The emotional roller coaster continues unabated, which is kind of weird since the past couple of days' worth of events had nothing to do with any of my toons directly. (Yet.)
The other day I got a whisper from Shintar of Priest With a Cause:
"We killed KT!"
Woooo!
"But also, our usual raid leader ragequit the raid on Sapph what a night"
Wait, what?
She assured me she'd get a long blog post out of this, and she wasn't kidding. It's well worth a read. But I'm still incredibly proud and happy for Shintar and the rest of the Order of the Holy Fork for beating Classic just before pre-patch. Way to go!
***
As for our BC preparation, the raid lead team was busy reviewing and slotting where each person was willing to go, and we finally got down to the nitty gritty.
We needed Shamans and we had too many Mages.*
So I put my money where my mouth is and volunteered to switch my main to an Enhancement Shaman.
I'm still going to play with Card, but she's not going to be my primary toon. And neither will Linna, although I'm likely to utilize the boosting service for her.
So this upcoming week's raid is going to be bittersweet: the last time before pre-patch that I'll have Cardwyn as my main.
***
What will Card do afterwards?
Most likely, she is going to take some well deserved time off. She'll leave the Plaguelands to others for a while, port down to Stormwind, and walk back home to the family farm in Eastern Elwynn. There, she'll spend as much time out in the sun as possible, trying to chase away dark memories from the inside of Naxxramas and Ahn'Qiraq, along with landscapes where the very air takes on a sickly hue. She'd never take the wheat and barley growing in the fields for granted again.
Things have changed since Card started out. She has several nieces and nephews now; two of the farmhands, James and Robyn, married and moved into a small place Card's Mom and Dad built for them on the northern edge of the fields. They now have a couple of children of their own. Linna is still out there with the Knights out in the Plaguelands, keeping Light's Hope Chapel open and the Scourge at bay.
Mistress Evelyn is semi-retired; Card's family built a small place for her adjacent to the farm buildings so she could continue her pursuits without constant travel to Stormwind. Instead of visiting the children of Eastern Elwynn, they now come to her for lessons.
The ebb and flow of children suits Card to no end. She gets to play with her nieces and nephews, go fishing at the nearby pond, and even do things she used to hate, such as turning manure. Being out in the sun, in nature, and surrounded by friends and family keeps the darkness at bay. It also serves as a reminder of why she fought in the first place, which can get lost in the heat of the moment.
Perhaps that call will come, a summons to cross the Dark Portal and face Illidan and the Burning Legion, but for now time is Cardwyn's most precious resource, and she intends to use as much of it as possible making herself whole again.
Figures that Blizz would drop the news about BC Classic a couple of hours after a post.
So.....
June 1st eh? With a May 18th Pre-patch?
Not amused, I am. Naxxramas' Event went on longer than the two weeks' worth of pre-patch for TBC Classic.
Boosting services on the servers --the ones you pay for in WoW gold, not the ones that Blizz wants you to use-- will be brisk, especially if you want multiple Shamans (or Pallys on the Horde side) in raids fairly quickly.
I look at the two weeks as a push by Blizz to capitalize on their own monetary boosting services, but given that most of the toons in need of a boost won't be able to get one (Draenei and Blood Elves), why stick to two weeks?
Unless they asked the sweatiest of the sweaty guilds for advice on lead-in to release day, that is.
***
Oh, and I left my old guild today.
Within the past few days I noticed that a lot of my old guildies began logging in like clockwork, with TBC Classic on the horizon. To be fair, I was never on Az when they were, because I was either doing some leveling on alts or raiding/whatnot on Card, but when I logged into Az to do some farming, I noticed the last logged in times and went "hmmm....."
After a couple of days of this I began to get irritated. I'd been the only one to consistently login over the months, and I guess they figured they could pick up where they left off. It was at that moment that I realized that I'd moved on without them, and I really didn't need Retail Orphans any more. So I gave the GM role back to the original GM and /gquit.
Az is now a free agent again.
Will she join Valhalla? Nah. Not for now at any rate. She can remain independent, especially since she has been doing her own thing for so long. Besides, I'm going to be busy doing raid stuff, and Az will be an alt that I'll goof around with from time to time.
I'd never performed any raid lead functions before, and I mean the "real" raid lead functions, not merely organizing the Mage Int buffs. But last night during our regular Zul'Gurub pug run* I assumed the role of Loot Master for the first time.
Courtesy of my new gig being part of a raid lead team, I knew I was going to have to learn this job anyway, so I figured no time like the present. I'd already been growing more and more concerned about the burnout that the pug Raid Lead had been facing, and I wanted to take on a greater role in her raids to make her job easier.
So last night's ZG run was a great testcase as to whether a) I could handle this technically, and b) I could handle this without getting too much stress.
While I realized that I wasn't going to be as smooth as she does it --she's been doing it for months-- I have no idea how she juggles all the hats on these smaller raids.
***
We spent about a half an hour before the raid working out the settings for the LootReserve add-on, which is what we use for our raids with the Soft Reserve loot system**, and then based on a quirk of Classic I had to assume the Raid Lead position and then grant her Assist so she could perform all of her 'regular' tasks.
It actually wasn't that bad.
It helped that the raid was composed of a mix of guildies (still feels weird saying that) and regulars, and they were very encouraging throughout the raid. The two other Mages stepped up to help out with managing the Int Buffs and taking care of other small things I'm used to doing, so it freed me to focus on the Loot Master's job.
Which actually contributed to my death at least once.
I was busy looking at the reserves and whatnot in the approach to the spider boss while we were killing those spider packs. Since my mind was on that, I kept spamming Arcane Explosion and not paying attention to my threat levels. Naturally, I pulled threat and died.
"A Card in her natural habitat: eating dirt" was how I described it in Mage chat.
"What happened?"
"Died due to skitterer packs."
"How?"
"Was busy looking at reserves, spamming AE, not paying attention."
"Yeah, that'll do it."
I died one or two more times, both of them directly related to me focusing on the Loot Master job, so I'm not terribly concerned. But given that I'm not exactly swimming in gold, that money spent on repairs did hurt.
***
Since I'll be taking this job going forward on the two 20 person raids, I'm sure I'll get better at this as time goes on. And I think I can do this when we get to BC and I graduate to the DKP tools we currently use in our progression raids. Of course, stakes about loot are a bit higher there, so hopefully I'll have this down enough to not cause any drama all by my lonesome.
*While technically it is a pug, this raid (as well as our Saturday BWL and Sunday AQ20 runs) has so many regulars from across several guilds that it's more of a semi-pug at this point.
**If you're considering running Soft Reserve, the LootReserve Addon is AMAZING. For both raiders and the lead team. For raiders, you get a GUI that handles everything you wanted to do (so you don't overwhelm the Loot Master with requests to the point the LM's account is throttled by Blizz). For Loot Masters, you only have a half dozen settings to worry about without having to type out commands on the chat line. If it was all command line driven, it'd take forever.
