After my last post, I figured that a follow up deserved one too. After all, I spend enough time complaining --under the guise of 'commenting'-- that I figured I ought to post when things actually go well for a change.
When we last saw our heroes, I had a rude awakening when I discovered Friday morning that the name of my raid had been changed to a Zul'Aman raid, and a raid for the OTHER progression raid team.
Oh yes, who needs coffee when you discover that you're not only squeezed out of the one raid that you are able to run, but you're squeezed out of a raid so that the OTHER team --the one that can make our progression raid team feel like the "backups" or "reserves" because they run twice a week, get more than twice as much gear, and have most of the sweatiest players-- booted you out of your raid without any notification whatsoever?
Yeah, I was not pleased.
***
I blew off some steam by cursing up a blue streak, sighed, and more politely followed up in the raid leadership channel that I was planning on running Karazhan until there was no more interest in doing so. After all, while Zul'Aman may have only a 3 day lockout, Karazhan in Phase 4 will have upwards of 22 badges available. This is the largest number of badges available in a single raid/instance in TBC Classic, so for those that like badges this will keep interest for quite a while.
What I didn't say is that the people who are my 'regulars' show up because they like the laid back atmosphere and the overall lack of pressure to speed run the damn place. I call them my regulars, because they seem to always have a new alt to run through and gear up in Kara.*
Given the name change, I knew which of the co-GMs did the work, so I waited to see what was going to happen.
***
Well, I didn't have to wait long. Before 9 AM ST the other co-GM had changed the raid name back.
And a few hours later I received an apology in the chat from the other co-GM, as she wasn't aware that I was still running Karazhan.
I accepted the apology at face value, but given my regular drumbeats of getting the Friday raid filled on Wednesday and Thursday on the guild's Discord LFG channel, I don't know how you could not know.**
***
And so I figured that was that. I got my raid back, along with an apology, and I could still have my Friday nights.
Well...
That evening, while I was relaxing prior to the raid, I received a ping from the Monday Raid Lead. Would I be interested in running a Zul'Aman raid with her on a Saturday afternoon, Server Time?
This means that the raid would start at 6 PM EST and run until 8 PM EST (roughly) so as not to interfere with another friend's proposed SSC raid at 11 EST.
I didn't hesitate.
"Sure!"
At about this point, I was starting to wonder whether I should buy a lottery ticket or something, because I wasn't expecting to have all of this drop in my lap on Friday.
And to top it off, there was apparently a guild leadership discussion, and the outcome of that was to allow the raid leads a bit more internal power within the guild itself. Not that it's anything I'd use and definitely not anything I asked for, but it does exist now.
So... Yay?
***
And yes, I did go out and buy a lottery ticket today, because I figured why not? It was nice to have lady luck smile on me for a change, and on the extremely unlikely chance I actually win something I can use those winnings to help some other people out. Pay it forward and all that.
*I honestly don't know how they do it, but then again if you had a lot of alts sitting at L60 when TBC Classic dropped, that'd make it easier to level, I suppose.
**And yes, I can fill in the blanks. I'm just going to be better than that.
And here I thought I had an opportunity to chill for a while before I started to feel the pressure about Zul'Aman runs.
I guess that means that Wrath Classic will drop in the Fall, probably in the October/November time frame.
***
I'm not sure what to make of all this. One one hand, if I wanted to get back into progression raiding when I finally am no longer drinking from a fire hose with all of my new job stuff, now would be a good time. On the other hand, I'm simply not wanting to rejoin the raid and find myself back at the bottom of the DPS stack again.
Let's look at this with a critical eye rather than a sentimental one.
To be "good" again, I would need upgrades to just about everything I'm carrying.
Before anybody calls bullshit on this, here's the Phase Three singular best piece I have, courtesy of seventyupgrades.com:
My best piece was bought using Badges of Justice.
Now, to be fair, seventyupgrades doesn't handle trinkets very well, and yes, I do have the Dragonspine Trophy (DST for short). Before you ask, I almost didn't roll on it because I wanted to defer to others who had better gear and DPS than me. Think about it: if someone with better DPS gets the DST, they'll do significantly better compared to me winning it. If there's a similar percentage applied to crits and DPS, the one with the larger DPS pool will benefit more than one with less DPS. That was my thought process about not rolling on the DST, but I was pretty much beat over the head by people wanting me to roll until I finally did. And I actually won it.
Yes, it's a nice little trinket, but you have to combine it with the Bloodlust Brooch and then pop both the Brooch and Shamanistic Rage at the same time to get full benefits from it (mana back as well as all the other nice bonuses in a fight.)
But outside of the trinkets, this is my singular best piece of gear for Phase 3:
Yes, the Tier 5 gloves. No, I don't have four pieces of T5 gear to get the highly sought after T5 bonus. I only have two pieces.
Oh, and the Edgewalker boots that drop in Karazhan. They're almost as good, proportionally speaking.
Most of my other pieces barely register on the charts.
For the record, I checked the listings after I added the Zul'Aman raid into the mix, and hardly any ZA pieces register. A cloak, a belt, and maybe a ring, but that's about it. So for me, "catch up" is a relative thing as I've already got gear that's as good or better than what drops in ZA.
And that's kind of sad, really, because it means that I'd need SSC/TK and Hyjal/BT runs to get geared.
Without a Kael'Thas kill, Phase 3 raids are pretty much off the table anyway, and it's actually hard to find a SSC/TK raid that fits into my schedule.
***
All of this was just to show what an uphill climb I'd have ahead of me to actually get some real gear to get out of the basement in the DPS listings.
The couple of crafted pieces that use the Nether Vortex are possible, but when it was presented to me as "upgrades" in a long list of ways to improve my DPS, I was told "it'll get me 10 more DPS" for each piece.
Whoop de fucking doo.
When your DPS is 200-300 lower than most everybody else, and I'm told that I should be getting in 3+ more Stormstrikes over the same time frame to bring myself in alignment with other Enhance Shamans, then I know the problem isn't just with gear, it's my own physical abilities. I'm being compared with people who are young enough to be my own children (or grandchildren, for pete's sake), and I know I don't have the same physical skills I had when I was in my 30s. (Or 40s, for that matter.)
So why would I rejoin a progression raid when I'm going to be reminded that I'm old?
***
I do receive a couple of whispers or Discord messages every so often, telling me that I'm missed in the raid. Which is nice, but I've seen how the sausage is made, and it can't be unseen.
About the only reason why it would make sense to come back from a critical standpoint is because they want me for my body.
"Not this again. Shush, Card. It's not what you thi-- Oh, nevermind."
Right now, the raid is hamstrung in their DPS utility classes. As in there aren't any.
The raid does not have a single one of these classes present:
Enhancement Shaman (Enh Shammy)
Retribution Paladin (Ret Pally)
Balance Druid (Boomkin)
And not for lack of trying to recruit, either.*
If you know how TBC progression raids work, all of this adds up to some significant DPS being lost. Your own DPS might not be great, but you make others in your party/raid better.
