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.
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...
Fantasy RPGs and MMOs have a problem with clothing.
No, I don't mean overtly sexy clothing, although there's plenty of arguments around for armor that makes you wonder what the artists were thinking, but rather the design aesthetic itself.
I look at clothing found in games and I wonder how to properly describe them. Part of that is trying to properly describe them in writing, but also just trying to understand what the inspiration was and what time period was the clothing designed to evoke.
For example, LOTRO zooms in on what I'd call your standard Fantasy aesthetic, shooting for a Medieval look in spots and a Renaissance look in others. Think of the differences in clothing in the Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy with the Rohirrim and Gondor, never mind the differences in The Shire and Bree-land.* Even The Elder Scrolls kind of subscribes to a traditional Fantasy look.
It's in games such as WoW, with heavy Steampunk and SF influences mixed in with Fantasy, where I have issues trying to understand the aesthetic.
(I'm not going to throw in mounts and whatnot here, because this is about clothing. Just sayin'.)
Video games often tend to hew to what Blizzard has defined as the "Rule of Cool": cool people doing cool things. As a corollary, you have to look cool while doing those cool things. So, if there was a design decision on gear/clothing, Blizzard would go with what looked coolest.
But.
How the hell do you describe the clothing? How would it work?
To be honest, I never really considered such things until I realized just how many layers people wore in prior centuries. A modern person would consider "layers" as throwing on a sweater before adding a jacket when going outside, but to someone from, say, the 1700s, that's just a start.
Thanks a lot, Shrek; onions and people are the same. From Yarn (and the movie Shrek).
Part of my interest in Renaissance Fairs, living history locales, and Medieval re-enactment organizations (such as the SCA) are how people lived back then. Any student of history could tell you that a lot of literature and art depicts how the upper classes (nobility, religious, and even rich merchants) lived; by comparison, there's scant space devoted to how the vast majority of people in any given time period lived.
Still, I get it. People who play MMOs end up playing characters that rise to the ranks of the great and powerful. At the same time, very rarely do people who begin a tabletop RPG or an MMO start at such lofty heights. Your gear changes as you rise in the ranks, but not always. The leader of a Thieves' Guild, for instance, would not want to attract attention to themselves by living it up and wearing extravagant clothing. The same would go for a spy; their job is to inhabit the role they've been chosen for, whether servant or concubine, courtier or merchant. If there's one thing that RPGs and MMOs kind of miss out on, it's that you're not going to be wearing the same clothing all the time. For ease of plot (and to be honest, the ease of the Art and Graphics Departments) you just tend to keep the gear you're wearing all the time. But if you're entering into hostile territory, odds are good that unless you've got an army at your back you're not going to be wearing a uniform or gear that screams "Hey, kill me first!"**
Anyway, back to clothing in general.
When you delve into clothing as, say, a member of the SCA, when you have about 1000 years of history to choose from to make your character and then clothe them, there's going to be a bit of chaos involved. The similar thing happens in RPGs and MMOs, where artists draw what looks cool but isn't typically confined to a specific period or aesthetic. Even then, you have to make design choices.
For example, in some of the fiction I've played with I decided that it was a good idea for Squires among the Knights of the Silver Hand to embrace a monastic look, evoking the inspiration for the Paladin, the Military Religious Orders...
If you stop at the 14th century version of the kirtle --and potentially the surcoat as if it were a tabard-- you have a suitably monastic look which is quite distinct from others you might encounter around a city such as Stormwind or even Silvermoon City. It is also quite practical and essentially a unisex look, so it would work for all Squires.
Once you start getting later than the 14th century, the unisex look gave way toward tailored clothing toward both sexes, so sticking with the version above makes sense for your average RPG or MMO.
Leaping forward several WoW expansions, you have the Neo-Victorian look of Gilneas, where Victorians and late-Medieval to Early Modern looks are found in Stormwind and elsewhere.*** Trying to make sense of a world where the Victorian and the Late Middle Ages' clothing coexisted would make your head hurt --I know it does mine-- but I think the reason why I have issues with this is because I look the two styles as points in time from the same culture. In a fantasy world, there can be no assumptions that the two styles are part of the same culture, because they can co-exist without much of an issue. After all, just look at the clothing styles for various cultures even today; there's absolutely no requirement that all cultures maintain the same clothing designs, and to assume such is to be pretty myopic.
