That's my secret: I'm always motivated

(Apologies to Bruce Banner for that modified quip.)

Something that nobody --and I do mean nobody-- has ever asked me in my years of writing is how I stay motivated.

Probably that has something to do with the size of the reader base of this blog, which I'm pretty sure is around 30-ish regular readers, when you filter out the web crawlers, spambots, and the individual spikes due to someone linking a post back to PC. Sure, a lot of the articles may eventually reach about 100 hits, but that's a long, slow drip-drip-drip over the course of months.

We used to have more regular readers, back when the major WoW/MMO watering holes were active*, but you could tell almost instantly when a site went dark because we'd see a corresponding drop in traffic. In my experience, people didn't migrate from a central watering hole to a Feed Reader, they simply stopped reading. People didn't come here for WoW (or MMO) news, for that they'd go to Wowhead or WoW Insider/Blizzard Watch or Massively/Massively Overpowered.

I've said numerous times over the years that if you're looking for validation by having people read your blog, you're going to be disappointed. Once you make peace with the reality that blogging is a niche format and very few people break through into the greater consciousness by blogging in this day and age, you'll be fine.

***

So that does beg the question: why keep blogging? Why stay motivated?

Well, I'd be lying if I said that I don't get any gratification at all from PC. When I see the page views go up after I posted something, I get that good ol' dopamine rush of "Hey, somebody wants to read this!" It's similar to that initial high you get when you discover that someone you've developed feelings for actually reciprocates. It's somewhere between "YESSS!" and "How did I get so lucky?", but before those doubts of "Okay, this can't really be happening, can it?" creep into your head.

That first time that Tam from Righteous Orbs commented here on the blog, I was about over the moon with excitement. Or when WoW Insider linked to a series of posts I made, I had to be walking on air for an entire week.

Personal gratification notwithstanding, I have a confession to make: I've always wanted to be a writer, and blogging gives me that outlet.

I can turn my head from where I'm sitting right now and see this up on a bookshelf:

This wasn't the first book on Science Fiction and Fantasy that I'd read --Lord of the Rings and The Sword of Shannara had that beat by a few years-- but this was the first collection of short stories that I owned. I devoured the stories within and began hunting for more. When I realized that there were actual magazines that published F&SF short stories**, 

Some publications lasted only as long
as the driving force was alive, such as
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine.
Given how well MZB's reputation aged over
the years, it's probably for the best.
(From ebay.com.)

and that publishing three short stories would qualify someone membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America, I made it a goal to try to get published. 

I should add, this is despite my mother's obvious distaste for my dad's mother being a regular reader of Reader's Digest and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, as if both were inferior products. My mom loved the cozy type of Mystery novels***, and I guess between the two major mystery magazines her tastes would have run more toward Ellery Queen than Alfred Hichcock's, but I interpreted her dislike as a putdown of the short story format itself, which motivated me all the more to try to write better. 

***

Here I am, over 40 years later, and I'm still not a published author.

There was a time when I used to get
a copy of this from the library
on a regular basis, so I knew what
the submission requirements were
for all of the F&SF magazines.
(From amazon.com)

Writing fiction, especially short fiction, is harder than it looks. 

Okay, I should qualify this a bit. 

Writing fiction is easy; writing good fiction is hard; writing good fiction that is publishable is harder still.

If you want to find out how easy it is to write fiction, go check out the fanfic websites. (I'll wait.) A lot of SF&F fiction put out on the web isn't very good, and that has nothing to do with the nature of fanfic itself. I've wondered about why the writing isn't that good, but having gone back and read some of the novels and short stories I read as a kid, I think I can understand why: the quality of stories back in the "golden age" of SF&F overall wasn't really good.

Oh, don't get me wrong: I loved those stories, but the writing itself needed work. 

A lot of SF&F writing back then had, well, a ton of info dumps. The concepts of world building were such that in order to set the scene, authors basically spent pages setting up the world rather than simply letting the story fill in the gaps along the way. There was also such an emphasis on getting the science right that the quality of the writing suffered as a result. 

And the Mary Sue/Marty Stu protagonists. Hoo boy, there were a ton of them.

