Happy Hour at the Dungeon

It's kind of a tradition in MMO group content to find someone who's been imbibing some alcoholic beverages. I mean, it's typically an after hours activity, and if you're at home (or at an internet cafe) and you're of the right age, why not have a drink or two?

Unfortunately, it's also a tradition for people to over imbibe in group content.

There was one time back in January 2022 where our TBC Classic raid team was raiding Serpentshrine Cavern, and we were testing out a new Main Tank. He seemed competent enough, and while I could hear the occasional glug of a drink, I didn't think anything of it. I mean, I used to have a beer when I raided before my hospital stay, so why not someone else? Well, right before we were to take on Lady Vashj, we'd prepped for the pull and.... Nothing. The "new" Main Tank didn't pull. He didn't respond to our calls in Discord.

He had passed out right before the pull of the last boss in the raid.

Oops. 

We quickly scrambled and to a replacement MT to show, but no, we didn't kill Vashj on that raid. 

Oh well.

Anyway, I bring this up because last night I was taking a break and goofing around on the Anniversary servers, and I figured I'd get into an instance or two. If nothing else, they ought to be pretty standard runs for a Friday night. 

Have I ever mentioned my naïveté before?

On the first run, there were three guild members: tank, healer, and Enhancement Shaman DPS. The Healer was drunk. And by drunk, I mean "he was doing shots of tequila" drunk. Despite that, we were doing okay, until the latest shots hit his system, about 2/3 of the way through. 

How do I know this? He started speaking of himself in third person. 

At one point, the Shaman had died and I made a quip about reaction times and the Shaman replied saying "I'm laughing so hard I'm crying right now."

People died enough times that someone thankfully dropped a repair bot, so we could repair without our gear breaking.

Still, it was a fun run, if for nothing else that the Healer provided enormous amounts of unintentional comedy.

The second run was a bit different, because the Mage didn't speak English other than "GO" or "YAY" or "SAD" or "HAPPY".* Still, I could tolerate that were it not for the tank being inebriated, so he wasn't being that attentive to the Healer. At one point the Healer specifically said after a boss fight "brb bio", and the tank kept right on going. When the Healer came back and managed to rescue a bad pull, she pointed out she said "brb bio" and tank replied with "we didn't die".

::rolls eyes::

The tank made a couple of other bad judgements in the run, one we recovered from and one... we didn't. Luckily I was on Joan, and therefore I had Soulstoned the Healer just for such an emergency. The Healer then called out the adds that we had on that pull and the tank claimed innocence.  At least that didn't turn out to be a big row, but for certain the Healer split right after the last boss. Can't say I blamed her.

I guess it's a pick your poison sort of situation: if you make people laugh and you're obviously silly about it, that forgives a host of sins. But if you're pushing when there's no reason to, and because you're a bit drunk you're not quite as fast with reflexes as you think you are...

Hey, it wasn't my fault this time!!!

*At the end of the run, I asked for a portal in both English and Spanish, and no bueno.

#Blaugust2026

Amusing Guild Names, 2026 Edition

Here's something I haven't done in quite a while: Funny Guild Names.

I have a bunch of them that I haven't done anything with, and now's as good a time as any to post some of them. (That's the polite way of saying I couldn't schedule a post correctly and it accidentally posted last night instead of today.)

#Blaugust2026

Not Exactly a Unicorn Week

Even though I didn't play much on the Anniversary servers the past week, when I did play I had a good time grouping with people to run some instances. If you're used to pseudo-random groups* being completely silent during instance runs, then the runs I was involved with last week were anything but that. 

Yes, yes, I know, I can be chatty when I'm in a group and someone breaks the ice, but this time around I was far from the most active in any of the groups. When I was on Joan, that didn't come as a surprise because inevitably someone would comment on the name "Joanofdark", but when I ran as Neve on the Horde side there was another chatty person far more interested in social connections than I was in her dungeon runs. 

What struck me the most last week, however, were the number of people who mentioned to me at the end of the run that they'd added me to their Friends List. In all of the cases, they mentioned that in addition to a smooth run they had a good time just hanging out with me. As I told one of my friends group later, "It's amazing how not being an asshole works out."

Hey, why is everybody looking at me?
From Memedroid and Dogeloaf using
the OG 'Scooby Doo, Where Are You?' cartoon.