It was after a detailed yet really emotional discussion on the raid guild's Mage channel about Thaddius. Or, more specifically, the Mage team's lack of decent parsing on Thadd. While we consistently down Thadd, the Mage crew has had to lay off of pushing the pedal to the metal because we frequently get an Ignite that either comes close to or actually pulls threat*. If you map out our threat levels, one of us with Ignite's threat looks like we're on a sudden rocket ship to the stars (almost vertical). So, to combat that we frequently start by soaking the first Ignite, use a Rank 9 Fireball to start with, and then switch to Max Rank when things look stable.**
But all of that has an effect on our parsing which, to be fair, sucks.
One of the crew was arguing about his need to fix his lack of parsing so much and in such a way that it set off alarm bells in my head. I can't describe it, but if you've been a parent for long enough you just learn to recognize where something takes a detour into dangerous emotional territory.
"Dude," I finally responded, "If you're thinking you suck, you don't. Trust me on this one. I don't want you to think you suck, because you kick ass."
Things calmed down after that, but still it was a pretty raw discussion.
So with that in my mind, I received a ping from one of the raid guild's leadership later that day. "Cardwyn, do you have some time to talk?"
Uh-oh.
First, she used my full name, Cardwyn, which I only hear in raid when the Raid Caller/Leader says something officially in raid or when the Loot Master says it when I win something. Second, with the rather generic "do you have a second to talk" following so shortly after the Thadd argument, I got that sinking feeling that I'd overstepped my bounds in the parsing discussion, and I guess she drew the short stick to talk to me about it.
"Well," I said, "might as well get this over with." I responded and said I had time today or tomorrow, but now is fine too. I was alone in the house at the time, so no big deal.
After a couple of hours --and, of course, after my youngest and her boyfriend had dropped by and were up in her room-- she finally responded and I pulled on my headset to chat while I worked on dinner.
"So Card," she began, "You're aware that in BC we're going to have two 25-person raids, right?"***
"Right," I replied, realizing belatedly that Mage parsing was not on her mind.
"I'm going to be leading the Monday raid, along with [a couple of other people]. I'd like to know if you would like to join the raid leadership to be our fourth."
I blinked.
This I was not what I was expecting.
I mean, in the raid surveys that we'd filled out, I had checked a little box that said yes if I wanted to help out in some way. I'd conveniently ignored the entries for Raid Caller, Loot Master, and other official duties of raid leadership, because I figured I could help out by doing a few minor things here and there. After all, I'm not exactly the sweatiest person out on the raid team by a long shot.
Somewhere in the back of my head was a small voice saying "Just how few people offered to volunteer before they got to my name?"
But it was an offer, and I accepted it without hesitation.
We chatted for about 10-15 more minutes, and finished the call.
As I took off the headset I suddenly realized what I'd committed myself to doing: I was going to have to give up on my grand dream of taking my time and exploring Outland. (At least initially.)
And I was gonna have to get sweaty. No way around it.
"Well, crap."
***
Around the same time, with the latest patch came the ability to dethrone a GM if they'd been marked as inactive. Since my guild's GM has been inactive for months, it was kind of a no brainer that I took the opportunity to perform a coup and take over the guild. Sure, it's a guild of (essentially) me at this point, but hey, it's something. And I didn't even have to gather signatures or anything either.
It had kind of irked me for a while that if the GM wasn't going to even make an effort to come back, he could have given me or someone else the GM job and then left, but oh well. I guess people figure that things will remain unchanging. I once asked him about some of the people who leveled in the guild an then split, and he kind of shrugged. It was his guild, I was informed, and he was fine if people didn't necessarily want to stick around or anything. I thought it weird to not have a vested interest in the people in your guild that you didn't necessarily know that well, but I rolled with it.
And now it wasn't his guild at all anymore.
***
It's kind of weird how my work instincts immediately kicked in when I began analyzing the documentation we already had. Usually I try to separate my work from home life, and in spite of me working from home for a couple of decades I do that fairly well. Unless, of course, something like this comes along and then my lizard brain says "Ooo... Data..." and then the work part of me wakes up.
Naturally, the next thing I thought of was "I don't have enough info on raiding in TBC --or classes for that matter-- to help out." So I started reading up on raid compositions, goals, and whatnot.
This sort of thing has been my diet for the past week.
I quickly discovered that there was going to be a problem.
As part of the raid leadership team, I was guaranteed a spot in the raid. But a lot of the 25 person raid compositions in TBC had only one Mage in them. And with two raids, that meant 2 Mages total.
Our core group of Mages currently totaled four.
I knew that at least 3 of us were planning on playing a Mage in BC Classic, and if --as I assumed-- all four of us would, we'd be hard pressed to find space for all of them.
While I could theoretically switch to Az, the slots for Rogues in 25-person BC raids numbered somewhere between zero and one. And I knew that we had far more talented Rogues out there in the raid than me.
I cursed up a blue streak, realizing what that meant. Unless something happened, we were at risk to lose at least one of the Mages from not only the raid team, but potentially from the guild. And our Mage crew is pretty tight. If we all lived in the same city, we'd likely hang out together, go for beers**** and in general have a good time. We look out for each other and reach out when we think things aren't okay. It may be totally selfish, but I didn't want to lose that friendship.
So I decided to sacrifice Card.
"Listen, Card, it's just a figure of... Tell you what, go finish farming Demonic Runes and I'll explain it later."
***
I brooded over this decision for a couple of days, because I've grown quite fond of her. It's likely due to my writing attempts, because her fictional personality is a mesh of my two daughters, and I've connected to her in a way that I never did with my other toons.
But I've played a Ret Pally before, and I've played a Warlock before, and both were going to be needed in BC raids. I was fairly certain nobody was clamoring to play Ret --the only person I knew who did had to retire from the raid due to personal reasons-- so I could slip into that role fairly easily. And I already had Card's sister slated in my head for a Ret position, so I could do that.
If I was going to lead, I had to set an example and do what I could for the betterment of the team.
"My time has come!" Hold yer horses there, kid....
I took my concerns to the Raid Leader, who told me that once the teams (and leadership) were announced there was going to be another survey to see who wanted to go where. So she said we have time, so just wait and see.
Okay, I could do that.*****
***
A short time later the Raid Leader pinged me in Discord that we had an issue. Since a lot of the raid leader tools (WeakAuras and add-ons) are configured to be guild specific, my presence was going to cause problems. She cast out a feeler about whether there were any real issues about joining the guild.
I kind of figured that this would happen --and I was surprised that the topic wasn't broached when I initially agreed to join the raid lead team-- so I'd already decided it was going to be okay. I laid out my checkered history with guilds, but I told her that since I'd made a commitment, I'll follow through on it and join. All I asked was that since I hate being the center of attention, can we please do it while hardly anybody is on.#
That went as well as you'd expect.