That's not to say that I don't like a heroic character, because I do, but some of the protagonists in the stories back then were so perfect that I have a hard time going back and rereading them.**** I like characters who do heroic things, not heroic characters doing, well, their thing.

Because I internalized a lot of these stories in my youth, when I started trying to write my own fiction, it just didn't sound right. The flow wasn't there, and the info dumps didn't mesh well with how I wanted stories to proceed. The characters were either too good and perfect, or I'd swing too hard the other way and torture the characters for no good reason other than "the characters have to suffer or have angst" for it to be legitimately good fiction. And I'll be honest in that I hate that. As I've said many a time, if I want that out of a story, I'll watch the news.

"What about catharsis?" someone once asked me.

Thanks for saying so, Mr. Crews.
(From Brooklyn Nine Nine, meme from GetYarn)

"Catharsis is fine, so long as tragedies and black comedies aren't the only things you're consuming," I replied. "After a while, reading all that will merely get you depressed."

And when life is going shitty for you, or even just kind of shitty, reading tragedies --or their close cousins, the stories where tons of main and secondary characters die-- isn't exactly a big pick-me-up.

***

My writing foibles aside, when Souldat asked if I wanted to blog about WoW, I felt that at least here was my chance to actually write something and get it out there without any internal pressure to get published. I could just write, and by writing, improve my craft.

I'm grateful that over the decade plus I've been writing PC I haven't had people tell me that my writing sucks, or been critical of the overall quality of my work. And I'm doubly grateful for that because I've read some of my old stuff, and boy does it stink.

Truth.
(From youngwriterssociety.com.)

I have no idea what made me think I was "writing gooder" back then, because I wasn't. And I realize that a few years from now I'll look at these posts and groan to myself about how terrible they are. I mean, I do that already with One Final Lesson, and that's the only story of that length I've ever finished and released into the wild. 

But that's the thing that keeps me motivated: the knowledge that I'm improving with every post I write. It may not be obvious to me now, but it will show up some years later. 

It's something that keeps me posting, because even if I never get published I'll at least have a body of work I can look back on.

"Well yes, but not in the traditional sense...
Wait, are you in Eversong?"

"Oh. Well, it's nice of you to keep up
with your Instructor's relatives."

#Blaugust2022

*Blogs such as Righteous Orbs, MMO Melting Pot, The Pink Pigtail Inn, Orcish Army Knife, and when WoW Insider (now known as Blizzard Watch) used to have a weekly update of activity in the WoW Blogosphere. All of these are either defunct (Righteous Orbs and MMO Melting Pot), have bloggers fall away from blogging (PPI), pass away (Orcish Army Knife), or just shut down their regular articles highlighting bloggers (WoW Insider).

**And still publish, despite the decline in circulation among paper magazines. Venerable names such as Analog (launched as Astounding Science Fiction in 1930) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1949), and more recent fare (in a relative sense) of Asimov's Science Fiction (1977) still are kicking around. There are others out there as well, but I can always count on these three to be on the shelves at my local independent bookstore, right next to the two long running Mystery magazines Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (1941) and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (1956). 

***I remember one time my mom's mother, my wife, and I had a conversation about books. Grandma told me about a book she was reading, and that my mom was interested in what it was like. "Oh, you wouldn't like it," Grandma had told her, "because there's sex in it." The fact that my grandmother knew her own daughter was too much of a prude to enjoy a novel she obviously liked tickled me to no end. That was when I realized that my grandmother was far more comfortable with sex and modern society than her own daughters were.

****This is a problem even with current fiction. There was a novella in one of the magazines I have from the mid-2000s --I think it might have been Analog-- who had a protagonist that was smart, scientifically trained, witty, and athletic. I struggled to find any flaws in him at all. Ironically enough, I found a novelette in a 1986 Analog magazine, The Barbarian Princess by Vernor Vinge, that turned the Mary Sue concept on its head. 

I think I still have my copy
around somewhere, but this came
from abebooks.com.

Even though Tatja Grimm was definitely the Mary Sue type, that didn't mean she was perfect. And seen from another character's point of view, which is how the novelette is told, their own internal biases against the "barbarians" played heavily into making that an enjoyable story.

EtA: Corrected some grammar. As usual.