I guess with the mish-mash of clothing aesthetics I ought to just give up trying to define everything and just learn to enjoy the ride. Still, I know my desire to define everything will just annoy me to no end.
Here's the Patreon link. Seriously, the webseries is really well written.
*I'm leaving Dwarves and Elves out of this because they're purely fantasy races. Since Tolkien modeled Hobbits off of the country folk he knew, I'm lumping them in with Men for this exercise. If I were using David Eddings' Belgariad, for example, things would be a wee bit different as the various nations have distinct dress and stereotypical attitudes. Nobody ever confused Eddings' works with deep philosophical and historical themes, however.
**Mages know all about that; even Nefarian can be heard yelling to his underlings in a fight in Blackrock Spire: "Foolsss...Kill the one in the dress!"
***And you thought David Eddings' nations from The Belgariad were a hodge-podge of various tropes. Chereks were Vikings, Tolnedrans were Romans, Asturians were Robin Hood and the Merry Men, while Mandorians were Arthur and his Knights, etc.
You knew this was coming, didn't you? Meme Monday falling on May 4th is just serving up an easy score...
Catholics would have as well until the early 2010s, when they changed it for something like "and your spirit" or something like that. From Lutheran Memes on Facebook.
And yes, I chose this one specifically because it calls back to that old GEICO insurance commercial. "Mike Mike Mike Mike... Guess what DAY it IS??" Hope you enjoy the earworm. From No Guilt Disney.
Yes, yes it does. Alas, the original on Facebook Star Wars Memes is gone.
Only thing missing is Harry Potter. Or maybe Red Dwarf. From Bertmanderson.
I guess "Cinnabons" was trademarked. From Bertmanderson again.
As long as that chocolate milk isn't the full sugar variety, thanks. From LinkedIn (of all places).
It's kind of funny that after I posted about walkthroughs and whatnot last Wednesday and Thursday, Tim Cain's YouTube video today was about a question he received about how the Internet changed game design and game dissemination to players.
This isn't the first time he's tackled a similar query, and he has those answers in links in the Description*, but one thing that stuck out in my mind was how the rise of Influencers and Influencer Culture has shaped people's opinions about games. The longer his video went on, the more I thought of that line from Citizen Kane...
From Citizen Kane via Yarn.
That reminds me that we've come full circle in what Influencer Culture really means: there have always been people who tell us what to think and what to buy, it's just that the nature of that delivery has changed over the decades** to being more immediate, requiring a more immediate response.
Well, we can control our response, and that's where hitting the pause button isn't a bad idea.
*Tim is awfully good at providing links such as that.
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...
Yes, I've been doing some Spring Cleaning. Well, among other things, but I'm sure you understand. And I do mean around the house, not cleaning out my pile of memes.
Yep. Sad to agree. From Someecards via Pinterest.
I sometimes wonder if the squirrels in our yard do spring cleaning too. From makeameme.
Yes indeed. All those brooms around Silvermoon, just working their asses off. From Reddit.
Bhagpuss commented on yesterday's post about walkthroughs and solved games that "following guides are just more fun", to which I snarkily replied that "are you really playing the game, though?"
That little exchange kept rolling around in my head all night, and I decided to delve deeper into it, because I don't think I was right to simply dismiss Bhagpuss' point.*
In my response, I likened following a walkthrough or merely utilizing the optimized meta to playing connect-the-dots or watching a movie or television series, but upon reflection I don't believe it's just that.
A game is active entertainment. No matter anything else, if you're playing a game of any sort, you're choosing to engage with it. While we can also choose to engage in more passive forms of entertainment, such as watching television, you still have to interact with the game. AI hasn't progressed to the point where it plays the game for you**, so that mere act of physical interaction raises it above the level of watching reruns of MASH.***
However, the operative word isn't 'active' per se, it's 'entertainment'.
Yes, I went there. From the movie Gladiator (via Tenor).
I forgot to ask that basic question: "Are you having fun?" Or maybe a better one is "What is your goal?"
While the former question is the one most people ask, maybe your goal isn't to have fun at all. Let me explain.
