Wanted: A Living Breathing Instance

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.

Setting Expectations

If you want to know the difference between Retail and Classic in two screenshots, here you go:

Classic:

Note: I like the purple robe better. It harkens back to Dalaran
and the Royal Purple of the Mages of that City.

Retail:

The blue and white robe a Retail Mage starts with
is closer to the Blue and white robe a Priest starts with in Classic.

Both are a Blood Elf Mage with the same name (Drak -something, can't remember what it is offhand), and their respective starting zones. If I'd have chosen Sunstrider Isle for the Retail toon, it would have looked exactly like the Classic version, but the Exile's Reach intro area highlights the differences much better.

Yes, that's Thrall. You know, The Once and Semi-Future Warchief of the Horde. And there's two dragons (!) for escort. 

Of course, a new player won't know diddly about who Thrall is*, but this intro is all about setting expectations. You're on a ship with an Orc in charge, and there are dragons escorting the ship. If you're a recruit, that image implies that a) Orcs are in charge, b) creatures such as dragons are your friends, and b) this is normal.

The Classic intro, by comparison, shows the entire stretch of the Blood Elf starting zones and then centers upon you as a "recruit": a survivor trying to make sense of it all. No dragons, no orcs, just some fellow Blood Elf NPCs and a few other players** 

Like the Exiles' Reach intro, there are expectations set. This time, however, they are that a) you're pretty inconsequential, b) there are no gigantic fantastical creatures in your corner, and c) this is normal.

***

If you've played both the Draenei and the Blood Elf starting zones that were introduced in The Burning Crusade and remained largely unchanged over the years, there are two things that stand out between them:

The Draenei antagonists are the ecological disaster of their own making when The Exodar crash landed on Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles, and the Blood Elves themselves. Make no mistake, the Blood Elves are out to get them by any means necessary, and they're under the command of an Eredar named Sironas.

The Blood Elf antagonists are the Amani Trolls on the eastern borders of their lands, and the undead Scourge and the remnants of their homeland destroyed by Arthas Menethil before he became the Lich King.

The expectations are that Draenei will hate the Blood Elves and their Demonic masters, and that the Blood Elves will hate the Scourge and the non-Darkspear Trolls. It is by design that the Blood Elves never encounter a Draenei out in the Old World*** until they arrive in Outland and discover that the propaganda of Outland spread by their leadership to be a lie.

Neve: Paradise, my ass. What idiot do they take me for?
From April 2022.

Likewise, the Draenei don't re-encounter Blood Elves out in the wild**** until they also reach Outland, but they knew what they were getting into because they'd actually fled the damn place not so very long ago.

***

Now, why do I use TBC as a reference? Because this setting of expectations is very important. It gives you a chance to understand what you ought to care about, what is considered to be a normal baseline, and where do you go from here. 

Taking that comparison from TBC and applying it to Classic vs. Retail, the expectation is readily apparent: in one, while there are fantastical elements, the basics are pretty recognizable to anybody who has played a Medieval-based Fantasy RPG, read a Fantasy novel, or even watched a (relatively) low Fantasy television show or movie. You're starting at the bottom where things are more or less non-magical, and you're going to have to work your way up. In the other, the Fantasy elements are much higher, which might indicate you're of higher status than average, but if you're just a raw recruit then you have greater access to what is typically thought of as High Fantasy than your typical Fantasy novel.*****

If you'd not have looked at the title, you'd have thought they were two different games. And, for all intents and purposes, they are two separate games these days: while the art and class design are similar, they are distinct enough that a player won't confuse one with the other. The gameplay may superficially look similar, but the differences quickly become apparent once you begin to level a character.#

Is one better than the other? Despite my own personal preferences, not really. One is a refinement of the original MMO design that Everquest popularized, and the other is a lot closer to an Action RPG. In one you're a nobody, in the other you're the Champion of the World. In one you can have a house, in the other you have to make do with the occasional empty building. 

And in both, at the intersection of seediness and desire, lies Goldshire, the Fever Dream of Azeroth.

Or maybe Sanctuary, the city found in Thieves' World.
From Etsy, of all places, because I'm lazy
and don't want to hunt down my own copy.

*Okay, it's entirely possible they might have heard about it, especially from some friend who'd been trying to convince them to try WoW and peppered them with all sorts of lore as "enticement". Thankfully, when Souldat's wife convinced me to try the game back in 2009, she didn't have to twist my arm very much.

**The Exiles Reach boat I was on had literally no other players on it. So... I was the only person on Moon Guard taking the boat, I guess.

***As an NPC or an enemy, not a player, of course.

****Save for those old Blood Elf quests in Azshara, which actually date to Vanilla WoW and had nothing to do with the TBC expansion. In fact, those Blood Elves are hostile to both Horde and Alliance, and Blizz obviously didn't clean that up very much before TBC released back in the day.

*****Unless this is Pern. Or Navarre. Or the Alternate Europe from Naomi Novik's Temeraire series.

#When I encounter a Retail player who came back to try the Anniversary servers and they ask where a specific ability is, I have to explain that that ability or capability or whatnot was added in [insert expansion here] so instead you have to do [insert original design here].

Cranky Red Being Cranky

(You have been warned.)

Buckle up, because I've got a doozy for you:

I hate Seasons.

Not these Seasons:

No, not these seasons, although this is pretty accurate.
From Reddit, ifunny.co, and NBC 4 in Columbus, OH.

I mean these seasons:

This is ESO's 2026 Seasons road map.
From neowin (and Zenimax).

I'm using the Elder Scrolls Online's seasons graphic as a punching bag here, but pretty much all of the major MMOs do them: ESO, GW2, SWTOR, and the various versions of WoW, among others. Of the WoWs, Retail WoW is by far the most explicit in organizing the game completely around seasons, but if you squint you can see the seasonal format in the Classic varieties too: they're just not called "Seasons" but "Phases". 