"I'll Take 'Not What I Was Expecting' for $200, Mayim..."

I was busy working away with my headset on, listening to music, when I heard a "bing" come across.

Being not the standard alert that I get for email or a meeting, I looked up to see a fading visual alert on my desktop PC screen. Something about a "gift".

"What on earth..." I began, and hunted for the Battle.net window.

Quickly locating the little gift box icon on the screen, this is what was inside:

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...

Um, yeah, this is awkward. I mean, do they even know that I'm a blogger, and that I've not done diddly on Retail in ages? Sure, I've hopped on and tooled around Stormwind --or Dalaran 1.0 (I think that's 1.0) or whatever the base of operations in Mists is-- but I've not done a single quest, much less anything more interesting than a few screenshots. They have to know that Classic and TBC Classic are my jam these days.

Since I'm overly cautious, and my line of work is in security, I went ahead and opened a support request to verify that these were legit. I'm pretty sure I'll get a "Yes, they're legitimate, don't worry so much!" as a reply, but this just seemed too much of a coincidence that a few days after I'd done some poking around in Retail I suddenly get this dropped in my lap. Surely there's an automatically generated "gift" that appears like this when certain conditions are triggered.

Now, if only Blizz read my blog and would actually provide me with the info I'd really like to see, about how many accounts actually do various activities in-game....

#Blaugust2022

"Is that a hairstyle, or did a womp rat die on your head?"

While I was hunting around YouTube for something else, I stumbled on some fan made SWTOR Story Trailers. Of course, once I found them I started hunting for more, because I couldn't just leave it alone.

The best story trailers don't give away the story, but leave you with just enough to get you intrigued and want to play that Class for the story.

Oh, and usage of the in-game voice acting is just a cherry on top.

Here's a pair of the better ones, for the Imperial Agent and the Smuggler, from Welzeit SWTOR:

#Blaugust2022

Listening for the Whale Song

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

--"The Emperor of Ice-Cream", by Wallace Stevens

One of the things that irks me about the "do your dailies" crowd is that a certain subset revels in the amount of gold they're making while doing said dailies. 

Before they moved en masse to Atiesh, one guildie knew of my aversion to doing dailies and used to tweak it from time to time, using the promise of gold as a lure.

"Think of all the gold you're missing out on," I was told more than once.

"If I wanted gold fast," I retorted, "I'd spend a few bucks and simply buy it."

"And risk getting banned? No thanks."

That particular exchange stuck with me, because I happened to know people back in the heyday of Naxx who actually did buy gold just so they could keep up with the potion and flask demands. And I also remembered a conversation with a guildie from what was then the #2 raiding guild on Myzrael, who informed me about the insane gold requirements to keep up with the equally demanding raid schedule.

Given that I could put two and two together, I realized that there were likely a lot more people who were like those friends who bought gold. After all, somebody has to be buying the gold the bots were all farming.

***

So, I grew curious, and when that happens, ol' Red tends to get himself in trouble.

Yes, these sites do exist and
are easily found.

I guess there's no real surprise that these sites are right out in the open, easily found with a simple search. Back in the day, when I was once whispered at for seeing if I needed gold when I was passing through Ratchet, I presumed that these sites were on the Dark Web or something. Maybe they were back then, but they certainly aren't now. Blizz must have given up policing these sites at about the same time they decided they wanted a cut of the action and brought forth the WoW Token.

For what it's worth, I checked a site or two. No, I didn't click on any of the options. My Spidey Sense kicked in and I thankfully didn't click any of the links, AV tool or not.

So.... It looks like between $30-$40 US dollars for 3000 in-game gold.

My boast about just buying gold for immediate gratification isn't too far off the mark. And with these sites operating out in the open like this, it's very likely there's no repercussions in game either.

This all boils down to a player leveling to max level on a megaserver such as Atiesh or Pagle, going out and buying 6000 gold for $60-$70, and jumping right into GDKPs to get geared. No grinding needed. Hell, that second site even sells boosting, so you could use the L58 boost before it vanishes, buy a boosting service, and probably pull all of this off for less than $100.*

Sure, this all defeats the purpose of the game, but when an MMO is basically saying "the game begins at endgame", you're letting basic economics (and the black market) dictate how you get to endgame. And what you do once you get there.

