off the mortgage on my house. 

***See how my L12 toon without any amount of trying at all has almost 5 gold? If this were Classic, you'd be lucky if you had ONE gold by the time you went to Westfall.

****Or warbands or whatever they call it now; it'll always be PvP in my book, because it's pretty self-explanatory.

EtA: Corrected grammar.

Normalcy in Goldshire

I believe I've mentioned a few times that I have some low level toons on Retail WoW's Moon Guard server. For the most part I've done some basic questing with them, mainly clearing the Starting Area and the adjacent First Zone. In the case of  questing close to Stormwind, that means interacting with quest NPCs in Goldshire.

So, when I logged into one of said toons that I'd last parked at the Lion's Pride Inn, I actually got a whisper directed at me. 

In Retail, by default if you get a whisper it pops up in a separate Chat Tab, so I didn't notice it at first while I waited for my PC to catch up with all the toons in the immediate area.* But when I did, I got an existential sense of dread. After all, the last time this happened I got some pretty explicit queries**, but I figured I ought to at least look at what was said.

That was... normal.

It was unusual in that it was an actual normal whisper. So I replied:

I think the person misunderstood that I actually was parked there due to quest turn-ins, but it could be worse.

At least somebody was looking out for the lowbies on Moon Guard...

*I've discovered that it takes about 5 seconds or so for all the toons in an area to appear on my screen when I've logged into Retail. I get the impression that the engine is polling the server for everyone in the area, and that it's not exactly a very swift response. My current internet connection is 600/600 mb, so there's plenty of bandwidth for items as simple as that, so I suspect the engine for this is a wee bit unoptimized, especially since Classic WoW does not have those problems.

**No, not the ones I actually posted here on the blog. The ones not published here were a wee bit more direct and rated "M for Mature".

EtA: Added an extra "*" to clarify a statement about toons appearing after a login.

Now Here's a Pertinent Question

I haven't watched Wowcrendor much the past decade or so, because I'd just not engaged with Retail WoW much since Mists. However, something caught my eye today, and I thought I'd share.

He posted it yesterday, and it can be turned into a broader question about MMOs in general. 

Why do we login to these games and play? Is it inertia, friendship, curiosity, addiction, the goal-oriented nature of things, or something else?

For me, I'm not exactly sure why I login. 

Does that sound strange to you? It sure does to me.

I mean, I may chat with my friends group on the WoW Anniversary servers, but I don't actually play with them. They'd all reached max level ages ago --and some have multiple toons at max level-- while my own toons are L66-L67. And I've already decided that once ny toons start reaching L70 I'm going to probably not play them much at all and instead play other toons. Perhaps that's borderline insanity to the average Anniversary server player who's got multiple raids already under their belt, but I'm kind of happy that I've never pushed myself to that route. Hell, I probably won't even get epic riding at all on any of them*, much less flying. But getting that stuff isn't why I play. (At least I know that much.)

Maybe it is exploring the world that I'm attracted to the most. When I get on LOTRO or SWTOR, I spend more time just putzing around and looking at places than anything else. ESO is the same way. I can engage at my own pace without worrying about catching up with the Jonses or feeling like I'm missing out. I also did a ton of simply exploring places my last year of playing Retail back in 2013-2014, because the Battlegrounds only made me angry and most people I'd known had quit the game. It was pleasant; empty, but also pleasant.

I think I'll turn the question over to you, the reader: What's your reason for playing?

*One L67 toon, my Shaman, doesn't even have "basic riding", because she's got Ghost Wolf form. Sure, it's not as fast as basic riding, but it's free and it's an instant cast spell that has gotten me out of jams numerous times in the past.

Wanted: A Living Breathing Instance

In the MMO world where it seems that speed (and loot) is king, my fondest memories of dungeons/instances are those that simply feel alive.

I've made my feelings pretty clear on how game developers simply don't make instances on the size and scale of a Blackrock Depths (Classic WoW) or Garth Agarwen (LOTRO) anymore. Instances are now designed as bite-sized chunks for a quick dopamine rush, where the fun is less an experience of an epic place but more of a test of skill in your speed at completing the instance. 

I was thinking about this last night when I responded to Kurn's blog post from Sunday, in which she asked what was people's favorite Classic WoW instance. While I ultimately chose Deadmines as my favorite because of its status as a gateway drug (and the conclusion of the main Defias story throughout the Stormwind territory), I have to give plenty of props to the "big guns" of Classic WoW instances: Stratholme, Blackrock Depths, and Blackrock Spire.

By comparison, Scholomance is a short instance.