Seasons are not limited to MMOs, either, as most live service games have organized themselves into seasons to keep people logging in and playing. Some are called Battlepasses, some are Seasons, but you get the idea.

I'll acknowledge the good things about seasons first: they demonstrate that a live service game of any sort is being actively supported, they do keep customers logging in and playing, and in general the seasons format lends an air of predictability to these games. In some of the seasonal formats, everybody pretty much starts out the same in terms of needing to gear up and/or obtain in-game currency, so there's no built-in advantage to having done well in the last season. A returning player can start over in a new season and not feel that far behind, which is a nice bonus. Another thing is that the seasonal format does seem to be pretty popular; popular enough that most of the blogs I read that talk about them speak of them in generally positive terms. We bloggers can be a pretty cantankerous bunch, so something that gets more praise than not is worth noting.

But.

I hate them. I mean, I REALLY hate them.

I hate them enough that I actively avoid playing games' seasonal content. Which, in the case of MMOs that basically organize themselves around such content, is a wee bit of a bummer. If you're a long time reader of PC, you can now tune out and wait for the next post, because it's not like I've been shy about this opinion.

From The Office. And Yarn.

Oh, you stuck around? Okay, here's why I don't like seasons:

I Hate the Rat Race.

You see, I've dealt with "seasons" before, in Retail WoW. When you run Battlegrounds like I did in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, the gear grind was organized around gear acquisition (and rankings). I never bothered with rankings and arenas/rated battlegrounds, because I was more of a casual PvPer. However, when people would sprint ahead and acquire gear quickly (due to winning regular/rated BGs) and you were merely doing your thing, playing in random BGs was a nightmare for a few months until you started to get the PvP gear that you needed. It always seemed to me that once you became barely geared enough to survive without getting one-shot, the PvP season would end and a new currency/gear set would open up and you'd have to start over. This led to one of two options: Git Gud (play more), or Drop Out. Given I didn't have the time to play to such extreme levels to effectively 'git gud', I eventually dropped out in frustration.

Since that time, I've come to understand that the way the seasonal content is designed, this is a feature and not a bug. Companies want you to login as much as possible (and spend real life money on stuff in cash shops too), so seasons are designed to maximize FOMO without turning off the player base en masse. There's a fine line between utilizing FOMO to get people to constantly login and buy stuff without pushing them at all or too much, and over the years the more successful games have figured out where that happy medium is. 

HINT: That happy medium is much too FOMO-driven
for my liking. From Dean Signori.

It's the consumption-based society placed in a video game. However, instead of keeping up with the Joneses with cars or computers or power tools or spouses*, it's skins and bling and pets and gear and mounts and weapons. And titles; can't forget the titles part.

If you like that, great. Have at it. Apparently you're very much in the majority here. But for me, I'm tired of it. 

The Unintended Side-Effects on Social Interactions

I'm tired of the naked manipulation by game companies to profit off of psychological tricks. I'm tired of the systems and FOMO-driven seasonal activities being first and foremost, and items such as story and the world being the afterthoughts. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard in an MMO the equivalent of "I really don't care about any of this shit [the story or the lore], I just want to kill things and get my loot." And for me, nothing is a bigger buzzkill than hearing that from someone I'm playing group content with.

"If money is all you love, then that's what you'll receive."

--Princess Leia, Star Wars

I realize that game companies are giving people what they want. If people --or the right sort of people-- didn't want that, they wouldn't make it. They can justifiably say they are responding to player feedback. But at what cost? I look at MMOs as these big, expansive worlds/galaxies, but seasons tend to reduce the scope of an MMO to that of a lobby game or focusing on fewer, specific activities that are part of the current season. This is heightened by the time-limited nature of the seasons, which can not only focus on the tasks at hand but heighten FOMO as much as possible. For example, I couldn't login to Retail WoW for the past few months without seeing this pop up:

It's nice that at least they let you know how much time you have left, but this specific implementation was also done to artificially heighten the FOMO behind the Remix environment. After all, which item gets the largest font size? The time remaining, not what this little box actually is about (WoW Remix: Legion).

Social media hasn't exactly been helping people cope with FOMO, either. There were YouTube videos that came out around the same time as that screencap above that said "Is It Too Late to Start Playing Legion Remix?"**

I know people are doing this for clicks, but still, it's abject lunacy all around. If it's too late to start and you're over two months from the end, then that's absolutely terrible game design and the devs should have locked character creation when it was effectively "too late". If it's NOT too late to start and you're over two months from the end, then the community is actively sabotaging itself. 

Yes, I considered the trolls, but I also look at the players who only consider engaging in something if it's not "too late" to do something as a problem in itself. It's never "too late" to try something out, but if you won't do it if you can't get a certain specific item or title, then there's a wee bit of a problem here. Having raised three kids, I know better than to give in when one of them threw a temper tantrum. And people who throw temper tantrums because they didn't get the thing they wanted (or those who would take their ball and go home if they didn't win) don't amuse me. Still, it's extreme FOMO set in motion by the design team if the only way to achieve certain things is to login practically every day. That's part of the reason why WoW's player base melted down in BfA and Shadowlands: pressuring a player --whether by peer pressure or in-game pressure-- to login and do certain activities every day. 

If You Don't Play with a Circle of Friends, You're Kind of Screwed

If there's one constant in the positive commentary I've seen from bloggers and online forums about seasons, it's that it's great to play seasonal content with your friends. It certainly appears that when someone complains about seasons in any forum-based environment --Reddit, Discord, Game Company Forums-- the solution most often presented is "go find a guild or a circle of friends and play with them". 

So basically what people are saying is that the way to fix problems in the seasonal format, whether exacerbating already extant ones or creating new ones, is to... avoid the problem entirely. Go find some friends and do the content with them.

"Do you not have phones friends?" 

