The State of the Redbeard in 2026

Truth be told, I’ve not felt much like writing the past few weeks.

I guess that’s to be expected, since I wrote more posts for the past year (187) than I have at any other year during the blog’s existence while at the same time working on personal writing projects. And that doesn’t even count the writing and reports I put together for work.

While I understand the allure of using tools such as Chat GPT and others to compose for you, I really dislike the lack of control that those tools encourage. While I’ve seen those tools likened to using a car’s automatic transmission or other time saving tools, none of those other tools replace the human as the center of the creative process quite like the so-called generative AI tools do. It could be argued that you have full control over the editing process, but I’ve found from watching people at work that once the AI tools get their hooks in, you begin to simply accept their suggestions more and more without a critical eye. 

That’s the long version of saying that I’m going to keep writing the way I always have been –with me composing at the keyboard— without any reliance upon generative AI in the creative process.

***

As I’ve approached 2026 with some weariness on the writing front, I’ve also come to a bit of a crossroads with my gaming. Perhaps its more of a recognition that my physical skills never were as good as I wished they could be,* and that the reality of retirement being a little over a decade away has lent a bit of weight to my end-of-year musings. 

It’s now four years on after I cheated Death,** and I have found it more of a struggle to maintain my numbers than before. Oh, I still make my numbers well enough, and my doctors are happy with how I’m doing, but I’ve come to recognize over the past 3-4 months that it’s not quite so easy as before to maintain my weight and blood pressure while eating the same amount of food. There are two obvious answers here, to exercise more and to eat less, but I have enough foresight to recognize that there’s only so much I can do before things start to decline again. As one of the Diabetes team members told me, what I’ve got are progressive diseases, and you can only hold them off for so long. Not exactly the most positive assessment of my situation, but probably the most realistic.***

Still, the knowledge that my time is finite has changed what I want out of gaming. I was never one to chase highs from defeating bosses or in PvP, although I’ll freely acknowledge the rush in doing so, but I’ve pulled back from that in general. I get more out of playing with people, enjoying their company, than I get from competing with people. I am less tolerant of drama when it detracts from my long term enjoyment of a game, although there have been times when I’ve thought long and hard about stirring up some crap when I thought some asshat truly deserved it in Gen Chat in an MMO. 

I’ve also become more and more interested in the types of connections that people make within video games. Perhaps that’s been piqued by my own experiences, making firm friendships within MMOs and the blogging community,**** but it could also be due to my fascination with how the RP community operates in Retail WoW (and to a lesser extent LOTRO and FFXIV). 

Yes, yes, I know: that fascination can fuel an unhealthy relationship with… players… in Goldshire’s Lion’s Pride Inn on Moon Guard-US. And I have to admit that I’m still stunned whenever I poke my nose in there by the sheer number of people getting their freak on.***** It’s slightly more normal when you go into Stormwind, but even then let’s just say that there’s always something there when I run through to the bank or the Auction House that makes me go ‘WTF?’

Yeah, this certainly did.

And run into a light pole, too.

*CLANK!!*

I’m not about to deny people their fun, because I’ve lived the Satanic Panic and am extremely wary of people claiming moral authority and informing me what I can and can’t do, but I do wonder about the connections we make in games, and where some of these more extreme personal expressions fit into the gaming spectrum. 

Definitely puts a crimp into me working the AH.

For all the people who brush those weighty concepts off, saying “Nah, Bro, it’s all just joking around,” I think they sell themselves short. From the benefit of having watched the internet rise into its current form over the past 35+ years, I don’t think we can brush off the connections we make as “not being important”. In the end, these connections are all we have that stand a chance at outliving us, because most of us will never paint a Mona Lisa or construct the Notre Dame. And in the case of video games, a company could decide to pull the plug on a live service game tomorrow, and what would you be left with then? Memories of the game and the connections we made. 