Oh, it worked out at first, because only a few people were on at the time, and half of them were guild leadership and so were aware of my decision. But once they changed my tags in Discord, well....
This was one of the more tame memes; you get the idea.
Uh, yeah.
Of course, before all that happened, I wasn't about to give up my newly acquired GM role in my old guild. So I managed to finagle something and move Az into the GM role, freeing up Card to drop Retail Orphans and join Valhalla.
It all blew over after a day, thankfully, so by the time the Friday progression raid was set everybody had gotten the ribbing out of their system.
But except for a few people in the two raid lead teams and guild leadership, nobody knew what was coming when the raid leadership teams were announced.
***
...and there has been drama. The curse lives.
*And guess who is often the owner of said Ignite. I watch those threat meters, sigh, and say "I'm gonna have to LIP, aren't I?"
**We're one of the few guilds on our server that have cleared Naxx and yet don't have a single Thunderfury on the raid team. Oh, we've tried for that second Binding off of Baron Geddon, for almost a year on a regular basis, and still we haven't gotten one to drop for either of our tanks who have a Garr Binding. If we had even one TF, the additional threat would be enough that we could just go to town on Thadd.
***This is by memory, so it may not be completely accurate.
****And tequila. I see you, Raike.
*****We worked on an overview statement as well as a proposed raid composition this weekend, and the Raid Leader and I decided to mark me as "TBD", so that if things work out I can play on Card, but if not I'll fill one of the other slots.
#As I've alluded to in the past, I'm extremely shy in real life, but every day I get up and put on a (virtual) mask to get me through the day. When I first went to university, everybody had to take a day's worth of psychological tests. When I received my results back, they included an appointment with a university psychologist, because the psych staff was concerned about my ability to handle day to day life in college. When I finally met with the shrink, she took one look at me and said "You look fine; so why the results?" "I hide it well," I replied.
EtA: Replaced "raid teams" with "raid leadership teams".
I, uh, now have a bit more of an incentive to get to L70 in BC than before.
And unfortunately, until the official notice drops, I can't really share the reason why yet. I'd been holding on this post for a week now, and I was getting tired of holding it so I'm putting this placeholder out while I'm waiting.
But there was a price to be paid, at least from my perspective. I paid it willingly, but it did not change my personal opinions on anything. Probably the labels will give some of it away, I suppose.
I suppose with BC fast approaching, it was inevitable that the raiding schedule would change. The weekly runs of Molten Core --dubbed the Molten Core Fun Run-- have come to an end.
It was announced in last night's raid that this run was the last, which caused a bit of sadness on my part. MC had turned into a type of raiding 'comfort food', where you can show up and just feel that no matter how shitty of a day you had, things were gonna be okay.* Kind of a "where everybody knows your name" type of raid.
When I was in high school, one of my nicknames was "Cliffy" because I was a bit of a know-it-all.
In the back of my head I always knew it was going to happen, but it still felt like a letdown. You never forget your first time, I suppose, and my first real raid was an MC run that this Fun Run was a spinoff from. If you include that original MC raid, 11 months is a pretty decent time for a raid's lifetime, particularly since MC hadn't been on the progression raid schedule since, well, February 2020. Unlike Zul'Gurub, the other raid with a long lifetime, Molten Core won't remain relevant into BC (unless you count farming for recipes). ZG has the benefit of having enchants that remain useful deep into BC, just like Blackrock Depths has the benefits of being the place you farm for the Hand of Justice, which will absolutely remain a BiS item deep into BC.
Still, I'm going to miss that place.
*For the record, my comfort food is beef stroganoff, at least the way I make it. A good Cincinnati style chili 3-way is a close second.
The currently rumored date for the BC Classic pre-patch drop is May 18th (or thereabouts), which means for the Alliance there will be Shamans as far as the eye can see, and a similar number of Paladins on the Horde side.
Which probably explains why I'm not going to tinker with being a Shaman.
I remember when Mists dropped I very frequently found myself as a minority as a non-Pandaren in Battlegrounds. There was one notable Warsong Gulch game in which I was the only non-Pandaren participant on the Alliance side, and while I want to say that included the Horde side too I can't recall for certain. Those were strange days, no doubt.
But still, reading all of the posts on the various Discords about BC has been akin to listening to a bunch of Pathfinder fans talking about min-maxing their characters. And if you have an hour to lose, you too can listen in on how to create a truly overpowered PC*.
I've pretty much tuned out discussions about BC at this point. From what I've seen so far, BC discussions devolve into such minutae about BiS items, raid compositions, the best way to get raid ready, and grinding out attunements that the interest in BC as a place to explore and experience has gotten lost. I can't help but think that I'm seeing some of the same factors that led to Retail's current state** being played out before my eyes.
At this point I'm wondering exactly where I'll fit in, because while I'd like to experience end game raiding in BC, I steadfastly refuse to power level my way there. I want to immerse myself in Outland and experience the expac when it was new and wondrous. I remember going through the Dark Portal for the first time back in 2009/2010, but back then there were so few players in Outland --everybody and their grandmother was already in Northrend by then-- that the impact was kind of muted. This time, things are going to be different.
Kind of like this, but in Hellfire Peninsula.
I certainly hope that my path won't take me away from the friends I've made in the game, but as friends have come and gone within Classic I shouldn't be surprised that things will change. I suppose you could say that change is the only constant in an MMO; after all, look at the names of all the newly created Night Elves on the first minutes of Classic's opening and think of just how many of them remain, playing the game. I know that I don't recognize any of them, and by now I've gotten to know quite a few names around the capital cities and the major guilds.
Anyway, we'll find out in at least a month or so how things stand.
*That min-maxing culture, along with the success of D&D 5e, are likely the drivers for the creation of Pathfinder 2e. The amount of crunch in Pathfinder had gotten so large that you were pretty much required to use a computerized database system such as Lone Wolf's Hero Lab Online to keep track of your characters.
**Well, outside of the Cataclysm rewrite and the direction the overall story of Azeroth went, that is.
For the past week I've been perusing peripheral options for my gaming activities. Oh, yes, I've been playing games too*, but my mind has been on other things
Perhaps it's the weather, but I've turned my attention to such projects as what it would take to repair the deck --likely replacing about 10-15 deckboards-- as well as finish the paint job that was so rudely interrupted by my knee injury. Once the decking is repaired, then I can focus on making some stands for the plant containers on the deck as well as getting a replacement gas grill.**
All of this means spending some money.
Some of it is obvious --wood for the deckboards, etc.-- and some not so obvious: if I want to get a quicker result in replacing the decking, I have to purchase a power miter saw. I have a manual miter box, but it takes much longer to cut. I looked into power miter box rentals last year, and the price of the rental was enough that if I use the saw for more than one trip it is more economical for me to just buy a decent quality inexpensive power miter box.***
There are other projects that require spending some money too, such as getting the carpet cleaned. Last year in late Summer, I discovered that rental places were refusing to rent carpet washers, so if I wanted a carpet cleaner I have to buy one myself. And believe me, our carpets could use a good cleaning.
So yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that on my mind. And that has been creeping into my game playing, too.
***
Before you even think about it, let me make one thing clear: I'm not gonna turn into a streamer.
Sorry, that's not my thing. And while I'd love to have a nice studio setup, likely combining it with a music practice room in the house, that ain't happening. We don't have the money for it, and if we did we'd get other repairs done first.
So while the concept of getting an A/V setup going is very tempting, if for nothing else to indulge any music recording I'd like to perform****, that's not possible at this time.
Instead, I've been focusing on what I can do to improve my in-game interactions.
Yes, I've got a wireless headset that I use.
The Logitech G933 Artemis Spectrum. Pic is from PC Magazine, likely originating from Logitech.
And especially when I have to get up and move around a bit from time to time, yeah, it's a lifesaver. Not the greatest sound quality for music, but it'll do for both work and gaming. Build quality is good, and while it doesn't do noise cancelling, I've only had to crack it open to put tuner cleaner in spots once.
However, if people in the house try to talk to me, I'm not likely to hear them. When working, that's not an issue, but if I'm gaming I'd like to hear them. Because for some reason as soon as I put that sucker on in the evening to go play, somebody in the house just has to have a conversation about something. It's like magic, I swear.
So while the oldest mini-Red was around, I borrowed her Blue Snowball Ice microphone to use while I raided. It solved the isolation issue, and in a bizarre way it solved the "hey, I need to ask you something" issue. Apparently when I started using it, people did NOT want to be heard talking to me while the mic was up and running, so they saved their discussions until later.
(Genius!)
The Snowball is a pretty unassuming microphone, but it's not mine, as it follows the oldest mini-Red back and forth from college. So, I thought, I could just buy my own microphone and just do what I need to do without relying upon pestering my daughter for hers.
It's never as easy as it sounds, right?
I have since gone down the rabbit hole of USB microphones.
Indeed. This is just a small portion of the available microphones. And the article this is from only highlighted one (!) of these mics. From Techstunt.
I can honestly state that I have no idea just how much time I've spent researching USB microphones, but I now know enough to realize that the most popular mics out there, the Blue Yetis and Snowballs, may not be the one for me.
There's a time and a place for tweaking a microphone's gain and whatnot to make things just perfect, but when I want to just get going quickly that can suck. Especially when the software that comes with the mic (like the Blue Yeti Nano or X) deliberately has the gain set too high by default. And while I'd love to take advantage of extra mic patterns, the reality is that I won't need them any time soon. So it kind of boils down to the sound for the get up and go.
I'm not going to pass on the Blue Yeti's just yet, because the main competition in my mind is the Elgato Wave 3, and I cant seem to effing FIND one out in the wild to make a physical comparison. I hate going in blind like that, but if I want to buy a Wave 3, that's likely what I'll end up having to do.
And even then, there are some others out there, such as the Rode NT-USB Mini that's caught my attention as well.
Geez, I hate making a decision here.
***
The mic aside, I've been hoping to fix up our PC desk. The sliding keyboard + mouse part has a laminated fake wood look, and that cheap laminate has been fading away. I figured that now was as good a time as any to get it replaced with a nicer laminate so I didn't have to use a mouse pad when gaming.
But boy is that going to be annoying to find.
Kind of like this but without the wood/MDF. From Cabinetmaker Warehouse.
I've already been to a couple of hardware stores and struck out, so I think I may have to go to a woodworking specialty store, such as Woodcraft, to find what I need.
***
My old backup solution has bit the dust. It was a Seagate Go system, long out of date, and now the hard drive died, and a replacement didn't work at all. Which sucks.
So.... I might have to invest in a real backup system, like a Synology NAS, because my internet connection isn't good enough for me to consider backing up everything to the cloud. And I scouted the costs of 2-bay and 4-bay NAS devices, and yi-yi-yi.....
Very nice, but the price.... From Synology.
***
And, at long last, there's the speakers.
Back in the day, this was da bomb. Pic from Amazon.
The speakers I'm currently using are the now ancient Altec Lansing ADA-305 woofer and satellite pair. Back in their heyday (circa 1999) they were considered the best speakers for the PC, but 22 years later their age has been showing, particularly in the crispness of the the highs and the overall sound. I've been contemplating making my own pair of speakers with a subwoofer, but I've also been considering just replacing the drivers for the satellites and see how that works. Either way, this is the one area that I refuse to skimp on, because I love listening to my ripped CDs when I sit nearby, working.*****
***
So, there's a lot of other things to consider moving forward, and by comparison my gaming is actually a nice diversion from all this.
*After a week of regressing and not being able to kill K'T, we one shot him this past Monday. And to while away the time, I started yet another game of Stardew Valley. For the record, I always think I'm going to choose someone else, but I typically end up picking between Penny and Leah to romance and marry. Probably because both remind me of my wife.
**While I love using my Weber kettle grill, using charcoal grills on wooden decks is typically not a smart move. And since my primary location for using the charcoal grill is on the driveway (for safety reasons), with the mini-Reds now sharing a third car we don't have as much space as we used to. Hence my interest in gas grills. This time, I'm getting a Weber gas grill; I've had Coleman and Sears/Kenmore gas grills, and I've learned my lesson. If you want a grill that lasts, get a Weber.
***And yes, those exist. Ryobi and Kobalt are two brands that make decent inexpensive models, but you have to check them out to see if they'll work for your situation. Seriously, it's worth it to do some hands on testing.
****I was a radio DJ back in college, and for a span of 5-6 years in the late 90s-early 00s I helped to run the sound at the Cincinnati Celtic Music and Cultural Festival.
*****My work laptop can't access anything in my home network, from printers on down, because of the VPN that the laptop uses. Oh well.
The arts are what makes life worth living. You’ve got food, you’ve got shelter, yeah. But the things that make you laugh, make you cry, make you connect – make you love are communicated through the arts. They aren’t extras.
--Barack Obama
The idea of taking up art as a calling, a profession, is a mirage. Art enriches life. It makes life worth living. But to make a living at it—that idea is incompatible with making art.
--John Sloan (Yes, he was an artist. Go figure.)
As part of the Vanilla/Classic WoW quest chain for Tirion Fordring, he sends you into Stratholme to find a painting his family sat for years ago. The reason is to remind Tirion's son, who has effectively been turned into a cultist by the Scarlet Crusade, of his family's past life and what honor truly stands for. The questline is a tragic one, but for me it's notable because the focus of one particular quest is on an object of art.