--Possibly apocryphal

I find that answer extremely disingenuous for two reasons: it doesn't actually address the problems, and if you play at a different pace or style than your friends, you'll create fractures in your group of friends and you'll be unconsciously pressured into operating at the speed of play that your friends are operating at. 

In my years of playing MMOs, every guild I ever joined imploded or changed to where I or my style of play was no longer welcome. I honestly envy people who have no qualms about jumping to another guild at the drop of a hat (or joining a bunch of guilds), because I simply can't. When I commit to a guild, I commit to playing with people who I at least consider acquaintances. For me, it is not a lightly-held commitment, and I don't leave a guild without some serious consideration. 

Likewise, I've experienced the gradual fissures in my own current friends' group because most of them pushed far ahead really fast in the current Anniversary servers while I deliberately chose to not get swept up in the euphoria of progression raiding in Vanilla WoW again. Sure, their rewards were great, including one of them landing an Atiesh, but I was adamant in pushing at my own pace for my own sanity***. I was talked to by them about how they just want to go do stuff with me, and that they'd be happy to boost me, I basically said "thanks but no thanks" and that was that. I very rarely directly interacted with them in-game save for general chatting, and I ended up having to go the pug route whenever I wanted to run instances or do group content. I was fine with that, but I did miss running content with them. In the end, I guess you could say that they were all more hardcore than I was.

Looping back to seasonal content, if you operate at your own pace or you simply don't know people and aren't inclined to randomly join one of the many guilds who try to chat you up with whispers****, you're left with random pugs. And we all have our horror stories about toxic pugs in MMOs, all the more so when the limited nature of seasonal content means that puggers want to go harder and faster than what they explicitly state. Add to that (in Retail WoW at least) the very real potential that if you screw up in a Mythic Plus run***** by a lack of understanding/lack of skill, the person whose key it was loses their key. Let's just say that people can get cranky about that, which adds to the toxicity of doing pug runs. 

Hence the evergreen "Play with your friends!" suggestion that bypasses the toxicity problems without actually addressing them.

To me, this is akin to an ostrich sticking their head in the sand and pretending everything's fine.

Too few people use the full meme.
From KC Green and The Verge.

The Short Term Nature of Seasons Means the Long Term is Rendered Less Important

We've all had our posts or commentary about "Why does the story in X suck now?" Or maybe "Why isn't company Y putting out new story for their game?" Well, game companies aren't made of money, despite what it certainly seemed in Blizzard's case 17 years ago, so if they're pumping out things to do in seasonal content, guess what typically gets the shaft? The overarching story/game. 

Being focused on the short term so much means that resources aren't being allocated to the long term, and that poses a problem for the overall success of the game. This is not exactly a new phenomenon, since it certainly seems that most publicly traded companies (or those owned by private equity firms) operate on a quarter to quarter basis. I've personally seen my own company (or one of its predecessors) basically use financial funny business like "temporary pay cuts for one month" to make the quarterly bottom line look better,# so I'm quite familiar with how such a short term focus causes long term problems. People notice a decline in quality, employees get frustrated with the lack of pay or working conditions and leave, or management lays off all of the people with institutional knowledge in favor of cheap labor who make the same mistakes that were done years ago. 

So yeah, such a focus on short term seasons, whether there's an overarching road map or not, means the overall plot can get lost. 

Playing Single Player Instanced Content in an MMO is a Band-Aid on a Community Problem

Oh yes. I figured I'd address the other suggestion I'm sure people will promote, at least from a WoW perspective: if you can't do group content, go solo stuff in Delves. That's always reworked for each season.

After all, that's what it's there for, isn't it? 

Yes, and actually that's the problem.

Delves are an admission by Blizzard that it's cheaper to devote money toward creating a single-player instanced experience in WoW than it is to clean up the toxicity in the WoW community. 

Let me put it this way: every company has to devote resources in such a way that provides the most short term profit. Not long term, because a company that's publicly listed on a stock market or owned by a private equity firm has to show maximal quarterly profits. Cleaning up an in-game community takes a firm commitment from a game company (and the community itself), and more importantly it takes money. Frequently more money than a game company wants to spend for an intangible benefit of having a "good community". And let's also be blunt, losing the bad actors in a toxic community also means that the game company is losing those players' money. 

So, to a lot of game companies, creating a single-player experience to circumvent the toxic community in the pugging scene is the way to go. It only costs some developer time as opposed to a lot more money invested in admins and enforcement, and voila! You get a workaround for those left out of group content to do instanced content of their own. Never mind that it is the gaming equivalent of "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain," here's a shiny new thing that you can play with.

From Choice of Games. And the Pythons, of course.

It's not a matter of whether it's fun or not, that it exists annoys me. It also feels like it's a game company patting you on the head, telling you to go play and leave the other content to the "Big Boys and Girls".

That single player instanced content is popular is kind of an understatement. And yes, I'm quite aware of the Green Eggs and Ham nature of my dislike, but I do know that the nature of my dislike is Grinch-y enough that I would never even admit to liking it if I did try it and like it.##

***

I could probably delve deeper (::rimshot::) and provide more reasons why I dislike seasons and seasonal content, but I think that I've beaten this topic enough. And like I said above, I don't expect people to agree with me on this, because they have different experiences and they do have a tight knit group of friends/guildies that play at the same pace as them, so many of the potential pitfalls with the seasonal format don't manifest with them. And that's fine with me. I'm glad they're having fun.

But for me, I dislike it when not everybody is having fun, when people don't find the seasonal format to be an enriching experience. It doesn't matter if it's in WoW, SWTOR, ESO, or any of the other MMOs out there: I don't consider a marker of success to be whether merely enough people are having fun, but whether those that aren't can find their place at the table as well. Maybe game companies can only do so much, as the community's own behavior has its own part to play, but game companies can create the conditions that a better in-game community can arise. Or they too can focus on the short term and worry about the long term ramifications next season. Always next season.

*Or ham radios. I guess it's a sign that this is everywhere, and not just in gaming communities.