Yeah, like this BASF commercial from 1991:
And apparently in Mount Hyjal, the Archimonde fight** has a steady stream of fears being cast that are alleviated by Shamans in each group dropping Tremor Totems throughout the fight. That means a minimum of five Shamans per raid team, because of 5 groups of 5 in each raid.
Our raid team only has three Shamans.
My presence would make it four, which would go a long way to getting the raid team over the hump and finishing the Mount Hyjal raid.
On the flip side, they'd have to bench someone who was bringing a significant amount of extra DPS to the raid. And I'm not sure even my presence, doing a rotation that keeps the melee boosted in DPS, would overcome that DPS loss. After all, TBC Classic is not a very melee friendly expansion to raiders.
***
And now with Zul'Aman on the docket, it seems that my Karazhan raid might be squeezed out anyway.
I awoke this morning to find that the Friday Karazhan's sign up page in Discord was renamed to the "other" raid's "Thursday ZA Run".
I was initially annoyed, and posted in the raid leadership chat that I was planning on running the Friday Karazan until there's no interest --badges are badges after all, and it's hard to beat Karazhan for the sheer volume of badges-- but I have no idea if it'll get changed back. If not, and I've been squeezed out by a GM who pre-epmtively did this, then there's literally nothing keeping me in the guild anymore. Especially since my time is considered so unimportant that nobody thought to inform me that I was going to get my run yanked before it actually happened.
Well, I guess I'll find out today what's going to happen to the sole raid I have left.
*There simply aren't a lot of those three out there that aren't currently raiding in TBC Classic. I've likened finding an Enhance Shaman looking for a raid to finding a unicorn. Usually it's people looking to raid an alt, and given the transition from Classic to TBC Classic, a lot of those looking are classes that used to be on the hit parade for Vanilla Classic but have fallen a bit to the side: Warriors and Mages. To be fair, Mages still do good DPS, but there were so many of them progression raiding in Vanilla Classic that there's not enough space for them all in TBC Classic.
**The final boss in that raid instance. Yes, the demon from Warcraft 3.
Now there was an MMO that shaped my in-game playing over the years, despite the bugs and mishandling of the Conan property by Funcom.
That opening beach area. The graphics still look good even after 14 years. From mmos.com.
There was so much promise in that game, and I'd sung its praises before, especially in the starting zone, and I've been disappointed how the game played out. From the delay in the button pushes to the bait-and-switch from Tortage to the rest of the leveling content, it's a damn depressing situation at times. But that game simply won't die.
Ah yes, the character creation screen. And the boob slider, which starts at roughly a C cup and goes to 'How is she walking?' From the IGN Age of Conan Wiki.
No, I haven't logged into the game in the past couple of days; I believe my time at logging in at all is at an end. But what sparked my musing about the game was how the mobs in WoW behave compared to AoC, and because of that I have a hard time following through on some of these YouTube videos showing how people can solo farm stuff in various instances/locales.
A couple of weeks ago --when Linna was still in the mid-60s*-- my questing buddy was trying and failing to accomplish some farming that she'd seen another guildie perform in Slave Pens. She'd also checked out some YouTube videos, and she kept dying. So I dropped by and kept her buffed, rezzing when necessary, for about an hour or two. During that time she showed me a couple of the tricks, showing how you can run from one point to another and not have to worry about the mobs following you.
Yes, this is one of the sole pics that show Linna around an instance. So far, that evening spent in Slave Pens' opening area has been the only time she's been in a BC instance. (And for the record, we were talking about the guinea pigs, not any human grandchildren.)
"Oh!" I replied. "And here I thought there was a barrier there or something."
"Nope! They just won't aggro here." A bit later, when we were in Dire Maul: East, she pointed out a location and said that was a reset point there. In both cases I kind of shook my head and muttered to myself that these two things would never work in Age of Conan.
***
The mobs in Age of Conan are pretty brutal at level. Compared to other mainstream MMOs, they're on the Dark Souls end of difficulty in that it's not just a primary enemy you have to deal with, but how nearby enemies react as well. Back in the day, if you pulled one baddie, depending on how you pulled you might end up with 4-5 additional enemies ganging up on you. The mobs aren't linked per se, they just react to whatever nearby mobs are doing. It's quite impressive --especially for the era, when you'd not expect MMOs to behave in that advanced a fashion-- but it instilled in me an extra amount of caution in how I leveled out in the field. And in Age of Conan, you are most definitely not on the "superhero" end of power while leveling. Even Neve and Linna, who were both leveling in quest greens acquired from what must be 5-10 levels ago, feel more powerful than the average Age of Conan toon.
And tips and tricks that work in a game such as WoW simply will. not. work. in Age of Conan.
AoC was designed with the hardcore in mind, back when PvE hardcore content meant more than "very long attunement processes".**
***
If Blizz wanted to, they could close out these gaps in the system that allows certain reset points and solo farming items to exist. The key point here is "wanted to", because I suspect that the Blizz devs themselves take advantage of these little quirks in the system, so why would they shoot themselves in the foot? And it's also important to note that since these little flaws in the WoW matrix were discovered, it's become a bit of a game to find these semi-legal loopholes. If those loopholes were closed when WoW was young, the devs would have at least had history on their side, but by letting them stand they're now considered part of the game.
Some people would call it inventiveness, others laziness, and still others would call it 'cheats'.
Like, oh, using the Immature Venom Sacs to deal with Viscidus in AQ40.
Someone had to figure out not only would those sacs work with Viscidus, that they were tradable among people in a raid, but also that people had to farm the damn things in Lower Blackrock Spire by using quirks in the system to get the spider mobs down quickly enough so that the timer on the sacs they acquired wouldn't expire. Is it a kludge? Yes, of course it is. Does it work? Yes, it does. Is it what was intended by Blizz to fix the challenge? No, likely not, but that's the point. It was a solution that presented itself by someone who knew the reset points and could quickly farm a lot of sacs instead of farming mats for poison cleaning potions.***
***
I guess you could say that because those little quirks and gaps exist in WoW, it makes WoW more appealing to a certain type of player: one who likes a challenge and thinks outside the box. Age of Conan taught me how to pull conservatively and at the right angles for solo play, and WoW hasn't rid me of that just yet.
*Boy, it might have been even less time ago than that. Feels like a bit of a blur.
(This is a rare occasion, where I inserted a jump break to keep this post from overwhelming the main page of the blog. Just wanted to warn you ahead of time.)
One of the things on my bucket list for WoW Classic was to experience the class quests as they were originally intended: to provide a unique flavor to each class. I realized that some classes had it better than others, such as the Priest and Hunter class quests being superior to the Rogue class quests*, but I was fine with that. I just wanted to see how things were before Cataclysm destroyed all of the unique little quirks that made the Old World so good.
