No Pressure. Absolutely None at All.

None indeed.

It was even larger earlier.
Last night, November 7, 2026.

Kudos to the lone Retail person there. 

Where am I, you may ask? 

I don't want to hear about the Wanderer's Stitched
Trousers. I know what they look like. And so does
Neve, who bitches about them every chance she gets.
Little does she know that the Dragon Queen herself
wears a version of them, but that's an expansion off.

Fel Reavers notwithstanding, I'm going to forge my own path. 

The Morning After

Throughout the WoW Anniversary servers, there was peace and quiet.

Just the way I like it.

It was this morning, but it was just as empty
last evening.

And here's Orgrimmar for reference purposes.

I found a more people out in the wild, questing, but a complete dearth of farming bots. (Good riddance, and have fun in WoW Forever.)

My friends' list last night was completely swamped with people on WoW Forever, and if that's any indication a lot of people from Retail were there as well. My suspicion is that the Retail players will gravitate back to Retail first, but it'll probably take a few months or more before the Classic players start to fade away.

I'm going to make a prediction, merely based on past performance, but that in about 3-4 months the Era servers will experience an uptick in interest due to players either missing the old Vanilla Classic or disliking the changes made to Classic. You can't please everybody, so whether WF* is what people expect in Classic Plus or not remains to be seen. 

As for me, I've decided I won't need to reserve names because of the last name capability. I've discovered in the past that the only toon name of mine has been used throughout Retail or Classic is "Azshandra", and all I need to make mine unique is to use a decent enough last name. So, I'm good. Maybe I'll create a toon before Christmas, maybe I won't. Odds are good that I'll be busy with other things.

*I've got to come up with a better way of shortening WoW Forever that doesn't just say "Forever", because it still feels damn pretentious. The problem with WF is that it is also shorthand for Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

The Empty Zones are Coming...

That's my snarky take on the next 3 minutes and change, because of this...

From my Battle.net front page.

For those that will imbibe, have fun!

A Late October Overview

It's been a while since I actually posted about my own gaming.

To be honest, I'm not certain that the post from September 9th actually counts, as it was a complaint about a bizarre dungeon run that never happened. So, I guess it may have been since August 20th that I provided a real update on what I've been doing.*

***

The short answer is "not much". 

Okay, see you next Meme Monday.

You're still here? You actually want some info?

Okay, fine. 

I don't drink much, Balthan. Type 2 and all that, so shush.

I still play video games, and I still play on the WoW Anniversary Servers. I separate out MMOs versus the rest of video game playing because MMOs are a time sink unto themselves. It's just that I keep my video game playing down to bite-sized chunks, so I don't spend all of my spare time consumed by the hobby. That way I can actually work on other hobbies, housework, or family stuff. 

My single player games, Civ IV, Stellaris, Stardew Valley, Age of Empires, and Planetbase, do keep me busy. I can tinker around with them for a while, and I can get a game of Civ IV and Age of Empires done in an evening session. Yes, I would like to play some RPGs, but I also know it will suck up far more of my time than these old standbys will, so I'm very careful about that.

***

Now, about WoW.

As of October 28, 2026.

As you can see, Neve finally reached Outland, and my Hunter, Hoots, is about to reach max level in probably about a week. Like all my other toons, once a toon hits max level I effectively retire them and I switch to another toon on the same faction. In this case, it'll likely be Az, my old Rogue and the namesake of the first toon I made in WoW Classic in 2019.**

"Remind me again why Sindorei leadership calls this
a green paradise." 

Nothing says "strange land" as much as floating
islands does, I suppose.

And for the record, I still haven't named Hoots' owl. It just fits as-is, I suppose.

I don't see my WoW friends very much right now, as work and family activities (it's Fall, so football season for those with high school kids) keep them busy. My Questing Buddy does login, but she typically gets on after I've gone to bed, so I don't see her quite as much as I used to.

Also, I should mention that I do occasionally login to Retail to fish for a bit...

"Sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watching the tiiiiide roll away..."

There are times when I want to passively observe the crowd, whether it's in Stormwind...

Or during an event...

When did the devs add a Burning Man just outside
Stormwind? That's not there in Classic, and in fact it's
location near the Undercity is the object of both
Alliance and Horde quests.

Or, god forbid, Goldshire...

At least my lowbie Rogue can fit under that brontosaurus
there. Mmmm... brontosaurus burgers... I've been
watching too many old Flintstones episodes again...

I still haven't heard anything new about WoW Classic since the opening of Zul'Aman, but I intend to hang around there as long as possible and just let the crowd steamroll their way to max level in Forever. Once people begin to drop there, because that's what WoW players do, I'll actually consider going over.

Which reminds me: I expect the Blue Elves to make an appearance in Retail before the end of Midnight. Midnight is the Elf expansion, so why not? Forever might be a separate leg on the three-legged stool that is World of Warcraft, but that doesn't mean it will have different races from the Retail game.

*Apparently the bots that tend to far outnumber the actual readers of the blog don't mind, since I had that bubble of "views" that appeared in early September. It's still ironic in the extreme that Google and Gemini still don't recognize the blog exists, but I digress.

**Azshandra was also the name of the last main I played in Retail back in 2013-2014.

Speed Runners Gonna Speed Run

My YouTube feed is starting to calm down from the WoW Forever hysteria of the past few weeks.

I won't say that people are any less excited about a new version of World of Warcraft, but the initial rush of YouTube and blog posts seems to have calmed down quite a bit. Still, one of my observations that the game may change but the community doesn't seems to remain accurate...

And...