There are times when it feels like being nice to people in an MMO is an exercise in futility, but last week proved to me that there are still people who prize a good connection in an MMO over other things. I have no idea what the rest of this week will be like, but you never know.

*The LFD automated queue finder doesn't exist on the WoW Classic Anniversary servers. Instead, it's a semi-random process where your name gets thrown up along with everybody else who is looking for people for a group, and it's up to you or another person to actually assemble the group based on what person you want. Some classes (Mage, Protection Paladin) have an easier time of finding groups than others.

#Blaugust2026

A Vacation from My Vacation

Last evening was the first time I'd been on WoW in several days.

Oh, stop being dramatic.
From Titanic.

It's not that I was tired of WoW or anything, I just didn't log in. There was no pressing need to get on, and I was doing other things, so that was that.

It's always good to gain some perspective by stepping back from what you're immersed in to look around a bit. That's the important part of taking a vacation --not the actual going and doing part-- but rather the self-evaluation made when you step away from your work for a while. I don't think it an accident that the "Great Resignation" came about after the Covid-19 Pandemic. People had plenty of time to think about their lives and the direction they wanted to go, and... They weren't happy with where they were headed. I can't say I blame them one bit, because I know I did.

Given my age, I suppose it's no surprise I've begun reading up on retirement and what it is like for people. I've often quipped that I'll never actually be able to retire, as multiple economic downturns have pretty much sealed the deal for me on that part, but still I wonder if I could make it work. And how other people make retirement work for them as well.

For me, one thing is certain: I'm not one for traveling. My experiences traveling, beginning in my childhood, have never been what I'd call enjoyable. If a family vacation was "not miserable" then that was about as good as it was going to get. Even as an adult I found the few family vacations we took to be not very enjoyable because for certain people in the family a vacation meant "GOGOGO" and "DODODO", when all I wanted was to park myself somewhere and just close my eyes and relax. And as you can imagine, I did not win those familial battles, so I gamely had to deal with it. 

It's kind of ironic that I play games and read books that frequently involve traveling from one place to another, because I'm just done with dealing with all that in real life. Perhaps its because it's more an idealized way of travel without having to do it yourself, particularly given the prices of everything surrounding travel, but it could also be having to witness how cringey some travelers are. You know the old joke about how if you're speaking to someone in another country and they don't understand you, the solution is to speak it LOUDER? Yeah, I've seen that in action. That and a ton of other faux pas that give a credence to the stereotypical Ugly American abroad. And for me, that's just in my own freaking country. 

But right now, stepping back from WoW for several days was what I needed and I didn't even know I needed it. I felt refreshed when I logged in last evening, and I ran a couple of dungeons with people who I didn't know but had an enjoyable time with. I realize that is pretty much the luck of the draw, but falling into a group with a tank/healer combo who were from the same guild and were happy with my output (as in: not pushy into how to maximize my DPS) was pretty much chef's kiss. 

It was low stress and enjoyable, and that's all I could have asked for.

EtA: Fixed a typo.

#Blaugust2026

It's Not Exactly Bottled Lightning

It's been a busy couple of weeks around the house. Family, guinea pigs, amateur radio club stuff, things like that. And not to mention cleaning and more doctors' visits.*

Oh yeah... And work, too.

From Tenor. (And Warcraft.)

Consequently, not a lot of game playing has been going on.

But I can tell you a lot about grounding and bonding antennas and radios!

There ought to be a lightning arrestor
in that diagram, as well as bonding between
the shack ground and service ground. From W8JI.

Anyway, I should mention a few things.

As of July 14, 2026.

Joan is at L64, and instead of spending money on other things I bit the bullet and bought a dual spec option for her so I could switch to Demonology and get the Felguard tank, who is much better at holding threat than the Voidwalker ever was. Although I do miss some aspects of Affliction, such as some instant casts and some extra Curses and whatnot, I kind of prefer not dying more.

I overall have had good interactions with people while playing Joan, but there are a few here and there.

You kind of get the idea. The person's guild was
"Big Pull Energy", so I didn't encourage him.

There's getting licked by the occasional Troll or Forsaken, to which I respond by a "/flirt" which tends to make them stop in their tracks long enough for me to move along. Maybe they were expecting me to be grossed out or do a "/slap" but I wasn't about to ask them any detailed questions while I was getting away from them.

I still do forget just how tall Draenei are until
I'm right next to one. They make Joan look like she's
in 5th grade or just about to hit puberty.