I realize that the Mage quests don't have the same level of interest of some of these other class quests, but the biggest challenge is trying to do them at level on an underpowered Mage for the zone you're in, heading into the swamps beyond Theramore and Brackenwall Village searching for Tabetha's Hut**. That challenge makes the exploration portion of the game shine, but as in just about every other aspect of pre-Cataclysm WoW addons take out all of the guesswork and fun in a search in the unknown. If you do it as Blizz intended, a lot of these quests are more challenging than they seem in a meta created and addon filled (aka Questie) environment.***
"...says the person who DIDN'T get struck by lightning..."
Another metagame issue that impacts whether people do the class quests is "Are the class quest rewards any good?"
Yes, even I use seventyupgrades.com (and its predecessor, sixtyupgrades.com) to determine if my rewards are decent or not for the quest I finished. But the difference in my usage versus others' is that I don't plan my questing based on upgrades; I just quest, and if it works out that I can get an upgrade, great. If not, I'm not gonna bitch that I should have done some other quest that yielded a better item.
The class quests I just do, because they're class quests. They represent a big part of why I play WoW Classic and not Retail: I want the flavor of Azeroth without it being beaten into me by a system designed to get me to Endgame as quickly as possible. The class quests are --by their nature-- unique and not a part of a zone story or anything of that sort. I choose to do these quests for the same reasons why I play the way I play, even though it costs me time to do so****, because I'm not doing any Endgame more complex than Kara right now. And probably won't for the conceivable future unless a friend's Saturday Night SSC runs start up.*****
***
Okay, with that as the prologue, you probably know where this is going.
Instead of a Blizzcon for making announcements, Blizzard is going to have a presentation on April 19th 2022 to cover the future of the Warcraft franchise.
The post covered Classic Season of Mastery, TBC Classic, and Retail, so I presume that we'll see presentations on all three iterations of WoW.
This is my completely uninformed speculation as to what will be presented:
Season of Mastery will conclude and there will be another WoW Classic reboot.
TBC Classic will conclude by December 2022 and will be replaced by Wrath Classic in time for Christmas 2022.
A TBC Classic reboot --akin to Season of Mastery-- will be presented.
A new Retail expansion, set for release in Q1 2023, will be revealed.
There will be a boosting service for Wrath Classic in the same vein as the Deluxe Edition for TBC Classic.
It's entirely feasible that Wrath Classic and Retail might switch positions in the timeline, but that's my feel at the moment. It's also possible that the Retail expac is released in Q3 2022 instead of Q4 2022 or Q1 2023, but given the silence out of Blizzard I kind of doubt it.
Despite the hue and cry over the Deluxe Edition for TBC Classic, enough people bought it that Blizz is definitely bringing it back for Wrath Classic. Yes, that means that bots will swarm all over Utgarde Keep, The Nexus, and Ajol-Nerub, because that's what they do.
I also expect Wrath Classic to follow in the same vein as TBC Classic and drop earlier in the launch event than expected, meaning that a mini-version of the Left Overs --featuring Death Knights-- is going to experience what we experienced. That being said, starting in the mid L50s makes the leveling experience much easier, so probably not as much of a mental meat grinder as what was experienced last Summer.
(Was it really just last Summer? Yeah, yeah it was. Sheesh, my TBC progression raid experience didn't even last a full calendar year.)
So sit down, prop your feet up, and reach for that bowl of popcorn on April 19th. (Y'all can have that; I'll just have a salad, thank you.) Maybe we should create a Blizzard Bingo to see just how many Blizzard buzzwords are covered in the presentation.
The urge to build, to construct, to create is deep inside my bones.
Among the stories that my mom uses to embarrass me with* is the one that when I was about six, my great uncle came over to help my dad with some of the chairs around the house. There were two chairs that could spin around and then rock back and forth. My dad and my great uncle were going to try to lock down the chairs so that they didn't rock, because we'd had a few "incidents" with my brother and me wreaking havoc with those chairs.
They looked a bit like this, only one was red and the other was blue.
While my brother quickly got bored and wandered off, I stuck around, watching, while they tried and failed to figure out how to prevent the chairs from rocking back and forth. After a while, I spoke up and suggested that they bolt the two plates together by drilling holes in the plates and using bolts to tighten and hold the plates together. My dad and my great uncle looked at each other for a moment and went "Ohh....." Within about 45 minutes they had both chairs locked down properly.
A year or so later I was given for my birthday two items: a bonsai kit and a Handy Andy junior handyman set. The former had some seeds that turned out to be dead already --I planted and watered them according to the instructions, so I know-- and the latter had a real screwdriver, a hammer, a plane**, two saws*** and just enough wood and nails to build a toolbox to hold everything.
Perusing the internet for a while yielded this. Although it has a triangle and only one saw, this model also had its own metal box.
I had to wait a week --a sheer eternity to a little kid-- before my dad had the time to help me build the toolbox. Once that was built, I wandered around the house for days, looking for things to build. Sadly, there wasn't anything to work on, and my parents weren't interested in suggesting things for me to build (something about me hurting myself), and my toolset eventually sat in a corner of the garage, gathering dust. I couldn't afford to buy any wood without assistance, because my parents seemed to think that we lived in 1957 instead of 1977 and would only give my brother and I a quarter per week for our chores****
Pleas for a chemistry set yielded a big fat "no", but I did get one of those 175-in-1 electronic sets from Radio Shack for Christmas a year later. Alas that my parents did not like the beep sounds it made when I built the circuits in the instruction book and took the batteries away from the set, again rendering the damn thing useless.
This was the story of my childhood: I'd get something to foster my urge to build things, get partway along, and then my parents would step in and neuter the project before I could finish it. I think this is the origin story of my vast amount of incomplete projects lying around the house, because I was trained to expect to get hamstrung or sidetracked by my interests.
That being said, by the time I graduated college I began to build a few things using my own money, such as a bookcase I designed to hold mass market paperbacks. The entirety of my F&SF book collection was in mass market paperbacks, so I knew exactly what I needed and built the thing from scratch.
Here's the proof. It's still in my basement, 30 years later.
My interest in building things isn't limited to woodworking, as I'd posted in the past about my attempts to repair/recap an old Sony AM/FM radio, but I've also been called upon to perform emergency sewing for school projects. Such as the one time I made a dalmatian outfit for the youngest mini-Red to wear for her school play, or the time my son wanted to go as Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, for Halloween. If you know Classic Doctor Who, you know that means the scarf. Since I didn't (and still don't) know how to knit, I bought a ton of cheap felt and stitched it together using a sewing machine, using the lengths found on doctorwhoscarf.com as a guide.*****
Among my other hobbies/projects are my on again, off again affair with homebrewing, building/repairing stuff around the house (including putting a replacement roof on the back porch after Hurricane Ike hit back in 2008), stereo speaker building, and gardening.
Living proof that I can actually complete a project. And they actually sound good, too!
But one thing that has always caught my eye but I never followed through on was garb/cosplay creation.