***

To be perfectly honest, all this makes me want to puke.

Subverting the intent of the game like this is disheartening, but not surprising. After all, the entire intent of GDKP runs is to be a raid for "high rollers", who have a lot of gold available to bid on gear. But even then, the intent is subverted by the ability to buy gold so easily and without repercussions. And Blizz can't ban GDKP raids either, because bidding gold for gear is allowed in game. Even it was explicitly banned, Blizz can't stop the transfer of gold between players without wrecking the in-game economy. And let's face it, Blizz wants the money from subscriptions, else they'd be more aggressive in their enforcement of bans.

But I can't decide what's worse: that players feel that the only way to get geared up is to enter into GDKP runs (buying gold to do it), or that the game's timeline is accelerated enough so that players feel the pressure to get geared to catch up with everyone else. The entry to GDKP is the new GearScore, but one that's easily rectified by opening up your wallet and pulling out your credit card.   

Yes, you can say --and I definitely would-- that you cheated the system if you took part in buying gold for these purposes, but my opinions don't matter here. In game morality and ethics are only present in a game when the players create it and enforce it. And when they don't --or won't-- it evaporates under the weight of money.

#Blaugust2022

*Hell, you could probably find people to run the raids for you, just so you can stand around in Dalaran and look cool with your Tier gear. 

Resisting the Tide

Before anybody else mentions it, yes, I'm aware that the Wrath Classic pre-patch will drop on August 30th.

You can't login to Battle.net and not see it.

Considering that I'm not raiding, I'm not concerned about the "ticking clock" or the "rush to L80" or anything else about Wrath Classic. Wrath is gonna drop, and given how TBC Classic went, at this time next year we'll be knee deep in Icecrown Citadel frenzy, whether the patch date is announced or whether it's about to open. 

And I'm extremely glad I'm not swept up with all of that.

I mean, Wowhead put out an article about Ten Things To Do Before Wrath of the Lich King Classic Releases back in May. That was a little over two weeks after Sunwell Plateau opened to raiders. It's as if the expectation is that Classic players --and by extension MMO players in general-- simply can't enjoy the moment, but have to be looking to the next big thing.

I used Bing because it presents the results
like this. But you get the idea.

And here I am, just kind of doing some farming, some Alterac Valley, helping my questing buddy level her Mage, and just in general taking it easy. I was asked if I wanted to run dailies with another Myzrael holdout, and I passed. 

"It'll be fun!" they said.

"No thanks." To be honest, if I did help I'd not pick up any daily quests myself, because I don't feel like holding anybody up while they wait for me to finish a quest. I mean, I do have that reputation of having shitty drop rates*, so why have everybody else wait around?

However, I've been thinking that when the pre-patch for Wrath drops, it'll be time for me to head up to Quel'Danas after all. I mean, I already missed out on the transition from a rainy, gloomy island to a bright sunlit place, but that also meant I missed out on following the "DO YOUR DAILIES" crowd. So while that mass of people is rushing onward to pre-patch activities, I can hang out in an empty area and just poke my nose into different places. Just because.

#Blaugust2022

*It's great for leveling, so you can grind more mobs for XP, but sucks when people want to get a move on and go to the next thing.

A Musical Salute

I spent part of today dropping off the youngest mini-Red at college for her sophomore year.

If you're a long time reader of PC, you'll remember when Souldat and I started this blog, the youngest mini-Red was entering 1st Grade.

My, how they grow up so quickly.

Anyway, on the drive down I was listening to the soundtrack from Wildstar, which brought back all the feels for a world forever left incomplete.

This November will be the 4th anniversary of the demise of Wildstar. Let's raise a glass to those games that have passed on, and how much they meant to us. If you've a game that you miss, let's hear it.

#Blaugust2022

The Armor Maketh the Toon

I've kind of had a thing for that Alliance Stormwind Guard --and the similarly armored Theramore Guard-- armor set.

It's just one of those things that you see in Classic long enough that you'd occasionally like to have as an RP set of your own.

Ah, these two. Don't ever change.

