Practicing Acts of Random Kindness and Senseless Beauty

The other day I logged into my Orc Shaman and noticed a mail icon was up. I wondered if that mysterious person who'd whispered "I see you" was back, but no, it was someone else:

Well, whaddya know...

Whatever I might have been expecting, it certainly wasn't this.

The person had sent along some silver, a couple of health potions, and some Smoked Sagefish (provides a buff for casters such as Mages, Warlocks, and Shamans). 

I was really touched by this act of random kindness, and I in turn sent a few items along with some silver to someone I randomly saw in The Barrens.

It felt good to be reminded that there are caring people out in the world, especially in a game and genre kind of infamous for bad behavior by players.

Sigh. Really? Again?

Sometimes oddball stuff just happens.

Saturday night, I wasn't doing much, just hanging out in Darnassus in between Alterac Valley runs. 

Or a raid. Or a dungeon run. Or...
You get the idea.

Until this happened...

I looked up from my typing and found this:

Yeah, your eyes don't deceive you, she was up close in my grill:

I wasn't planning on moving, but I certainly entertained the thought. Of course, that could be what she wanted, so I flirted back just to call her bluff.

But nothing happened. She didn't respond, and neither did I. Since I knew the Alterac Valley Battleground was going to pop in probably 5 minutes or less, I decided to just stand there and watch a YouTube video with WoW up in the background until that happened.

It was an uncomfortable silence.

But then the BG finally alerted, so I winked and went to the Battleground:

I haven't seen her since.

Good riddance.

#Blaugust2024

Like That Pat Benatar Song

Word disseminated across the Classic community a couple of months back that a bunch of older servers were going away --my original home of Myzrael-US among them-- and there were free migrations off of those servers to other locales.

My Myzrael-US toons had already migrated to Old Blanchy well over a year ago, where they sat while I began playing Classic Era on the Mankrik Cluster, but I figured I ought to move them before the opportunity was removed. 

The West Coast PvE destination for all of these toons was... Atiesh-US*, which has apparently been suffering from player loss as well. Since I already had a stable of toons on Atiesh-US, that wasn't much of an option. I'd have preferred to migrate my Old Blanchy toons to the RP-PvE server, Bloodsail Buccaneers-US, but that wasn't an option. So, I selected Pagle-US on the East Coast, and that was that.

Or so I thought.

Somewhere shortly after that migration, I began to wonder about the nascent Classic Era West Coast Cluster. After all, I'd saved a copy of the original Cardwyn on the Era version of Myzrael-US for posterity, and when the price dropped to $5 before the ability to save a toon on Era was lost forever I went ahead and saved my two bank toons and my Rogue, Azshandra, as well. These toons were sitting on a dead cluster when all the Era activity was on the East Coast Cluster, and I began to wonder if Blizz in their desire to get people to compress onto fewer Cataclysm Classic servers had also opened up free migrations in the Classic Era realms as well. I was absolutely not going to pay Microsoft to migrate the toons to the East Coast Cluster, but if it was free...

TL;DR: Migrations off of the West Coast were available for free.

The limitation is that you had to move your toon to Mankrik-US in Classic Era, but since I created my current Era toons on Pagle-US, that wasn't an issue.

So.... I now have two Cardwyns on the same Cluster. 

One is Fire,

Ignore the kinda-sorta icy glow.

and the other is Ice.

I SAID, the other is Ice.

That's better.

I still prefer the utility of Frost, but I can't deny the sheer firepower of Fire. That OG Cardwyn is practically at full best in slot, gear-wise, that also means that she brings the pain from that angle as well. I'd like to get newbie Cardwyn up to a much better gear level, but since I'm not planning on switching her from being a Frost Mage there is a certain ceiling to her damage potential. And that's fine. 

*That's the server where my franken guild moved to, and that's where Deuce (Cardwyn Mk. 2) resides. 

Something that Adele Dazeem* Would Sing About

I have been learning, slowly, to let go of the death grip that WoW Classic had on me the past 2+ years.

When I was unguilded, it was much easier to just relax and log in whenever I felt like it. Even when I was a part of Retail Orphans there were no organized guild activities, so there was no reason to try to login every day and do something. I could relax when I needed, and push myself when I wanted to. 

Next time, USE MORE FIBER!!

 

My first forays into regular raiding, in Molten Core, had a low level of commitment --one on Tuesday evening and one on Friday night-- so if I wanted to I could spend the rest of the week doing other things without any worries at all.

 

The epitome of "not worrying":
Dancing atop the Deathforge.

All that changed a year ago, when after a couple of months of persistent hounding/recruiting** I finally relented and joined a progression raid team. 

At that time, I really didn't have a lot of outside commitments --a pandemic and only one kid still at home will do that-- so raiding filled my late night activities after my wife went to bed.*** But I couldn't just leave it be, and like any other addict --low grade or not-- my in-game commitments continued to climb as 2020 turned into 2021.

When you've got two Warlocks in
raid, you bet there's gonna be some
boom-boom going on.

And now, I'm part of a Raid Leadership team, reviewing boss strategies and condensing them into something easily understood. Or getting pings about joining the guild --each time I have to explain that I don't have the authority to throw out guild invites, as I'm not an officer-- or reaching out to people when my Spidey-sense goes off and I think that things aren't okay with someone.****

"Show off!!" said the water
walking Shaman.

 

It's very easy for WoW --or any MMO, really-- to slip into being a job, where you have to login and have to do things. And me, being the responsible person I am, did just that. To be fair, it's a better job than most people's "regular" jobs.

Oh, for pete's sake, it's not that
bad. Will you just clean the
damn toilet this time?

But it also means work when you're supposed to be enjoying yourself.

***

The week I took my son back to college, I quit playing WoW early because I was going to have to leave at 7:30 AM EST. And by the time I returned from my adventure to NW Pennsylvania I was wiped out and went to bed early. The day after, I got back to work and by the time I'd caught up with an extra day's worth of work I just looked at WoW and said "Nah, not today." 

And I must admit those three days without WoW Classic were... glorious. 

Nothing to do, nobody to help out, and I was happy to just not be around.

I woke up early, got on Friday morning, and saw nobody was on, so.....