There are a few quests that require you to fetch and retrieve a book, and there's a notable quest that involves a flute in Felwood, but far and away the arts aren't found in the Azeroth a player interacts with. Sure, there's the background music at inns and other locations, paintings on the walls, and other reference pieces, but almost literally nothing interactive. Unlike LOTRO, a player can't learn a musical instrument --or play a class that uses music as its magic-- and unlike Elder Scrolls Online or SWTOR (or many other MMOs) you can't purchase a house and decorate it as you please. The most you can do is transmog (in Retail) or take up some of your precious bag space for a roleplaying or hangout outfit.*
It is not a controversial statement to say that when WoW was designed, the arts weren't exactly high on everybody's mind.
I completely understand the whys of that, because when you're creating a game of epic fantasy you're more concerned about a lot of other things (like making sure mechanics actually work) than how the arts impact the denizens of the game world. That being said, given the dedicated art department that Blizz has for WoW and its other games, especially for the look and feel of a specific class, race, zone, or whatnot, you'd think that there would be advocates for the art that a player has input on.
***
I hear their passionate music Read the words that touch my heart I gaze at their feverish pictures The secrets that set them apart
When I feel the powerful visions Their fire has made alive I wish I had that instinct I wish I had that drive
The reason why I'm so passionate about the arts and MMOs is because art inspires me. I love to read RPG materials, not just for the game rules/settings/adventures, but because the art inside the books stirs a desire in me to do more and be more than just a character playing a game. I'm one of those people who has to have music on at all times, no matter the genre**, because music is the backdrop of my narrative life. About the only times I don't have music on at work are when things get so serious that I have to devote all of my resources to something. Or, as one of the mini-Reds once told me, "Dad, when you turn off your music, put in earplugs, and hunch over your laptop, that's when we know shit has just hit the fan."
But the arts are what I truly enjoy in life.*** Sure, I love sports, especially college basketball, and I enjoy building things,
I built these last Fall for my wife's old 80's era all-in-one stereo. Replacing the crappy old speakers that came with the system was like night and day.
but I don't have the talent or time to devote to the arts. I can wander museums and look at the art, but I can't paint or sculpt. I can immerse myself in music, but I can't play worth a damn. Acting? No thanks; I listen to voice actors and watch plays/shows/movies and think "I can't do that. I can't fake emotions like that. Hell, I get embarrassed role playing in pencil-and-paper RPGs."
And the Great American Novel this blog ain't. (Just sayin'. Doesn't hurt my feelings any, because I recognize my limitations and work within them.)
***
Art also provides a starting point for a player as well. It presents a new player --who may be uncertain about wanting to play-- with the ability to say "You're welcome at the table; you can play someone who looks like you."
If I'm in a fight, I want this guy on my side. From the D&D 5e Players Handbook.
Or they can give you a sense of what a player can do.
I never realized it before, but the female Halfling here bears a vague resemblance to Anna Kendrick. Or maybe I need more sleep. From D&D 5e Players Handbook.
And yes, there's the eye candy art as well.
What, you thought I was going to use Seoni? Geralt works fine, you know. Besides, Geralt is one of those people who I think of when I say "I'm not gay, but...." From The Witcher trilogy.
People draw fan art of their favorite characters, their toons, or even scenes from a gaming session all the time. And if I tried posting some here, I'd have a real problem picking a representative sample from the tons of fan art available. Perusing Deviantart alone can suck hours of your time. But if you ever watch Critical Role, you'll note during their breaks the fan art they post... Oh the fan art.
***
Because of all that, the overall lack of an artistic outlet in some MMOs can be a bit jarring at times. Some work within the limitations and create fantastic work, such as Kamalia of Kamalia et Alia and her fashion sense. Her Sunday on the Promenade series on transmog outfits alone are worth a perusal, even though I play Classic and don't have access to transmog. (Me? I'm happy when I don't select blue shirts and a blue jacket to go with my blue jeans.)
Others work with what they have, saving a set specifically for hanging around an MMO city.****
But there are times when I wish a WoW toon could make music all on their own in the same way that you can in LOTRO. The 5 PM EST band on the Gladden server still plays regularly just inside the western entrance to Bree, and it would be nice if something such as that were available on other MMOs. Or have a space of your own to decorate, like you can find in LOTRO, SWTOR, or ESO (oh boy, the options you have in ESO).
Such as it is, we have to make do with our own efforts outside of MMOs.
Maybe I should try my hand at painting. I already had a couple of discussions with one of my fellow Mages about watercolors, and he positively geeked out on me and provided me with a ton of info to get started. I know going in I'm going to suck, but if I work at it maybe I can finally draw/paint an image I've had in my head for a while, of Card wearing regular clothing, with her nieces and nephews, heading to the pond close to the farm to go fish. Her face is relaxed; she's grinning at the nephew she has perched on her shoulders, while Carys and the others are cavorting around because they're all excited that Aunt Cardwyn is taking them on "an adventure". And perhaps in the distance, Kit and Kerisa are already there, sitting and fishing, glancing over their shoulders with amused expressions at the ruckus. It's not a "go slay the dragons" image at all, but a simple picture that reflects the humanity of a toon.
*That's not counting the pirate and other costumes people can transform into, courtesy of holiday events.
**Well, I'm not a fan of most country music, and hip hop commands my attention in a way that distracts from anything I'm working on, so I rarely listen to either. Although I will say that Cardwyn's nickname in raids is now primarily "Cardy B". And because of that I now point out that the "B" stands for "battle rez".
***Oh, for pete's sake, I do love my wife and family, so don't go there.
****I have two now: the "Vixen Set" which features the Spider-mage robe, and an "Out Dating" set, which has Card wearing an evening gown. I should make one with a full Tier set, even having helm and cloak on, just so I can look like a Mage and drum up some consumables and/or portals business. I can't remember who said it, but a friend in Classic mentioned to me about a month ago that when they wear a full T2 set they get a lot more business.
Okay, I still haven't figured out how to post the video like you can with YouTube --and I blame poor tools by Blogger here-- but here's a link to our K'T kill, as streamed by Mirsh.
It's also nice to know I'm not the only one who curses while raiding. Good thing the kids are much older, or I'd go crazy trying to censor myself. But somewhere, I think my Grandfather would be proud of me for cursing as much as I do.*
I've always wondered how I sound in raids in Discord, and now I know. You can hear me at the tail end just before the kill saying "We've got him!! We've got him!!"
I can't help but confess that I was focusing on where I was on the screen, hoping that I don't look too much like an idiot. I can't stream, because if I did you'd see my head was on a swivel, constantly looking for those banshees as they bore down on us. And it's not a lot of fun once you hit Phase 2 and you're trying desperately to conserve as much mana as you can for sheeping while wanding and pacing out your potion consumption.
*A quick story about my Grandfather. During WW2, he and several other people in his division were promoted to Corporal. As they all stood in line, a Captain marched up and down saying "I made you, and I can break you." My Grandfather, never one for tact, piped up and cracked, "If that's the way you feel about it, you can shove it up your ass!!"
My Grandfather was busted back down to Private quicker than you can say WTF...