I suspect that the increased number
of women among the Theramore Guards
is due to who the ruler of Theramore is.

Well, I discovered some months ago that The Thorium Brotherhood person down in Gadgetzan had some specific armor recipes for sale...

As you can see, I've already gotten the
plans for a few of those pieces. There's
seven of them in all.

All for the price of a lot of Thorium bars, you can gain access to an armor set that is the spitting image of a Warcraft RTS plate armor set, the Imperial Armor Set. And that armor set just so happens to look a lot like the armor the Guards wear.

Yeah, it's pretty much a vanity set these days, but at least it's something I can collect in my spare time to give Linna that formal look that she always associated with the Knights of the Silver Hand. 

(Even though Paladin armor sets are quite different, but shh. Don't tell her.)

And when you think about it, there's very few people farming Thorium at the moment since people are trying to take advantage of the Joyous Journeys (tm) buff to level toons in preparation for Wrath Classic. So this works for me, and it gives me something to do while poking my nose into various Classic dungeons.

Maybe I ought to finish making a Seal of Ascension for some of my toons....

#Blaugust2022

The Most Important Test in Wrath Classic Beta -- The Winterfall Firewater Spellsteal Effect

After my little adventure in Winterfall Village on Cardwyn 1.0, I thought "Hey, maybe I should take Neve there!"

Yeah yeah yeah, I bet.

And I took advantage of her fully accessible porting capability, and dropped in on Shattrath City with about 7 stacks of Winterfall Firewater...

"I AM-- Wait, where is everybody?"

Alas, that it was on Myzrael-US post mass migration.

Those that were there seemed completely
nonplussed when a giant Sindorei
wandered into the bank.

My questing buddy and I were in a Discord voice group with one of our fellow Monday raiders, and I mentioned to her about what I discovered up in Winterfall Village. I didn't tell her just what would happen, but I told her that she ought to drop by with her L70 Mage and see what happens when she tries Spellstealing from multiple Firbolgs there.

I then got to thinking. I have never seen anybody mention this thing before, so I had no idea if this was nerfed in Wrath or not. 

Since I had access to the Beta for Wrath Classic, I decided to make a little side trip on Neve to Winterfall Village.

"What happened to my hair?"

"I SAID...."

With about 9 stacks under her belt, I ported into Orgrimmar...

"WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HAIR?"
"Oh, uh, sorry about that."

Neve lost a few stacks here and there, but still she had a decent amount when I reached the starting Horde location for the Wrath Beta test:

It was fun, but kind of unsatisfying. Like how you figure something cool out, but nobody really wants to share in your discovery. "Ho hum, another giant Sindorei. What a nothingburger."

And to be fair, each Spellsteal of Winterfall Firewater not only increases your size, it slows you down. After several stacks, your movements slow to a crawl, which drives me absolutely nuts. And where's the fun in that?

So... I can say that yes, Spellsteal does behave exactly the same way as in TBC Classic. But will I do it on a regular basis? Uh, no. I don't have a fetish for that sort of thing, and while it's kind of fun at first, it's... well... boring after a while. Okay, so I'm big. Now what? Well, not much.

I also must admit I like my Mages exactly the size they are. Nothing strange about that. Well, outside of the fact that they can wield the Arcane and throw fireballs around, but hey, that's an MMO for you.

#Blaugust2022

A State of the Game Request

Back before the private equity firm that now controls them ruined the company, Fantasy Flight Games' annual InFlight Report was one of the most well attended presentations at Gen Con. Their presentations were more E3-esque than anything else, and their fans loved them as they brought their upcoming games to life. 

This is from the 2019 InFlight report,
probably the last of their really good
presentations in spite of the technical
glitch partway through.

Alas that FFG's masters, the holding company PAI, began to eliminate product lines and focus the company only on their big Intellectual Property titles. Additionally, to boost profitability PAI had FFG cut staff and trimmed the fat right to the bone. As one Redditor put it, "It's the first games publisher to have switched from hobbyist management to MBA management."

I was feeling nostalgic about the old, independent FFG, and I loved it when they leveled with their fans about how things were going, as well as the direction the company was headed. That got me to thinking about how things have changed, both in tabletop games and in video games. Because of that meandering path it took in my head, this nostalgia led me to a wish that more video game companies would provide a better window into their game statistics than they currently have. 