Right now she's finished with Hellfire Peninsula and is about halfway through Zangarmarsh, which makes her pretty much on point for matching what the others have done. The only difference is that she's doing it faster, because I'm only leveling her.

As for Neve, she's still in the mid-L40s, and that's fine. I play her when I want to get on WoW but not do Outland, although I know she'll eventually get there. Whether that happens before TBC Anniversary ends is kind of up in the air. 

Outside of these two, I've pretty much retired the other three toons that made it to L70.** There's no real reason to play them --I've already covered that before-- and despite that just the other day I turned down a spot in a Karazhan raid for Linnawyn because even though they wanted her for the Paladin buffs, she'd be next to useless in the raid itself. When you have gear mostly from Nagrand (mid-L60s gear) and a few mid-level instances, your ability to actually DPS is so bad compared to people who have run heroics and whatnot that it would be effectively a 9 person raid, not a 10 person raid. Since I didn't want to grind for gear just to "not suck", which is a sliding scale given that my friends who were asking had been getting pre-raid BiS (best in slot) gear for their toons prior to running Karazhan, by the time I got gear I'd consider "good enough" to raid with, they'd have all moved on to much better gear themselves, leaving me in a perpetual state of trying to play catch-up.

No thanks.

As for the future, I can see Joan finishing up sometime early-mid August, and then I'd likely move on to leveling one of my other toons to L70. If I play my cards right, I can actually get about 5 Alliance and 1 Horde toon to L70 in time for whatever happens next.

*My numbers are still good, thanks for asking. 

**Except for working the guild bank I created. Card's the GM, so I've retained most guild bank capability strictly to her.

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."

Time for Plan B

I wasn't expecting this to happen this quickly, but here we are.

June 13, 2026.

June 25, 2026.

I wasn't expecting both toons to hit L70 before the end of June, and I certainly didn't expect them to finish in Nagrand, either. But it's done, so now the question becomes what to do next.

Neve is still in the low-mid L40s, so I can work on her for a bit. That's not a difficult thing to do, because Mages are still in demand in the Old World; the only real drawback there is that she needs to generate gold to cover the cost of her training, and that won't be quite as easy given that demand for Vanilla items such as fish and cloth aren't that great right now.

What I decided to do in the interim is take my Warlock, Joanofdark, over to try her out for a bit last night.

"Mom! Marshal Isildor is IGNORING me again!"

She killed a few boars, got a couple of quests done, and got her first quest reward from Outland: a wand.

Yes, a wand.

Not exactly a real boost in gear, there. Although to be fair, the DPS boost if I'm actually using the wand is rather nice, but it still isn't quite what I was expecting. Oh well.

But hey, I've got probably until Winter to finish leveling her, so I've got time.

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.

Same Old, Same Old

In the last little bit of time since I posted about the Anniversary servers, this happened:

June 2, 2026.

One down, two to go.

Cardwyn dinged L70 in Nagrand, leaving three untouched zones behind: Blade's Edge Mountains, Netherstorm, and Shadowmoon Valley. 

I don't think the other two toons are going to get so lucky, but we'll see. 

Listings are as of June 10, 2026.

I ought to note that unlike my experience leveling in Vanilla Anniversary servers, I basically would switch toons once they cleared a zone. So, the level you see for Linna is where she stood after finishing up Terokkar Forest. Briganaa was at L67 as well when she finished up Terokkar, but Card was a lot closer to L68 than the others are, which is how she was able to finish up leveling in Nagrand. There's also the little fact that getting some quest drops for Card were harder than others, and my exploration of finding Corki (that Broken NPC who somehow manages to get himself captured by ogres multiple times) meant I cleared out more caves than was necessary. All this meant that Card got a lot more XP from simply killing mobs than Brig did; she was just more efficient at questing than Card because she came along second and got to learn from the Mage's experience.

***

I've recently begun doing something I'd previously done on Retail, and that's just hanging around cities, watching the crowd.

And being amused by the guild names...

I still do make quips or gestures about things that pop into my head while playing, though...

The number of medical ads is too damn high.

And sometimes NPCs can't take a joke.

There is Always Plenty of Time

I haven't done one of these posts in a while, because I had no need to.

Listings as of May 29, 2026.