***

Yeah, I’ve been pondering some deep issues this past month or more, and I don’t have a clear resolution to them. I watch some of my in-game friends chase raiding in TBC Classic, and while I wish them well, I’m not following in their path. I’ve no desire to deal with drama, the need to push yourself hard to keep up, and following the gear treadmill to validate my playing a game. It’s not a matter of the old accusatory line “If I can’t keep up, I’m taking my ball and going home” that I know my decision could easily be interpreted, but for me it’s more of a “If I can’t keep up, I need to find a different way to have fun and remain valued.” 

*There, I said it. I'm not as good as I ever thought I was; if I were, I'd have a bit more success under my belt than I have. I recognize that external success with dexterity-heavy systems such as video games and sports such as soccer or basketball is highly dependent upon who you play with in addition to innate skill, but I now have enough hard-earned knowledge to admit I was never as good as I hoped. And Father Time hasn't exactly done me any favors over the past decade and a half, either.

**Or rather, my doctors cheated Death. 

***As I cynically used to put it, “We begin to die as soon as we’re born.” I’ve seen that quote attributed to various people, from The Bhudda to Bret Harte, so I have no idea who first said it, and I’m not inclined to spend a few hours or more chasing that down.

****Given what I know of my readership, if you’re reading this and this post gets the average number of pageviews there’s a greater than 70% chance you and I already are acquainted in the community. Now watch this post blow up and make a liar out of me. 

*****Sure, there could be mere bystanders, like me, but I doubt we’re even close to a quarter of the people in there at any given time. And if you are a bystander and are in there for more than a minute or two, you’re likely propositioned at least once. I know I have, and in my most recent encounter I wasn’t in there for more than a handful of seconds to turn in a quest and sell some stuff. Yes, despite appearances, there’s still a quest giver inside the Inn.

Beware Strange People Bearing Whispers

I've been on a bit of an exploration kick lately in Retail, where I just poke around areas looking for people while I'm on my lowbie Rogue. This is all within reason, of course, since she's roughly L13, but I did poke my nose into Northrend and all sorts of other areas on the Old World. 

Needless to say, it's all pretty empty.

Eh, I took the portal anyway.

I don't know where half of these portals go nowadays.

Ever had the feeling that you're lost in your hometown? Retail is like that to someone who hasn't played since Mists (and even then mainly BGs). Oh, I did recognize a few people around...

Wait, I thought Cardwyn was your only apprentice.
When did all this happen, and does Card know about this?

And I couldn't go more than a few feet without it being suggested that I check out various things...

*SIGH*

But I found some Honor Hold personnel at the bottom of the Mage Tower and I saw they could port me to the Dark Portal. 

"Aha! I can go to Outland. That'll work!"

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...

What the hell is going on? You know what, I think it's smarter to just go back to the old Lion's Pride Inn and call it a day.

Ahh... Much better.

Still, there was one thing on my mind. After the roleplaying post from the other day, I was reminded that the old Moon Guard - US server was where most Alliance RP took place. And yes, I'm quite aware of Goldshire and the Lion's Pride Inn's reputation. Well, the last time I visited Goldshire on Moon Guard, I wasn't that impressed. This was back in 2013 or so, and some of the worst offenders of ERP back then had been purged from the server, so it wasn't what I'd call "busy". Still, I've seen enough YouTube videos that show an active RP scene, so I got curious and made a toon on Moon Guard just to see what's going on.

Sorry, but she's not named Cardwyn. I did check to see
if Deathwyn was available, but alas it was already taken.
It actually took me about 10-15 minutes of hunting for
available names that I liked before I got to this one.

I wasn't planning on doing any RP myself; I don't have any RP addons installed on Retail, and if anybody were to whisper me I'd politely decline. Hey, it's their world and it's the proper thing to do.

Well, at least this looks normal.
Full Disclosure: I ran back last night to get this
screencap, because I forgot to take one on Sunday.

I did find actual people questing in Northshire Abbey, so that's an improvement over what Livona experienced.