(If you get a chance, go listen to The Kinks album of the same name as this title. You won't be disappointed.)
MMOs, by necessity, are a limited slice of an invented world.
As much detail a dev team can put into a game world, there are going to be gaps. Some are massive, such as the lack of religion being prominent as a divisive element,* and some are more subtle, such as the lack of music and the arts in people's lives.
I was thinking of this when I read Bhagpuss' post about how the Guild Wars 2 devs tried to artificially create player hubs when the players had organically established their own hubs. It's a good post and well worth reading, and as you'll see my really short TL;DR doesn't scratch the surface of its detail. I don't play GW2 enough to comment on that specific MMO, but it did give me fuel for thought concerning other MMOs.
The most prominent of MMOs, World of Warcraft, has the recurring theme of conflict between Orcs and Humans at its center. This is artificially propped up by Blizzard, even though the most popular expansions (BC, Legion, Wrath) all center around the two factions joining together against a common threat. Expansions --or portions of them-- that emphasize the conflict tend to not be as well received**. However, Blizz keeps pushing the conflict because.... It's the core of the game. Or something. Although if you asked me what the core of WoW was, it's that "Old Gods are bad and the source of all evil. HP Lovecraft rules."
Still, it also seems that Blizz attempts to do the same thing that GW2 has been guilty of, which is to create a new player hub for each expac. Or, in the case of Cataclysm, an artificial attempt to re-establish the faction capitals as the primary hubs in the game.
It's not like ArenaNet and Blizzard are the only guilty ones here. Standing Stone has created new hubs with each expac in LOTRO, and Bioware the same in SWTOR. To an extent, I can understand the need to create central hubs in new territories, and they become the hub of activity for each expac. But at the same time there's no reason in a Fantasy or Science Fiction MMO that you can't just have a gamified way of allowing players to simply return to the hub of their choice and bounce back and forth from wherever "the front" is.
I guess my whole point is that instead of observing what the players are doing and trying to change behavior by artificial means, why not let the players do their own thing?
***
I do realize that there is a game out there that does just that, and it's called EVE Online, but EVE takes the "give players the latitude to do what they want" and opens up to an "anything goes" environment.
That sort of game isn't for everybody.
EVE is definitely not for the faint of heart. From giphy.com.
And yet, looking over how Blizzard has implemented WoW from expac to expac, I can't help but think that Blizz has lost a lot of what made the original Vanilla (or Classic) implementation of the game so great: you can wander around and make your own way without being railroaded into a specific path. That doesn't mean that people haven't figured out optimal paths for everything --there's a reason why boosting services are so popular in Classic-- but to experience endgame content you aren't limited to a very specfic path. To experience Naxx, you don't have to have gone through AQ40, for example, and vice versa. About the only limitation those two have is that you have to have at least gotten a decent amount of T2 gear from BWL, and even then it's not a strict requirement. I'm living proof of that.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Some games, however, you can't not have various hubs. With the events of the War of the Ring as a backdrop, LOTRO can't avoid having hubs in various locales. And SWTOR has hubs on each planet you visit as a necessity, since traipsing across the galaxy is not a simple thing. But an Azeroth or Tyria? They have no such limitations. It's all up to the devs to observe the players and reinforce their preferences rather than trying to redirect them, because artificial redirection doesn't always go well.
*This is merely an observation, not an indictment. Many of the longest running conflicts over the centuries have been fueled by religion, so the absence of those types of conflicts in MMOs do tend to stand out. And as many conflicts are driven by religion, an equal or greater number use religion as an excuse for something else (such as Albigensian Crusade, which was merely an excuse of the northern French nobles to invade Languedoc in the south of France).
**Battle for Azeroth as the primary example, although the complaints about that expac are much much more than just "artificially creating conflict".
***Besides, you always have your ship to hang out in.
I am NOT sleepy. Too much adrenaline. (And my screenshots suck. This one, taken by a fellow raider, looks much better. Don't know how you do it, Tany. Seriously.)
I almost missed the raid due to an emergency at work, but I kept the raid lead informed of my situation as raid time approached, and because of that they kept a spot open for me when I finally got off work.
I'm not sure what I expected, but I felt that there should be End Credits scrolling or something. But we were treated to a serenade of Hey There Valhalla by the raid lead.
To say that gear/clothing found in many video games, particularly those in Fantasy and Science Fiction genres, emphasize form over function is a bit of an understatement. Of course, if you pick up a random pencil and paper RPG splatbook, you're likely to see pictures of PCs/NPCs wearing "impractical" gear/clothing scattered throughout the inside.
For every RPG that has art like this:
I recently acquired this. Makes for fascinating reading, and it looks very much like a D&D 3.0/5e lite.
You have something like this:
A Cyberpunk RPG.
And don't get me started about how some novels depict things:
And this wasn't even the most obnoxious of the Flandry novels.
And of course if you've ever played video games, there's a lot of fanservice designs too. You know, like the Spider-mage robe.
I'm not here to complain about that, because it is what it is. However, when I saw the artwork for BC Classic, something caught my eye.
From the WoW Classic website.
I mean, nothing too unusual here: the oversized shoulders for all toons, the hefty bodybuilder look on the male toons, and the bustier look on the female toons...
But for the female Blood Elf, I noticed the pointed end of that bustier settled right. over. the. belly. button.
Even cloth "armor" needs some form of basic reinforcement to maintain that form.
It looks nice until said Blood Elf has to lean forward or bend over or something. Then that point goes right into the belly button and the gut. And that's gotta hurt.
By contrast, the female Draenei has a much more practical design (at least what we can tell):
Honestly, they look less like a bustier and more like American Football shoulder pads.
I'm not denying that, fashion wise, both look very nice. And comparatively speaking, not so much fan service as just a personal look. But I'd hate to cosplay that Blood Elf look solely for that pointy little reason. Probably rounding the bustier out a bit would work, or just flattening it out like the Draenei version would work too. But Blood Elves gonna Blood Elf, I guess.
A long time ago, several years before this blog came into being, there was a seminar/discussion about writing and publishing at the Downtown library. It was free and open to the public, and hosted by several editors from Writers Digest magazine.* I'd always wanted to write Fantasy and Science Fiction**, but at the same time I didn't want to put myself out on a limb and show up as the clueless noob among a bunch of aspiring --and much younger-- writers.
My wife effectively kicked me out the door, saying that "you might as well show up and listen, because that's what you're passionate about". So I took a short jaunt to the Main Library and sat somewhere in the back while the editors presented and took questions from the audience.
The area the seminar took place in had enough chairs to easily hold 100 people, but I'd say it was about 1/3 full with about 10-20 other library patrons wandering in and out, driven by curiosity to stand in the back and listen for 10 minutes or so. What also immediately stood out was that I was very much a minority, both in gender and age, and most everybody else was more ambitious about writing than I was. Selling to a publisher wasn't my primary goal, although that wouldn't hurt one bit; my desire was to actually write a story I was proud of.