Nice to just get that finished without any "why didn't you turn it in back in Classic?" questions from people.*****

I saw what happened those three days, and I felt recharged, so I decided I'd take a few days off again this week. And you know what? It felt even better. I was back to where I was before I filled up all my days with raids, where I could goof off and enjoy myself without constantly having to get sweaty all the time.

Such as dancing with the glitched
succubi in Heroic Arcatraz.

Have I mentioned before that I'm so happy that I have a main whose dance is NOT The Macarena?

*Remember this? John Travolta at the Oscars back in 2014 had a massive brain fart while introducing Idina Menzel prior to her singing Let It Go from Frozen, calling her Adele Dazeem instead. Like the pro she is, she shook off any distraction the massive screw up gave her and belted Let It Go out of the park.

**I personally prefer "being hounded", but I know that they officially said I was "recruited". Or convinced. Whatever.

***I've always been a night owl, whereas she's a morning person. I'm still not sure how we ended up together.

****Okay, I do that all the time anyway, but my reaching out now carries more weight because of that leadership role, I suppose. 

*****Because there was no need for me to turn it in. Somebody always had an Ony head around, so I didn't need to do it myself.

EtA: Corrected the comment numbering.

Return of the.... WoW in the Wild

 It's been a while, but I caught sight of this ol' minivan once more at the mini-Reds' high school:

And, I think, the same Columbus Crew MLS sticker.

Oh yes.

 

And it turns out they live in our neighborhood, as I was behind the minivan all the way back home.

Given that I've seen Horde stickers around the University of Cincinnati, I'd have to hang around there more frequently if I want to see more WoW stuff, I assume.

However, here's what my oldest's significant other gave me for Christmas:

Beer not included.

Yes, the Lion of Lordaeron etched on a beer glass, complete with "Redbeard" on the bottom.

Have I mentioned lately that I love my oldest's SO?

Now I need to find out where they ordered it from, so I can get some others made. Maybe a "Cardwyn" or an "Azshandra"....

Bears as Far as the Eye Could See

Well, not really, but there was an impromptu Druid Bear form dance party at the Myzrael-US Stormwind Fountain last night. From what a couple of people had told me, it just kind of happened. A few Bears started dancing around the fountain, and then others showed up until the entire fountain area was crawling with them.

And the one player who tried to join in while shapeshifted into a Firbolg.

Alas that I wasn't there to get a pic*, but I did see some of the pics that my friends took, and it was one of those spontaneous moments of pure fun that make playing an MMO worthwhile.

Kind of like this, when I landed in Ironforge and ran to my usual spot:

There were actually two more at first,
but they began galloping around the area.

It turned out that I knew one of the people there in the reindeer lineup, and she waved at me. I waved back, and we had a chat while the reindeer patrol looked all nice and proper. One thing led to another, and I was invited to go to AQ20 they were putting on as they didn't have enough people to raid Naxx that morning.**

Just one of those things that you simply can't plan on.
 

 

 

*I suppose I could have asked if I could use one of the pics, but I try very hard to keep my blogging relatively unknown. It's not that I talk shit about the people I play with --I don't-- but I don't want my blogging general knowledge either. I know it's a bizarre opinion to have of a blog, since it's a public endeavor, but I've found being such an obscure blogger very freeing in its anonymity. Here's a link to a post back in August 2020 as to my opinions on the matter, but if you just click on the "blogging" label and you can see the numerous times I've mentioned this particular phenomenon.

Nevertheless, there are a few people on Myzrael-US who do know I blog, but I'm very confident in saying that those who do know don't exactly spend a lot of time reading the blog either. (Or at least they've never mentioned any of my blog posts to me.) Which is perfectly fine with me.

**Card was already committed to another AQ20, so I went on Az. I didn't need any of the drops, but I enjoyed the run. Apparently my friend hadn't seen what the Perdition's Blade looked like, so she was asking me where I got that weapon (off Raggy in MC), and how cool it looked (oh yes, it looks awesome).

A Blast from the (Infamous) Past

I periodically make a trip back to Ravenholdt, on the border between Alterac and Hillsbrad, because that's the one place I wanted to see as a Rogue in Classic. When you're an Alliance Rogue in the low L20s and you get that quest to "come visit" Ravenholdt, you have to traverse not only the Wetlands but Arathi Highlands, where the wandering enemies can be over 10 levels higher than you.* As a Rogue that means that you pretty much go through all of Arathi stealthed as much as is prudent, but even then I was chased by one of those damn buzzards for what felt like an eternity.

But once you're high enough level --and you've already gotten the Southshore flightpoint-- Az made her base at Hillsbrad as it was the closest a low-mid L30s Alliance toon would get to the Scarlet Monastery without having to run through the Western Plaguelands.** I spent the Halloween season hanging around in Southshore, watching the occasional Horde incursion to throw rotten eggs around the town.

Once I moved on from Scarlet Monastery, Az left Southshore to entrench herself at Theramore instead. But me being me, I'd still occasionally send Az back just to wander around. Seeing Hillsbrad as it once was warms the heart.

Anyway, the other day I was visiting Ravenholdt and Alterac when I got into group for Uldum. I figured that a quick jaunt down to Southshore and catching a flight to Thelsamar was faster than hearthing to Theramore and catching a ship to Menethil Harbor, so I stopped bashing ogres in Alterac and ran towards Southshore. I quickly passed the Tarren Mill spur on the road from Alterac, where a Horde toon gave me a wide berth even though I wasn't marked for PvP.

There I ran --almost literally-- into a group of L60 Alliance that were coming back to Southshore after a successful foray into raising hell in Tarren Mill. They were bouncing around, taking their time, and one of them waved at me as I caught up to them.*** Even though I started playing WoW on a PvP server, it still felt very weird being surrounded by allies with green colored names. Perhaps because this was Hillsbrad and I was once a Horde lowbie getting ganked by those evil Alliance, I suddenly got the creeps.

I turned off the main road toward Southshore, and everything exploded around me.

Figures with skulled yellow nametags were everywhere, swarming all over the Alliance group. At that point I was eternally grateful that none of the Alliance PvP group had decided to buff me or something, as it would have made me a sitting duck.

