Miscellaneous Musings on a Quiet, Sunny Sunday Morning

I knew this day would come.

Last night I received my usual invite to Blackwing Lair, helped summon people by being a clicker, made and distributed food and water, and organized the Mage Int buffs.*

Then I turned my attention to the reserve listing, and discovered there was nothing Cardwyn needed. Sure, there were a couple of T2 pieces I'd like to get to finish out the set, but as far as gear I could use right now? Not a thing.

One of the pug Mages last night even whispered me, asking what I'd reserved, and I told him that I was good. "I got the Claw last week, and that was the last piece I needed," I replied.

"Oh cool, congrats."

"Thanks. But yeah, I'm just here to help out."

I still could use enchanting recipes out of Molten Core and AQ20, and there's always the need for idols in Zul'Gurub, but Blackwing Lair is the first raid that Card has semi-officially "outgrown". And when I started progression raiding and my gear needs were so great, this moment seemed so far off that I felt Card was never going to get enough DKP to finally finish the task. But in a weird quirk, the opening of Naxxramas helped me out because the official Friday night BWL raid shut down in favor of an extra day of Naxx raiding. Its replacement, the Saturday night BWL run, used a soft reserve system, which meant I could pick and choose the specific pieces of gear to roll on based on who wanted what. And after the people ahead of me in the progression raid finally got the Tear of Neltharion they'd been waiting over half a year for, my turn came with nobody else to roll against. By then, I'd accumulated the other popular BWL Mage pieces, so all I had left were the Tear and the Claw of Chromaggus. And, in two successive weeks, I got both pieces without any other competition in the reserves.**

So here I was, after six months of running BWL, and I finally "finished" it on Card.

It felt... weird, but also freeing. I grew to enjoy running BWL, the goblin packs notwithstanding. There's an ebb and flow to the raid that is comforting in the same way that a well geared MC run simply works. You can make small talk, laugh, joke, make quips about the various methods of dying to goblin packs (my favorite: blinking away from one bomb right into another), and in general just relax. When you have as many regulars as we have, you know the raid is going to be okay. It's only in the details where we have a few anxious moments, like getting a bear tank for said goblin packs, but we somehow manage to work things out.***

And I'm not planning on giving up my spot in BWL for quite a while. I love it too much.

***

In case you haven't noticed, the MMO blogosphere has simply exploded with talk about Valheim, the latest hotness game. Which, I might add, is still in Early Access on Steam.

Yes, a game from a small publisher --that isn't finished-- is getting a ton of exposure in a way that I haven't seen since, oh, No Man's Sky.

The major difference between Valheim and No Man's Sky is that Valheim is complete enough for people to play via Early Access, so you'll know pretty quickly if it's a dud or not.

And by all accounts, Valheim is good enough, and far enough in development, that there's plenty of blog posts discussing it in such a way that the major AAA publishers wished people would talk about their upcoming releases.

That's nice and all, but PC is one place you're not going to see any Valheim posts for quite a while.

The reason? It's in Early Access.

I haven't bought a game in Early Access, and I'm not planning on starting now. I waited until My Time at Portia was officially released before purchasing it. Same with Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and in that case I waited until the final release was on stable ground before purchasing the game. Since that's my policy, I'm going to do the same with Valheim. That's for one really really good reason: I've got a ton of games already purchased that I can play without needing one that isn't finished. And really, I think it more likely that I'll get a PC of my own before I get a chance to play Valheim.

So I salute all of those who took the plunge and are enjoying the game, but I've been George R.R. Martin-ed enough times for me to not jump in.****

***

As long as I live, I will never understand how multiple meters can come up with such disparate results. 

I'm not often one to toot my own horn, but on last Friday's Naxx run I got top DPS. 

Now, to be fair, the top Mage on the raid team lost her buffs on the first pull when an abomination got loose and wandered into the main raid, killing about 8 of the ranged DPS. And if you've ever played a Fire Mage, just whose name ends up on an ignite is a pretty random thing, so the fact that Card showed up there was just luck.

But hey, I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when I had TinyThreat on the threat meters and wasn't paying attention to the DPS meters until I started getting congrats from the other Mages. When I saw the results, however, I felt that I'd finally gotten something right in the Naxx raid. Until I looked at the Warcraft logs.

When I pulled them up, it claimed that while I was the top Mage, I was more back into the middle of the pack. 

Which got me to thinking just how is it possible for the two to be so far off.

The only thing I could figure is that I was out of range for some of the DPS, but that didn't make sense since I didn't really have to move to get into position to cast (Patch came to us instead of the other way around). Now it is possible that the melee DPS started earlier than the ranged, but not that much earlier to make that much of a difference in the TinyThreat DPS meters. For a fight as long as Patchwerk's is, we'd have had to have held off for 20 seconds or more to make that much of an impact. 

So all I can do is shake my head, shrug, and do my best.

***

With all the talk about BC, I thought about revisiting my past and reviving a toon long since retired:

Time to pay the bar tab and get moving.

Yes, Neve will ride again in BC Classic!

*I'm the only Mage designated "Raid Regular" who attends all of the pug raids put on by Valhalla, so I've simply absorbed the job of organizing which Mage buffs which group. (If a guild member attends, I defer to them, but most of the time they're simply happy to let someone else handle this gig.) Once in a while I'm the sole Mage in a raid, such as Zul'Gurub, and when that happens I like to have fun with my posts in raid chat. Such as the time I posted "Mage Int buffs: Cardwyn Group 1, Jaina Group 2, Khadgar Group 3, Rhonin Group 4."

**A soft reserve system means that you can reserve an item (or two, depending on implementation), but other people can reserve that item too. So, if that item drops, the only people who can roll for that item are those who reserved it. Instead of 20+ people rolling, there are far fewer people to roll against, increasing your odds of winning. But for a new L60, a soft reserve system is a godsend: if you DON'T reserve anything, all the gear that drops that doesn't have a reserve on it means that you have first dibs on that gear. There's also no limit on the number of non-reserved items you can win. We've seen in ZG and BWL runs people who are fresh L60s make out like a bandit and take home 6-7 pieces of gear in one setting. And one more thing of beauty about the system is that even reserved people do have a shot at non-reserved gear: all it takes is the non-reserved people to not roll on that first, non-reserved roll, and then a second open roll takes place where anybody who could use the item is invited to roll. It may sound complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it the soft reserve system is fantastic for people needing to gear up. We've accumulated a LOT of regulars to our soft reserve raids because they work so well, even among the most highly rated guilds on the server. I'm also pretty sure that the progression raid as well as Valhalla as a guild has gained people due to Jes' handling of the soft reserve raids. 

***Or rather Jes does. She's a natural leader, and yet she works hard to pull off a smooth raid. She's also pretty well known around the server as one of the go-to people for enchants, so that helps with name recognition, even when she's on one of her alts.

****Can you believe that Patrick Rothfuss' Wise Man's Fear was published 10 years ago? I didn't even realize that until a month ago.

The Weekly Department Meeting Come to Life

Back when I attended college, Fridays at 3:15 PM were reserved for the weekly Physics Department meeting. Classes on Friday ended at 2:50 PM, so it was only natural that the department would schedule their meeting right after that, and once the meeting ended the professors would "retire" to the on campus pub and drink together for a while.

The students --both Physics majors* and any other interested students from the Science and Engineering fields-- were invited, although not that many students actually attended. Since part of the meeting was put on by the Society of Physics Students --and as I was the chapter President my Junior and Senior years-- it fell to me to go bring the donuts and coffee from the student union to the meeting. I'd have to say a few brief remarks ("Glad to see everybody here, we've remarks from the Department Chair and a presentation from so-and-so") and then the meeting would run itself. 