Compared to modern instance design, those Classic WoW instances --well, most of them save for Dire Maul and Scarlet Monastery-- are gigantic places that were meant to be living, breathing locales. The devs took their cue from RPGs and the big dungeons found in tabletop games, such as Expedition to the Barrier Peaks or The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and created expansive places to explore. Yes, you had to make multiple forays into a lot of the instances to complete quests --not just for loot-- and more than one of them were informally gated by level difficulty, such as Uldaman, where if you did the early portion at-level you'd find yourself vastly underpowered at the end of the instance. 

Over time, however, these strengths of the older instances grew to be looked at as less than a key feature and more of a bug, and were consequently smoothed out of dungeon design. I suppose you could say that as MMO design focus changed from the leveling journey to endgame raiding, instances grew to be looked at as a stepping stone for the player. With the introduction of timed challenges (Retail WoW's Mythic Plus) and perpetually increasing difficulty modes, instance design is now far more about the mathematical and skill-based exercise of speed and precision rather than the integration into a game world. At that point, instances have grown to be looked at as an endgame in itself, complete with a story-mode (with or without AI-assisted NPCs) all the way to a perpetually increasing challenge mode (Mythic+). 

***

For all the speculation of a Classic Plus to Vanilla Classic WoW, and for the record I am still highly skeptical that a true Classic Plus is coming*, one of the hallmarks of anything that would classify as Classic Plus would have to be a return to grand, sprawling instances. If Blizzard were to put all of the Classic Plus content after the Naxxramas raid, then the vertical progression would kill off any real sense of a Classic Plus. It would just be an alternative to the official WoW timeline but keeping all of the problems contained therein. 

Of course, I am in a pretty small minority here, because the popularity of the modern instance design speaks volumes. When most people talk about Classic Plus, they speak of "NOT the official timeline" rather than "more stuff for the leveling journey" in Vanilla. It's a reaction to how things are now and deciding that taking another fork in the road is a better idea.

From  the Star Trek: The Next Generation
episode "Relics". (via Tenor).

Answering the question "What does Classic Plus mean" will go a long way toward understanding what Classic Plus we might get, and knowing the Blizzard of today I'm not sure I trust them to answer it in a way I'd like. 

*I believe that it's equally likely that Blizzard would announce the ability for people to purchase their own private server software so they can host "official" Vanilla WoW versions. Blizz might even allow those purchasers the ability to manipulate some things, such as difficulty levels and buffs/debuffs to players and mobs to make the experience easier or harder. If there's one way to kill off the private server market, it's that.

Um... Excuse Me...

I wasn't exactly expecting to post anything today, but this dropped in my Inbox...

From an email from May 7, 2026.

Okay, I get it: Blizz wants to sell you a statue of Dalaran, the floating city version. (Old time Warcraft RTS players would argue that's not the "real" Dalaran, but I digress.)

But. "Azeroth's Greatest City"? 

From Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.
(Meme from Yarn.)

I believe it WAS Azeroth's Greatest City, but not anymore...

The Joy of Random Encounters

It's kind of strange how fast I'm leveling on the Anniversary servers given that I'm not actively trying to slow it down. I'm not trying to affect how I play, either, it's just happening on its own.

"If I could walk on water..."
I'm sure Eddie Money never thought of this...

Of course, this is all relative. Being at L51 right now in late March, about 1.5 months after the Dark Portal opened on the Anniversary servers would be considered frightfully slow if this were Retail WoW or even among those who wanted to raid on the Anniversary servers, but compared to how I've leveled in the past* it seems extremely fast.

I'm doing this while still finding the time to just do stuff I find interesting.

The other day I was heading south from Desolace to the primordial forests of Feralas when I came across a Blood Elf Hunter well under the average level for the zone. She appeared to be heading toward Camp Mojache, the Horde base in the center of the zone, which I can completely understand. I personally would have approached this from the east, where the lower level mobs for the zone were, but I can't assume that this player would have known that. 

So anyway, she was riding south and I passed her not too far away from the Ruins of Ravenwind when she'd paused for a moment. For some reason my Spidey-sense went off and I swung the camera around just in time to see her get attacked by a bear out of the brush. She was Horde, but she was also about 8 levels under that bear that jumped her. 

I quickly realized she was in deep trouble, so I went back and attacked the bear, ripping threat away from her and dispatching the bear in short order. 

What to do now? 

Well, I switched back to ghost wolf and escorted the Hunter all the way to Mojache.

I love the name Callindaria. It feels like
a fantastic name for a Sindorei.

At first I think she believed I was waiting for an opportunity to attack her, but eventually she just kept going once she realized I wasn't turning off to go to either Feathermoon Stronghold or Dire Maul. The ghost wolf form isn't as fast as even a basic mount, so when she'd get decently far in front of me she'd pause to let me catch up. When we were close to Ogre camps along the way, she let me take the lead until the danger was behind us.