I had one Swiftness Potion left in my packs, and I used it to quickly get the hell out of there and reach the Flight Master before the Horde could gank her. Good thing, too, as when I flew away I turned around to see the much larger Horde retaliation group right on my heels, having dispatched the Alliance group.

Okay, I should have had absolutely nothing to fear, as I wasn't marked PvP. However, I know from experience that accidents happen and I could quite easily have been buffed by a PvP late comer or someone not part of the Tarren Mill raid. I also have a lot of dark memories of being ganked in Tarren Mill, to the point where I stopped calling it "ganking" and started calling it "being Tarren Milled". Since this was open world PvP, I wasn't prepared for it in the same way that I'm prepared for a battleground.

So when I read online in places (Reddit is the loudest party here) about how the heavy Horde skew on PvP servers is making Alliance players leave in droves, yeah, I can appreciate where they're coming from. Yes, these players should have known this was coming when the Honor system dropped, but still it can be quite a shock to the system. And it makes me glad I rolled on a PvE server.

But this has also hardened my resolve. Bring on Alterac Valley; I'm ready.




*And that's not counting the elites that wander the zone --and the road-- on a regular basis.

**Not recommended, although some plate wearers in my various SM groups died only once, and that was at the armed border crossing from the Western Plaguelands into Tirisfal Glades.

***The people who I first grouped with those first few weeks of Classic had long since passed me to max level, and it was entirely possible one of them recognized me. However, I think that it was more that they'd had their fun and were enjoying the chaos they'd wrought.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

Living The Frosty Life

When I started playing Classic, I had two real goals: to get into old style Alterac Valley matches, and to get a chance to play once more a lot of the classes I'd leveled before. While I'm still waiting for that AV run, I'd made a point to create several toons so that when I was ready I could start leveling a different one.

My first toon to be used was pretty much a no-brainer, as I've been playing Rogues/Thieves/Shadowblades since I rolled up Azshandra back in late Cataclysm.* While I fumble around with my Warlock Dominius when I enter an instance, I know exactly how to play Az.

But while Az is my main, I've got a few other classes that could vie for second place.

There was the Paladin, whom I've played on both the Horde (Quintalan) and Alliance (Tomakan and Balthan) sides, but squeezed in between the Paladin years and the Rogue years there was my multiyear dalliance with Nevelanthana the Mage.

"Barkeep, hit me up! And add another
for the lady to my left!"

Neve, a Sindorei Frost Mage, leveled primarily in late Wrath and Cataclysm, and hasn't seen much time since her semi-retirement**. But having played her out in the Wild, in BGs, and in 5-man instances, I know how to handle a Mage in a more well-rounded fashion than I do a Warlock.

So I eschewed the temptation to roll a Paladin and instead created a Mage.

***

I resisted the "obvious" Min/Max choice for an Alliance Mage --the Gnome-- and instead created a Human Mage. Like the Kaldorei Rogue Azshandra, a Human Mage isn't the optimal choice for the selected class, but I'm not interested in the strictly optimal build. I'm not interested in raiding, and I'm not going to let the "git good scrub" crowd tell me how to make a Mage tick. And since there are only two Alliance races that can play a Mage, that meant a Human Mage.

Which fit in with the WoW Classic equivalent of Neve I'd envisioned.***

Therefore, let's put the rest of this behind a spoiler window, because I'm going to be talking about those low level Mage things that people don't want to have spoiled.

Don't Interrupt a Warlock Making a Fashion Statement

After what felt like the upteenth time of running through Tirisfal to reach the Scarlet Monastery, Az stands at L39.

And nowhere near having enough money for a mount when she dings L40.

Still, I've decided to take a break from the Rogue Life and try something new, so that I can appreciate more of what Classic has to offer. And in honor of the lack of summons' for all of those SM runs, I created a Warlock.

Compared to Launch Day, Northshire Abbey was
really quiet. Well, except for all these Kobolds.
And yes, I got that cloak as my very first drop.

I'd created a previous Warlock, a Worgen named Adelwulf, back on Ysera in Cataclysm and leveled him via Battlegrounds. To say that Cataclysm wasn't kind to Warlocks in BGs is a bit of an understatement. After being jealous of them in Wrath, I decided to create one just as they were nerfed heavily in Cata. Yes, that meant that the BG route was a real slog to get through, and when I reached somewhere around L82 or so I gave it up. I liked that ol' Wolfie, but constantly being targeted at the beginning of Warsong Gulch became a bit much.*

Since Adelwulf was born in a post-Cata world, I never got to see the original class quests, and being a Worgen meant I never got to hang in Northshire Abbey and work my way through the mostly Human oriented quests. Therefore, I decided I was not going the Gnome route that many of the Warlocks I've grouped with went, but instead decided to create a Human with a name in honor of the late MMO Wildstar, Dominius.**

Since the enormous wave at launch has long since passed, the crowd in Northshire and Elwynn Forest has diminished, but there was little trouble in grouping up when necessary, such as with those @#$&-ing Murlocs east of Crystal Lake's more tame version. I re-discovered that without a Voidwalker, I was a bit of a sitting duck if more than one Murloc decided to attack me, so grouping up became imperative if I didn't want an endless series of corpse runs.***

Still, for me the main attraction was to see the Warlock class quests, and they did not disappoint.

Yes, there are spoilers, even after all this time, because it's been since --2011, maybe?-- that we saw these class quests in all their glory?

Doing This Because I Can, I Suppose

Being a Stealthie means you can get yourself in trouble.

As in "I shouldn't be in this zone and I'm gonna die" trouble.

I've mentioned this before, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I snuck into Western Plaguelands before I hit L30:

Or that I snuck into Feralas and was chased by Tauren guards around Camp Mojache. (Sorry, no pics there, because I was too busy trying to stay alive.)

Or that I was running up to the Cenarion Sisters outside of Shadowprey Village in Desolace, and a Troll guard from the village aggroed on me, even though I could (I thought) barely see him. (Still no pics, but I could swim like 40 Naga were after me.)

Or that I got waaay too close to the Dragonkin in Bough Shadow, because I forgot that it existed in Ashenvale.

***

Still, there's that sort of getting in trouble, and there's the "getting in trouble" you get from a superior.

