Yadda Yadda Yadda, Something About History

Let's harken back to those halcyon days of yester er, 2021, when the Dark Portal opened and TBC Classic formally launched.

The optimal method of leveling in Outland --according to all the game guides-- was to spam dungeons in succession until you get to the level cap. My guild back then followed that strategy religiously, endlessly spamming dungeons to get to the cap*, and then... They stopped. They --and a lot of other players who followed the same strat-- simply burned out on running dungeons and refused to run them again.** 

This strategy, one of endlessly spamming dungeons over and over, was repeated in Wrath Classic and in Season of Discovery's Phase 2 (Scarlet Monastery, anyone?) and was even picked up on by Nixxiom in his latest video as part of the reason why he stopped playing SoD:

One of my Classic Era friends hates hates HATES
Gnomeregan, so she's right there with you, Nixxiom.

So, why bring this up? I mean, that community-wide scourge of min-maxing things to death is what led me to quit Season of Discovery too, but that's not why I'm posting.

I'm looking at Delves from Retail's soon to be released The War Within and am thinking that people will simply run Delves on repeat until they get to max level, and then switch to running dungeons and raids. That's assuming that they don't actually need to finish a main storyline to jump straight into endgame content. Maybe they do need to quest to get to endgame, but my belief is that people will skip everything to get to the end if you give them the opportunity to do so. The WoW community has shown in the past that enough players will do whatever it takes to "win" that they need to be protected from their worst impulses. 

I don't need to rehash that TBC Classic experience that the leveling Shamans --myself included-- had upon reaching Outland: when we finally needed to enter some of these dungeons, we couldn't find anyone to run with us due to the burnout. At least with Delves you can run them solo, so you don't have to worry about your friends burning out on them and preventing you from getting your own runs completed.

It's just that I look at these new systems and think of all the ways that they could go wrong. Like death and taxes, the concept of developers underestimating a player base's lust for something --no matter what it is-- is almost a certainty. 

*And then Heroics once those unlocked, because getting attuned to some of the raids required a lot of Heroic dungeon runs.

**Until the Isle of Quel'Danas unlocked at the end of the expansion, revealing the Magister's Terrace dungeon, and they all spammed that endlessly for reputation and gear.

A Collection of Guild Names, Season of Discovery Edition Part 2

The variety of guild names that I've found on WoW Classic Season of Discovery servers is quite impressive. I wasn't joking when I mentioned in a comment somewhere that I had enough for another post on guild names, and that was a few days ago.

Hey, look who I found (and targeted for visibility) hanging
around the Stormwind mailbox! Harpy Riot! Don't know
whose toon this is, but it's someone in Wilhelm's guild.

Anyway, here's a bunch more guilds that I found in Season of Discovery (and Classic Era)...

Figured I'd start here, since it was just in the
above screencap.

Yeah, that's me. I have to be picky about
my burritos these days, however.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of
this particular guild name.

Kinda-sorta yeah, I guess....

Hmm... If you say so...

Okay... Was this a take on "I didn't inhale"?

At first I thought this was a reference
to the old NBC show Wings, but that's 
not the case. 

I ran Deadmines with Mythenis here, so
I ought to have asked about the guild name
when I had a chance.

There are days when I deny it too!

I like banana bread as much as the next
person, but you know, it doesn't really
work all that much.

This sounds like a riff on the glasses
from that old 1980s movie They Live!, 
but I'm not sure.

This is a pretty popular guild, given all the
toons running around, and there's even a
guild for alts called "Great Alts of Nazarick".

Shouldn't this have been an all elf guild?

If you've got emotional damage, do you need
someone to come to your Emotional Rescue?

Oh, I bet you're sweet...

"Get out or I'll call the Goon Squad!"
"I'm on the Goon Squad."
"You're on the Goon Squad, you ARE the Good Squad!"

Oh, this could go in quite a few ways...

Why do I get the feeling that they like
cooking in that guild?

I really like this one. It's as clear as mud.

Or as a riff on the very first Scooby Doo
episode, What a Night for a Knight!

This is my oldest's favorite guild name.
In WoW, that is. She prefers "Gloin's Loins"
from LOTRO overall, however.

At first I thought this was AKS
--as in American Kennel Society-- but I
kind of prefer this as-is.

Finally, a guild I'm actually in. This is
my Questing Buddy on her Mage alt in the
all-gnome guild that a mutual friend put together.

Good thing that, because have you seen
some of the LFG stuff lately?

Only somewhat? You need to try more!

Was kind of disappointed that this was attached
to a Dwarf, because I figured a Druid in 
bear form would be perfect here.

Damn. Now I want a cinnamon roll from
Cinnabon...

Ow, that hurts.

This is probably my favorite name on the list.

Zug zug!!!

How New Languages are Born

As I referenced here in this post back last August, there's a book out there called The Past is a Foreign Country that's actually on my To Be Read list --and that sucker is pretty huge, so it'll take a while to read-- that I'm looking forward to digging into.

I was thinking about that "foreign Language" part today when I was perusing some gamer blogs I don't frequent that much. 

I'm quite familiar with the "language" of Classic WoW --the slang behind the game-- and to a lesser extent that of several other MMOs, but it was when I perused those sites/blogs that primarily focused on Retail WoW did I detect the so-called "lingual shift" that make the two groups entirely separate entities. 

I was reminded of something a high school teacher once mentioned in class about the Romance languages: all of those languages derived from Latin* were once simply local dialects of Latin that grew apart over the centuries. 