***
If you've ever been to a Renaissance Fair you've seen people --some performers, some just fair goers-- dressed in costume. To someone outside of the community it appears to be just that, a costume. But to someone involved --or someone from the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)-- that's known as garb. I've known SCAdians who rummage through various patterns at a Ren Faire, looking for that one pattern that would complete their formal outfit. Or people who take great pains to study costume and clothing from the Middle Ages to get something exactly historically correct.
The link I provided above shows Faire goers as well as Faire staff (from the Ohio Renaissance Festival), and obviously not everything is historically accurate, but it certainly appears quite fun. For me, however, I've an urge to create garb and/or cosplay just because.
Oh, I wish. The T2 Paladin Cosplay from tamuicosplay.com. Svetlana and Benni work their collective asses off, and it's amazing what they can achieve.
But, and this is the sticking point, not for me personally. I know, given my build, I'd be more of a candidate for mimicking Falstaff or, say, Henry VIII, but I'd rather not do that.****** I would like to make stuff for someone else, however, time --and most importantly, money-- willing.
Thanks a LOT, Shakespeare. From the Mary Evans Picture Library, via fineartamerica.com.
I need practice with a myriad amount of skills, which is kind of a sticking point. Like, say, sewing. Or foam armor making. Or dying/painting. Or simply "not burning the house down".
But I look at the compositions that Kamalia puts together on her blog Kamalia et Alia, and can't help but wonder how I'd put together that sort of transmog into a real costume. Like her current one, which includes outfits entitled "Restless Dreams" and "Like, Totally, Not a Death Cultist, Okay?"
Just, wow. Kamalia, I bow to you.
I think I really need to brew some beer to take the edge off of this urge to create. Or maybe design an RPG setting. Or something, because I simply don't have the money or space to create new hobbies for myself.
(I bet when you saw this title that I was going to talk about Elden Ring or something, right? Well, if you want to read about an older person trying the game, go to Tobold's Blog to read about his attempts to play an action RPG that's as unforgiving as the Dark Souls/Elden Ring games as a person whose physical skills aren't what they used to be. Like him, or me.)
*There was one time, about a decade ago, when I was helping my parents out around the house with something and my mom wandered by and said "Oh, you were breastfed as a baby." I looked around, bewildered, saying "Where on earth did THAT come from?" My dad just sighed.
**My parents, in their quest to make sure I didn't kill myself by age 10, immediately took the sharp edge out of. Which, of course, rendered it useless.
***One was a coping saw and the other a "regular" saw, which they took away from me as well. Okay, they let me keep the frame of the coping saw but took away the blade portion, rendering that useless too.
****One of the reasons why I wasn't big on making the kids do any chores for money was because my time was worth so little to my parents that they simply gave us a pittance, even for 1977, to spend. I mean, I could play exactly one game of Pac-Man on that quarter allowance, which lasted up until high school for me in the mid 80s. And if I wanted to buy a paperback book, they ran $2.50 in the late 70s and then $2.95 in the early-mid 80s. (Plus tax, you know.) That'd take me 3+ months to get the money for a single book.
*****If you try to put in https, your AV program might complain about the site because it only has an http version available. Just a note.
******And while it's going to be a very long time before I lose enough weight
to get my health issues under control without drugs, if I did manage to
do that I'd actually consider wearing something.
Sorry about not writing sooner; I've been busier in Outland than I thought.
The Legion is still causing trouble in the peninsula staging area, but we've been pushing them back throughout the rest of this Light forsaken zone. Because of that, I've been sent onward to help with an expedition the Cenarion Circle has sent here to Outland.
"Knight Linnawyn reporting in, ma'am."
You remember Ysiel, don't you? She organized the Outriders based out of Cenarion Hold in Silithus. She's out here now, leading the Cenarion Expedition from their base in a wetlands area, and she has her hands full with Naga and some mysterious occurrences throughout the region.
In addition to the Draenei and Orcs in Outland, there are other races that seem to be the Draenei's cousins. There are the Broken, who are very close to the Draenei but have their contact to the Light severed, which withered them a bit. Honestly, I didn't know that a race that had a direct connection to the Light existed, and my friend Zarleigha described it as basically feeling the warmth of the Light on you at all times. To her, it's about as normal as walking, so losing it would be devastating to her. The Broken have learned to live without that connection, just like the rest of us, and some of the Broken have turned to listening to the elements as a substitute for that direct connection to the Light.
Still, there is a third group that we have seen in Azeroth, the so called Lost Ones, who have descended to barely above barbarism. They're the people who give the Cenarions the most trouble.
I was scouting one of these Lost One groups south of the Expedition's base when I discovered that they'd captured a friend of Kitwynn's, Kayra Longmane. I swear, Kit seems to know everybody out here. I freed Kayra from the hut she'd been tossed into and we escaped north, but not without a few adventures.
The Light protects.
While scouting farther west of the Expedition's base, I came across a friend of yours, Watcher Leesa'Oh.
"You're Card's sister?" she replied. "Oh, I miss the time when she visited us in Darnassus!"
She and her lovable cat, Buddy, were studying a race native to the swamp that she calls the Sporelings, and how they interact with another race, the Bog Lords.
Things are not going well here. The Bog Lords have been entering the Sporelings' territory and have been eating the Sporelings. I couldn't sit idly by when a cry for help came from a nearby Sporeling, so I sprang into action.
Leesa'oh had discovered that a tribe of Ogres had moved into the northwestern part of the swamp and from there I scouted and discovered that they displaced the Bog Lords, who then took it out on the Sporelings.
"Who are you calling puny?"
We stole back some of their mushroom stores and proceeded to start a new feeding area for the Bog Lords south of the Ogres' territory.
Still, the presence of the Naga here is the real problem in the swamps. They seem to be draining the swamps, and Ysiel can't quite fathom why. She had me return to the Cenarion staging area west of Honor Hold to ask for help, but when I arrived I found the Circle's hands are still tied up with the Silithids and the Scourge. Unfortunately, the Expedition is on its own.
"Who we need," Ysiel told me, "is someone like your sister to help us put the puzzle together."
I told Ysiel that you're staying put at the moment, and she was stuck with me instead.
And don't you dare come out here yet, Sis. Mom told me in her last letter that you're still having flashbacks and nightmares from inside Naxxramas, and there is no way you're coming out here until you're properly healed. I'll take care of myself, and when I finally catch a short reprieve I'll be sure to come back home for a week's worth of leave.
Ysiel is going to send me to the Draenei city southeast of here, called Shattrath, to look for assistance with the Naga. I'm still getting used to seeing so many Draenei around, and I've heard rumors that a significant chunk of Blood Elves defected from Illidan and joined forces with the Draenei in the city. If that's true, it just might be our first big break out here. Southwest of here is a large encampment of these Mag'har Orcs, the ones that follow the Old Ways and refused the Burning Legion back in what feels like ancient history. Even though they distrust --at best-- anyone who isn't an Orc, I've heard that the Frostwolves have established some ties with the Mag'har. If the Frostwolf Clan can get them on our side, we've got a chance here. A real chance.