**Seriously. Do a short YouTube search and it'll pop up.

***And blood pressure.

****It happens to me all the time.

*****This is my understanding, as I've never played Retail since Mists so it might have changed. (My watching the crowds at the major cities and Goldshire don't count as "playing", IMHO.)

#Except for the executives. Because of course that's the case.

##It would also require me to engage more in the Retail WoW story, and that is simply not happening.

Codas and Retrospectives

Every so often, the YouTube algorithm pops up something that I really love.

This time, it's the kinda-sorta Beatles song, Now and Then.

Yes, it's the last of the pieces that Yoko Ono had found on a cassette that John Lennon had been recording prior to his murder. The other two songs were in better condition and could easily be filled out by the three remaining Beatles at the time into released songs, but this last one proved to be beyond the reach of the technology of the mid-90s. Apparently George Harrison also thought the song was rubbish when they were working on it in the mid-90s; whether it was the low quality recording or the song itself was up for interpretation. Still, with new tech brought to Paul and Ringo by Peter Jackson, they were able to get a usable extraction of John's voice and finish the song.

It's by no means the best Beatles song out there, but at this stage in my life I find it wistful, a longing for people in the past that you had a friendship with and are no longer around. In its own way, it's a perfect coda for the band.

The music video for Now and Then does highlight the irreverent and funny personalities of the band, which reminded me a lot of something my Questing Buddy and I were chatting about earlier this past evening. 

We were talking about our experience raiding in TBC Classic, and before that our Vanilla Classic experiences. Her journey ended up being much better this time around on the Anniversary servers, because her guild doesn't take themselves entirely seriously. They do want to raid well, and they do push themselves, but that's more on the individual members to basically have their stuff ready to go rather than some Raid Lead wielding a clue stick to get everybody on the page*. What I highlighted was the espirit de corps of the Mage team, and how we were all a tight knit bunch and truly enjoyed each other's company. Raike would talk about her music playlists for the raid, Zwak would crack his sarcastic Dad jokes, and Haldol would somehow make it to the raid despite keeping a crazy work schedule. Raike and I would create fake music lyrics to commemorate our Mage Misadventures, and Iceboom would talk about his watercolor painting and encourage me to give it a try.** We all kept track of who died, egged each other on if they had a chance of ripping threat from the tank, and we'd talk about the most inane topics that we could come up with. Given that the three Mages ahead of me were three of the best Mages on the server, I didn't mind that I was in fourth place on the overall DPS meters. What mattered to me was the amount of sheer, unadulterated fun we were all having, and that's something I do truly miss.

I don't think that sort of connection will ever come again in an MMO for me, because it was my first time truly being part of a progression raid team and the stars aligned to provide me the best possible time in a multiplayer game. Like John sings in Now and Then, I do miss you, old friends.

*Or, as in the case of the franken guild I left, having weekly "performance reviews" of your parsing that they instituted in Wrath Classic.

**If you're reading this, Iceboom, I still have to buy some paints and get to work. Your biggest piece of advice, to keep painting no matter how lousy it looks, is advice that I've taken to heart on all sorts of endeavors.

Wait, What WAS Considered Beautiful in 2004?

Okay, I'll admit that I wasn't expecting to be writing this post when I sat down on Friday morning before work, but things happen.

Well, this happened:

I've been watching Angelika's videos for over a year now, and her focus on items such as clothing, art, style, and other things in MMOs and RPGs (mainly Elder Scrolls and WoW) are interesting to me. So, when she decided to focus on the standards of beauty in WoW (primarily WoW Classic), I was interested in her take on it. 

The biggest takeaway for me was how she viewed Vanilla WoW through the lens of what was considered attractive and stylish in 2004, which was when the game released. I'll be honest in that I couldn't tell you much of what was considered "in" at the time, because our youngest was a year old and overall the years 1998 - 2005 were a bit of a sleep deprived blur. 

Then, this morning, this dropped:

I haven't watched the trailer either (I haven't watched a Retail WoW trailer except for Dragonflight since Mists back in 2012), so I can't speak to it myself, but I found her critique very interesting in that Blizzard is basically "going generic" as far as the Blood Elf look. If you looked at Liadrin, you'd not know it was a Blood Elf from WoW. She just looks like an elf, not a Warcraft elf.

Of course, that's not enough, because apparently there's a big divide on the reaction to the trailer. People either adore or despise it, with not that many opinions in the "meh" middle. Which is pretty much standard for anything in Retail, but a lot of the hate is focused on Liadrin's look and how "masculine" she looks. The pictures I've seen of her simply don't look like her, masculine or not. Liadrin has a specific look to her that dates back to TBC, like Angelika pointed out, and Blizz moved away from that.

Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, but yes, the videos are worth a watch.

#Blaugust2025

"I Guess You Like Killing Dragons"

This is something that periodically pops up when I play MMOs, and I have to wonder whether it's unique to me or more of a general reaction.

When I'm in a PvE group environment, such as a max level dungeon, instance, or raid, the question of  "What are you here for?" will occasionally pop up. In raids, that is an inevitable part of handling loot, especially in the "old style" of not having personal loot as found in Retail WoW, as no matter what method used people will want to obtain loot.  In other cases, people are merely being social and asking a pretty general question as an ice breaker. 

There's even a good chance that people have some quests they want to finish, such as the numerous quests that take a person back and forth to Blackrock Depths, or they want to help someone with a special questline, such as the WoW Classic Era Paladin or Warlock mount quests. 

But I'll use as an example an Onyxia raid from last year that I got talked into going by a couple of people in my WoW Classic Era friend group. This Ony run came after their guild's weekly Blackwing Lair raid, and for those people not familiar with the Onyxia raid, it consists of a couple of trash mobs and the dragon, Onyxia, herself. It's a fairly quick raid if it's done well. But this particular time, they had barely 20 people there out of a maximum of 40, and that as definitely pushing the envelope as far as how few people you can take into Ony and complete the raid. 