Back when I first started with Az, I reached Dolanaar and met with the Rogue Trainer there, Jannok Breezesong. I thought him a slight bit loopy, as if Phoebe from Friends were reincarnated as a Male NE Rogue, but essentially harmless. But after you reach L10, he gives you the quest called The Apple Falls, in which he confesses his, well, obsession with a Night Elf named Syurna in Darnassus. He recruits you to deliver a rose to her, which doesn't sound like a big deal.

Well, trying to find Syurna without using a mod such as Questie proves challenging. You can --and I did-- spend a lot of time wandering around, with the "If I were in with Rogues, where would I hang out?" running through my head.

Craftsman's Terrace? Nope.

Warrior's Terrace? Nope.

Some secret lower level in an Inn? Nope.

Some secret section of town, close to the Temple of the Moon? Nope.

At about the point where I was thinking that maybe they were holed up in waaaay up in the Northern section of Darnassus, far north of the Cenarion Enclave, the little dot appeared just as I crossed the bridge.

The Cenarion Enclave? Are you kidding me?

But where..... I spotted a tree to the left, with absolutely no guards nearby but a couple of people in a platform above. I quickly climbed up the tree and discovered a Poison Vendor, but no Syurna. I scampered down the path, turned around, and found the opening I sought, leading down.

This is it, I thought, as I followed the curved passage downward. Damn, they hid themselves well.

At the bottom of the passage it straightened out, and I could see Syurna in the distance. And she was not pleased.

"Isn't this wonderful," she purred as I approached. "You've brought flowers for your own funeral."

Oh Shit.

Even though I'm now in the 30s,
when I drop by I still feel... inadequate.

Since I'd never leveled an Alliance Rogue prior to Cataclysm, I wasn't certain what would happen next. But it turns out that she had a job for me, which involved pickpocketing a demon.*

Yes, that became pretty standard and sure, she may be an NPC, and "just a trainer", but you know, that quest certainly colors my perception of Syurna to this day. I don't have a similar opinion of Mathias Shaw, even though I really ought to.



*And if you know that quest, said demon is hanging out on the edge of a branch dangling out over the edge of Teldrassil. Given my ineptitude at maintaining my balance in game (and out of game, really), this was not quite an easy task.

EtA: Fixed the word "town".

Let's not Overcomplicate Things

It seems that when it comes to video games, I'm a bit snakebit right now.

I haven't been able to play any video games as much as I'd like, and no, this doesn't have anything to do with work.* It does, however, have to do with our family being a bit larger for a while: we've an exchange student residing with us**, and she's been here since the end of August. She'll be leaving in another week or so, but since that takes priority over other items around the house*** I've been gaming less and spending more time on being a good host.

What that translates into is that I've fallen behind in leveling along with the initial wave in WoW Classic, but there's still plenty to do with people who are my current level.****

But alas, my biggest desire --outside of Alterac Valley-- is that I would like to get into some 5-man dungeons, and I simply don't have time for that at the moment.

I keep thinking I'm going to outlevel the content in the Deadmines shortly, so I really need to get there and get in a group. But I also know that a full Deadmines run, particularly given the likelihood of at least one wipe, would take about an hour of complete dedication, and given the intensity of the first part --fighting your way through the mines-- there's no way I could do the 5-man without interruption. And that means really early in the morning or late at night.

But not all is lost: I've been spending some time creeping along, gathering flight points.

Oh yes, I've been a bad Night Elf, sneaking along in areas not meant for an L22 character.

Such as trying to figure out if I could sneak through Burning Steppes just enough to pick up the flight point at Morgan's Vigil. Spoiler Alert: you can't, because there's an Obsidian Elemental parked in the lava just past the (busted open) door to the zone.

Another spoiler alert: doesn't matter if you're stealthed, because a baddie who is high enough level to get the skull icon instead of a number will aggro on you as soon as it gets a line of sight on you.

And based on that result, I didn't try to reach Feralas, although I was really tempted.

However, I did creep up to the Arathi Highlands and picked up the flight point there at Refuge Pointe, and I took the easy route (boat from Menethil Harbor) to Theramore and acquired a flight point there.

Yes, Theramore was still very much non-bombed out, and Jaina Proudmoore had her original hair color (and disposition).

Since I had a flight point for Dustwallow Marsh, the next step was to go get one for Ratchet.

Climbing up the mountains surrounding Dustwallow Marsh isn't an option, and I was low enough level to not make it through the Marsh itself, so I decided my best bet was to sneak through The Barrens' entrance from Stonetalon Peak. If you'll recall, the entrance to The Barrens from Ashenvale is really well guarded by Horde, so you can forget about getting through that way, but Stonetalon's entrance is pretty wide open. Additionally, I'd already been questing in Stonetalon so that I could beef up my level to finish the Ashenvale questlines, so I was familiar with the zone.*****

And I was off, creeping along toward the entrance to The Barrens, and avoiding the Horde players that were running back and forth around Stonetalon. Sure, Myzrael may be a PvE server, but my WoW infancy was spent in Stormscale-US, a PvP server, so I'm more than a bit gun shy about running into the opposing faction out in the wild. That didn't stop the Troll Shaman who made a point of letting me know he saw me by waving at me numerous times.

"You don't see me," I muttered to myself as I crept along.

I maneuvered around the Grimtotem areas, kept to the hills, and "The Barrens" finally popped on my screen.

"Thank goodness. Now I can--"

And then Honor's Stand came into view.

"Uh oh."

The main passage through Honor's Stand went right by the Horde outpost, which effectively blocked the ravine formed from the mountains on one side and the mesa on another, and I had no idea whether the north side of the mesa had a similar configuration.

Doubling back, I turned north, and breathed easier when I saw that those Horde outposts appeared abandoned, so I hugged the mesa and hoped a stray L60 Horde Guard wasn't nearby. A few anxious minutes later and I was into the clear, the plains of The Barrens stretching before me.

Well, except for the roving Centaur and Gnolls, not to mention the Thunder Lizard that had a disturbing tendency to anticipate where I was headed even though I was stealthed, I managed to head south in the direction of where I thought Ratchet ought to be. I turned east on the road and kept on going....

...right into Dustwallow Marsh.

"Oh, you have got to be shitting me!!" I said out loud. "Next time I'm taking the corpse run!!"