Be well, and send me more drawings that the kids have done! I save them in my pack to take out whenever I'm missing home. And you say that Trevor visited? You can't just leave me hanging like that! Are you two finally going to get together? I know you've got it bad for him, and having another Knight in the family is a good thing in my book. I expect details! Nothing is off limits!!
Your loving sister,
Linna
EtA: Corrected a caption; restoring it's original message.
There are times when it feels strange, knowing the future.
Sure, there are plenty of times where I play a game more than once, such as Baldur's Gate, and I know what will happen. And that doesn't bother me much, even though I know I'll end up making the same story selections in spite of plenty of incentive to do otherwise.*
Even playing WoW Classic and visiting places such as Theramore, knowing what happens to them in Retail, doesn't bother me too much because I just simply refuse to accept the Retail storyline from Cataclysm forward. I just look on that as a story in need of a massive reboot and retelling, because of poor decisions made by Blizzard to.... what? Look edgy? Provide drama? Give the faction leaders something to do? Make more money by placing the story in novel/comic form, and going off the rails by focusing solely on faction leadership?
Sorry, got sidetracked there.
But still, there are times when I read the in game story for someone such as Illidan, known to just about everyone else as The Betrayer, and think that he got a raw deal.
In this timeline, Illidan's end comes as the final boss in Black Temple, and think of everything he gets screwed out of along the way:
A suitor for Tyrande, and loses out to his own brother (Malfurion).
A powerful (arguably the most powerful and influential) Highborne Mage, and loses the Well of Eternity due to the War of the Ancients.
Tries to play the Burning Legion by "going over" to their side and then sticking a metaphorical knife in their backs at a critical juncture in the War of the Ancients. As a result, is trusted by no one.
Creates a second Well of Eternity to restore the Well to its original glory, and is imprisoned.
Is sprung from prison by Tyrande and Malfurion to assist with the Burning Legion, is turned into a demon by the Skull of Gul'dan so he could defeat a dreadlord, and is banished by Malfurion.
Tries to play both sides once more by feigning allegiance to the Burning Legion, and is given the thankless task of defeating the Lich King. (He fails.)
Turns against the Legion on arriving in Outland, but in the end becomes yet another Overlord of Outland who ruins the damn place.
Getting screwed out of your love, your craft, your people, etc., will tend to make a person bitter. Since he tended to exercise bad judgement in service of a good cause, I frequently see him as an Azerothian version of Albrecht Dürer's Melancholia.
Been there, Melancolia. Oh, I've been there. From the Google Art Project via Wikipedia.
It's kind of ironic that, for decades, I've kind of identified with the personification of Melancolia as she broods over inspiration. Being in awe over people who have that creative spark and can seemingly summon it at will, it always helps to know that waiting for inspiration to strike is not merely a pastime of the rest of us, but also afflicts the gifted.
But I can see a character such as Illidan in this print, particularly when he is seen in the BC trailer, brooding over the Skull of Gul'dan in a Hamlet-esque way. His inspiration only led him so far, to making bad decisions that he has to reflect upon for the rest of his life.
Which is coming to an end at the conclusion of Phase 3.
***
On days like yesterday, when I stumbled across a post in Blizzard Watch about alternate Hearthstone skins that shine a window on what could have been in the Warcraft universe. Such as Illidan as a Sabertender, or Anduin as a heartthrob (or an SI:7 operative).
I think that Cardwyn could get behind the SI:7 Anduin. (From Blizzard Watch.)
But what attracted me most was seeing Festival Jaina. Not that it's interesting on its own merits, but that she's happy.
I could definitely see Jaina at my envisioning of the Goldshire Harvest Festival. Minus Cardwyn's 'Pig Incident' as an adolescent. (From Blizzard Watch.)
I can't recall when I've ever seen her happy before, and if there's someone who definitely fits the bill as a gloomy Eeyore-esque Mary Sue type, it's Jaina.
Uh... Let me explain that part.
She (and Thrall) are both Mary Sues (or is that Mary Sue and Marty Stu) in that they seem to be magically free of weaknesses, are über-powerful**, and they skate along in the Warcraft universe whereas just about everyone else seems to die off or be corrupted. And that's not even talking about Jaina having a blue dragon for a boyfriend. I guess you can tell that the two of them are the favorites of Blizzard simply because they take a licking and keep on ticking.
That doesn't mean that all is peaches and cream for Jaina, because Blizz has spent a lot of time trying to throw tons of emotional and physical tragedy in her direction. It's almost as if Blizz is trying to say "No, she's NOT a Mary Sue at all! See? She's constantly buffeted by tragedy! She can't help but dwell on her failures!"
This art, however? What I see in her face is someone who has cautiously let her guard down for a while. It's not relief, nor is it abandon, but more of an "yeah, I can do this for a while", with a bit of strain still on the cheeks and her smile.
She's freed from her shackles for a while.
***
Ironically enough, that freedom from shackles was something that Illidan was never able to achieve. I looked at Jaina's portrait and instead of just saying "Oh, nice" and moving on, I thought of Illidan instead.
And Johnny Cash.
I suppose I should have said Trent Reznor, since I was thinking of Johnny Cash's version of Hurt, but I honestly do prefer Cash's interpretation more than Reznor's Nine Inch Nails original.
When the Cash version was released, I was still in my early 30s, with three small kids, a wife who suffered from depression, neighbors who judged us by whether we went to the right schools or played the right sports or went to the right church***, and I didn't know how we were going to survive long term.
Cash's Hurt changed Reznor's young adult spiraling into addiction into an older person at the end of their life, watching things fade away. The lines "I wear my Crown of Thorns upon my liars chair" and "everyone I know goes away in the end" spoke to my existential angst at the time, and in some small way it helped me realize that I'm not the only one who struggles, who has guilt and regrets. I've returned to Hurt from time to time when I'm feeling low, just so I can rekindle that realization once more in a therapeutic fashion.
But a character such as Illidan doesn't have that catharsis. Heis our catharsis, if we only let him in. And I can't help but feel his tragedy when I'm roaming around in Outland, questing, although I should be thinking about other things. I know the future of this place, and it saddens me that I am unable to change it. Like how I know what is coming, Wrath of the Lich King, and I know that all of the excesses such as Gearscore and automated LFG will be there with it, and I'm powerless to stop it.
Questing, thinking, and listening are therapeutic, but only once we accept things that we cannot change.
*Such as in Stardew Valley, where I have soft spots for Penny and Leah.
**Without any real limits. Or at least it seems to be the case.
Well, now is as good a time as any to discuss this.
John's premise in the video is that anybody who has 'solved' an MMORPG and figured out the optimal path toward achieving the goals set out in said game is providing people with the 'metagame'. No, not the Facebook 'Meta', which is abjectly silly and just marketing speak for trying to bring as many disparate concepts/items/whatever under one roof*, but something quite different.