The main portion of the meeting, however, was the presentation put on by a guest speaker, frequently one of the professors or someone from the research division over at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And to be frank, those presentations were technical.

Highly technical.

Oh, how I wish the equations were
this simple.

 

By my Senior year I could begin to follow along with the presentations, but my Freshman year? Hoo boy, was I lost. I remember one time I left a presentation with a Chemistry major, and as we walked outside the building he turned to me, laughed hysterically, and said "I have no idea what I just saw. Can I buy you a beer instead?"

"Sounds good to me," I replied.

While I enjoyed the meetings, to this day I still can't explain any of the presentations I saw. The fact that they didn't fire my imagination** was likely an indicator that my major wasn't going to pan out for me, but I could appreciate the work that went into them.

***

I was reminded of those department meetings the other day while I read discussions about DPS and Sapphiron on the raid's Guild Discord.*** The more theorycrafting people worked on, the more my eyes glazed over.

Look, I'm not an idiot, and I do want to optimize my DPS for both my own and raiding purposes. But from my perspective, there comes a point of diminishing returns. There's only so much WoW (or any game) that I can take. Shintar put it well in her post about how the more she plays Shadowlands the less likely she is to read fan commentary about Shadowlands.

I completely understand and I agree wholeheartedly. 

***

Like I described in my About Me section several years ago:

He isn't that interested in the intricacies of Theorycrafting --which he likens to his old Boundary Value Problems class-- but appreciates the results that others have provided.

And really, that outlook hasn't changed. 

I thought I'd be more amenable to Theorycrafting and more WoW (or other MMOs) once the mini-Reds grew up, but the reality is that my gaming time is limited by access to the PC. I share the PC with my wife, and given the current budget situation that isn't going to change. Additionally, on days when my wife isn't around in the evenings, I don't spend all evening playing WoW either. After a while I just say "okay, that's enough" and log out. I just can't push myself to do more WoW if I tried. 

I suppose that doesn't make me sweaty enough, and so be it.

And I'm at peace with that reality.

***

The other day I was asked by someone I knew why I go into Zul'Gurub runs if I don't need anything from there. "To support [the raid leader]," I replied. "To help out."

I don't think that quite computed, as he suggested I could be getting another Idol to use for enchanting purposes, and why wasn't I reserving them? (We use a soft reserve system on ZG runs.) I told him that there were a lot of people already reserving idols and I'd won one fairly recently already, so I was fine with waiting a week.

Again, the desire to play things on my own level and give others a shot didn't quite compute, because he wanted to help me improve my DPS.

And I get his desire to help out, really. But I'm not greedy, either. I don't have to be at the top of my game all the time, and when you reach 50 years old your reaction time isn't the same as what it's like in your 30s (or 20s). In terms of maximizing my DPS, should I be chasing down someone on the server to get a Fire Enchant to gloves? Sure. But do I have the time to spend hunting them down --and making sure I have the gold to cover the enchant-- to make the exchange happen? No, not really, not if I have to constantly farm for mats for potions and other items for raiding. 

I don't mind getting a bit sweaty, but there's limits. And in Azeroth I can pretty frequently reach them without trying too hard.

Now, will somebody point me in the direction of the doughnuts and coffee? Before the next presentation starts, I'd like to make sure I stay awake and well fed.

*Yes, my degree is in Physics.

**With the exception of the superconduction presentation. Yes, I'm old enough that superconducting was a brand new thing when I was a college student. I also remember the entire Cold Fusion debacle, and how the papers by Pons and Fleischman spread like wildfire from university to university in a pre-modern internet world, with students and professors frantically cobbling together materials to duplicate the papers' results.

***Before you ask, I've finally decided that I'm not going to join the guild. (If anyone from the guild reads this, sorry. Cajoling won't change my mind.) I'm going to wait and see how the Burning Crusade Classic shakes out with guilds before committing. I know that dropping from 40 to 25 raiders for a team means 15 people have to find another raid, and I also know I will be one of those 15 based purely on numbers: I'm 4/6 mages, and I believe at best they'll take 3 to the main progression raid. I also don't know whether there will be 2 co-equal progression raids (or more, if you count the 10 mans Zul'Aman and Karazhan) or a main team and a farm team. All of these have the potential to fracture guilds, so I'm not going to commit just in time to watch a guild blow up. Again. 

****Ye Gods, I need to update that.

Just What is Needed

I discovered something about raiding on Friday night: it is a drug.

I'm not being facetious, but rather kind of honest. After last Monday's raid, I saw two days of not doing much (work on one day and taking my son back to his university on the other), and then one and a half days of farming to get enough pots for Friday's progression raid. Work had been beating on me day in and day out, and progression raiding felt like a job. And I was tired of the grind.

I was giving serious thought to throwing in the towel and going back to just doing occasional raiding and merely goofing around.

But instead of following through, I decided to give myself a week or two before I pulled the trigger. I don't like doing anything rash, and a rough week is still just a rough week. I've been there for people in game if they ever needed someone to talk to, so I decided to reach out to an in-game friend and ask if she had some time to hear me bitch for a bit.*

It turned out that we both had things on our minds, so we both took a while to discuss them and unburden ourselves. I felt much better after that, and I decided that yes, I should give myself a few weeks before I did anything stupid.

And that Friday, I zoned in and we raided at our usual time.

And after about five minutes, I forgot entirely about quitting.

***

Two hours into the raid, I realized just what it was. Raiding is a helluva drug.

If you're in a good raid team, you pick each other up, you laugh, you joke, you have a cameraderie that helps you get through rough days and rough weeks. And this past week definitely qualified as "rough". I'd miss all of the aspects of progression raiding with this raid team, and in spite of the grind I needed this. It felt good to be part of this raid team.

But even outside of the raid, on the drive back from Pennsylvania, I had 6 hours to myself and a bunch of CDs to listen to.** So I listened and sang.

And sang.

For six hours.

The best part was that it was six hours of uninterrupted singing. Nobody to judge my music selection, my (lack of) tonality, or my volume. Because I was not quiet.

When you wanted to sing loud and you're
from the Cincinnati/Dayton area, there was
always Fannigan's Isle. Even on a ballad like this.

 

It felt good to belt out a lot of songs. Therapeutic. And then, when you combine it with the Friday raid, I realized I did the right thing in waiting. It wasn't the raid itself, but the week, and I couldn't see that clearly.

I reached out again to my friend and thanked her for listening, because I really needed that. It got the ball rolling, and music plus the raid itself finished the job. I wasn't going anywhere.

Regardless of what you think of The Eagles
or Don Henley, Heart of the Matter is a great
song. This version was from 2000.

*Well, read. I wasn't going to say it out loud and have anybody else in the house listen in.

**The car stereo only had an analog AUX input, so I decided to use the "old" method instead.

Rise and Fight Again

:We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."

--General Nathanael Greene, Continental Army*

 

I believe I'd been spoiled.

My first full raiding experiences --not counting Zul'Gurub-- were for raids that were already effectively on farm. 

Take the Friday night Molten Core run that introduced me to full 40-man raiding. That first run I spent 45 minutes prior to raid time quickly skimming bosses and trying to figure out what to do without looking like a complete idiot. Actually getting into the raid required me to navigate the auto-invite add-on, which until that moment I never encountered. And when I was told "whisper [name] inv" I thought that was the weirdest message to ever send to someone. I was half convinced that I was the butt of an elaborate prank, but as soon as I sent the message I got the invite and away I went.

But the raid itself? I discovered pretty quickly that the raid was designed for alts and the occasional pugger, so lil' ol' me was surrounded by people who knew the raid far better than I ever hoped to. Because of that, I had an easy time slipping into raiding.