***
Walkthroughs are very common in teaching. They provide students with a process to understand a concept with known starting and ending points, and if you get stuck during homework or a test you can fall back to that walkthrough as a guide to help you work through your issues. For example, my Advanced Lab 1 and 2 classes in Physics at UD relied heavily upon you as a student to study and reproduce journal articles, then write up the results as a formal 10-20 page lab report.**** My third lab experiment was provided to me by the professor showing me the lab equipment and the basic design, handing me the requisite journal article, and then said "Now, go and reproduce The Photoelectric Effect."
While some lab experiments are more simplistic than others, they are all walkthroughs. However, I would argue that "entertainment" isn't the typical reason why people utilize them. Yes, there are those who find it fun --and I'm one of them-- but the primary reason why they exist is for instruction and understanding.
Likewise, walkthroughs are found in various other sporting and hobbies. They provide a basis for understanding, a learn-by-doing methodology, and a foundation to build upon. I'm thinking of the karate-do kata that the kids (and my wife) used to perform for their karate class, and you get the idea.
I recognize this kata from their classes.
From the standpoint of games, for some people walkthroughs are the best way to learn to play the game. They provide you with the understanding of the logic behind the game, where the pain points are, and how to solve the problems presented.
***
So, assuming that the answer to "What is your goal?" is to have fun or be entertained, then we can proceed to "Are you having fun?"
That answer is completely on you. If by "having fun" you go do your own thing, then go do it. If to have fun you follow a walkthrough or the meta, then do that too.
However, that doesn't mean that people won't judge you because of what you do. People are people, and I've found over the years that the people who love to say "I won't judge you" often are judging you, just not out loud. And yes, I'm guilty of that too. I'm not going to deny that.
If people react negatively to you for not following what they perceive is the "correct" way of playing, don't be surprised. But it also needs to be said that you don't have to yield to their pressure. If they want you to play a specific way and if it's a requirement for your participation with them, then you have to decide whether it's more important to play your way or play with those other people. If others can't respect you for the way you want to play a game, I think there's your answer.
So for me, "having fun" means doing my own thing, trying to puzzle out answers on my own, and not utilizing walkthroughs or a published "best method". To those who use those because they've got other things to do, such as raiding, then that's fine. You do you.
*Yes, I realize it's my blog and I can do what I want with it, but I try to avoid being an asshole.
**It could be argued that botting software for MMOs is rapidly approaching this tipping point.
***Even then, it must be said there are greater and lesser degrees of engagement while watching television or a movie. If you're in a movie theater watching a movie, the crowd can be more engaged than if you're watching alone at home. The same thing goes for the shared experience of watching a sporting event in a bar or a stadium; you may not be playing the sport itself, but you're engaged with the shared experience of watching and cheering on the participating teams.
****I've told this story before, but I'll mention it again. The night before all of our Advanced Lab 1 lab reports were due, I was working on one of my last lab reports when I somehow nuked the floppy disk my lab reports were on. I had to scramble and rewrite 4 lab reports, a total of 80 pages worth, over the course of 8 hours. I somehow managed to finish it in time, my memories of that caffeine and terror fueled night are pretty hazy.
In the midst of planning the construction of some raised garden beds, studying for the Amateur Radio Extra Class License*, and handling family-related activities, I've had plenty of time these past few weeks to do some thinking.
The biggest thing on my mind was why I actively avoid trying to follow the crowd and follow the clearly defined optimal game path when playing any video game.
Am I committing self-sabotage by doing this?
When I play a single-player game, it's not a big deal because there's nobody looking over my shoulder to tell me I'm doing it wrong. I'm quite aware that just about every video game, from Baldur's Gate 3 to Oregon Trail** has wikis, walkthroughs, and meta-builds out there for people to use, but unless you're actively streaming your gameplay*** people will be none the wiser.
But in the case of an MMO, there is always a best way of doing something --courtesy of algorithms and mathematics-- and if you're not following that meta build that's going to be a bit of a problem. Maybe not if you're playing the game solo, but if you want to do any group content there's always somebody who will be annoyed if you're not "doing things properly".
That's one of the big reasons why I never played what was at one time THE best rated boardgame on Boardgame Geek: Puerto Rico. Aside from being a Eurogame with a pasted-on theme designed to hide a mathematical exercise, Puerto Rico suffered from what for me was a fatal flaw: if you follow everything perfectly the winner will be explicitly determined by your initial turn order. Some Puerto Rico fanboys were so into the meta that they'd absolutely flip their shit if you didn't play exactly according to the meta.