Instead of doing those initial quests, I figured it was safe to run straight to Goldshire and see what I could find.*

Remember the proverb "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it?"

Yeah, about that...

Holy crap.

I got over to the inn, saw THAT, and immediately logged for the day.

That was a bit overwhelming. The inside if the Inn had to have the most people I've seen in one place in Retail since... early Cataclysm, maybe? It certainly wasn't in Mists, because Ysera-US was pretty empty, even with the server "merges"; on Area 52-US --a 10:1 Horde server-- I think everybody was either raid logging or just hanging out in the Horde Pandaria hub, but since I never leveled a Horde toon to max level that expansion I never made it there. 

So, I decided it couldn't have been that bad, and that I just happened to show up at a specific event or something, so I checked Goldshire and the Inn again tonight...

"Do I really want to know what your rates are
for a room, Sir?"

And stepping outside, there was this:

I ran back to Northshire Abbey, because it was a LOT quieter, and it was there that I discovered two things.

The first is that it's now a default that if someone whispers you it's put in a separate tab, and two... well...

I'm almost 100% certain that person wasn't
talking about Enterprise Resource Planning.

I didn't respond, because at first I wasn't sure how long that whisper had been there --it could have been about 10 minutes old for all I knew-- and I'll be honest in that I should have known that sort of whisper would happen. But... Did you see the size of that crowd? Given the mob inside I figured it would have been hard to pick me out, especially without me having installed any RP addons and only running out of the place, but a female toon still managed it in the minute or so I actually spent in Goldshire. This kind of puts a lie to the concept of "If there's a crowd, nobody is paying attention to you." If there's a way to make my anxiety spike while playing a video game, that was it.

Well, I guess you could say I finally found where the people are in Retail when they're not sitting around wherever the endgame area is: they're in Goldshire on an RP server.

*You have to be paying attention if you do this in Classic, because the Defias and hostile animals lurking near the road could kill you. In Retail, it's not very likely.

EtA: Added the comment on the last graphic because I can't not see the business version of ERP when I see that acronym.

That Hangover Sucked

My wife worked on New Year's Day --that's the blessing (time and a half pay) and curse (you have to work on a holiday) of working retail-- so she went to bed early on New Year's Eve.

I, for some reason, stayed up past midnight to listen to the fireworks*, and I got on WoW Classic Era just to screw around a bit. 

Not terribly much going on there.

So... before I retired for the night I got on WoW Season of Discovery.

Things were a wee bit different...

Who let the reindeer in?

Oh, right. Lava Lash is an RP server.**

And given that little fact, things got a bit rowdy...

Night Elves of both sexes were, uh, "dancing"
on top of benches and kegs. And there was a gnome
on one of the picnic tables, egging the male NEs on.

With free booze available, Card got drunk...

See that blur in the middle? That's her.
Apparently I either didn't drink enough
or you can't get so drunk in game to hurl.

Anyway, the fireworks went off at midnight and people were calling for an afterparty at Goldshire. That was when I decided that I didn't want to end up on the wrong side of some adult role playing and retired for the night.

*And a couple of kids in the neighborhood zipping around on ATVs up until New Year's as well. We have a hilly neighborhood, so frequently people can't see cars coming, but that never seems to deter these kids. There have been more than a few near misses with cars, especially when both cars and ATVs speed quite a bit through the neighborhood. I just shake my head and wonder when we're finally going to get the big wreck that our neighborhood has been spoiling for.

**I did check Orgrimmar just for curiosity's sake to see if the Horde was partying. After running there with a newly created toon, there was literally nothing going on. All the RPers were in Stormwind, I guess.

Slumming in Season of Discovery

I've poked around on the Season of Discovery WoW Classic Era servers off and on for the better part of a month, but I'm still somewhere around L13 at the moment. Part of that is because I'm just not giving it much priority, as I spend most of my WoW time on "regular" Classic Era servers, but it's also that I'm just kind of slowly leveling while everybody else is swarming all over Elwynn Forest and Westfall. 