My second 40 person raiding experience actually came with AQ40, as it was on a Monday versus the Friday night BWL run. And that first night the raid team finally downed Twin Emps for the first time, so I experienced success without the pain as well. From that point forward, the progression team made steady progress until they finished all of the nine bosses.

Jumping ahead a few months, and Naxx came calling. The progression team made steady progress once more, and I was confident that process would continue.

And then we ran into Four Horsemen.**

***

I'd never experienced this part of a progression raid: the pounding of your head against a concrete wall.

Spending more than half of a raid night trying --and failing-- to make much in the way of progression against a boss was a humbling experience. I realize that there wasn't much me and the rest of the ranged DPS could do until the complex healing and tanking rotations got themselves straightened out, and that was a long and painful process. 

And I'll be honest in the middle of all of this figuring things out I managed to pull aggro and wipe the raid on two separate occasions. I'm not sure why, but I didn't feel bad when it happened, and I don't feel bad about it now. Perhaps because it was a learning experience my brain basically told my conscience to "shake it off and let's go", or maybe it was that the constant stream of raid wipes had dulled my senses, but I'll never know for sure.

It was at that point that I realized that every raid team has to find a way to climb over that hump, to get past the pesky boss, or be at a risk of the boss becoming their own personal Waterloo. When I saw raid teams --and their associated guilds-- fall apart when they couldn't down Arthas in late Wrath, this is what they faced. The mental strain on raid leadership, not to mention the entire raid team, can be considerable. Cracking under pressure is a very real thing, and I've seen it happen at work.

***

After my nuking the raid last night, that very next try we finally broke through and defeated the Four Horsemen. You could feel the relief in the cheers; we downed our bugaboo, and now we could move forward and bash our heads against another boss. 

This time it is Sapphiron, the undead frost wyrm.

And I will never again take for granted our upward progression. Time to put on a crash helmet and pound my head against a stone wall again.

*Okay, get ready for an info dump on one of my favorite people from the American War of Independence.

Nathanael Greene, nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker", was the person originally charged by George Washington with the job of Quartermaster General: in charge of procuring food and supplies for the Continental Army during the American War of Independence. In the countryside there were bumper harvests, yet the fledgling Continental Army had to beg for scraps. Nathanael managed to somehow keep the army fed, even in the dark days of the winter at Valley Forge, by a combination of persuasion and personal loan guarantees. Without his logistics, the Continental Army would have collapsed long before the entry of the French and the Spanish on the American side.

In 1780 he was given command of the Southern Continental Army, which had been practically annihilated by the British. The first half of the Southern Campaign saw Greene's forces spending most of their time being pursued by the British army, led by Lord Charles Cornwallis, across the Carolinas. Nathanael, like George Washington, knew the importance of actually keeping an army in the field. If the Southern Campaign were to devolve strictly into a guerilla style campaign, the British would never accept the legitimacy of an American victory. Therefore, to win meant beating the British on the battlefield itself, and Greene's forces were badly outnumbered and supplied.

Cornwallis fought Greene on several occasions, beating him on the field of battle, but Greene managed to escape each time and keep the Continental Army largely intact. (At the battle of Guilford Courthouse, Cornwallis' situation was so dire that he ordered his cannons loaded with shot and fired into his own troops, who were engaged in close combat with Greene's.) Once Greene was able to keep his Continentals in the field and safely make across the Dan River to the Virginia colony, Cornwallis turned east expecting support along the Tidewater coastline. You see, Cornwallis' pursuit of Greene's army came at a huge cost, as Cornwallis was forced to abandon his advantage in supplies to chase Greene's more nimble Continental Army.

Once Cornwallis turned east, Greene split his forces, turning south with the majority of the Continental Army to push the British back to Charleston, and allowing his second-in-command, the Marquis de Lafayette, to command of the troops following Cornwallis. The pursued became the pursuer, as Lafayette's forces harassed Cornwallis all the way to the coast, where Cornwallis made his stand at a small town named Yorktown. General Washington and French Forces commander Rochambeau marched their combined armies south, pinning Cornwallis against the coast. When the French fleet defeated the British and closed an escape by sea, Cornwallis surrendered.

The quote above comes from the depths of the Southern Campaign, when it seemed that even Providence itself wasn't cutting the Southern Continental Army a break.

**For some strange ungodly reason, I keep typing "Four Horsement" instead of "Four Horsemen". Beats me why I do that.

Okay, now that the Town Hall is Over...

Blizzconline 2021 has come and gone, and for a change I paid attention to it.

Being able to watch the livestream for free does help (a lot).

In the past, you could pay to watch the livestream --or you could even pay to watch the activities on DirecTV (honest!)-- but even then, I'd only read the commentary from WoW Insider/Blizzard Watch or from my fellow bloggers. So when the "Do you not have phones?" comment blew up, I wasn't around to watch it live.

So yeah, I was a bit concerned about how this remote oriented con would work out, and whether the con would skew more toward one of Nintendo's quarterly updates, or something straddling an authentic in person con experience.

For the record, I was fine with either, as long as Blizz didn't a) shoot themselves in the foot with another "do you not have phones?" comment, b) shoot themselves in the foot with another "tough gamer moment" comment, or c) shoot themselves in the foot by trying to bow and scrape to the Chinese market.

Basically, don't shoot yourself in the foot.

Oh, I get it about China and the CCP: it's the 2000 lb. elephant that will trample anyone who gets in their way. When they can make one of the richest people in China, Jack Ma, vanish, you know they don't mess around. 

And by comparison, Blizzard --and most other gaming companies-- are the tuna out there for the orcas to feed on. So if you want China's market, you have to play by China's rules. The last BlizzCon, and the events leading up to it, made that abundantly clear. 

This time around, however, a global pandemic took center stage and China receded into the background.*

***

I've been working from home for so long that I've forgotten that it takes some time for people to get used to it. So when Blizz people started talking about how they had to get used to conferencing and collaborating remotely, their issues simply did not compute for me. It was only about a minute or two in when I realized that "jeez, they've never done remote work before!" 

Once you get used to it dealing with work from home becomes second nature, and if you've a boss that is flexible in your work habits then you can take time out to be the kids' taxi or make it to a game and then come home and get more work done.** But using collaborative tools like Teams or WebEx can take some time to get used to, and a graphic designer ready setup in the home is probably a whole other level of complexity that I never had to deal with.

These were the sorts of challenges that Blizz confronted, but it seems that they've gotten used to it.*** I suspect that the transition took longer than Blizz' management expected, particularly in terms of work output, but on the flip side they now have a workforce that isn't tied down to Southern California property values. I'm not exactly sure if they'll take advantage of that, but you never know.

***

Work from home foibles aside, I found the info sessions I watched informative but not overly so. I knew going in that the nature of the con meant that the extra time spent getting dynamic feedback from the crowd as well as the natural give and take wasn't going to be there, so that meant that the info sessions themselves were going to be shorter. That wasn't an indictment of the process, it's more of the way it is when you design a presentation: you have to give enough time for the crowd to react and respond before you can continue, and in a virtual environment you don't have that.

The part I was most interested in was BC Classic, and I wasn't disappointed. I felt that Holly spent extra time reminiscing about the old days in order to establish her bona fides, which given the nature of her coming from Everquest I felt it was necessary to pacify certain parts of the WoW community who still think of her as "the EQ person". Still, the info about items such as bosses, classes, and when you can roll a Draenei/Sindorei were spot on. Among those of us who were watching from the Myzrael-US Discord server, we were all in all very happy with the info provided. Could there have been more? Sure, but I suspect they're still aiming for a May release and don't want to get locked into that timeline if something shakes out in the beta.

The "You are not prepared!" was a wee bit dated, but as someone pointed out in our BWL run Saturday night, Illidan is NOT prepared for US.

***

Now, for an old time gamer like me, it was nice to see the repackaging of the old Blizz games, including The Lost Vikings. And the reworking of Diablo II. 