I've been leveling 3 Alliance and one Horde toon, and while it's somewhat slow going compared to the Vanilla zones in TBC Anniversary servers*, I'm perfectly happy at my pace. 

As you can see, Card will likely hit L70 (the TBC maximum level) in June, and it's also expected that at least one other toon will join her. Neve is still plodding along in the low L40s, which considering that I'm not really doing much with her isn't a big surprise either.

Once toons start reaching max level, what then?

Well, one thing is certain: I'm not planning on raiding or even doing Heroic dungeons. 

I'm fine with the regular variety, thanks.

Unless I know everybody in the group, there's no real reason for me to do the Heroic dungeons. After all, I've been there in 2021 when I needed to run Heroics to get attuned for raids, and they're hard enough without having to deal with any random group drama. There was also the problem of simply finding groups, as once people overdosed on instance running in 2021 they simply stopped doing any instances once there was no explicit requirement to do so. I've already seen a dropoff in players in Hellfire Peninsula from as little as a month ago, so I'd imagine that the number of prospective dungeon participants coming up through the leveling process has dried up.

Does that mean I'm not enjoying the TBC Anniversary servers? No, I'm having fun. And really, that's all that matters. If I'm not having fun, I'll go do something else. That doesn't mean there aren't frustrating moments while playing, such as while I'm off somewhere, killing mobs as part of a quest, and some random L70 toon flies in, grabs all of the mobs in the vicinity, and then downs them all using AoE.

"What a dick!" is my usual outburst when that happens, and then I go somewhere else (or play something else) until the toon has finally moved on. Usually that takes about 15-30 minutes, but sometimes they're out there farming for hours.**

Outside of that, I've found that I don't need flying, a fast mount, or even a mount itself (in the case of my Shaman) to enjoy the game. If I want to run an instance, I prep beforehand and make my way to the instance before I put myself out there in the pool. That alone eliminates any issues with travel prior to entering the instance, and I'm in no particular hurry in trying to get into an instance either. That means I can chill while I wait. 

I've found that hanging out right by the Summoning
Stone at Scarlet Monatery does wonders for people looking
for DPS. I've entitled this screencap "Four Female
Blood Elves and a Tauren Walk Into a Bar".

I guess the lack of flying means I'm not doing the Tempest Keep instances, because flying is required to reach those instances. Then again, I'll likely reach L70 long before I would even reach Netherstorm (where the instances are located), so it's kind of a moot point. 

***

Right now, I'm thinking of simply putting any L70 toons I will have effectively in storage and noodle around with other toons instead. 

Why? Because if everybody is right and we'll get a Wrath Anniversary server this Winter, why push hard for anything when it won't matter once Northrend opens up? If I'm not raiding, there's no reason to stress over my gear or attunements or whatnot. And if we somehow get a TBC Era server out of this, I can wait until the mass of people have moved on to Wrath and then I can come out from hibernation and noodle around Outland without any crowds or pressure to boat race my way through to the end. 

Now, I have thought about returning to Battlegrounds and Alterac Valley once my toons hit L70, and that is a possibility. I guess I'll have to consider that when the time comes. For now, however, I'm happy at my own pace.

*As opposed to when they were Vanilla Anniversary Servers. It's a noticeable difference in speed from my perspective.

**I sometimes wonder what goes on in their heads that makes them think that they're entitled to bad behavior when other people are attempting to play the game. Then again, I've seen bad behavior out of people out in public because they think they're entitled to whatever it is they're bitching about. Doesn't matter if their poor or rich, white or black, it's that some people are just assholes and have no concept of shame. 

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.

Somebody's Following Me

I can't go anywhere in Outland without running into someone on a nether drake mount. 

It began the moment I set foot in Outland at Hellfire Peninsula...

And it's continued throughout my experiences here so far...

Being able to walk on water has its advantages.

At least in Shattrath City you can find people on other mounts, but still the nether drake is by far the "standard" mount found on the Anniversary servers. 

These are just a few of the times I've seen nether drakes around. It's so ubiquitous that one could be forgiven if you'd have thought they simply gave you one once you unlocked flying. But no, there's a long grind to get a nether drake mount. I did it once during Cataclysm simply because I wanted to see how it was done, and while it's not the worst grind in the game it didn't engage me either.

That being said, seeing all these players with their nether drake mounts, I'm reminded of Syndrome's quote from The Incredibles...

From The Incredibles vis makeagif.com.