Despite the global reach of mass communication these days, there are times when you talk to someone from another English speaking country and you can't really follow what they're saying. There was a time this past Spring when I happened to have the television on a Saturday morning and there was a Scottish Premier League match on**, and while I was able to follow the play-by-play announcer, the color commentator... Well, at one point I turned to my wife and said "I have absolutely no idea what the hell he's saying."

It wasn't just the accent, since some Scottish accents are really thick --as my son discovered when he visited Edinburgh while he spent six months studying abroad at Lancaster University in England***-- but the slang he was using made absolutely no sense to me. 

Or, as I've discovered courtesy of an Aussie friend --met via WoW Classic, naturally-- that there's an entire subculture completely foreign to other English speaking countries merely using the word 'cunt' in Australia.

After a certain point dialects become separate languages. While that might be harder in this day and age, it won't stop happening. And even within online communities, the siloing effect of social media makes it easier for groups to self-isolate, and by that isolation they develop their own terminology/slang that gradually becomes a dialect all its own.

***

Circling back to gaming, when I read Retail WoW blogs that discuss the nuts and bolts of the game, it makes absolutely no sense to me.

Kind of like this. Thanks, Cap.
From Pinterest.

Some of it is not having played Retail WoW in a decade (and as far as PvE content goes, longer than that), and systems have grown and changed. Some it is also the slang surrounding the systems having mutated to the point where what you thought you knew in 2012 is completely out of step with 2024. 

When you need a translation guide for returning players, you know that lingual shifts have occurred. 

***

One thing I've noticed when I login to Season of Discovery or WoW Classic Era servers and simply hang around a capital city is that the questions people ask are answered more with, well, normal English rather than shorthand. That is less the case in Wrath Classic, and the few times I've ever logged into Retail the past year I've seen questions answered with shorthand that I would characterize as "gobbledygook"****. Admittedly, the RP community on the Season of Discovery server I'm on might have an impact there, but I've seen it on my "normal" Era server as well, so I think it's a tendency of people who play on these Era-type of servers to answer questions in plain English.*****

Of course, that doesn't stop the flame wars concerning whether the dungeon acronym "DM" means Dire Maul or Deadmines, but that's been going on in WoW since, well, forever. 

Kind of ironic that the one thing that still brings the various versions of WoW together is an argument over what to call The Deadmines.

All about that context.
From Know Your Meme.

Still, in the end, I do wonder whether the two communities have grown so far apart that they've become Balkanized, and that the slang/dialects used within the two communities is just a symptom of the overall problem.

*Thereby bursting the bubble of hormone-addled high school boys that these languages were the key to "romance".

**It was the March 5, 2023 match between St. Mirren and Celtic. Once the St. Mirren player Charles Dunne got a red card in the 39th minute... Boy, did Celtic kick St. Mirren's ass.

***He and a friend had gotten on a train heading north to Edinburgh and some announcements were read over an intercom by a Scot with an accent so thick that my son turned to his friend and gave the universal "I have absolutely no idea what was just said" shrug. There was also another time when he'd gotten on a train in Wales, where the announcements are made in both Welsh and English, and this particular time the announcer forgot to speak in English. "Well," my son quipped, "I guess we're going to find out if we're on the right train really soon."

****When they didn't get a response saying "google it" or "go to Wowhead", that is.

*****I might make a toon on a PvP server just to check. I certainly don't need the stress of being on PvP servers in general, not after my experience on Stormscale-US back in the day.

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.

A Collection of Guild Names, Season of Discovery Edition

Okay, so they're not all from Season of Discovery, but the majority of them are, hence the title.

And yes, when you want to hang around a major city and just people watch, this is what you find.

Not sure what they mean by "worst", but
I'll take them at their word.

I think I found the guild my questing
buddy would join!

Who is this 'Debbie'? Is she a downer?

I want to know if there's a guild named
"Ready Only After Coffee".

They were apparently asleep at the wheel
during the Battle for Azeroth expansion.

I'm pretty sure you're standing right there.

Found the John Le'Carre fans.

Well, this is correct at first, but he
kind of went off the rails.

I have this sudden urge to go collect pottery.

Given my employment history,
I could join this one.

If people weren't getting their dopamine hits
they wouldn't be playing.

Found the guild that Josh Strife Hayes
would be a member of.

I honestly don't know how to respond
to this one.

I have this sudden urge to say "Peace..."

I figured they used the wrong word for
'brakes', but you never know...

This is how I used to read the street
signs that were meant to say
"SLOW... Children at Play".

Next on Mythbusters: Testing the Myth of
the pre-nerfed C'Thun! Is the Old God unbeatable?

"But my name's not..."
"SHUT UP!!"

It's legal in Ohio, too!

Okay, I see the ceiling. Now what?

Not sure if the "N" refers to Night Elves...

I thought this might be a Planet of the Apes
reference, but there's apparently a podcast
with this name. Go figure.

Yes, this is the guild I referenced a couple of posts ago.
And yes, it's fairly active.

I keep thinking Dragonlance when I see this
guild name, but for all I know it could be
a vague reference to England's War of the Roses.

I'd make a Bernie Sanders joke here, but he
apparently has come down with Covid.

"Rise again, little fighter
And let the world know the reason why..."

Knowing what I know now about how the Murloc
sound is made, I just kind of shudder when
I see this guild name....

Gary's pretty popular, from what I can tell.

Well, I'm glad you're proud of that.

I'm sure the UC was "Undercity", but
I like to think they meant University of Cincinnati.

Hey, thanks. You're not so bad yourself.

If that's a janitors' guild, I ought to join since
I was a janitor in high school.