I realize this is the era of remastering games --see the upcoming Mass Effect Trilogy remaster as an example-- but if it is done well then it is a welcome benefit to gamers around the globe. The PC environment especially has changed so much over the years since ME or D2 were released that even without the graphical remaster the code would have likely required a rework to operate properly in the era of RTX 30 series video cards.**** The real kicker is whether the remaster is redone in such a way as to anger the fanbase (Warcraft 3), a reimagining of the game (Final Fantasy VII), or a a faithful but purely upgraded graphical version of the game (looks like D2 and ME for now). It does look like Blizz learned their lesson on Warcraft 3, but we'll see when the remastered D2 comes out.*****

One thing I do appreciate is that the Diablo IV development team is providing regular updates and details of the game's progress, so you know what's going on. Frequently this is too much of a black box --Schroedinger's Cat aside-- and you have no idea as to the details. But that the D4 team is spending the time to communicate with the fans as well as their thought process behind certain developments is a very very GOOD thing. I understand that some of the items the dev team are working on are going to be hidden --story, for one thing-- but understanding details of where they are in the process without throwing out dates is fantastic. The one thing I hate is when the suits announce a release date, because software development is not like building a widget, there will be major setbacks and reworkings that need to be addressed, and that's just your average Monday morning. Assigning a date and expecting a dev team to meet it is a potential disaster in the making, crunch notwithstanding.

***

So in the end, I enjoyed this Blizzconline. And yes, the RPG player in me enjoyed getting a chance to see Matt Mercer and the Critical Role crew in a Diablo esque game on Saturday. 

I am glad that the con went as well as it did, because I'd argue that a hybrid of the strictly in-person con and the online version is the way of the future. Hell, when Metallica came on my wife wandered over from watching the television and said "Hey, Metallica!" 

"Yeah," I replied. "They're playing for Blizzcon."

"Wait, this is live?"

"Well, at least it was done strictly for Blizzcon, but...."

"But that's so cool!!"

Now, if I can get her to watch the intro about how gamers were impacted by Blizz' games over the years, because that was an advertisement for not strictly Blizz' games, but gaming in general. That could have come straight outta GenCon and not missed a beat.

*But not totally gone from people's minds. Kind of like saying Beetlejuice three times and --voila!!-- Michael Keaton appears.

**Yes, I have been the kids' taxi for a long long time.

***I'm perfectly happy working from home. What I've discovered about working at the office is that I spend a lot of time socializing and a lot less time working, so when I need to get things done I don't go into the office. I know quite a few other people in my neck of the woods who think the same thing, and they're content to work from home too.

****I discovered that when I went to install LOTRO on my oldest's new laptop. It still looks for old DirectX 9.x, which you can't download anymore, and the failure to install was driving me crazy.

*****It just occurred to me that there's likely a certain amount of the Mass Effect fanbase that is going to buy the remastered version primarily because of the upgraded graphics in the sex scenes. Oh well.

Just One Request

Please please please.....

PLEASE!!!!

NO "DO YOU NOT HAVE PHONES?" MOMENTS.

 

'K?

 

When Turkeys Fly

I've mentioned before about our informal Turkey Award, handed out to the person with the most deaths in the progression raids.* And until the other week, I'd successfully avoided taking home that honorary turkey leg.

Well.... The other week that streak came to an end.

I died three times at the beginning of the raid in quick succession, to trash leading up to Patchwerk, and that set the tone for the rest of night. When you don't even get off a cast before an abomination takes you and 8 of your closest friends out, you know things aren't gonna go your way.

That was, ironically enough, the last time I both got Dire Maul Tribute buffs and the spellpower Flask for the raid. 

Obviously those deaths meant my DPS took a big hit --the flask notwithstanding-- but it also meant that I reassessed just what the hell I was doing chasing after all those buffs if I wasn't going to live long enough to make much use out of them. That first death was a fluke, as were the second and third deaths**, but I didn't treat them as one. It was then that I realized a pattern had been forming and I'd ignored it until then: when I got extra sweaty and tried picking up all the buffs, I became more aggressive. When I got the bare minimum number of buffs (Heart of Hakkar and Dragonslayer), I became more conservative. 

The reasoning ought to be obvious: the fewer the buffs, the more likely I wanted to hold onto them, and the less likely I was to charge in on a skitterer pack to try to get to the top of the meters. Likewise, the less likely I was do to something stupid during the Cultist/Acolyte trash pulls and bounce around out of healing range.

It's a simple thing, really: play conservative because you don't help the raid when you're eating dirt. At the same time, you have a conflicting motive to prove you belong, and the most obvious way of doing that is to improve your DPS. And that means buffs, enchants, flasks, etc. etc.

But helping the raid also means getting your Frost Resist gear (Glacial Set, in my case), farming your Tubers for Loatheb, babysitting the bodies for spawning scarabs in Anub'Rekhan, and getting your teammates off the wall in Maexxna. None of which, I might add, are going to enhance your DPS.

***

After a lot of consideration, I decided to step back a bit from my buff pursuits until I could get my survivability back to an acceptable level. I'd still have liked to get flasks for the raid, but the current price of a Flask of Supreme Power is about 180 gold right now, and that's out of my price range.*** I could squeak by at 150 gold, but that was also when everybody and their grandmother wasn't farming Plaguebloom throughout Azeroth.

So, whether I liked it or not, I scaled back my buffing and played it conservatively.

And it worked.

I've not sniffed the top of the leaderboard for the Turkey Award until Monday night, and the only reason I was up there was that I had exactly one death before we started beating our collective heads on Four Horsemen. (We wiped seven times on Four Horsemen, leading to a second place total of eight deaths, shared with 5-6 other people.) And really, death levels outside of Four Horsemen being so low was quite an achievement from my perspective.

I know my DPS suffered as a consequence, but I was fine with that. I was contributing to the raid by being alive, and that was the important part. Now that I've started behaving better, I'm going to start slowing re-adding extra buffs to my pre-raid night routine.

Now if everybody could stop farming Plaguebloom for a for a while, that'd be great....

*We occasionally bring up the Turkey Award for Molten Core and Blackwing Lair raids, but the "formal" Turkey Award is handed out after the progression raids.

**The third in particular was bad because I'd just gotten rezzed up and was drinking when another abomination wandered into aggro range, surprising everybody. The a-bomb hit with an AOE which only dealt a decent amount of damage to everyone. Except me, who didn't have buffs and full health. Alas.

***Spending time and gold getting the Glacial set made sucked up two weeks' worth of farming, not to mention some of the enchants I started farming the mats for. When you run an Undead Set (courtesy of the Scourge Invasion event), a "normal" Fire Mage set, and you start to replace pieces as you get new gear, all those enchants aren't cheap. I can hear the other mages now, saying to not blow your gold on a Flask when you need the enchants, but when you need so much enchanting done (I honestly thought I'd have replaced almost all my gear by now with AQ level gear so I didn't bother enchants then), it's all a bit much.

Wandering in the Dark Wood at Night

Cast your eyes on the ocean.
Cast your soul to the sea.
When the dark night seems endless.
Please, remember me.

--Loreena McKennitt, "Dante's Prayer"*

 

 

Yesterday, I spoke with a friend with whom I'd not played MMOs for about a month. He left Classic after an incident** concerning several issues in raid, and he hasn't logged on since.

He had told me immediately before he left the game that the WoW Classic was becoming less and less fun, so I believe that the incident was simply the last straw before going cold turkey. He hadn't given up on MMOs themselves, just Classic, so I felt that the time away was doing him some good. I don't think that he's permanently given up on Classic, but we'll see.

It was a good conversation (via Discord messages), and I hope to continue it in the future. But it also got me to thinking about the constant churn that happens in both MMOs and real life.