This is the roadmap of "how to level in TBC Classic properly", or the definitive boss strategy in raids. Or the optimal raid composition and/or class spec for raiding. Or how to get yourself attuned (or Attune-d (tm), couldn't resist) most efficiently. Or.... Well, you get the idea.
But to continue, Josh believes that the metagame or 'meta' is ruining MMORPGs because it eliminates player choice.
Yes, you read that right. And, once you hear him out, you'll likely agree with him.
The entire point of the meta is that it is the optimal way of doing something. And if that is the optimal solution presented to the gaming community, why would you do anything else BUT that? To do so is to cheat yourself of the best solution in a game.
I was reminded once again of the metagame after the Friday Karazhan run** when during the Discord chatting post-raid someone mentioned about getting rep for Cenarion Expedition. Another person chimed in with how you "ought to do it" by buying those Unidentified Plant Parts and turn those in, one after another, until you reach Honored. Then you can go questing and get the rep needed rather than running Steamvault multiple times. Considering that I just went out and quested on Linna, not really caring about rep, until I hit Honored and the Plant Parts left in my bag*** were useless. But I was more annoyed that I knew about the meta for Cenarion Expedition rep and I deliberately chose not to do it, and I was --unintentionally-- having my nose rubbed in a pile of dogshit because of my choice.
And that's the thing about the meta: it exists, and because it exists you are always reminded of it even when you aren't following it. Unless you turn off Discord or chats and eschew grouping in favor of solitary play. Even then, the knowledge that a meta exists in some form or another will haunt you, despite your protestations of innocence.
After all, even I end up on some WoW websites, trying to figure out the optimal builds and talent trees for my toons. Those published entries are as much a metagame as Attune or other attunement walkthroughs, and a not so secret reason why I haven't gone into any 5-person instances on Linna**** is because I messed up and took an extra level to finally get the talent for Blessing of Kings, and I didn't want to blow any extra gold on resetting my talent trees just to fix my screw up.
And then I thought, "Why the hell should I be apologizing for not having the 'right' build, anyway?"
My brain almost immediately responded with multiple instances in the past where I was in instances, learning, and being told that I suck and the rest of the people dropping group.
"Oh, right."
Then I thought about guild groups, and then I remembered that I was --rather politely-- told to 'get gud' by being 'counseled' on how to improve my DPS in SSC/The Eye and in Naxx.
***
Oh, you didn't know about that in Naxx?
Oh yes, I was given some unsolicited 'counseling' by a fellow guildie one evening --who didn't even run a Mage as anything other than a lasher farming alt-- on how to maximize my DPS. I was seething afterward, because I knew exactly where I needed to go but gear held me back, and here was someone who didn't even take part in our Mage Crew discussions trying to tell me what to do. I basically took the 'advice' and threw it in the trash, because I had my own roadmap and I knew that the rest of the Mage crew would back me up.
And now, having been on the other side of the raiding leadership, I know how this works: someone in raid leadership asked him to talk to me about it, rather than asking my class lead who was likely not involved at all. (And I have a really good feeling as to who it was who asked him, too.) Even though I didn't raid with him in TBC Classic (or that part of guild leadership), that experience soured me considerably on whether some random person might want to 'help' me by 'informing' me of the meta for whatever it is I'm doing.
So yeah, I don't need any guild groups in 5-person instances while I'm learning things, thankyouverymuch.
Even if I did want to group up in guild, guildies would soon learn about my toons outside of the auspices of the guild and start adding them to their friends list. The only person who knows Neve and Linna are attached to me is my questing buddy, and I prefer it that way. A few other people are aware that I boosted a Paladin in case Ret were needed, but that's all they know.
***
Regardless, Josh's 'solution' isn't one that I think would work. You'll have to watch the video to form your own opinion, but my belief is that the meta is here to stay, and it will pretty much rule the MMOs that already have been 'figured out' because of human nature.
If you ask someone what their goal is in playing an MMO such as WoW Classic, what is the answer?
How many say 'To win"?
How many say "To have fun"?
But the kicker is what does 'winning' and 'fun' mean to people?
If it means 'endgame', odds are very good that it also means utilizing the metagame to win the endgame. Even if 'having fun' means that people want to 'raid with friends', eventually raid leadership will have to come to some hard decisions about people who simply aren't doing a very good job but happen to be good friends. Who do you pick, the friendship or finishing a raid tier?*****
If it means 'winning PvP', it means following the PvP meta. After all, the PvP crowd is more intensely driven to winning and min/maxing their way to success than even progression raiders.
If it means doing anything other than that, then perhaps the meta doesn't matter that much. But to an MMORPG, where everything is geared around Endgame and PvP and raiding, the meta will still rule.
***
So....
Where does this leave me?
Probably trying my damnedest to keep my head down, run the Friday Kara until it simply isn't viable anymore, and just mind my own business. Eventually I'll get over this funk, and since I've got about 10 months or so until Wrath drops I've got plenty of time. I can console myself in that no matter what MMO I play, there will be a meta lurking out there, so it's not like I can change a game and free myself from the metagame. It's all about the community, and how overt --or backhanded-- they are in pushing people toward the metagame that matters.
And that last statement probably deserves a post of its own.
*There's another Josh Strife Hayes video on that, right here:
**You remember the person who was interested in learning to raid lead and was offered --without my knowledge-- a chance at running my Friday Kara run? He never followed through. I was going to contact him directly, but I was told to wait to see if he followed up with me. So far, he hasn't. Of course, he might contact me this week because that's just my luck. I post about it, and it happens.
***And a few mailed over by my questing buddy.
****Outside of 'Normal' runs for Hellfire Ramparts, Blood Furnace, etc. being very hard to find.
*****A couple of weeks ago, during the Friday Kara someone said in Discord that they missed raiding with me on Mondays. "Thanks," I replied, "but you at least have [raider's name] now, and she brings 300-400 more DPS than me." And nobody said a word about missing raiding with me after that. It's very easy to assuage your own guilt by saying platitudes, but the reality is that my replacement brings significantly more DPS than me. People can't deny the uncomfortable fact that when I replaced her for Vashj in SSC on my very last progression raid night we couldn't bring Vashj down. The next week, they nailed her on the second try. My questing buddy continues to insist that I'm missing the point and that people do miss me, but I believe I just simply said the quiet part out loud that nobody wanted to admit.
I have found it amazing how external events kick me in the ass.
Last night, I just wasn't feeling like I wanted to just keep doing much, MMO-wise. Not for that evening, but in general. If there's one thing that seems to be a constant in my MMO career, it's that change will always happen. Unfortunately, the negative change outweighs the positive change, and that wears on me after a while.
So while I was busy just going through the motions and in general feeling down, the news came across about the invasion of Ukraine.
And that was a shock to the system.
Oh, I knew it was coming --pretty much everybody did, if they were paying attention-- but knowing it was coming doesn't make hearing that it is actually starting any easier.