So I figured why not and asked for an invite. 

After joining the raid, I joined their Discord for coordination purposes and the Raid Lead sent me a link to a website for their Soft Reserve system, Softres.it. I didn't really need to look at the list of items to know that Onyxia doesn't drop a lot of loot for Mages. For the most part she drops one piece of Tier 2 gear (the Helm), and the only other items of interest would be the 18 slot bag and (of course) the Head of Onyxia, which you can turn in for an okay reward for Mages but you do get to have your name announced as everyone in your capital city gets the "Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer" buff. 

I just gave a brief glance at the options there and decided to pass on reserving any loot.

This didn't go unnoticed.

Before first pull the raid leader said they were one short on people reserving, and after a short pause, there was a "Cardwyn, you're not reserving anything?"

"No, I'm good," I replied via chat. 

"You're sure?"

"Yep."

"I guess Cardwyn likes killing dragons," someone quipped.

I'd begun typing a response, basically saying that the helm I was wearing (a turban, actually) from Upper Blackrock Spire is better than the Tier 2 Helm, but.. saying that was simply taking too long and they were ready to go, so I let it slide.

There's a reason why I turned off
the Show Helm option in MMOs.

But I'm sure that more than one person looked at my gear, which was a mix of Blue and Green gear, with the only Purple pieces on it being the hand crafted Robe of the Archmage and the ring I got from having an Exalted reputation with the Stormpikes in Alterac Valley, and said "WTF?"

That's the thing, really: the raids with actual upgrades for me --in the lower WoW Classic Era raids, anyway-- are in the other raids: Molten Core (MC), Blackwing Lair (BWL), and Zul'Gurub (ZG). To be honest, I'd be better off running ZG a few times to get some basic raid pieces and then go to BWL, but I'm sure people jump right in to BWL without a thought once they hit max level and get attuned to the place.

***

The concept of someone joining a raid or other group content when they don't need anything, gear-wise, seems to be such a foreign thing that it flummoxes people.

I was once kicked from an instance run of fellow raid members back in Vanilla Classic WoW because I was in there for fun and not a guildie. One moment I was in the group and the next I was kicked, being told in Discord* that since I was in the instance for fun and not a guildie they were going to give my spot to a guildie who needed the instance run. If I were given the option I would have stepped aside, since everybody involved was on the same raid team, but being booted without giving me a chance kind of stuck in my craw.

For a long time I felt that the person leading that instance run was trying in a not-so-subtle way to try to push me into joining the guild that I raided with, and I resented the passive-aggressive manner in which he was trying to accomplish his goals.** As time has gone on, however, I now realize that this was just a symptom of the encroaching hardcore direction that both the guild and raid leads were heading, and one that I became increasingly at odds with.

I realize that saying that you play for fun
can be wielded as some sort of  excuse for poor behavior,
but I've been on both sides of this argument and I can say
that the try-hards are worse. From Reddit.

Doing things for fun is just a statement that you enjoy what you're doing. It's not an excuse for not caring, or trying to validate bad behavior in group content. Unfortunately, however, "fun" has somehow gotten a bad reputation in gaming circles, which boggles my mind. 

This isn't work, after all.

If your gaming has morphed into work for you, or you begin to look down upon people who are there to enjoy themselves, maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you're doing. 

*It was a post raid instance run, so we were all in Discord.

**This person is the same person who pulled me aside after a Classic Naxxramas raid to tell me how to "improve" my DPS, despite he not being my class lead, nor a raid lead, nor playing a Mage for anything other than one of his many alts. This unsolicited advice annoyed the hell out of me, given that I knew what gear I needed to improve and I couldn't make the gear drop if the RNG Gods were not interested. Given that my class lead was really happy with my overall output, as he had his own trouble with getting gear, I valued his input far more than these "suggestions".

#Blaugust2025

When You're Too Meh for a Midlife Crisis

I sometimes wonder what my midlife crisis would look like. 

Yes, before you point out that I'm north of 50 so I technically should have had my midlife crisis a decade or more ago, I'm aware of that. But I also know I didn't really have a midlife crisis either, so...

Would it be a fast car, like this Mercedes I discovered at my son's apartment parking lot when we picked him and his partner up for Gen Con?

It was SO out of place compared to all of the
rest of the cars in the parking lot.
Fun Fact: I looked up the price online and it costs
close to what our current house cost back in 2002.

Nah. If I had my choice of car, it'd likely be something from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s, although I'd not say no to a mid-80s Ford Mustang or Pontiac Firebird.

These were made locally until mid-1987.

The thing is, that era of cars are in high demand from people my age (or a little older), so even the thought of buying one to try to fix it up is kind of cost prohibitive. 

The pricing bubble has also afflicted another hobby of mine, audio, because I'd like to have picked up an older 1970s era receiver, but again a ton of people my age have gone into that and driven up the prices.

Such as this Pioneer SX-780, made in 1980
(the manufacturing run was 1978-1980).
From Oleg's Vintage Audio.

Then again, my trusty old NAD T751 receiver could stand a cleaning and repair job, so maybe it's for the best to stick with the NAD and my Pioneer VSX-2000 that is still chugging away in the basement.

Or I could go the route of a friend of mine and start up an AD&D campaign of my own...

Such as module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
From eBay.

But I'm happy playing in his campaign at the moment. No sense in stealing his thunder.

Maybe I could just take that period of my life when I actually did progression raiding in Vanilla Classic and say THAT is my midlife crisis, and then we'll call it a day. That's probably the easiest answer. 

EtA: Corrected the NAD receiver model.

#Blaugust2025

A Few Changes

Well, I can say that I'm getting closer to getting a mount on a few accounts.

Yes, Hoots is holding a two-handed sword.
Standings as of July 23, 2025.