The speed running crowd certainly seems to be working things out right now, which kind of defeats the point of WoW Forever. Those seeking to monetize the optimized leveling process, such as Zygor, are prepping their tools for a release alongside (or shortly after) WoW Forever releases. 

If nothing else, the WoW community does not disappoint.

Okay, let's be honest with ourselves: speed running was definitely going to happen. There's no two ways about it, really. The concept of speed running has been baked into video game culture for decades now, and it is so ingrained into MMOs such as WoW that any attempt to slow the speed runners down has drawn lots and lots of gripes by the larger WoW community. Concepts such as time-gated content, staggered raid wing releases, and abilities (such as flying) locked behind reputation grinds are all there to combat speed running and protect the community from themselves. 

I guess someone ought to create a WoW Forever bingo card based on when they observe certain classic WoW community behavior in WoW Forever, with others providing a Shocked Pikachu face when it happens:

Use it or lose it, I guess. From all over the internet.

Instead of the Center Square being free, it could be a behavior which is effectively free: Saying "I'm bored" in Trade Chat. 

Oh well.

Nothing Lasts 4 Evah

From the comic For Better or For Worse, July 7, 2005.
April's band was named "4 Evah", a reference to the four
members of the band. And yes, Jeremy was a Class A asshat.

Shintar poked me the other day, asking me when I was going to post about WoW Forever. I am, after all, a Classic Plus skeptic.

I heard about WoW Forever even while I was up in Milwaukee, because you can't truly escape the gamer news cycle, but beyond that it now exists --and that there's a new Elven race that you have to pay to access*-- I knew almost nothing about it. In fact, I heard just as much about Diablo 5 and the announcement about new game set in the StarCraft universe** as I did WoW Forever: hardly anything. Given that I was with family, that's fine.

And some friends.

But I'll also admit that I'm just absolutely damn tired of it all.

***

Maybe it's the fact that I've got to start over once more and try to figure this stuff out without spoiling the discovery process in the game for me --as tons of people seem to have no issues doing that for themselves already-- but I'm also tired of the "same old same old" that will be the modus operandi once the game opens. You know the drill: the game opens and everybody and their Grandfather rushes out to max level, because that's what they've been conditioned to do. 

For all the lip service paid by the Devs to the Journey***, both they know and I know that it simply won't happen. People will rush to Endgame, do all the new instances, have YouTube videos and Wowhead in their (virtual) hands, and min max their way to happiness. Oh, and do all the new raids. 

My Questing Buddy mentioned something about WeakAuras not working in WoW Forever (I think I have that right), but that won't stop people from trying to figure out other ways to make the raids trivial. To what's probably a vocal minority of the WoW player base, overcoming the obstacles to making the raid trivial is just as important as the raid itself. But since they are quite vocal, they have quite a bit of influence over the player base and the Devs, so... I look at every other fresh WoW environment that Blizzard has released --Retail/Classic expansion, new Vanilla, or whatever since I began playing in 2009-- and the behavior has been the same. 

And I'm kind of sick of it. 

***

This isn't a matter of me whining that I didn't get my way with Classic Plus, as in my "I'll believe it when I see it" stance means I now have to believe it, but more a matter of me being tired of going against the grain. About the only thing I do know is that based on my prior decades of gaming experience, going with the crowd and rushing ahead only leads to frustration and self-loathing on my part. Ever plowed through a ton of Halloween candy and immediately regretted it afterward? It's like that, but instead of Snickers bars you're inhaling all the in-game content you can without a whit of self-control. 

I know for a fact that if I did rush ahead I wouldn't be able to control myself, because I've done that while reading novels. Or playing video games.**** Even WoW, to be honest. (See: the Summer of 2021.)

I do realize that this is just a funk, and I'll eventually get out of it, but I don't think I will do all that much of anything resembling a deep dive into the game. I ought to at least look at a few basics and hash out some theories about WoW Forever and the Azerothian Universe. For now, my initial, very off-the-cuff impression is that WoW Forever is in the same point in the timeline as Warlords of Draenor: an alternate universe akin to what you find in comic books. As I described WoD back in the day as the equivalent of DC Comics' "New 52" reset, WoW Forever fills a gap in the timeline where the timeline zigged instead of zagged. 

The hubris involved in calling the game WoW Forever has also not been lost on me, because my initial reaction to the name has been "Really? You're going to call it THAT?" Oh, I get the why of it, but I also don't believe for a minute that was the only reason why that name was chosen. And all I'll say to that is... Nothing lasts forever.

This is the last photo we have of Bleu. Last Wednesday
my oldest found her very lethargic in the morning and rushed
her to the Emergency Vet. She was told about the worst news
you could have, where Bleu was in severe pain, and the two
choices were to undergo a highly risky surgery with a low
chance of success, or putting her down. She decided
to have Bleu be put out of her misery. At least we got to see
her over the weekend, where she seemed happy and healthy. 

*The fact that Blizzard has already monetized WoW Forever says a lot about their belief it'll be a success.

**James Strive from the YouTube Channel GameLinked (it's a fork off of LinusTechTips) commented on that StarCraft game "I'll believe it when I see it" at the 2:40 mark from their weekly post this past Thursday. Four years away from release is a long time, and let's be honest: we can't predict what's going to happen in the game industry even two years in advance with LLMs on the rise, much less FOUR years.

***This is another of the few things I do know about WoW Forever.

****Helloo, Baldur's Gate 1. It's been a few decades since I completed you, hasn't it? 1999, you say? That sounds about right. But that was quite a blur back then, because I was a new parent, and despite that I stayed up all night for several nights and then went into work dead tired because I couldn't stop myself from playing until I finished it.