Mindless grinding did little to take my mind off of things.
After I tried processing the news for a while, I just turned off my PC and lay down in the dark, staring up at the ceiling.
***
A large part of my problem with the news is that my kids are now of military serving age. It's one thing if the situation was bad enough that the military had to draft "Old Man Redbeard" in his 40s and 50s, but my kids are an entirely different thing. It may have been an extremely unlikely scenario, but late at night is not when safe, rational scenarios play over and over in your head.*
About the only good thing that the news did was to get me to stop feeling sorry for myself. Even then, doubts always creep in because that's what they do.
I don't have the answers to my irrational fears or my existential dread of whether I was a good dad, or that I spent too much time playing video games and not enough time with my kids. Or whether it was all worth it.**
***
Morning dawned after a somewhat sleepless night, and I found no comfort in the cold, gray day. The news out of Kyiv isn't good, and both my work and personal problems didn't magically evaporate. But for now, there's not much to do except just keep on plugging away. Because I guess that's what we do.
*Among the other irrational scenarios: Is my blood glucose crashing? Is my heart about to give up? Is my blood pressure skyrocketing? Am I getting fired tomorrow? Am I just faking everyone and not doing as well as I seem in my medical recovery? Is [insert drug name here] right for me? Before you laugh about the last one, I never paid attention to all of those drug commercials until I became a walking billboard for them. Now, I see a random commercial and say "Yep, I'm taking that."
**"What was all worth it?" "Hell if I know; that what can be as large or small as my mind wants it to be."
Having done some occasional stuff on Cardwyn the past week or so, I will say this: my lack of interest in questing in most L60 zones back in Vanilla Classic has provided me with a great opportunity in TBC Classic.
Shush. This particular quest wasn't around in Vanilla Classic.
All of those quests that I never did --the Wintersaber Grind, the Rockfury Bracer quests, the EPL quests, etc.-- are still there for the taking, and they all count as XP. On most days, I'll get on early in the day when nobody else is around and knock out the Wintersaber quests, reducing them to the equivalent of a pair of dailies. Between the two quests that I have right now, and the drop rate being just low enough, I can complete them both and get 5% of a level's worth of XP out of spending about 15-30 minutes of time. Since I'm in no particular hurry, that'll get me a level in less than a month. Considering she's L63 now, this is faster than I expected.
And when I get bored of doing those quests, There's zones in Silithus with L61 Twilight's Hammer enemies to beat on.
Once I get to L66 or so, I'll hike on over to the area surrounding Karazhan to see how Cardwyn will fare against the L68-L69 enemies there.
Every once in a while I get a whisper from some random toon, asking me if I'm grinding for the Wintersaber mount, and I say "Yes." And they go away.
Since nobody else is out there, and it seems everyone and their grandmother is working on Netherwing mount grinds, I can just relax in peace.
There is a questline at Hellfire Peninsula in TBC Classic that I dislike.
Of all the quests in TBC Classic, this is the one that I actively avoid.
No, not because it raises questions about temptation and consequences, or the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or even an obnoxious number of Kill Ten Rats, but because it reminds me too much of real life. I would wish that it was about our better angels, but it isn't, and because of that I have a hard time dealing with the questline.
***
If you're like me, you've seen about all of the original Star Trek episodes over the years. And if you're also like me, you've probably also read the short stories that James Blish made of the original episodes, because you simply couldn't get enough of the stories. While there are some episodes that hit you right in the gut, such as City on the Edge of Forever or Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, the episode A Private Little War has resonated in my psyche over the years.
Yes, some tropes were pretty stereotypical, but the Original Series did make you think. From memory-alpha.fandom.com.
The story unfolds when Kirk visits a Stone Age era society he once studied years ago. The person he'd once confided while he was an undercover observer in has now become chieftain, and as the story continues it is discovered that the Klingons are arming the competing tribe with flintlock rifles. The chieftain's wife observed Kirk and McCoy using their phasers, and decides to steal Kirk's and use it to get one up on the competing tribe. Things do not go well, and the chieftain's wife is killed. In the end, an arms race ensues, with Kirk's friend asking for flintlock rifles of their own to match those that the Klingons had been providing. Or as Kirk puts it, "Serpents, serpents for the Garden of Eden."
Even the best of intentions can oft fall astray, and no matter how much one tries, sometimes you just can't win.
If my observation of that episode sounds somewhat familiar, then you too may have come across the storyline that begins with the quest entitled 'Sedai'.
***
Sedai's questline begins with Sedai's Draenei brother being concerned about him, as he'd gone to the Maghar Orcs seeking peace and hadn't returned. You investigate and discover a dead Draenei near the paths leading to the Maghar encampment. He'd been struck and killed from behind.
Returning to the Temple of Telhamat with the bad news, one of the Broken who'd befriended Sedai decides an eye-for-an-eye is good enough for him, and he sends you into the Maghar encampment to slaughter the Orcs. When you return, Sedai's brother is horrified at what you'd done, insisting that "This is not our way!" He then sends you out with a device to see if you can find the truth of the matter.
With the device, you are able to see what happened: Sedai had gone to the Orcs, and they'd rejected him and escorted him out of their encampment, telling him to not come back. The Maghar have naturally been suspicious of outsiders, especially since so many of their brethren had fallen under the sway of the Burning Legion. Sedai turns to leave, and witnesses that the Orcs have been jumped by Fel Orcs. Sedai looks like he's about to help defend the Maghar when he is cut down by a Fel Orc assassin from behind.
The true villain in all of this are the Fel Orcs, who turned the Draenei/Broken and the Maghar Orcs against each other, but the thing is, like as in A Private Little War, there's nothing you can do. The two sides are willing to believe the worst in each other, and that suspicion makes them both ripe for manipulation by Illidan's forces.
And that's what I hate about this questline: you know and can see how easily manipulated the two sides are, but like in reality, there's nothing you can do about it. Most of us don't have a pulpit to try to get people to see the other side in reality, so all we can do is watch the unfolding nature of events and feel helpless to do anything.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and the first decade of adulthood was in the 90s, so I got to see this messy reality in spades, with The Troubles being my most obvious example of this problem. Everybody knew that the true villain in the conflict in Northern Ireland was the lack of trust in each side, which extremists on both ends used to keep the conflict going. It was only when enough people --the common people who were the victims in the undeclared war-- finally said "Enough!" that real progress was finally made.
I can love and respect what Blizz did with that questline, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I hate how it reflects on our own reality, where people can't see beyond sharp divides of black and white to finally meet somewhere in the middle, and how it reflects on me as well. No amount of gear or gold or whatever can change my mind on this, because all it does is sadden me at who we are and what we have become.
There's a new addon that is sweeping the WoW Classic community. From the same person who created Attune, there's now Dailies.
Yes, an addon to detect, share, track, order, and plan your daily/weekly quests. It will also, like Attune, allow you to share your info with others in your guild. About the only thing it doesn't seem to do is allow a guild leadership to track who is completing their dailies. You know, for being optimally ready for raiding.