 ***

Churn is to be expected. People move, change jobs, retire, or even pass away. We change over time too, and what we may have once tolerated or even encouraged is no longer accepted by us. 

My friend's departure from WoW Classic reminded me of others who have come into my (virtual) life and moved on. 

Like the friend who introduced me to the L60 5-mans and encouraged me to explore more of the game than I was content to stay with. Months before the Gates of AQ event, we were in Silithus questing, just kicking around on some quests that he had. At one point we stopped by the Gates, and he told me that he would be here when those gates opened. 

Less than 3 weeks later, he stopped logging in. He'd never joined Discord --he said his computer couldn't handle it and Classic at the same time-- so for all intents he simply vanished. 

Or the other friend I got to know while originally leveling Az; he and I ran several instances together, but eventually work started kicking his ass and he had to cut back on playing as he was constantly working the night shift. He eventually lost his spot in the raiding guild he was in due to lack of attendance, and the last time I spoke with him his wife happened to walk by and she --who he used to play with in Classic-- disparaged the whole MMO genre as a waste of time.

I haven't seen him in months, either.

There are other friends that moved to Retail to check it out --or in one case, return home as it were-- and they've spent by far most of their time in Retail. I see them online, and we occasionally chat, but we never get the chance to group up much any more.

***

And it hasn't been lost on me that my focus on progression raiding has meant that a lot of my time spent online has been focused on getting the mats/pots/whatever for prog raiding together. When I just want to run solo and not chat or anything else, I simply vanish online: I don't mark myself online on Discord, turn myself invisible in Battle.net, and unjoin myself from the raid guild chat channels. It's not perfect, of course, since anybody who has marked me as a friend in game will still see me, but its as good as it gets for silent running.

It is very effective, but almost too effective. More than once I've had a casual friend whisper me that they've not seen me in game for a while, and is there anything wrong. No, not wrong; not really. Just.... Well, just unable to do the things I want when I want to do them, I suppose. And that is very much on me.

That's part of the commitment to progression raiding, that you have to give up something in order to keep going at the forefront of raids. But I do miss other aspects of MMOs, such as 5-person instances, questing, leveling alts, and just socializing.

 

I recognize that the easiest solution to the socializing part is to just switch guilds. At the same time, while I've grown comfortable with the gang, I'm definitely not one of them. And swapping guilds will not change that. After my wife's friend's death --and a lot of soul searching-- I was pretty much ready to pull the trigger and go ahead and join the guild. But then some of them just had to make a very public attempt in Discord to cajol me into joining.

And if there's one way to get me to not do something, it's to lean on me to do that thing. 

I am very much a stoic Midwesterner, and I keep a large portion of myself private. I may be social and chatty --especially for an introvert-- but that is very much a superficial thing. I become emotional and open up with very very few people who have built up a level of trust in me. But I also have a very large contrarian streak in me. One of my previous bosses didn't understand me at first, and an ex-coworker stepped in to explain to her that "Red marches to his own drummer; he has a large amount of pride in doing things his way, and trying to force him into doing something simply won't work." Once she understood that, she changed her approach to managing me and we got along much better.

So, knowing that, you can understand why I saw that Guild push and said "Nope, screw that." You might not agree with it, but now you know where it came from.

***

So coming back to the original thoughts on this topic, the churn I've seen in MMOs is part normal, and part self-inflicted. Perhaps I can repair the self-inflicted part, but I also need to accept the "normal" part of the churn.

And for pete's sake stop trying to force me into doing things.

*The album Dante's Prayer is from, The Book of Secrets, is my favorite album of Loreena's. It's most well known for the surprise one hit wonder song, "The Mummer's Dance", and to be fair nobody --not even Loreena-- saw that one coming. However, the entire album is full of fantastic songs, from her putting the poem The Highwayman to song to the instrumental Marco Polo to Skellig to Dante's Prayer. This version shown below is from the memorial service for 100th commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in WW1 where many of her fellow Canadians perished.

 

**That incident I will not comment on; it is not my place to say, and as I've said before, I'm not a member of the guild I raid with.

Movement at the Speed of Plot

I entered The Deadmines last night for the first time in months.

With me were my oldest's Hunter, Tasarae, one of the Mage team on his Pally alt, and his daughter's Mage alt. I recruited a friend from Az's old Tuesday Molten Core runs, and she came along on her Bear tank alt.

All of us at level, and one of us setting foot inside for the first time.

We wiped three times --the last time trying to down Cookie after Van Cleef was dead-- and we pulled off a couple of fantastic recoveries after we had a couple of packs of ads on us.

All in all, it was amazing. I'd not had quite as much fun in a while.

***

Tasarae got to learn how Hunter pulls in an instance work, and I learned that I can tank --kinda sorta-- if I need to. My Bear friend had never been in Deadmines with a Bear before, and she was thoroughly enjoying how much fun it was to Bear tank things.* And in spite of me having a couple of levels on her, I simply could not pull aggro from her.

My Mage buddy healed us as best he could, and his daughter's Mage learned to enjoy sheeping things and blasting enemies with fire.

The instance itself, as my Mage team buddy said, was pretty much a perfect introductory instance. You learn the basics here and can take those lessons with you later on. 

I was teasing my oldest about how she was going to be gunning for our raid team's Hunter puller, and she gave me a look that said "oh HELL no". 

"But really," I said, "you're learning the same things that we use in Naxxramas today. That's why I don't like boosting so much, because this is how you learn to play your class."

"I'm still not raiding anytime soon," she replied.

***

The slow reveal of the extent of the weapon of mass destruction was not lost on my oldest. When we reached the final door and blasted our way in with a cannon, she said "Woah! Look at that!" 

She knew there was a boat ahead, as we'd been chatting about it in Discord, but she was stunned by the size of the thing. And the weapons.

And in that moment, the plot came full circle.

This was what the Defias were working toward, and what they intended to unleash upon Stormwind.

***

I suppose it comes as no surprise that in addition to my regular blogging I've been writing about Card's continuing adventures on the side, with an eye toward a climax in the Deadmines.** 

The questing in the Abbey, throughout Elwynn, and into Westfall all point a player toward a reveal as to why the Defias are the way they are, and even then there's plenty of plot points that a toon never knows about, even after the entry into the Deadmines is completed and the note found on Van Cleef's body points a player in the direction of who might be in league with the Defias within the Stormwind nobility. Hell, even once you get to L60 and defeat Onyxia you still don't know everything there is to know.

In that respect, I believe Blizz did a fantastic job of giving the player enough to go on, but not so much that they know everything. In reality, people don't know everything about what's going on --even if you think you do, you don't-- and so the Defias storyline reflects that. A player may find out everything Blizz has written on the subject (including the comics) but the player isn't privy to that information. And besides, you could make the argument that when what happens in WoW Classic contradicts the comics, I'd argue that WoW Classic should trump the comics in that regard. After all, the MMO is what we experience.

And the Defias' story is a cautionary tale as well, when your belief in your own correctness blinds you to everything else. In a way, it's a perfect tale for the past year or two.

Or, to borrow a few lines from what I've been working on...

"We still don't know who threw that rock," Mathias added. "That regicide remains our biggest unsolved case. But the Queen's murder not only crystallized the nobles against the Stonemasons Guild but turned the general populace against them as well. Tiffin was well liked, and unless you were here you'd never understand the jolt her death did to the city."

 

He stared at the floor for what felt like an eternity. "At the end of the riots, Edwin vowed revenge and left Stormwind with most of the Guild members. He hadn't been seen since, but I guess we now know what he's been up to."

I downed my water, wishing it was rum instead. "But why destroy everybody? That makes no sense."