Another thing I can say is that of the eight toons I've been leveling, the slowest two have been the Feral Druid and the Holy Priest. It's not that I had issues with playing them, it's that it takes a while for them to kill anything. And let's be honest, it's a bit difficult to level a healer if you don't go into group content, and I really had no intention of taking Shaluna into instances from the get go. I have gotten better at healing since my original days leveling Quintalan back in 2009/2010, but I've seen enough bad behavior by tanks and DPS in the pugs I've been in that I just look at healing random groups and give it a hard pass. 

Did somebody say bad behavior? How about a Mage who didn't buff casters or Hunters* or provide water or food to the same? I was on Hoots at the time, so I could understand the Hunter part, because if you only played Retail before coming to the Anniversary servers you might not realize that Hunters use Mana in Vanilla Classic, but not even buffing the healer until they repeatedly asked for it? Or even asking if people need water or food? 

"That's borderline criminal," a Paladin tank in a later instance commented after I mentioned that Mage's behavior.

"I was offended, because I main a Mage," I replied. 

Before you suggest the obvious that perhaps that Mage didn't understand English, he commented several times in chat in the instance run, so yes, he knew English well enough. He just wasn't interested.

But yeah, after watching behavior like that, or a tank just continuously rushing forward while I and the healer were sitting back, drinking, I think I much prefer being DPS and not dealing with stress-inducing behavior as a healer. (Or a tank, for that matter.) Whenever my Questing Buddy bitches about pugs when she's a tank or healer, I totally understand. It doesn't stop me from needling her, since we first met in a pug, but I understand where she's coming from.

***

Okay, I'm sure that somebody out there might be wondering why I just don't group up with my friends to run a few instances or so.

There's one big problem there: nobody seems to be at the levels my toons are at. And if they are, because they're leveling an alt, they shoot right on past me very quickly because they're using one of their max level toons to boost each other. For example, my Questing Buddy borrows her husband's Mage --whom she also leveled by boosting him with her own Mage alt-- and then levels those alts by boosting.

The other thing is that I'm leveling 8 toons at once, so even if they were just leveling by questing they'd naturally pull ahead, even though they're raiding and doing other things on their mains on a regular basis. 

I've been told that once I reach L50, my friends intend to nab me and chain run instances until I get to max level. And no, I'm not happy about that, so I'm starting to think that I might slow down my logging in when I reach L49 or so on toons. I hate carries.

***

In other news, AQ40 is already done and open, and the 12 hour war has passed us on the Anniversary server. This caught me by surprise, because I figured that at least a few more guilds would have worked to get Scarab Lord for toons, but it could also have been that one guild was being an asshole about it and rushing ahead to get Scarab Lord solely for themselves.

When I heard that there was some Qiraji fighting going on at Gadgetzan, I hopped on a flight down there and promptly discovered that it wasn't exactly the safest place for an underleveled Hunter:

Shortly after I took that screenshot, a respawn happened with me too far away from the flightpoint...

so I rushed back to try to escape with predictable results:

My friends group did what they usually do, and gave me some crap about it, but I gave as much as I got:

For the record, the ones giving me the most crap
were all women.

I guess that means that by early October people will be ready to move on to Naxx.

***

Oh, and I guess I ought to mention one more thing: given how slow the Holy Priest and Feral Druid are progressing, I'm going to start leaving them behind a bit. I might also do that to the Shadow Priest, but we'll see. I'm not giving up on them completely, but I have tried to keep all 8 toons together, and I think I'm ready to keep 5-6 of them in the same range instead of my current modus operandi. Given that two of them weren't going into instances, and the Druid was mainly going to be used as an Herbalist and Skinner, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'll just keep plugging away and see how things progress.

*Since I've never played Hunters until now, I never knew that Hunters had their bar changed from Mana to Focus --akin to a Rogue's Energy-- in Retail. It took the impending (and now current) Mists Classic release for me to realize that.

EtA: Fixed some grammatical issues.

Yet Another Debriefing

I've wanted to put together an origin story for Linna for quite a while now, so when I began Winter's Veil and the Light as a Christmas story things seemed to fit into place. Unlike the average Hallmark Christmas Movie (tm), I wanted a Christmas story that didn't have romance involved. Okay, yes, there's a few references here and there to romances, but it isn't the focus of the story at all.

It's also quite easy to forget that Linna's actually older than Card by about a year or so, because Card left home ahead of her. I felt that Card being the catalyst for Linna's departure is one thing, but there had to be more to it than that. I've done my share of volunteer work and I know people who chose professions that aren't very lucrative but serve a critical function in society* because they feel the call to serve. To me, the Paladin is an extension of that call to serve, despite in WoW lore the Silver Hand was seen as a path to the nobility. Obviously, people will join an organization for any number of reasons, yet I wanted Linna's desire to help out to manifest in a pretty obvious way. That doesn't mean that she's an overgrown Girl Scout or something, because I once described her as the least serious Paladin in the world. I can easily see her as being an annoyance in the side of Lord Shadowbreaker because she simply will not act with the gravitas as befits her status as a Knight.

The path of a Paladin in World of Warcraft is more than simply based on the historical military religious orders of the Crusades**, given that the members of the Knights of the Silver Hand could marry and have children. The AD&D version of the Paladin (the O.G. Paladin, to be honest) had a very restrictive set of ability requirements for the class, and in the old days of "what you roll on your ability score is what you get", Paladins were quite rare.*** Therefore, I made some extrapolations based on what I knew in-game of the WoW version of the Paladin and came up with the requirement for two sponsors for acceptance into the Order.

But how the initiation would progress kind of stumped me. 

Okay, I knew about Arthas' initiation in Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden, and I thought it might work with some heavy editing, but I cast about for information on how it was interpreted in a roleplaying scenario. It took some searching, but I came across this post on the Argent Archives website, which provides a full RP induction ceremony into the Knights of the Silver Hand.

From argentarchives.org as of July 1st, 2025.