Yes, I did (eventually) make it to Ratchet, which was right where the southern edge of Durotar meets The Barrens, but I wasn't very happy with myself.

I should have tried the corpse run first. Or maybe the water route, swimming my way up to Ratchet by hugging the coastline from Theramore.

ANYTHING but stealthing across The @#$!-ing Barrens.




*Well, a little bit, but not nearly as much as in other times.

**She's actually been a lot of fun to have around, but I have to be constantly on guard so that I don't use American slang as often as I do. And to be honest, I've not seen her that much as our youngest has been taking her from place to place, and all I am is the taxi driver.

***No, I haven't used that as an excuse to stop cleaning or doing laundry; instead I've spent a LOT more time doing both than I expected just to keep up with everything.

****Yes, my mantra has pretty much always been "move at your own pace". However, when you're stuck in that questing version of No Man's Land where you can't solo much in Ashenvale right now and you're forced into traveling all over to pick up quests in the low-20s you can do just to get geared up enough to get through those Ashenvale quests, you know what I'm talking about.

*****Stonetalon is another zone that was hit pretty hard by Cataclysm. Not originally, mind you, but in the storyline that followed once a player reached the zone. Even though I'd quested in Stonetalon before in pre-Cata, it was on the Horde side, and I hadn't realized how tilted in favor of the Horde the quests and activity in the zone was, from their flight point (conveniently placed in the middle of the zone) to the surrounding quests themselves. The Tauren-focused quests mimicked a lot of the Alliance/Night Elf quests, and the anti-Alliance quests meant that the Horde were constantly up in Stonetalon Peak, in the Alliance's home territory.

On The Positive Power of Gaming

I was finishing something else for the blog when I came across this new post on BBC News* about what gaming --particularly WoW-- meant to the disabled son of Oslo's vice-mayor of finance.

Mats Steen died in 2014, but his funeral was attended by members of his WoW guild, people whom Mats' parents had never met before. The article shares the story about how Mats fell ill, how he discovered gaming, and what the connections meant to everyone involved.

Mats' father, Robert, next to a pic of Mats'
toon, Ibelin. URL from the BBC article.

The article was originally written in Norwegian, and if you want to read that, the link is here.

I'll freely admit that I got all the feels from the article. I laughed when a guildmate of Mats', Lisette, met Mats for the first time. In Goldshire. And then there was the time Mats was in the hospital, and his guildmates grew concerned.

For the most part, however, I understood Mats in a way that prior to 2009 would have been foreign to me.

My access to the internet, and before that to online services such as GEnie, led me to online communities** that I grew to know and respect, but I never exchanged cards with anyone from those groups. I never connected with them offline, shared in their adventures with their families, exchanged pics of family members (including the four legged ones), and kept up with their personal lives.***

But I did to my fellow MMO gamers and bloggers.

That sense of community, of family, is what Mats experienced. He also experienced freedom that he was unable to achieve in real life, running and jumping, and also the freedom from judgment that comes from living with a disability.

Go and read the article, and grab some tissues while you're at it. And celebrate some of the best parts of gaming.





*Yes, I do read news outside of the US. That's an aftereffect of being a shortwave listener and being a member of my university's Model UN Club. Model UN, for those who aren't familiar with it, is a club where we simulate a committee or the General Assembly of the UN on a particular topic. We follow the UN rules for public discussion, and each person selects (or has selected for them) a country to represent on that particular topic. You can't just fudge things (much), you actually have to research the country's position on said topic. Our club also hosted a conference for high school/secondary school students to send a "delegation" to, representing a specific country across many different committees (from the General Assembly to the World Health Organization to the Security Council). The year I was to lead one of those committees, I ran the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, and while I wasn't expecting a very vigorous discussion, a few months before our conference was to take place Iraq invaded Kuwait. While the topics we covered were already set, the OIC managed to finish official business early enough that we were able to devote an hour or two to "the elephant in the room".

**Shout out to soc.history.medieval, one of the old USENET newsgroups that I used to hang out in.

***I did meet with a fellow member of the Cincinnati Bengals newsgroup for lunch back in the Fall of 2005, the year the Bengals made the playoffs for the first time since 1991. Unfortunately, the fellow Bengals fan passed away from cancer before that playoff game, so while he was able to see the Bengals make the playoffs he wasn't able to actually witness the game itself. He was a very gregarious person, with a shock of white hair and wearing an old style Bengals jacket, but the impression he made on me ran deeper than that. He asked me if I wrote for a living, and when I told him I worked in IT, he said that I really need to start writing. "I love your posts," he said.

When a Gamble Doesn't Pay Off

"You're good, kid, but as long as I'm around, you're only second best."
--Lancey Howard, The Cincinnati Kid


If it isn't obvious, I have a low opinion of gold farmers.

Gold farming, particularly the large operations, are a source of account hacking and MMO economy manipulation. They are by no means the sole source of either, but they are far from an innocent bunch. By using real money to purchase in in-game source of currency, the gold farmers encourage the "pay to win" mentality in what is at times a very obnoxious form of hard sell. There was a time in late-Wrath through all of Cataclysm where you couldn't walk through an Alliance or Horde city and not run into a bunch of bots in formation spelling out the name of a gold farmer website.* And even today, at least a few times a week I get spam mail in SWTOR from gold/credit farmers, which I find quite hilarious given that it is so easy to spend a day and accumulate enough credits to buy most items in the auction house.

I've occasionally wondered why gold farmers do what they do. Sure, the short answer is "money", but there's plenty of other ways to make a living than dealing in the MMO version of Bitcoin. Well, Cracked magazine's website has a post up about a gold farmer leaving the gold farming business behind.**

(I should also note that Massively OP also picked up on the article and posted a referring article on their website.)

The article itself is worth reading, if for no other reason than that it confirms my opinion that Blizzard's attempts to combat gold farmers using the WoW tokens was a shot across the bow of the WoW gold farming industry. It also deals with the nature of MMO/WoW/video game addiction, and that addiction is very much a real thing.

Oh, and the real gold mine (pardon the pun) is pairing this article with one from a year ago, about how a small time gold farming operation looks from the inside.