I quickly discovered that I didn't have to talk --or worse, present a writing sample-- so I could just listen and absorb what everybody had to say.
And people certainly weren't shy about the craft of writing.
Several of the women there wanted to write and publish poetry, to which my initial thought was "good luck with that". It's not that I didn't think they weren't good enough to get published, it's that poetry is such a niche market that it'd be harder to break into than publishing in general. I silently wished them luck, because I felt they were certainly going to need it.
Others played it close to the vest, like I did, but they did ask about the publishing process. And still others were interested in finding an agent and how one went about doing that.
The editors were knowledgeable, but some things --like catching lightning in a bottle-- they couldn't answer. I mean, finding the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King is as much a crap shoot as it is an educated guess.
***
But the reason why I bring this up is that one of the editors present, the Fiction Editor for the Writer's Market annual, has since gone on to have a successful writing career of her own. I was reminded of that when I saw an ad from our local independent bookstore about a Zoom interview of her in promotion of her latest novel. Sure, being in the writing industry gave her a leg up in figuring some things out, she still had to break through on her own. Plus, another local author is always a good thing for the local arts community in general.
One piece of advice she did give out to the aspiring writers that day has continued to stick with me: a writer has to write if they want to improve. You can't expect to show up, pound out a few lines, and expect to be hailed a genius.
For every Mozart or Prince, there are a ton of aspiring musicians who have to work their collective asses off just to be considered "average".
Okay, I know it's not historically accurate, but while I admire Mozart in Amadeus I appreciate Salieri's POV. Don't approve of his actions, however.
And her words have rung true for me.
Over the years of PC's existence, I've learned a lot about how to write. Or re-write, to be honest. Taking a post and editing it before release is critical to my writing process, and one I had to accept before I could improve past a certain plateau. When I was in high school and college, I used to compose at the typewriter because I hated rewriting. That meant I'd sit there and plot out a paragraph or more ahead of time, working everything out in my head before I would type anything. Yes, I would agonize over every single word I wrote, because I didn't want to rewrite a single thing. It slowed my output down immensely, but (I thought) I didn't have to edit the result. The thing is, while I could pull that sort of feat off in high school and get good grades, in college that simply wasn't happening. My professors ate me alive until I admitted that I couldn't just create a "good enough" result one time through.
Nowadays, I can't just pound out some words and then hit "Publish". I know better. And even then, I still miss things afterward, which explains the "EtA:" on the bottom of a bunch of posts over the years.
***
This sort of approach --trying something, revising, and trying again-- is also important in gaming. I've been reminded of that in spades on our run through Naxxramas, where the raid team hits a wall, spends time examining data and revising the approach, and eventually finding something that works. Sure, there's a lot of strategies for raid bosses already published, but you still have to tweak it to match your particular raid team and their strengths/weaknesses. Even then, you're not guaranteed victory, only a shot at it.
But it's not only the approach, but the humility that this approach requires, is what makes or breaks a raid team. We're one of the few raid teams left on our server that is still pushing deep into Naxxramas that hasn't yet killed K'T, and what keeps us going is that we're mature enough to handle setbacks. That doesn't mean we don't get frustrated --oh boy, do we-- but what's important is to not let those frustrations overwhelm you.
I don't drink Jack Daniels, but I still found this funny.
*It's perhaps a little known item, but Writer's Digest is based out of Cincinnati, even though the parent company is located in New York City.
**I have a copy of Isaac Asimov's Asimov on Science Fiction, a collection of his essays on writing SF, around the house somewhere. I was also inspired by Stephen King's On Writing, which interweaves a bit of his own history of learning to write along with understanding the craft of writing. Both are interesting books, and I highly recommend taking the time to find and read them.
When I discovered there was no such thing as Azeroth After Dark as referenced in yesterday's post, I decided to jump on it.
I am now the proud (?) owner of azerothafterdark.wordpress.com.
What I intend to do with it I have absolutely no freaking idea, but at least it won't suffer the fate that internet users in the 90s will remember with whitehouse.com. Or that time when Dick's Sporting Goods didn't own the dicks.com website.
***
Oh, and Happy St. Patrick's Day! Now you can go have a good cry first....
And then cheer yourself up with a few happy jigs and reels....
No, I didn't pull aggro*, and we were finally able to down Sapphiron. And I landed the T3 robe as well. (Cost me about all my DKP, though.)
But it was after, when a raid friend and I were chatting back and forth and the talk turned to BC that I slipped up. I'd mentioned that I was thinking about cloning Card so that a version of her could remain on a Vanilla Classic server forever, which my friend was thinking of doing too, but then my friend asked me about mains in BC.
I admitted that I didn't know for sure what I might do, and that I might even end up switching to Horde as a main, which shocked him. I had to explain that my first two toons I leveled [to completion] in Wrath were Blood Elves, and I do know that I'm likely to create a BC Classic version of them. Whether they'll be just an alt or whether I'll make them my mains remains to be seen, however.
Oh well. If word gets around that Card is "going to the dark side", I'll have earned that.
***
Given that I got the Mage T3 robe, my current robe, the one I've dubbed the Spider-mage robe, isn't going to be on me for that much longer. Still, I really love the look and feel of it:
Azshara was empty the night I was playing around with the look. I'm not one to do this sort of thing while there's a crowd.
The official name of the robe is the Crystal Webbed Robe that drops off of Maexxna, and according to sixtyupgrades.com it's the second best Mage robe in Classic at the moment. ** However, the personality of this robe is something that you'd think Spider-woman or Spider-Gwen (both from the Marvel Universe) would wear.
It just has that awesome look like something that Ashley Eckstein would design.
It was while I was screwing around in Azshara with the look of the robe that I discovered that, much like the superheroes I could see wearing it, the Spider-mage robe has a dual identity.
I was wearing an orange shirt underneath the robe, but since orange looks perfect with the aesthetic I never paid it any mind. However, if you look closely at the chest of the first pic you can see where there are a few cross stitching marks where some lacing is. That got me curious, so I took off the orange shirt, and when I did I blurted out "holy shit!"
Uh.... Card? When did you grow up so fast?
Card turned into a vixen.
Complete with backless look...
...and matching side boob and spiderweb / fishnet pantyhose on the arms.
Even in my dreams I wasn't expecting this.
Now, I'll freely admit that Card looks awesome in both looks, but the Spider-vixen look was truly shocking.And I'm not going to say that Blizz shouldn't have designed it this way, but as was pointed out by another friend who I showed this... transformation... to, Blizz does have a history of presenting female gear very differently than male gear. To her (and me), it was the overall lack of choice on a lot of the gear that annoyed her.***
At least with the Crystal Webbed Robe I had the choice to put an orange shirt on and turn Card into a budding superhero, rather than a femme fatale out of Azeroth After Dark.****
And yes, I'm going to keep the Spider-mage robe in my pack, just so I can put it on from time to time to hang around Stormwind or something. Maybe I should make a "vixen" look too, but I don't think I'm ready for that side of Card yet.