Eurogamers aren't very fond of randomness in boardgames either. From Pinterest.
If you play MMOs, does that sound familiar?
***
Here's the thing: whether or not you play according to the meta of a game, the mere existence of an easily obtainable meta for a multiplayer game means that you have to deal with the consequences, even if you consciously ignore it. Other players will expect you to play it, and if you don't that will impact their opinion of you as both a player and a person. Ignorance is unfortunately not an excuse for a subset of MMO players, and once you become aware of the meta**** you really have no alternative but to deal with it.
Yes, I deal with it by actively ignoring it, but that's also because I kind of figured out a lot of the meta playstyles in my Classic WoW toons through experimentation while questing. Sure, I'm not aware of the entire meta of a particular class, but a short jaunt to Icy Veins or Wowhead will present it to me in full gory detail. I guess you could say that I'm happy I got 80% of the way there by myself, and it's frequently enough for the pugging I do (or casual play). Raiding would certainly put that philosophy to the test, because a) I don't want to look like an idiot and wipe the raid*****, and b) I have a certain amount of pride in playing well and not being a liability. At the same time, I know that looking at the meta is opening Pandora's Box, akin to downloading and utilizing your first Damage Meter addon: once you see how you're really doing there's no going back.
There's a post by Shintar on her SWTOR blog, Going Commando, that's 4 years old this month about this very phenomenon. Titled My DPS Is Bad and I Can't Look Away, it has been living rent-free in my head ever since I first read it. That it came out 3 months after I gave up my progression raiding career certainly had something to do with it, and I completely sympathize with her opinion. At least with SWTOR the game culture doesn't trend toward hardcore that the versions of WoW do, but for me, that post was uncomfortably close to the lead-in before I'd have another "discussion" from a raid lead about "getting my DPS up".
But that's the thing: we're all responding to the very nature of a solved game. Consciously playing a different way from the meta is as much a response to the meta as embracing it.
***
I was thinking about this when my Questing Buddy spent some time playing Stardew Valley over the past Winter. In her usual way, she went out and found a playthrough so she could follow the best path to completing the game. I counseled her to just go and explore the game; sure, you get a "score" after two years but you can keep playing indefinitely after that. Unless you're deliberately trying for something very hard to do, such as completing the original storyline within one year, there's no real reason to follow a playthrough guide.
But you can guess the outcome, can't you? She kept up with the guide.
*Yes, I'm studying for the highest level of Amateur Radio license available in the US. It is certainly much more technically oriented than what I found in the other license coursework; while I originally thought I could be ready to take the exam by April, I have since come to the conclusion it'll be more likely late Summer before I'm really ready.
**Seriously, there's walkthroughs on how to win a game whose whole purpose is to get you to understand how migration on the actual Oregon Trail was like. Talk about missing the point.
***I'm very glad I'm too shy to consider streaming, because I would not be amused by such commentary.
****Typically having been told of its existence by another player wanting you help you get better at the game. I'm going to be charitable and it was a positive interaction, but if you know MMOs it's equally likely it was a variety of "git gud scrub" followed by a group kick.
*****OF COURSE I've done that before. Do you have to even ask?
After some work I've been doing for some upcoming posts, I figured I'd circle back to one of my favorite exercises in self-flagellation: writing.
Writing is kind of in my blood, because right now I'm actually doing that. I've been doing that on this blog since 2009, and I don't see me giving this up any time soon. I've been writing fiction off and on since high school --I was serious enough about it that I photocopied the submission info for Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines out of Writers' Market back in the 80s and 90s-- and the bug still has a hold of me. Today (Sunday), while I put this post together I went back to a story I'd been working on and tinkered with it a bit and tried to figure out the direction I wanted to take it, a rut that I need to simply just tell my inner critic to shut up and just write myself out of.
Anyway, here's a few writerly (and blogging) related memes...
Guilty! From Someecards.
Sorry about that; couldn't resist. From bhargavkesavan.wordpress.com.
Yeah, been there. This past week, in fact. From Bang To Write.
I keep thinking that my plot twists are so obvious that a truck could drive through them. From Autocrit.
This is also me. From Instagram.
Well, that's not gonna happen. If my mom found this blog, I'm pretty sure she'd think I was about to be damned to the fiery pit of hell or something. From SEOptimer.