 

"He believes that if you're not with him, you're against him," Mom replied. "That has always been a fault of Edwin's: he sees things only in terms of sharp divides. For him, and those like him, there is no morally gray area; it's only black and white. It's very easy for him to slip from feeling that he'd been wronged into the view that everybody else is an enemy. I look at Edwin and think that could have been me or your father, given the right circumstances." 

 

She looked over at Mathias, her eyes haunted. "It's.... hard for me to be here, Mat," she whispered. "I don't have the control I need any more, and it's taking all I have to not grab a pair of daggers and hunt for Edwin myself. He's earned a death warrant from me, but I know that once I start I won't be able to stop, and I can't risk that."

*Her main is a Warrior Tank, so she's familiar with how.... busy.... it is to be a Warrior tank.

**There's other stories floating around too, such as the Missing Diplomat questline. The Missing Diplomat questline is perfect for someone who has ties to the shadowy underworld, such as a certain protagonist whose family is connected to SI:7. It is also great in that it gets Card out of Stormwind and on the road toward Dustwallow Marsh, where she can begin the quest to assemble her own wand.

What was that about Old Dogs?

I tend to be, well, a bit hidebound in how I do certain things in MMOs.

I'm not a big fan of "gaming" things for exploitative purposes. I don't mean illegal cheats/loopholes, but taking advantage of a weakness in game to obtain a lot of a certain item. Such as a Mage taking advantage of how mobs track to farm immature venom sacs, for example. I've seen the YouTube videos, and I get the how it is done, but I still grumble at the poor design of how aggroed mobs go after you that I have a hard time in game of actually taking advantage of the poor design. 

For the uninitiated, you can stand at a certain spot in LBRS, aggro a whole bunch of spiders, and right before they get to your toon you can jump up to a stone walkway beside you and that same mob turns around, runs allllll the way back and then gets up on the stone walkway to chase after you. Do this enough times while AOEing, and you can burn down the entire mob.

Yes, it's legal, but it still bothers me that these elite mobs --and spiders at that-- don't understand the basics of climbing a 3 foot wall.

Or the basics of doing single pulls in Maraudon. Again, not a fan of taking advantage of similar weaknesses in Mara to farm Mara.

***

Some other exploitative runs, such as Lasher runs in Dire Maul East, I just don't get. 

I've done Lasher runs before, and after I'm done I sit there and go "That's it? That's all the gold you get for this? That's all the useful herbs you get?" And I shake my head. I was expecting a ton of useful herbs, but all I ever got were a ton of Heart of the Wild, which any Auction House affictionado will tell you doesn't sell that much. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who loves Lasher runs, and he said "it's the grays you get that are worth it."

/sigh

By contrast, I farm herbs in Eastern Plaguelands and Western Plaguelands, and in most normal times I can get some stacks of Plaguebloom, Dreamfoil, and Mountain Silversage and make 90 gold every couple of hours' worth of farming. 

Well, that was before the Mountain Silversage market collapsed a month ago.

***

I look at some people in WoW who accumulate a lot of gold, and wonder just how cutthroat you have to be in order to amass that much gold. How sweaty do you need to be? It's not like there's such a thing as compound interest in MMOs*, so you have to actively go out and sell things in order to obtain gold. Whether it's your services (such as selling water, boosting**, or ports), mats, or finished items, you have to sell something if you want to keep up with the increasing demands of raiding and other activities. 

It wasn't until about 7-8 months ago that I became aware of the concept of the GDKP raid. The "G" in front of the more traditional DKP term means "Gold", as in people bid gold to win items in raids. To join this "raiding of the rich and well heeled" you have to have a certain minimum amount of gold, and the raid leads inspect you to determined if you've got enough gold to play. Which sounds more than a bit like Casino Royale, but in WoW. Just let that sink in a bit: there's raids out there only for those with enough gold to join in.

Still, it's not like I'm the only perpetually poor person in our raids. I know a Warrior who barely makes enough gold to repair his gear between raids.*** And apparently there are a lot of people in our raid who need enchants, which means needing the mats + gold as well. 

***

I realize that this sounds like whining, which is why I'm talking about it here rather than on Discord or in WoW. But I believe a lot of this due to my approach to playing the game. If I wanted to earn gold, I'd do it the Gevlon way, which would likely earn me gold but also have some of my in game friends disappointed in my greedy methods. And while I'd like to think that changing my approach to farming in WoW wouldn't change me, I'm not so foolish as to believe that. 

How we play is a reflection of ourselves. That doesn't mean that we don't learn or grow while playing a video game, but it does mean that how we approach the game, how we interact with people in a game, and the emphasis we place on in game activities are a window into our own psyches. People who say "I play to blow off steam" and then proceed to act like an asshole in game are showing to the world what they are really like without the constraints of society.****

***

Nevertheless, I have begun changing my approach to farming gold in WoW. 

Instead of farming for raw materials, I've instead begun to focus on the finished items. I used to dip my toe into the tailoring market, but my lack of sales there dissuaded me from that approach. But potions? That's something I can work with. I know way too intimately just how much potions cost for raiding, and now I'm taking that knowledge and applying it to Az's potion making. Potions such as Greater Firepower, Mageblood, and Greater Shadow Protection sell well on the Auction House, and I'm focusing on what I can sell based on what I can farm. Sure, the market will change, but if I can can do this, I'm sure I can change with it. I don't need to go crazy while farming, spending all of my spare hours just trying to get enough gold for the next Naxx run, but I do need to be mindful of the lure of gold.

Now, let's just see if this old dog can internalize these new tricks.

*At least ones that I play, anyway.

**Another service I find distasteful. If you already know how to play your class that's one thing, but boosting to merely get to "where the game begins" misses the point. The leveling experience gives you the opportunity to learn to play a class, and you apply those lessons at endgame. Having to learn tanking at L60 when the only times you set foot in an instance were when you were being boosted is, well, a lost opportunity.

***Or so he claims. It's gone on long enough that its now a meme.

****Or maybe within societal constraints. After all, the past four years have been very educational in how people behave when they realize they can get away with anything.

Differing Touchstones

Last Fall I discovered just how out of touch I was with pop culture while waiting for a Molten Core run.

I can't remember the specifics of the conversation, but there was a comment made about surreal comedy, and I piped up and mentioned "Oh, like Andy Kaufman."

There was radio silence, and then a "who?"

"You know, Andy Kaufman, the guy who was the subject of the movie Man in the Moon."

"I don't really remember that movie."

"How about the REM song from the early 90s?"

"Card, you're not helping yourself any with that reference."

Well, shit.

 

For reference, here's the REM song.

Finally, another raider who was about my age spoke up. "Yeah, Andy Kaufman was in Taxi as Latka, and he did that routine where he challenged that pro wrestler to a fight."

"Yeah, he was kind of nuts to egg that guy who was twice his size on, just like his Elvis impersonations were so out there that you never forgot it."

At least I got the chance to make a semi-graceful exit.*

***

I was reminded of that generational disconnect once more while I was listening to a playlist on YouTube the other day. At one point the old Spinners song "Rubberband Man" came on, and I was bopping along. One of the mini-Reds happened by, and she said "Oh, that's the Guardians of the Galaxy song."

Not having seen anything past the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie --yeah, I'm a bit tired of superhero movies these days**-- I was surprised. "Really? The NBA used to play that song for highlights of players from the 70s and 80s, like Doctor J, Michael Jordan, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and the Big O."

At least the kids knew who the Big O (Oscar Robertson) is, because he played at the University of Cincinnati and then in the NBA for the Cincinnati Royals. I've told them the story several times about how my dad used to ride his bike to go see the Royals play at the old Cincinnati Gardens, and how Oscar was easily the best basketball player he ever saw.

The statue of The Big O outside of
UC's Fifth Third Arena. My photos turned out lousy,
so I borrowed this one put out by UC.