From the Why This Addon from the CurseForge interface:
"Dailies are already a big part of TBC with Ogrila, the Skyguard, fishing, cooking, dungeons and heroics, and now the Netherwing rep. But very soon we'll also get the Shattered Sun Offensive with a ton of new dailies, and then ... Wrath of the Lich King (hopefully!) with again a ton of dailies and weeklies.
Very quickly your daily grind is going to become very convoluted and having a simple yet effective interface to take you through your selection will be very handy."
Oh yay.
I was already avoiding dailies as much as possible, and now I've got another reason to do so. Because it's now part of the meta for TBC Classic, and like most metas it ends up changing something optional into a requirement.
I was going to post about this video sometime in the near future anyway, but this kind of accelerated things.
Between Attune, Questie, and now Dailies (among others), these addons are turning a game into a job.
Unless you actually like doing this sort of job, that is.
Last night, I went to bed early. A nice perk of listening to your body and saying "I'm tired as hell and I need some sleep," and no longer having the responsibility of helping to run a progression raid on Monday nights.
This morning, I had a message in my Discord about Karazhan.
One of the raid team's tanks wants to get a taste of raid leading, so I was contacted to see if I could let him have a chance of running a Friday Kara to get his feet wet.
I sat there for a few minutes, chewing on that, and said out loud, "Oh really?"
I'd been wondering whether I should simply leave that Friday Karazhan and just move on entirely, and here was a possibility of doing just that, wrapped up in a nice package and tied with a bow.
Of course, this request was likely a one off (or two off) scenario, but that didn't prevent me from suddenly getting very possessive of my little corner of Azeroth. And here I thought my only issue this week was making sure we had enough healers in place.
After musing over the possibilities, and admitting that I did kind of like having the Friday run to myself, I responded by saying sure, I'll let him try it out. I said I'd even reach out to him if he hasn't contacted me by Wednesday.
We'll see what happens, but that 'Happy Trails' screenshot I posted a few weeks ago may yet see a rerun. This time, for the guild and Discord channel.
***
Okay, let me address the elephant in the room: why the guild and Discord channel?
The answer for that is simple: the primary emphasis of this guild is progression raiding. Oh yes, I've read the guild charter, and there's a lot of fluff in there about friends and respect and whatnot, but what the charter says versus what actually goes on are two entirely different things.
Just like most of the progression raiding guilds, they follow the meta. There's a set of stuff to get, a set of talents to check off, a rotation to be perfected, etc. For Phase 3, that meant running Alterac Valley to get the Alliance trinket. Or Warsong Gulch for Honor/gear.* Or Shadow Resist drops.
When I was contacted the week after I returned to work from the hospital and told that I was losing my job and would move on to a new contract, I immediately tuned out any talk of the meta. I think I knew at that moment, long before I posted here on the blog or in the raid lead meetings, that I was gone. I was not going to have to follow the meta, because I wasn't going to be in the raid much longer.
I didn't want to admit it to myself just yet, but deep down I knew.
And you know what I also knew? That 80% or more of the Discord discussions surround raiding: the raids themselves, raid tactics, raid strategy, theorycrafting for best DPS output, raid gear, leveling alts for raiding slots, running instances for rep/gear/whatever that points back to raids, ad infinitum. Strip that away, you have not much else. You login, and about half of the discussion in guild chat is about gear drops, raiding, specs, DPS/tanking (for raids and whatnot), grouping for instances (for gear/rep for raids) and not much else.
All of that serves to remind me that I'm not raiding.
Constantly.
Right now, I have about 26 of 42 discussion channels permanently muted, so they don't exist to me at all. Of the 16 that remain, 7 are from my Monday raid team and one is a channel for raid leaders in general, which I have to remain in because I run Friday's Karazhan, the only Karazhan run the guild still does. One is the rarely used announcements channel, one is the channel for raid logs, one is the guild charter channel, and one is for raid guides. So really, I only look at 4 channels, and even then I still can't avoid raiding discussions.
Not much of anything to look at, is it?
The funny thing is, there was a survey toward the end of Classic --the same survey that led to me joining the Monday raid lead team-- and one of the key outcomes was that the guild focuses too much on raiding and there needs to be more opportunities for activities outside of raiding.
Looking at it now, midway through TBC Classic, I'd say that having a single arena team doesn't really qualify for more activities outside of raiding, especially given the lack of interest in doing much of anything else. The occasional instance runs often feel more like charity cases than spur of the moment "let's run some stuff tonight", and that vibe really turns me off. I have tried to join some instance groups, but an Enhancement Shaman --much like a Rogue-- isn't people's first choice at DPS for 5 person runs. Plus, some people only want to take people who "need" something from an instance run as opposed to just "helping out" or "having fun".
Even the Classic raids that we ought to just plow through failed to garner more than just 8-9 people's worth of interest. And yes, those are "raids" as well, so the irony is not lost on me. I had tried to generate interest in things such as a lowbie run through Ragefire Chasm --ala Wilhelm Arcturus' well documented lowbie run through Orgrimmar-- but there wasn't any real interest.
So yeah, my interest in sticking around can be defined by one word --inertia-- and without the grounding provided by regular raiding there's no reason to stay outside of friendships.
The asymmetry between Horde and Alliance questlines in a Classic zone continues to breathe life into the game. While some quests are identical --the Wastewander Pirates quests in Tanaris are a good example-- others have distinct differences. Go to the Hinterlands, and you might be tasked with quests attacking the High Elves there (Horde), or ignoring them entirely (Alliance). Thousand Needles have very few quests for Alliance, but plenty for Horde. Given that Thousand Needles is two zones away from Horde territory, the disparity is still quite stark. Wetlands is a similar scenario, only favoring the Alliance instead. I realize that some of this disparity is due to the unfinished nature of parts of Kalimdor, but that's fine with me. The quirks behind this give a 'lived in' feel to the game, and instead of creating artificial balance between the factions the differences just simply are, which is rather nice.
***
Neve is closing in on L50, and still hasn't been to an instance yet. I ought to fix that, especially since some gear from Scarlet Monastery is still really really good for a Mage, even in her mid-upper L40s. However, I refuse to run through a boost, because that's not the point of playing her. If all I cared about was getting to Outland as fast as possible, I'd consider a boost, but giving up 20+ gold (for a new toon on a new faction/server) PLUS the drops in an instance is a mind bogglingly bad idea. There is no way I am that desperate to get to Outland. I am spacing out my leveling with her so that she never leaves that sweet spot of an XP boost, which really really helps out a lot. Trying to stay within that XP boost range keeps me from overdoing it, which is also good.
*I still get hives when I hear that name. Okay, not really, but deep down in my soul I shiver. Leveling Adelwulf back in Cataclysm via Battlegrounds meant being beat up on a ton in WSG, and I have absolutely no desire to get back into that place again.