We passed several other Horde players heading the other way, but nobody turned around to help her along the road. 

Once we got close enough to Camp Mojache where I could see the pair of Tauren guards at the entrance, I stopped and waved goodbye. I think she was confused, as she turned back and looked at me for a few moments, but I sat down and waited until she swung around and rode off toward the base.

"Go on, kid. It wouldn't end well if I got any closer."

It's just little encounters like that, which only take about 5-10 minutes tops, that make my day. I get far more out of a random encounter than any other aspect of an MMO.

***

In other news, I've been a baaad WoW player. 

I have had the music turned off for the longest time; not because I don't like it, but because I listen to other things while playing. Sometimes I'm in Discord, and others I'm just listening to a podcast or other music. 

To be fair, sometimes your encounters in-game don't really mesh with the game music, such as the music for The Lion's Pride Inn not exactly meshing with the reality of Goldshire in Moon Guard.

I sure hope that the pink glow is accompanied
by a healthy dose of Lysol to clean the place.

And there are times when music I find online actually fits much better for my mood. 

Leyna Robinson-Stone is a tin whistle musician on YouTube who has plenty of music videos for the tin whistle. When I became re-acquainted with the whistle a couple of years ago I discovered her work and subscribed to her channel. 

This particular short is a duet with another whistle player,

CutiePie, who also has a a LOT of instructional videos.

One of her posts from over a year ago recently appeared in my feed, and I found her original piece fit the wilds of Feralas incredibly well. 

Going from Eddie Money to atmospheric tin whistle in one post. Go figure.

*Even back in my time on Retail in 2009 - 2014. My first experience on WoW, I literally didn't know any better (and I was leveling a Holy Paladin, so a big strike against me), but my later experiences were leveling to pursue different goals that were most definitely NOT optimal. Nobody goes leveling via Battlegrounds thinking it was going to be quick and easy.

This'll Be Your Big Chance To Get Away From It All

Outside of checking out a few cities in Retail (as seen in the previous post), I took the past several days off from playing WoW.

I'd like to say that I had projects that had priority over any video game playing, but that wasn't the case. I simply didn't feel like logging in and playing on my Alliance toons. I did check the bank alts a couple of times to make sure I wasn't losing anything via in-game mail*, but beyond that, I didn't do much.

This is but one page of my "junk" mail.

This sort of break is a necessary part of any endeavor, and because I have no external pressure to complete anything in-game** I can take as many breaks as I need. This was something I sorely missed in 2021, and I fully intend to take advantage of my lack of commitment right now.

So. 

What have I been doing?

Thinking about this...

No, this is not my house. From a
reviewer at The Home Depot's website.

Yes, it's creeping toward gardening season, and I've already obtained some seeds for this year. And this year, I'm actually going to put in a couple of raised beds in the backyard so I can plant a vegetable garden in the yard, the first one since the mini-Reds were little. (Here's to hoping the deer won't be that hungry...)

Outside of that, I've just been taking a mental break. Goofing around, doing this and that, and catching up on some of my writing.

By the time this posts I might be back into WoW, but whether or not isn't that great of a concern. What's important is that I enjoy what I'm doing.

*If you're like me and have far too much accumulated junk for a bank alt or two, you just move stuff around via in-game mail. In WoW at least, you have 30 days before the mail (and attachments) returns to the sender, and then 30 days it can sit in the sender's inbox before it's automatically removed. So, if you keep up with juggling in-game mail, you can move a ton of stuff around.

**Relatively speaking, of course. My friends group would want me to get to Outland and level faster --it's not quite so overt right now but it's one of those generally understood things-- but I'm being my contrarian self right now and am actively resisting that.

Some More Exploration

I suspect that I'm the sort of player that Blizzard likes to pretend doesn't exist. Or, if we do exist, my sort of player is in such few numbers that they don't pop up on their activity data in a meaningful way.

I mean, I prefer visiting this place in Retail:

I think there might have been a toon or two around here,
but I didn't poke my nose into the bank area so wasn't certain.

Or this place:

Running around on March 8, 2026, I was literally
the only player here.

Or this place:

Nobody here either.

Here's the screenshot that shows I was in the
Cataclysm version of Theramore, not the Mists
or later version. Those tanks only appeared in Cata,
and if you got through Mists and the Event, there's
just rubble here. (I think; I never did it.)

There were some new toons I saw at the place shown below, however...

Which is to be expected given that Blood Elves
got an, uh, extreme makeover for this expac. But
this version of Falcon Watch is one of my favorite
spots in Eversong, right next to Fairbreeze Village.