***

Why mention this? Well, because people --and gamers-- are a product of their generation. To the longtime MMO players who spent years in the old days of WoW (and now WoW Classic) have a completely different view of Azeroth than those who are new to the game.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard over the years that "XXX sucks!" Like my own personal bugaboo, Belsavis, in SWTOR. I can't stand that zone because it just keeps going on and on and on. Just when you think you're about to finish the planetary story, you go through a tunnel and reach yet another mini-area to explore and quest through.

Or the oldest mini-Red's personal dislike, Corellia. She has major issues finishing the final planet in the "vanilla" SWTOR zones because the warzone imagery depresses her so much. 

I was reminded of that disconnect when her baby Hunter, Tasarae, reached Darnassus for the first time. Of the Alliance cities, Darn has the reputation of being the most disliked. It's hard to get to, it's very spread out, and it's difficult to find anything without inquiring from the guards.

But when Tasarae walked through the open pathways with her new pet owl, she gushed about how beautiful Darnassus was. And when she arrived at Auberdine, the rugged shoreline and evergreen forests of Darkshore captivated her. 

It is the seeing of things with new eyes that energizes me. Just like when --very soon-- Tasarae will arrive at Westfall and head out on the questline that leads inevitably to the Deadmines and a confrontation with Edwin Van Cleef, the Stonemason whose thirst for justice led him down a dark path where everyone else was an enemy, and only he and his followers were in the right.

I'm looking forward to this. Tasarae doesn't know what's ahead for her, but I do. And I will once again be able to see this world through her, with new eyes.

 

 

*Thanks for covering my ass there, Zwak. 

**Not to mention all of the freaking gatekeeping by a subset of geekdom.

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).

In Honor of Buddy the Elf....

 

Happy holidays, everybody!!!

Oh, for Pete's Sake, 2020....

One of the few guildies left in my current guild actually put in an appearance today. He'd been consumed with binge watching a television series or two, so he'd been away from WoW Classic during that time. But what really pushed him into logging back in was that he is kind of in "rest mode" due to injury.

He broke his pelvis skydiving.

As he put it, there was a malfunction in the skydiving equipment, so he took the landing harder than it should have. When he landed, the force of the landing drove his femur up and into his pelvis, blasting through it to the other side. So he had to have the pelvis repaired and the joint reconstructed.

By the miracle of modern medicine, he was up and walking with a walker 3 days later. 

He still has a 3+ month road back to health, however, but at least he's moving in the right direction. It could have been worse --much worse-- but at least he's expected to make a full recovery.

I blame 2020 for this, as he'd skydived tons of times over the years, so this should have been a no-brainer.

And as an ironic aside, if I'd have left the guild, I'd have missed this story. So go figure; 2020 is conspiring to keep things exactly the same as they are.

Ghosts of the Past

For all of the highs I've experienced as a gamer this year, 2020 has massively sucked in general.

And Friday brought more bad news in that one of my wife's friends died of breast cancer.

It wasn't unexpected, as she'd taken one last trip this Autumn to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to say farewell to a part of the country she loved, and you could tell from the photos she posted that the disease had ravaged her. But people still held out hope that she'd live to see one last Christmas.

Needless to say, thoughts of mortality dominated my weekend.*

This was taken on Monday, but it also
exemplifies what I was up to last weekend.

***

I decided early on to not dwell on her suffering, because there wasn't anything I personally could have done. The only people who could have done something were her caregivers, and I had to assume that they did the best they could with the cards they were dealt. I also thought of what her family went through, and watching her decline reminded me so much of what happened to my father in May/June 2017.** He fell and was admitted to the hospital on Derby Day (First Saturday in May), and was gone before Father's Day (Third Sunday in June). When the oncologist told my Dad in early June there was nothing he could do, he asked what my Dad wanted. "That I go quickly," Dad replied.

But what I kept coming back to was the concept of "a life well lived".  

I've heard people describe it as "working to live rather than living to work", but A Life Well Lived is more than that. It's about finding and keeping meaningful relationships, exploring and doing new things, and doing things because you want to do them rather than having to do them. If a lot of that sounds like you'd have to have a lot of money to basically thumb your nose at American Corporate Culture, you're right. You would have to be independently wealthy to do that. 

Or poor and have no attachments. A modern day hobo, if you will.

Okay, it's not really that bad, because exploring and doing new things doesn't require you to have a lot of money to accomplish. After all, there's libraries, parks, free concerts, etc. to be explored. Still, telling your boss to get bent and going off and doing your own thing, ala American Beauty, is a dream that very few get a chance to fulfill until retirement.

Ah yes, Homer Simpson did live that out.
From The Simpsons' Treehouse
of Horror. I think fourth season.

 

It's one thing to experience death in a pandemic from members of our extended family, whom we may talk to once every year (if that), and then quite another from someone that the family regularly converses with. The stench of death that surrounded 2020 can depress even the hardiest of optimists, but it can also force a re-evaluation of your own life, leading you to ask whether your life has truly been a Life Well Lived.

***

And that it has.

My wife has issues playing around on the computer when it's nice outside and there's places you can go. So did my father, who was a certified golf nut.*** If it wasn't raining, he was golfing. If he wasn't golfing, he'd be at a driving range. If he wasn't there, he was outside in the front yard or back yard, practicing with a pitching wedge. And if he wasn't doing that, he'd be watching golf on television.

He loved golf even more than his beloved Xavier Musketeers basketball team, and if you knew my dad, that's saying quite a lot.

But at the same time, Dad subscribed to the Puritan work ethic, which I liked to sum up by using the H.L. Mencken quip that Puritans had "the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be happy." He worked long hours, was a perfectionist, and was never satisfied that something he worked on was "good enough". 

If you know me, either in MMOs or in real life, then this meme has probably popped into your head:

Yeah yeah yeah... I get it.

I have tried very hard not to burden my kids with my faults, and I think I've largely succeeded. They study, they play, and they work hard, but they don't overdo it. The girls are obsessive and perfectionists at music, but as long as it's limited to just that localized area, I consider that a success.

But still, my dad didn't have a father figure growing up, and his uncle (who never had kids) was the closest one he had. So he basically imprinted himself upon me, and as time has gone on I've had to fight that Puritan ethic that tells me that playing games without any real focus other than pure fun is a waste of time.**** 

My wife hasn't exactly helped either, as I can't tell you the number of times we've had a lazy day off and sometime at the end of the day she gets upset that we didn't do anything. She's so used to her parents always doing things outside, visiting places, and simply doing things that the concept of just screwing around and decompressing frequently has the opposite of its intended effect. If we go on vacation, if we're not where we are supposed to be bright and early so that we can maximize "fun" she gets really upset.*****

And if you think you know where this is going, yeah....

I spent the weekend alternating between two wildly contrasting views: that I should stop being an ass and join the guild I raid with (and have Az join another guild comprised of friends I group with on a regular basis); or that I should stop playing MMOs entirely and focus on "better things to do with the life I have left."

There was absolutely no fucking middle ground here.

Both have compelling arguments to them, and when you're listening to sad music from Simon and Garfunkel, the Carpenters, and other staples of my parents' record collection, both feel equally valid. 

Or this song from Fannigan's Isle,
A local Irish band.

 

One one side, it only makes sense that I'd finally join the guild I raid with, and at the same time place Az in a guild that has several other friends I run with. After all, they're acquaintances and friends that I enjoy hanging with, and it only makes sense to finally join the club.

However, there's also the risk of burnout.

I've seen some of the guilds currently raiding Naxxramas out there raiding Naxx 5 or 6 nights a week. The sheer number of mats and potions to keep that grind up is absolutely insane, and I don't see how guilds can keep that pace up without cracking soon. 