As you can tell, I adapted it to use in the story in the same way that they adapted it from Christie Golden's work. I thought there was too much in the ceremony to simply copy it verbatim, so I trimmed here and there to speed up the story a bit, as well as to add the sponsorship portion. I also thought it appropriate to give the Priesthood more authority over the entire ceremony by cutting out the Silver Hand's direct participation in some of the initiation, reflecting the Catholic Church's authority over the military religious orders in the Middle Ages. Azeroth has too little population --compared to Medieval Europe prior to the Black Death-- to simply let whatever Priest happens to be around to administer the induction ceremony. Sure, one of the Bishops could have run the show, but since the High Priestess is actually there in the Cathedral in-game, it made sense to use her instead.

***

Okay, confession time: for the longest time I had absolutely no idea who Linna's second sponsor would be. Only now in retrospect it seems obvious, but I wrote up several basic outlines for various people who would be Linna's second sponsor, and at various times I tried them all out:

• Elsharin
• Evelyn
• Mona
• Sloan**** 
• Mathias
• Some Faction Lead/Bigwig

The last two I discarded very quickly, because Mathias wants to stay in the background as much as possible despite Mona's past ties to SI:7, and also because I wanted this to maintain more of a "common people" focus than fall into the same "faction lead-focused" trap that Blizzard has with their own Retail story. Still, I knew that in order for Linna to be inducted, there had to be some nobility or higher up involvement (the High Priestess, Lord Shadowbreaker, etc.) but I didn't want that to be the focus of the story. All of the others in the list I deliberately brought up and discarded in the story itself because the story actually provided the TL;DR of why I decided not to use any of them. I also really didn't want to choose Azshandra, because she'd never agree to that. I know her well enough --she lives rent-free in my head, you know-- and she'd have shut that down before I could even put her on the list.

I wanted the second sponsor to be someone that Linna has interacted with, and could potentially represent a larger organization that may or may not be well received by either the nobility or the clergy. To my mind, that meant either a semi-renegade (such as Balthan) or a member of an organization not based in Stormwind: the Cenarion Circle, the Argent Dawn, or the Explorer's League. Of those, the Cenarion Circle made the most sense since Linna has interacted with them before. And it was then that I went "Duh!!" and smacked my forehead. I contacted Ancient, who readily agreed to let me borrow Kitwynn again, and that was that.

***

There was one last loose end I had to clear up, and that was a technical matter. I didn't want to write about Honey Bread without actually having experience in how the damn thing tastes. Yes, I could have just rolled with it and come up with a description based on what I knew of the bread, but I wanted to ground my writing in my own impressions of what it tasted like. Of course, the problem here is that a fictional food isn't something you could readily taste.

Or could you?

Well, in the Before Times, I wrote a post about fandom cooking in July 2021. Among the books I referenced, there was this little gift set:

I still have the apron, btw.

And tucked within it's pages, there was this:

Sindorei this, Sindorei that. It's not like the Queldorei
didn't eat it before them, you know...
From World of Warcraft: The Official Cookbook
by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, Page 79.

So... I had a recipe to try.

I need not bore you with the details about my testing the recipe out*****, and I did have to make an adaptation to accommodate my low-salt diet, but this was the result:

That's after brushing it with melted butter
once it came out of the oven.

If you want to know how it tastes, well... 'absolutely awesome' kind of covers it. It reminds me a lot of challah bread, given that the ingredients are similar, but the recipes of challah I've used have granulated sugar instead of honey.

Before you ask, 1/12th of Chelsea's recipe comes out to about ~34 grams of carbs, so it's well within my carb budget on a per meal basis. Believe me, I kept an eye on my blood sugar after eating it, and I had no issues with a sudden spike in my numbers. 

My wife really likes the recipe, so I think I might have to put this into regular rotation. Next, I ought to try Chelsea's Mulgore Spiced Bread recipe, which apparently gets rave reviews on Reddit and other websites. 

***

So there you have it. A story that I originally thought I could belt out in a month or so took over seven months and had me bashing my head against a wall for a good while. I have other stories I'm working on in various states of completion, and I'm not sure which one will appear next. I ought to start posting on Azeroth After Dark rather than letting that blog sit there, unused, but we'll see. Based on my pageview data, I know that my fiction doesn't get a lot of eyeballs, but I wanted to get this out there instead of holding onto it.

*Aside from the military, there's teaching, firefighting, police, local journalism, libraries, community outreach (such as senior centers and support), park administration, and religious orders (no, televangelists don't count).

**The Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon (Templars) and The Knights of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (The Hospitallers) are the most well known among the military religious orders, but there's also other Crusades througout Europe that generated military religious orders. Among them are the Teutonic Knights, the Order of Calatrava, the Order of Santiago, and the Order of Montesa. All of these military religious orders mixed a monastic life with military service. Unlike their non-religious chivalric counterparts, the adherents of the military religious orders eschewed worldly possessions and maintained celibacy in the name of service. While those requirements may have held up for individual members, some of the military religious orders became very rich from donations by the nobility throughout Europe (looking at you, Templars).

***Or you had to keep rolling until you got the right combination. I tried that once, and it took me hours before I finally got a Paladin on rolls alone. That minimum score of 17 out of 3d6 for your Charisma is a real bitch.

****You can find Sloan as an NPC vendor in SI:7, and I adapted her in another unfinished story into someone Card interacts with when she finally arrives at SI:7 with Mona's letter of warning to Mathias. That letter of warning is referenced in One Final Lesson, Part 5 and Part 6.

*****If people want to see the details, I can make another post about that later.

Winter's Veil and the Light -- Part 2/2

Previous Installment:
Winter's Veil and the Light -- Part 1

Several days later I paced restlessly in the foyer of the Cathedral of Light. I may not be the focal point of today’s events, but I was going to be in front of the High Priestess of the Church of the Light herself. The Cathedral may not be the Keep, but that didn’t mean the nobles of Stormwind weren’t paying attention.