My single biggest takeaway is that small time/independent gold farming operations remind me of small time professional gamblers. I don't mean the people who are on television at Texas Hold 'em poker tournaments, but the people who gamble at casinos, racetracks, and online for a living. Sure, someone may strike it rich at any time, but those times are very rare. You may even have a better shot at making it as a pro athlete than as a small time gambler or gold farmer, but that dream of making it big is a siren song.





*No, I'm not going to provide a pic of it. Why give the site(s) free advertising?

**I remember when Cracked was Mad Magazine's wackier cousin. When did Cracked actually start putting up some serious stuff in addition to the humor? I know that they were already serious when Robin Williams passed away and they had a couple of really good articles about the intersection of comedy and depression.

Have a Nice Trip

I spent most of the past week visiting different colleges and universities with the Redbeard clan, and while that also meant not a whole lot of gaming, I also got a lot of exercise walking around several campuses.

Sort of.

You see, I'd busted my foot back in early June the day of a college visit to Bowling Green State University. I was walking across our hotel's open area, where their attempt to invoke the images of New Orleans' French Quarter included masks such as these:

The photo doesn't do it justice.
The thing is close to 2 meters tall.

As I was staring at these masks that my wife compared to American Horror Story's Freak Show, I tripped over my feet and I felt intense pain in the heel of my foot. To my later regret, I convinced myself that I'd be fine and went on the visit anyway, which included a 90 minute walking tour of the campus.

I discovered just how much of a mistake that was when we left for home after the visit and stopped for lunch along the way. I simply could not put any weight on my foot without pain shooting through my heel.

After a week, I decided to visit the doctor's office since the pain wasn't going away much at all in spite of rest, ice, and elevation. The doctor took an x-ray and discovered that my foot was not in fact broken, but merely sprained. More rest and ice was the prescription.

Fast forward to a month and a half later, I can walk fairly well, but the foot is around 85-90%.

But it still isn't fun walking around college campuses, particularly those with lots of hills.

***

Anyway, after one of the campus tours we stopped for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Latin restaurant. We placed our order, and while we were waiting, I noticed a couple of construction workers eating nearby. Normally, that's not a surprise, but what attracted my eye was the "Blizzard" logo on the back of one of the workers' shirt.

Sure enough, when he went to get a drink, he had a giant Horde symbol on the front.

"For the Horde," I whispered. And smiled.

Lok'tar, friend! Have you come to serve the Horde?

If you remember this post and were wondering where the hell the Horde was, here you go.

I was in the vicinity of UC last evening and I was behind this car:

Yes, that symbol on the left was unmistakeable:

I decided not to embarrass the youngest mini-Red by shouting and waving. Still, Thrall would be proud.

About those TPS reports...

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, out there on the prairie...
--Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion (pick an episode, any episode)


Yeah, it was a quiet week last week.

I ran some battlegrounds and perused another MMO (watch this space for more info), but other than that, not much happened.  Well, in MMO gaming space, anyway.

Last week was a week more for getting things done around the house: painting the kitchen, painting an adirondack chair (with another one to be built on the docket), replacing the 20 year old entertainment center with a more modern design* that had "some assembly required", and some annual cleaning of the heat pump and the porch/deck.

Yeah, Summer is here in the Midwest.

I did break my "only AV and IoC" battleground credo after finally getting what I consider to be enough Prideful gear (meaning I finally had enough Conquest points to get the Prideful weapon), and I promptly regretted it. There were so many bot filled games that it makes you want to pull your hair out, and to add insult to injury the Alliance was back to bad habits, where I as a (at best) partially Conquest geared Rogue was in the top 3 in health on most of the games I played.

If you're a fresh 90 and you're just chain running regular BGs, you're doing yourself and your team a disfavor. If you're Alliance, queueing for AV and IoC will get you a full Honor set much more quickly than the "queueing for random" strategy.  If you're Horde, just go ahead and pick anything OTHER than AV and IoC; hell, I think I've won Silvershard Mines as Alliance only once the entire expac, and why any Horde would queue for anything else for free honor is beyond me.

***

Overheard in MMOs:

In Eye of the Storm (WoW):

Me: Just how many bots do we have?
Other Rogue: Well, there's you and me at least.
::silence::
Other Rogue: Oh, that's not good.
Me: I don't know about you, but I'm going to hang out around FR for a while.


In Warsong Gulch (WoW):

Hunter: Blizz loves bots, you know.
Me: Okay, I'll bite. How do you figure?
Hunter: They keep their sub numbers up. They used to ban more of these bots but they stopped when their numbers started dropping this expac.
DK: Plummeting, you mean.


In Republic side Taris (SWTOR):

Player 1: Aaaaahh! When will this planet end?
Player 2: I don't like it either.
Me: What's not to love? Jedis and zombies. Er, ghouls.
Player 3: Zombies!
Me: Yeah, but movie zombies act like ghouls.
Player 4: OMG, you play D&D. I can tell.
Me: Guilty!


On Republic side Alderaan (SWTOR):

Mini-Red #1: I don't like politics.
Me: You're still on the opening zone, aren't you.
MR1: Yes, and I don't like the politics!
Me: It gets more interesting starting in the second zone.
MR1: AAA! I can't stand House Thul or Organa or the other guys!
Me: Just relax, kid. It's not a big deal. It's not like Belsavis, anyway.
MR1: Is there politics there too?
Me: No, the planet never seems to end. Just when you think that you've reached the final zone, there's ANOTHER freaking zone to travel to. And that's not even the Bonus Series.
MR1: ...


In Republic side Taris (SWTOR, whispered conversation):

Player: You get to have Risha as a companion?
Me (realizing I had Risha out): Um, yeah.
Player: When does that happen?
Me: Not for a while yet. I don't want to give out spoilers.
Player: Oh, come on!
Me: I'll tell you this much, it'll be in Chapter One sometime.
Player: Like that helps a lot.
Me: It's worth the wait. The Smuggler story is the best one Republic side, IMHO.




*Which is step one in eventually replacing our old --and I'd like to emphasize the 'old' part-- 25" RCA television with a new digital model.

WoW Weddngs are Alive and Well

I've known people who play MMOs together who are married, and even some of those who met in game (WoW or some other MMO) and married before I met them.  But in-game weddings?  I've not known any myself.