And likewise, I do raid a ton myself. That's because I want to see a lot of the smaller raids put on succeed, such as ZG twice a week and AQ20 on Sundays. Then there's Molten Core Thursday Fun Runs, which I also know need regular raiders to succeed. So I show up because that's what friends do, they support each other. And to be fair, I don't buff myself much for those runs because I'm geared well enough to not require it. Yet I can see where I can't simply keep this going week in and week out. 

There's also the push to get "sweatier", as in working harder and harder to get to the top of my raiding game for the progression raids. Other Mages in the guild diligently farmed Necrotic Runes in the Scourge Invasion event and ended up with 6 to 8 stacks (or more) of Blessed Wizard Oil, so they'll have BiS oils for Naxx raids practically going into BC. Me? I had real life to deal with, and managed 3 stacks, which should get me to February. I say to myself that should be good enough, but is it really? Do I really know if I'm measuring up if I'm constantly 6/6?

And there's the perpetual gear grind, and I'm sitting here wondering when I'll ever catch up to the rest of the Mages. I've been assured repeatedly that I'm doing fine, but as I pointed out above, I'm my Dad's son, and that "I'm not good enough" mantra is alive and well within my psyche.

 

For the other side, it kind of goes without saying. Save some dollars, free up some time to do other things, such as read or fix things around the house, and maybe go out and get back in shape. Without my MMO habit, I'd not be seriously considering building my own PC. That's saving quite a few dollars right there, that could be better spent on "more important stuff". 

Like studying my work more, I suppose. I've been told I need to brush up on this or that, or pick up a new skill to keep myself relevant. Dropping MMOs would free up the time for me to do that, and to take the certification exams that do keep me relevant.

And yet, do I want to become my father? Do I want to be dead at age 69? I spent my life running from having "He Did a Good Job at Work" chiseled on my tombstone, so why should I change now?

Do I want to become sweaty at work instead of in a game?

***

What will I do? 

/sigh

Fuck all if I know.

I don't have any answers, which is why I wrote this all down. 

I am my father's son, for better or worse, and because of that I have my own demons to overcome. And there are plenty of times when that inner voice shouts louder than any voice of reason, whether it comes from myself or my friends or my family. And no matter what I do that voice will still be with me, sowing doubt.

Like I told some of my fellow Mages when I tried to explain what's going on right now, "I need to get my head screwed on straight first, and then maybe I'll be able to do something."

(But it wouldn't surprise me if I just remain in purgatory, in this wandering between the two ends. Because my inner voice would like it like that.)

 

 

*At times like this, I pour gasoline onto my internal fire by playing this piece from the Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War. I first heard it about 30 years ago, and every time I listen it feels sadder and sadder, so be warned. And for pete's sake, don't listen to this if you've a couple of drinks in you.

 

**If you wondered why the blog output declined during that time, now you know.

***When he was growing up, he'd even play golf in the snow; his uncle would take him out to the golf course near old Lunken Airport and they'd play there. My dad was very very good at golf; he could have been a local PGA pro at one of the courses around the county if he wanted to, but he never considered himself good enough to be able to do that. Hell, I'd have liked to have seen him try out for the US Open on the amateur side. As a measure of how good a player he was, he's played at both Pebble Beach (California) and Valhalla (in Louisville, KY), both places on the PGA Tour, and he's either made par or gotten under par. No handicap, just skill.

****How he reconciled his golf obsession (and college basketball obsession) with that work ethic is beyond me, so don't ask.

*****Yeah, vacations are anything but relaxing.

EtA: Added an extra pic.
EtA: Corrected some grammar.

A Proud Day

The Scourge Invasion continues, with tons of (re) dead Scourge in our wake...

Shouldn't we be burning these piles?

And yesterday was the first day of The Feast of Winter Veil, so I got into the holiday spirit in Ironforge:

Take that, Ao!
(Yes, we do know each other in game.)

Another acquaintance decided to continue
the fight while his toon was wearing a fancy dress.

But for me, the highlight of the day was this:

It sure looked better before I took
the screenshot. Now it looks like Card
is hiding her face.

Yes, that is the oldest mini-Red with her first WoW/WoW Classic toon, a baby Hunter.

Her finals are over*, and we obtained a replacement laptop, so here we are.

She was amused that her Night Elf is taller than Card, and made certain to let me know. But she also thought it awesome to actually meet Card in game.

I deliberately laid off a bit so that she could explore on her own. Having played LOTRO for years, she's familiar with more of the Old School MMOs than most people her age, but Classic was even more Old School than that. 

You know, with the lack of pointers telling you where to go for a quest. 

I did suggest Questie, the add-on that takes care of that, but she said she was fine with learning it the old fashioned way. She was really impressed that even though it's a very old game she felt it was so well put together, which even after all these years I remain impressed by with Vanilla/Classic.

So if I'm on a low level toon in some low level place, you'll know what I'm up to.

And boy, if she thinks she'll be anonymous for long, there are some friends of mine in-game who want to meet her...

*Yes, she's a senior at college. Not so mini anymore.

 

EtA: added an extra line for clarification.

Well, That was Weird

Early this past Sunday morning, after my wife had left for work, I was catching up on some work* when Discord pinged and I saw that Azuregos had spawned. I've been involved in raids that killed two of the Dragons of Nightmare, but I hadn't had the chance to kill Azuregos yet. So, I quickly responded with an "I'm getting online" and hopped on Cardwyn. I received the raid invite almost as soon as the loading screen finished, and I headed out for Azshara for a morning breakfast with a blue dragon.

Sunday mornings EST on a PST server aren't a great time for a pug, much less a raid for a World Boss, and we made an attempt after temporarily stalling out at 9-10 people. Without any true healers the raid wiped, so as we bandaged our wounded pride we waited for more people to join up. We eventually got about 17 - 18 people, and our decision to wait for 20 was made for us when a couple of scouts for the top guilds on the server began to appear. 

We pulled, and once everything settled down, we were able to grind out a kill.

About midway through the fight, someone from the top guild on the server dropped in and asked if we needed a healer. I didn't notice any response --and I wasn't the raid leader either-- so I focused on doing my part to down Azuregos.

Afterward, however, said player struck up a conversation with me. 

On the surface of it, the chat was pretty general in nature: how'd we do, any decent drops, how's your guild doing on Naxx, etc. etc. But at the same time, the toon was chatting me up in that he'd seen me around, have I run with his guild before**, what do I think of several different bosses, etc. etc.

At some point the lightbulb went off in my head*** and I thought to myself "Am I being recruited?"

I almost immediately followed that with: "WTF, has he even seen what my DPS is? He's hitting on the wrong player in my raid."

I kept the conversation aboveboard and polite, and eventually it ended and we went our separate ways, but the entire thing was so surreal that I still can't quite wrap my head around it. (Hence this post.) On the one hand, it was entirely likely it was completely innocent conversation. But on the other, after having described it to a friend on the server, he said "Oh yeah, Card, you were definitely being recruited. They just don't want to come out and say it, as some guilds take poaching seriously."

So maybe that was my "brush with greatness" on the server. But I could also say that "There, but for the love of God, go I." That guild is also known as being the sweatiest of the sweaty guilds, and the amount of prep and training and practice that'd take to appear semi-competent in that guild would burn me out faster than you'd believe.

It was flattering, but I vastly prefer the raid team I currently run with. I know my role, I know the people, and the raid suits me well.

And really, nobody wants to be near me if I'm sweaty.

*Don't judge me. I'm not a workaholic, and I knew going into the weekend it had to get done.

**Yes, I've been in some 5-man runs with his guild. Never had a problem there. But at the same time, this was the same guild that the tank from THAT AQ20 run was from. so make of that what you will.

***No, I hadn't had coffee yet. Does it show?