If you're like me, you can still visit the old BE areas all you want without ever having to think about anything post-2007:

I had to manually accept the "catch up" Dragonflight quest so I could hide it from my screen --you simply can't hide it any other way-- and I finally figured out how to turn off the "You HAVE to select a combat specialization" persistent pop-up (HINT: It's buried in the tutorial settings). Now I can sightsee without the constant prodding to go and progress, level up, or just do something other than what I'm currently doing. 

If there's a reason why I'm reluctant to go to Outland in the Anniversary Edition of TBC Classic, it's the constant prodding to "Do your dailies!" once you reach max level. Not by the game itself per se, but by everybody else in the game. And once Quel'Danas opens up in probably September or October, there will likely be people loudly banging a drum to do the Quel'Danas dailies (to unlock more content) wherever you go. It's as if in the carrot vs. stick argument on how to get people to do things, Blizzard prefers using the carrot while the player base uses the stick.

***

This expac-sized phasing in various locales, which is what it really is when you break it down, demonstrates that Blizzard could bring back the pre-Cataclysm Old World into Retail if they decided to make an effort at it. They wouldn't get the Classic crowd to return to Retail, because the elephant in the room is that the Classic crowd prefers the gameplay of pre-Cataclysm WoW, so the only people a pre-Cata restoration would service are those Retail players who want to go back to see the early days without losing all of the conveniences and gameplay of Retail WoW. And as my explorations demonstrate, there's almost nobody in Retail who's interested in the Old World anyway.

This does make me wonder just how much longer some of these old zones will remain active and visitable. All the processing power and storage involved in these areas that nobody visits do cost the Blizzard Division of Microsoft a certain amount of money, and if push came to shove I could see Blizzard deciding as a cost-cutting measure just going ahead and archiving these old zones to be spun up when they put on a special limited-time event. 

I can't keep these areas alive just by visiting, so I'm going to enjoy them while I can. 

***

Oh, and this is just a non-gaming related bonus.

Last week on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, the in-house band (Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine) played with Hozier and Lake Street Dive in a rendition of A Little Help From My Friends...

News and Notes From My Adventures

Alas, Quintalan's hardcore run on the Anniversary servers has come to an end.

RIP...

He made it within a half a level of 20, which exceeded the other two. I knew he was in trouble when I had two Scourge from the Dead Scar on me and I missed 2-3 times in a row on attacks. For the record, the pair of baddies were lower level than me, but when you miss enough times in a row you're going to be in trouble. I'd already used my "Get Out of Jail Free" ability, so when I was at 50% health I faced a decision to either cut and run or heal myself.

I tried healing myself, but I kept getting pushback while casting to the point where I had to try to bolt and run when I was at much lower health. And... that was that.

***

My Enhancement Shaman, Briganaa 2.0, continues to level much quicker than expected. 

That's all relative, of course, because if this were 2021 she'd already be in Outland, but compared to my experiences in the Vanilla version of Operation: Spread the Love she's positively rocketing forward at L36. Part of the reason why she's leveling so quickly is that she has absolutely no problems at all finding groups to get into dungeons with. That doesn't mean I'm leveling using dungeons, but I only consider it when I reach the correct level range for a dungeon and have done enough quests out in the world. Still, being an Enhance Shaman means that tanks love me for the bonuses I can bring to the team, and casters love the Mana Totems I can put down. 

And what's most important is that nobody bitches about whether I'm optimizing myself or not. 

From The O.C. (and Yarn) Remember that show?

***

When I'm not putzing around on the lowbie toons, I've been prepping the L60s for when they go to Outland.

How, you may ask?

Cue Theme from The Andy Griffith Show.

Or this...

Yes, doing quests that I'd left in my Quest Log.

Now, to be fair, I'd have put "Cooking" or "Leveling First Aid" here, but the "Person is Cooking" or "Making Bandages" animations don't look very exciting. (So, they are not here.)

I'm also trying to get all of my professions to their max level --okay, not Enchanting, because if I wanted to do that I'd be stuck in the Old World until November-- but everything else is fair game. Hmm... about Blacksmithing... Uh, yeah, maybe I'll add that to Enchanting.

It works for me, and keeps me from crossing the Dark Portal until I'm good and ready. 

***

As far as Retail goes, Stormwind on Moon Guard is still really empty...

As of last night.

But I did see this little item in my chat window, which amused me to no end...

Considering I was running from Goldshire to Stormwind, I had a good laugh. 

And let's just say that most of the Lion's Pride crowd must be at whatever the new max level is, as they were back. 

No, I didn't take a screenshot this time, and let's just leave it at that. There were... reasons... why I didn't take a screencap.

EtA: Corrected a formatting error.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.