However, Navimie of The Daily Frostwolf is a bit luckier than I, and last Wednesday attended an in-game wedding up in the Grizzly Hills.  Her adventures of getting there as an L1 alt are worth the read alone, but the picspam of the ceremony itself are really cool.

If my wife and I were to get married now, we'd not go for an MMO ceremony --she doesn't play-- but we most likely would have something like this at the reception hall:

Yes, that's a Settlers of Catan wedding cake.
(From forgoodnesscakes.net.)

Or maybe this:

Of course, I usually lose at Scrabble.
(From casasugar.com.)

...And Next on the Runway....

"Oh, I love your outfit!"

This announcement was made by a Bounty Hunter in the Cademimu flashpoint, right as we were buffing up.

"Who?" the other Bounty Hunter asked.

"Both you and Sree.  I love how you both look!"

I blinked.  I'm no fashion maven like Rades or Kamalia, as my rules for toon appearance can be boiled down to three words:  "no clown gear".*  My Inquisitor looked like a proper Sith in her hood and chest gear.  A bit plain, perhaps, but since I was still gearing up I didn't have much more than the chest and leg orange gear at the time.  I deliberately turned off the helm view, because I'm not in the mood of staring at a Jason or Scream lookalike for hours at a time.

The second Bounty Hunter spun around, showing off her gear.  "Thanks a lot!" she said.

"Thanks!" I added.

I considered that a unique situation until the other day, when I was getting ready for Warsong Gulch.  While skimming the team lists, I heard a telltale whisper sound.

"Nice mogging job," someone had pinged me.

I blinked.  Again.  "It's not mogged," I replied.  "It's all current gear."

"Really?  I'll inspect you and take some notes."

While I'm sure that I've been inspected before, it felt vaguely voyeuristic that someone wanted to see what my gear was for fashion purposes.

Maybe I ought to avoid Goldshire for a while until this whole fashion thing blows over.





*For example, I still think that Q's T9 Liadrin gear looked the best on him, even if it looked like a generic knight in shining armor.  To me, it just looked functional and cool.

Chit-Chatting Away

Gen Chat is an interesting beast.

Some games, Gen Chat is overwhelmed with gold farmers hawking their wares.  Other games, its dead silent.  And on still others, it can be a cesspool.

WoW's Gen Chat is decidedly schizophrenic.  In the capital cities, Gen Chat is active and reasonably well behaved.*  Outside of Stormwind and Orgrimmar (and Northern Barrens), Gen Chat is notable for its silence.  Occasionally you'll see the guild recruitment posts, especially in the starting zones, but for the most part Gen Chat out in the world is merely a marker to let you know when you left one zone for another.  Given that so few people actually use Gen Chat, its hard to tell if Gen Chat actually transcends the cross-server zones.**

In this post LFG/LFR World of Warcraft, Gen Chat's utility has declined.  Yes, there's Trade Chat and the LFG channel, but once the queues came along a lot of in-game chat activity vanished.

By comparison, Gen Chat in Aion is very busy, but unfortunately most of it is filled with gold farmers.  I suspect there are conversations in Gen Chat that are worth following in Aion, but they are drowned out by the flood of gold farmer spam.  I never thought I'd say this, but in the worst days of WoW gold farmer spam (in Wrath), we never even came close to what I've seen on an average night in Aion.  As much as some people gripe about the miscellaneous topics in Gen Chat, I'd much rather have that than gold farmer spam.

I think the only world where SWTOR's Gen Chat isn't that busy is on Quesh.***  Between the LFG requests and miscellaneous talk, Gen Chat in The Old Republic resembles a pub on a busy night.  I'm not sure how much of this is due to people who migrated from SW:Galaxies, but it doesn't surprise me that a game built on leveling would have an active chat environment in the various game zones.

LOTRO doesn't have a true chat channel marked General, but it does have Regional and Advice channels, which are what a F2P player will mostly see.  Like everything else about LOTRO, the chat channels are mellower than most.  Yes, there are arguments that flare up, but LOTRO chat channels reflect the player base.

Some F2P games tend to isolate players away from the "subscribers" Gen Chat, so I can't say how much different the subs have it.  Age of Conan is a prime example of the 'isolate the freebies' environment, and I can understand why.  By keeping the F2P players in a separate chat channel, that eliminates a lot of the fly by night gold farmer spam in the regular chat channels.  Throughout much of 2012, the F2P channel in AoC was very much dead.  There were people playing the game --just going to Tortage would show people that-- but they weren't saying anything.  In recent months, Funcom has done some server consolidation, and the formerly dead F2P Gen Chat is now active.  Topics in AoC tend to remain tied to the game, since that is the only outlet available to F2P players, but also because AoC's servers tend to have a more global contingent than most other MMOs.  I'm not sure why this is the case, but I've seen far more "pardon my English, it isn't my first language" in AoC's Gen Chat than in any other MMO I've played.

***

Why are some Gen Chats more active than others?  I've thought about this a bit over the past few months, and I don't believe there's a single item you can point to that explains the differences.  That said, here are a few of the ideas that I believe contribute to the success and/or failure of Gen Chat:

• Some of Gen Chat's activity is due to game design.  A game like TOR, which has a lot of Heroic group quests in each planet, encourages activity by forcing players who want to run them to ask the old fashioned way.  A game that has a strong RP player base, such as LOTRO and the WoW RP servers, will have more activity as well.  Those players tend to be interested in the social aspects of the game, and will speak up more often.
• Some games encourage self-isolation, and for a social person that can be grating at times.  While it can be fun to group up in LOTRO, a lot of content can be taken care of solo.  The same with TOR and WoW.  Blizzard used to have a lot of group quests in the Old World, but the Cata revision streamlined zone quests and eliminated most group quests.  LFR takes care of the need to see end game content as part of a guild, and LFG is famous for silent dungeon runs.  With TOR, you can solo quest all the way to max level and complete your class story without grouping once.  And without a burning in-game need to join a guild, the outlet some people have is to talk in Gen Chat.
• The need to join a guild also factors into Gen Chat activity.  Sure, guilds are optional in every MMO, but being guildless makes playing some games much harder.  However, other games (like TOR) make it very easy to play the game guildless, and those games have more active Gen Chat than others.  It may not be a direct correlation, since there are quite a few WoW players who create a guild just to avoid being pestered by guild invites, but the games that have huge guilds and emphasize guild oriented activity are also the ones that have the least amount of Gen Chat activity.
• Finally, in some games the argument could be made that Gen Chat has been rendered obsolete.  Look at WoW, for example.  You have so many methods of communication --both in and out of the game itself-- that Gen Chat is more a method of last resort.  Additionally, the game design in Mists has been pushing people into doing dailies --lots of dailies-- prior to any raiding, and there isn't a centralized chat that enables players out and about in various regions on a server to communicate together.  The mentality becomes "get the dailies done and then get on to other things," which isn't very conducive to chatting away either.  The old "standing around and fishing at the Dal fountain" design just isn't there anymore.  True, this isn't the only time that Blizz has put a lot of dailies as a gatekeeper for raiding --Quel'Danas and Firelands come to mind-- but those patches came later in each expac, not at the beginning.  Starting an expac with dailies as a gatekeeper is quite different, and sets the tone for the entire expac.

Some of the funniest as well as the most vile things I've read in an MMO came out of Gen Chat.  I once got into a discussion about the original Robert E. Howard short stories in an AoC session, and there was the "what events would a Star Wars Olympics have?" discussion during last Summer's Games.  I've learned a bit about theorycrafting in a WoW Gen Chat session, and I found out that some people who play LOTRO know far more Quenya than I do (which ain't hard to do, really).  The Gen Chat is the watering hole for an MMO, and when a Gen Chat turns toxic that's an indicator of larger problems in the game.

Here's to hoping your Gen Chat experiences are fun and interesting.






*Compared to Trade Chat, that is.

**It apparently does, but you'd never guess it.

***Okay, maybe Ilum too, but it's been a while since I've been there.

****The need to avoid being harassed also speaks to the importance of guilds in a game.

Where the Lowbies Are

Since my Rogue has made it to the L40s, I've taken to skulking around in the Old World while in stealth mode.  I still am working on leveling skinning, but the main reason why I'm constantly in stealth mode is because I pop out of BGs into areas that are frequented by the Horde.  I'd spent way too much time on PvP servers (and getting ganked in pre-Cata Tarren Mill) to not take precautions when entering enemy held territory.

I've also discovered where all the lowbie toons are:  Eversong Forest.

I kid you not.

When I crossed the Elrendar into Eversong, I was stunned by the sheer number of toons running about.  Yes, I'm aware of the cross server zones, but this was the first time I'd seen a cross server zone not called Elwynn Forest work as intended.*  Players were everywhere.  I even found a pair of toons working away by the eastern coastline, which tends to be overlooked as a questing area.

In the age of Panda, Blood Elves are still popular.  Go figure.

There were a few other trends I noticed:  a significant number of toons were Hunters and Mages, with Warlocks a distant third.  More interesting was that about half of the toons had titles already attached to them, indicating that a lot of these toons were alts.  And perhaps the most interesting item of all was that the ratio of female to male Blood Elves was on the order of 7:1.  I'd read somewhere that there were actually more female than male Sindorei played on the servers, but I don't recall the discrepancy being so wide.

One big surprise was that there weren't any Sindorei Monks around.  I know they exist, because I see them in Battlegrounds all the time, but there weren't any in Eversong.  I checked both Eversong and the Ghostlands, but nary a Monk could be found.

The few paladins I saw, however, were busy working away in the Ghostlands, fighting the Scourge.

***

Being a Rogue means that you occasionally scare the hell out of opposing players, even when you don't intend to.

For some reason, I really like the Ghostlands.  The eerie feel to the place, coupled with the fight of the Blood Elves against the twin fronts of the Scourge and the Amani Trolls, gives a new Blood Elf player a laserlike focus on the threats at hand.  The fact that the Forsaken have shown up to assist Tranquilien in holding the line on the Scourge, even before the Sindorei officially join the Horde, adds to the conflict.**  There's also the enjoyable interplay at the entrance to Zul'Aman, put in place in Cataclysm, between Ranger General Halduron Brightwing, Silver Covenant Ranger General Vereesa Windrunner, Chieftain Vol'jin, and a messenger from Silvermoon.  Finally, I really do like the elite abominations, Luzran and Knucklerot.***

I was sneaking around in the general direction of the Dead Scar when I saw a pair of L18 Blood Elves --a Blood Knight and Mage-- run up to take on Luzran.  Remembering how rough it used to be to kill him at level, I loitered around.  I'm not one to gank lowbies, but I figured if it looked like Luzran was going to win I could give them an assist.****

The Paladin charged Luzran, and the fight was on.

Luzran kept up a steady stream of attacks, gradually sapping the Pally's strength.  His healing simply couldn't keep up with Luzran's damage.  I made a quick mental calculation and began to maneuver into position.  If that Pally didn't have Lay on Hands available he was sunk, and that Mage was going down soon after.

Just as I reached Luzran's backside I saw the telltale flash of light.  The Pally had finally used Lay on Hands.

I pulled back to wait.

The abomination wasn't going down so easily, and he very nearly killed the Paladin again before he finally dropped.

Using emote, I said "Well done.  Not bad for a pair of Hordies."

The two Blood Elves froze, and one said something (in Orcish) out loud.

After a few seconds, I realized they thought they were going to be ganked.

Oops.

"Don't mind me," I emoted.  "I'm heading to the Plaguelands."

The pair began to move around again, and I slunk away.  The Scourge surrounding Stratholme needed some thinning out.




*Why don't I count Elwynn?  One word:  Goldshire.  It attracts toons for, shall we say, other reasons.

**If you play Alliance, go take a Horde toon into Tranquillien and watch the interplay between Dame Auriferous and High Executioner Mavren.  Let's just say that Mavren is a lecher, and the Lady is not amused.

***You used to have to get a group of 3-4 L17s to take out one of them, but with the changes to the game since Wrath you can take them out with two.  A word of advice:  if you're out questing in the Ghostlands, watch your back.  Those two have an annoying habit of sneaking up on you when you're not paying attention.

****Besides, I like the sound that an abomination makes when you hit it hard.