I paused for a moment to rub at the ache on my shoulder.

“Stop playing with it, Apprentice,” Mistress Elsharin said in Thalassian, her voice thick with disapproval. “It will take longer to heal.”

Pulling my hand away, I rolled my shoulders to move my old purple robe around a bit. “It’s…” I frowned as my voice trailed off. Searching for the right word in her tongue and realizing I didn’t know it yet, I changed directions. “How long before the pain goes away?”

“About a week.”

“A week?” I was about halfway through.

“Surely you’ve been hurt from being out in the sun too long, it’s no worse than that.”

No, it wasn’t, but that burn usually faded after a couple of days, and this was still going strong. I frowned, realizing that this was likely Elsharin’s way of saying “don’t be such a baby,” only since she said it in remedial Thalassian it sounded worse.

While Mistress Elsharin had given me another present –a warm bathrobe—for Winter’s Veil, her primary gift was a tattoo of her family’s crest on my shoulder. The concept of bearing the Dawnweaver crest sounded exciting and sophisticated at first, but the moment the Queldorei tattoo artist began, all those emotions vanished in a puff of smoke. I’d been beaten and stabbed and shot with arrows, but this so-called “small thing” hurt more than it had any right to.

Still, it kept me from thinking about Linna’s acceptance into the Order for a while.

“Remember, Apprentice,” Elsharin said, interrupting my musings, “Give the Knights what is asked, but no more. You have a talent for talking too much.”

“Yes, Mistress Elsharin.” I opened my mouth to continue, but I realized I was about to demonstrate my Mistress’ rather apt critique and shut it instead.

The doors to the Cathedral opened and my family entered, with Linna in front. She was dressed all in white, as was the custom for a supplicant, and she’d even taken care to brush her tangled blonde hair and tie it back into a smart ponytail. Her easy, casual smile was nowhere to be seen.

Winter's Veil and the Light -- Part 1/2

Yes, you read that correctly. I suppose you could call this a "Christmas in July" surprise, given that I'd originally meant to have this ready for last year's actual Christmas season, but stuff happened and I got stuck finishing the story. I'll explain more in a follow-on post after this is complete.

This story is set after the events that culminated in The Deadmines and then The Stockades in Vanilla Classic WoW. When I write I tend to jump around the timeline when I find a compelling scene, which is why I have other works of fiction in the pipeline. I may eventually begin creating completely original works of fiction again, but that also assumes that Cardwyn won't kick my ass or something and demand more be written.

The full list of attributions will follow at the conclusion of the story, so I won't give anything away, but here's a standard disclaimer: 

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Any characters and locations created by Blizzard for WoW Classic remain their property. This work of fiction uses WoW Classic as the primary reference point. Copyright by Redbeard of Parallel Context, 2025.

Winter’s Veil and the Light

"Apprentice, your sister is here!"

I stuffed the last wrapped present into my pack and slung it over my shoulder. "Coming!" I called, flying out of my room and to the top of the stairs.

At the bottom stood Mistress Elsharin and Kira, chatting quietly. Considering she’d just arrived from Goldshire I expected my big sister to at least appear like she’d been traveling all day, but no, she looked like her typical perfect self. She wore her formal Journeywoman's outfit, complete with the badges signifying her rank in the Goldshire Bakers Guild stitched onto her breast jacket. The only indication she’d been on the road at all was her travelling basket by her side, which she used to carry baked goods throughout central Elwynn. I bounced down the stairs and into her arms, clapping her on the back. “Kira!” I cried.

"Card!" she exclaimed, squeezing me tight and holding me at arm’s length. "Look at you! You're wearing a new robe!"

"It took me quite a while to figure out how to stitch the material,” I grinned, “but I had some help from around the Quarter." 

That was quite an understatement. When Mistress Elsharin suggested that I should mark the ending of the Defias affair by making my own robe, I was a bit hesitant. After all, she'd made it rather plain to me that despite her Queldorei house name she was not a tailor and had no interest in becoming one. After my experience with a tailor accosting me to examine my robe when I first arrived in Stormwind, I wasn't so keen on asking for help, either. However, Elsharin recommended a different tailor, and Mistress Larson took me under her wing to show me the basics of dealing with bizarre items such as spider silk thread in the creation of this new white robe.

"I love your Journeywoman's outfit!" I added as took in my sister's uniform. "Isn't it different than last year’s?"

"Yes!" Kira pulled her sleeve over, exposing some new stitching. "The gold stripe along the shoulder and down the sleeves signify Senior status."

"That's wonderful! Does that mean you're the Senior Journeywoman in the Guild?"

My sister grinned from ear to ear and nodded.

I dropped my pack and embraced her in another tight hug. "Congratulations!"

"That is wonderful news!" Elsharin exclaimed, crossing over to our kitchen. "This calls for a toast before you leave." 

"You're not coming?" Kira called after her.

My sister released me, and I shook my head and sighed.

"I shouldn't intrude, as it is a family event, and a Dawnweaver always puts family first," Mistress Elsharin replied, returning with three glasses and a bottle of wine.

"I tried to convince her that she's family now," I added, "but..."

"No buts, Apprentice." The Elf handed out the glasses and poured some wine into each. "To Kira Songshine, Senior Journeywoman!" she exclaimed, raising her glass in a toast.

"To Kira!" I saluted my sister and drank. 

"To Card and Elsharin, my Stormwind family!" Kira added.

"And now," Elsharin said, setting down her glass, "I believe you two have a date to keep back at your farm." She walked over to the foyer and raised her arms to cast. "Apprentice, you have my presents with you?"

I grabbed my pack and slung it over my shoulder. "Yes, Mistress Elsharin."

"Very well, I'll open the portal." She focused and brought the arcane to bear before us, and a portal to the farm opened. "Tell everyone Happy Winter Veil for me!"

"I will!" 

We stepped through the portal and into our barn.