I suppose I ought to work on obtaining more runes, but I'm just not prioritizing it very much. 

Part of the reason why I'm not prioritizing runes and whatnot is, well, I'm poor.*

And those items you can buy from vendors that allow you to read a scroll cost silver. When you don't have any silver at all, that can hurt.

I mean, I have to prioritize my training --or rather, the minimal training needed-- and then just build up as much coinage as I can. Once I can get to the point of making or gathering items to sell, then I can actually make some headway, but I'm not there yet.

The other big reason why I've not given a lot of priority to leveling in Season of Discovery is that I've been fascinated by the roleplaying that goes on.

Yes, I know, Lava Lash is a RP server, so I shouldn't be surprised that actual roleplaying goes on there. The thing is, however, when I tried out Bloodsail Buccaneers --both in Era and on Wrath Classic-- I found hardly anybody actually roleplaying.

How do I know this?

This was at noon today on Layer 1.

See those dots? Those are people who use the addons that can communicate via MSP (the Mary Sue Protocol) such as Total RP3 and marked themselves visible to others. There were actually 13 there --a couple were overlapping on the map-- and there were even more people who were obviously role playing without using the addon. The scanning range is the range that I can target a player with, so there are likely more people in other parts of Stormwind that I couldn't see at that point in time.

How did I scan? Well, I've downloaded Total RP3 and when you bring up the regular ol' map (the M key) there's a button in the bottom left that you can click to scan for roleplayers nearby.

I've had the add-on installed for the past several months, so I have a feel for how active the roleplaying community is on servers. If you actually see this many people roleplaying on Bloodsail Buccaneers in either Wrath Classic or Classic Era, let me know, because I've not seen it yet.

But here in Season of Discovery, the RPers have come out of the woodwork.

Yes, I filled in some basic info on Card.
Obviously, this is the "just starting out" version
of her, not the "I've seen some shit out there
in Naxx" version of her, which is some years later.

You can adjust what is visible in the profile, as well as tweak what the player's personality is so that people know what they're getting into when RPing with her:

You can select the standard traits as
well as add your own. And some of those
"add your own" can be... quite adult.

Have I actually engaged in roleplay? Nope. If someone were to approach me, that's one thing, but I'm not one to actively engage in RP with others first. Regardless, I've had a few basic interactions out there with a few people, but nothing worthy of "Goldshire on the Moon Guard server". 

Sorry to disappoint, but even if I had, I'd not mention it.

That's not to say that the RP community isn't active, because it is. It's active enough that a few players have complained about it, which causes me to raise an eyebrow. I mean, you're complaining that there's RP-ing happening on an RP server? Sheesh.

And really, there's not that much RP going on, either.

But there are guilds popping up for people to hang out in and RP with. Some sound rather tame:

And some seem far more, um, adult in nature:

At least they're up front about this.

Some other guild advertisements are that they're RP friendly but not necessarily RP focused. Still, it's far more active than I'd seen on regular Era or Classic RP servers. 

Do I feel kind of, well, icky about this? Not really. I mean, I've played D&D for decades, but naturally I've not played it to this sort of level of inhabiting a character as this sort of RP-ing would demand. This is a lot closer to what you'd find in the Society for Creative Anachronism or your average American Renaissance Festival. And yes, I realize my reticence to actively participate is partially driven by my reaction to the Satanic Panic back in the 80s, so old lies about what RPGs are do die hard.

*Sir Terry Pratchett had a great quote from one of his Discworld books about being poor that really hit the nail on the head. Ah, here it is:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

The thing is, I've been there. I've only been able to afford cheap jeans or shoes that fall apart after a year of steady use, so I end up spending more money in the long run just keeping myself in clothing than if I'd have spent more up front. But you need money to be able to spend a bit more for quality, and if you don't have that, that's the conundrum.