*Thanks to an Ignite I got to the top of the aggro stack on Thaddius, even though I'd stopped casting, and the Mage Lead was calling for a drop of Ignite. Luckily the main tank was able to taunt off me, but I didn't touch my cast bar at all until at least one other tank got past me on threat. That was an anxious 10 seconds there, let me tell you, and that was right after we'd been given a lecture about managing threat by the Raid Lead. I wish I could take credit for the aggro, but I had little to do with it. I wasn't even up high until aggro on the MT got shaky and suddenly it was one person, then a second, and then me atop the aggro stack. But we didn't wipe and we only lost one or two people on Thad total.
**The T3 Mage robe is currently best in slot.
***At least this isn't TERA or some other Korean MMO, where this look would be considered tame.
****Knowing Rule 34, Azeroth After Dark is likely a thing. But I'm stating here for the record that I'm not gonna search for it. Nope nope nope.... Okay, whew. It isn't a thing after all. Actually, I'm quite surprised.
EtA: Fixed a clarity mistake and "shirt", not "robe".
As life has gone on in a post-Naxx release world, the more I'm struck by how much the last two raids, Naxxramas and Ahn'Qiraq, shook up guilds.* While some guilds have gone on to complete Naxx and are in semi-hiatus while waiting on Burning Crusade to drop, others have gotten oh so close to finishing Naxx only to come up short. And there are those who are still trying to finish content in AQ40 to just get to the point of being able to start running Naxx.
And then there are guilds that simply don't have the personnel to get a 40-person raid on their own and have to work with other guilds to just get a shot at clearing content.
Even within the guilds that have been raiding Naxx, all is not roses and cream. If the guild has enough personnel to have multiple 40 person raids, great. If a guild only has enough to put together one 40 person raid, then there are issues with having a bench to work with, and also keeping that bench viable. I've watched guilds have a constant level of churn trying to keep a bench at all, much less keep those last 5 spots in a raid team filled.**
All of this has me watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
***
When a raid team is forced to reduce from 40 to 25 (and later, from 25 to 10) there's bound to be some hurt feelings.
I've mentioned this before, but I know that I'm not going to be part of the 25 selected to raid when our team goes through this process. For starters, Fire Mages*** aren't as dominant in raiding in BG as they are in Vanilla/Classic. Most of the 25 person raid compositions I've heard talked about for BC have mentioned about 3 Mages max, and I've even seen some raid compositions with 2 Mages. Assuming either composition, I'd be left off the 25 person raid team. On a good day, I'm 4th of the 6 Mages. Most raid days bounce around from 4th to 5th; some of it is my reaction time isn't what it once was, some of it is my lack of gear compared to the rest, and some of it is that I don't have the killer attitude to start DPS almost immediately, trusting in the tank to hold boss aggro. (I've died too many times due to pulling aggro to do that.)
So I'd be going onto either the bench or a "second" raid.
But here's where it gets weird. When I read the TBC channels in Discord****, people are all talking about what they want to level and what spec is best, etc. etc. Nobody wants to disturb the excitement by asking the hard question: who's getting cut?
It was briefly broached in last Thursday's Molten Core run when someone (can't remember who) remarked that it was sad that with BC so close now that there are only a limited number of times left where we are all able to raid together. And then just like that, nobody said a peep about it. Maybe it was that the reality of it meant that 40% of a raid was no longer gonna be there, but perhaps people already knew where their pecking order was.
And what I expect is that raid teams will potentially fracture not along where the needs are, but where the cliques are.
***
I've noticed that if you have people who you hang with regularly in a guild, you're going to stick around even if you may be on a raid's bench. But if you don't have that clique or general reaching out to include you in things, you're much more likely to split for greener pastures. It's only human nature after all to want to go where you're valued. And if you're in a guild but don't really know anybody, and people don't make extra efforts to reach out to you, then yeah, you're going to feel like you're not really there for any reason than to fill out a spot.
Looking back on my time in the guild I'm in --yes, the guild that has me as the only active Classic player-- I think I could have done more to play a couple of lower level alts, so I could participate with the slowly declining guild lists. Perhaps if I'd done more, the guild could have lasted longer. But then again, maybe I'm just kidding myself as I'm not only the only regular player but the only guild officer who logs in as well. Even the GM doesn't log anymore, and that says a lot.
But still, I've seen the unintentional lack of inclusion have an impact on various friends in various guilds. You join, you're excited to meet people, they're happy to see you, and then everybody goes back to their own subgroups. And then you wonder what's next. You get kind of stuck into this middle area, and it's quite easy to be present and yet not be "there".
***
So you've got a lot of dynamics in play coming into BC:
Are you actively raiding or on the bench?
Are you part of a raid team and/or guild subgroup that hangs out together?
Are you part of a class that is not going to be as dominant in BC? (Or the reverse?)
Is your guild able to put together a single 40 person raid team? Two? More? None?
All of that feeds into what's going to happen in BC when 25 person raids become the mains, with 10 person raids taking over the old ZG/AQ20 style 20 person raid.
My belief is that while some raid teams will successfully navigate a reduction from 40 to 25, they're going to lose critical pieces because of the cliques. If your Main Tank also has quite a few friends who are going to be left off the raid team, I could easily see that Main Tank joining their friends in starting up another raid team, and maybe leaving the guild altogether. Suddenly that first raid team is in need of a Main Tank and potentially other people to fill the gaps. Did that original raid team stop raiding Naxx before a player finished Atiesh? How that player handles that disappointment is going to be telling, and could potentially fracture a raid team.
So yeah, this is gonna get crazy real fast, whether people like it or not.
And me, I'm going to be watching and waiting to see what happens. As much as people want to not talk about it, this is going to definitely affect them, like it or not.
As for my raid team, well, I think I know how some of this will pan out. I'm not gonna say anything, because I've intentionally kept myself out of the guild, but I've a pretty good idea what's going to happen. The real question I have is whether things will be worked out emotionally or not.
*That's setting aside guild drama the has blown up several previously well known guilds on Myzrael-US, such as Azeroth's Redemption and All Quests Matter (I was told by an ex-guildie that the name is from the Vanilla era, but was unfortunately a casualty of current events). And there are other large guilds that have had some pretty big splintering, even though the main guild has remained viable (such as Indecisive breaking away from Sunrise).
**The Guild Recruiting channel on the Myz Discord is good for watching that sort of thing, as well as the recruitment ads in the in-game LFG channel. I hardly ever --evah!-- see a guild recruitment ad in the actual Guild Recruitment in game channel.
***And Mages in general.
****And boy are there plenty on various guild Discord servers. That's how it goes when you're a pugger; you accumulate guild Discord servers like people collect autographs.
EtA: Fixed a "of" to a "or". Makes a bit more sense now.