***

Let's be honest with ourselves for a minute: no publicly traded company is going to provide data that makes them look bad. 

So we can forget about a listing of total number of WoW subscriptions ever again, particularly once Blizz threw them out the window close to 7 years ago. 

However, that doesn't mean they can't play percentages.

I don't mean the Tenth Anniversary WoW Infographic, which is vague enough --courtesy of stretching over a decade's worth of playing-- but percentages about the current expacs (and Classic). 

Obviously, there's a lot that can be gleaned from the WoW Armory (for Retail) and Warcraftlogs (for both Retail and Classic) but that only shows things on a per toon basis, not a per account basis. That's where the rub comes in: when someone has a stable of 10, 20, or more toons but raids with only 1, the data from the Armory and Warcraftlogs can be deceptive. After all, I likely showed up in the Armory as having logged in on several toons over the past year, and I definitely am not playing Shadowlands.

In case people ever wonder whether
I (or Neve, in this case) actually
did the Quel'Danas grind in the past.

When people tend to say things about raiding and make generalizations --myself included-- it would be nice to put some real data behind it. One of the guild leaders from my ex-Classic guild made the assertion in the guild's Discord that you need about 6k worth of raiders to make a server viable, and I kind of choked. After all, the maximum number of players at one time on a server back in Vanilla was estimated at 2500-3000 players (out of 4k maximum that the hardware could handle), and I always felt that the 2500-3000 raiding toons found in Warcraftlogs for Myzrael-US back at its height resulted in a pretty healthy population. So I was extremely skeptical of that 6k number that was put out, and I felt it more along the lines of a justification for a decision --switching servers-- that had already been made. 

Another way of putting it is "What does a healthy population look like, and how would we know?"

I think it would also be a good thing if companies such as Blizz provided data that allowed us a better peek at who actually plays MMOs, and what they do when they're in game.

Do they spend their time crafting? Doing dailies? Raiding? Transmog? PvP?

A lot of WoW players I know suspect that far more people play WoW than actually raid, but what does the data say? If you looked at Wowhead, Icy Veins, YouTube, and other places, you'd think that raiding --and things leading up to raiding-- is all people ever do in WoW. But if the number of raiding accounts is something around 20% of the active player base, well.... That tends to put all those raid walkthroughs and meta guides into context, doesn't it? (For the record, I believe that the number is closer to 50% because I'd include LFR, but that's just an off the cuff observation.)

On the flip side, I have very little idea as to how many people play some other MMOs, such as LOTRO or ESO or SWTOR. In those games, I play in an extremely casual fashion --questing and sight seeing-- with very little time actually doing instances or other group content. I mean, I've done so little SWTOR group content over the last several years that I'm still wrapping my head around Tactical Flashpoints not requiring the trinity of Tank-Healer-DPS. But given that I play them in such a manner, I have no idea just how many people play like me, versus those who go all in on raiding and/or PvP or even just consuming current content.

Ah, the Prophet of Vodal Kressh.
Athiss is still my favorite Flashpoint
among the Classic SWTOR FPs.
(From Gameplorer.de.)

***

This is all pretty much water under the bridge, because like I said earlier in the post, very few publicly traded game companies are ever going to post anything that puts them in a bad light. But it would be nice to know the reality behind the games, wouldn't it?

A Mage can dream, I suppose.

Oh no, not both of you...

/sigh Maybe I should take up Scrabble.
Hey, wait a second... You're both...
Oh, nevermind.

#Blaugust2022

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

What Do You Want on Your Tombstone?

“Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs.”

― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There are times when I have to remind myself that while the name "meta" for "metagame"* is relatively new --within the pencil and paper RPG Era, certainly-- the concept of following the crowd for an optimal solution is anything but.

Anybody remember peer pressure? Or how financial bubbles are created?  Or the concept of The Greater Fool?

Yeah, that stuff is "the meta" in another form. 

I was reminded of this the other day during a discussion at work when the magic word "Gartner" came up. If you work in IT --or in Corporate America to any degree-- you can't help but run up against the monolith that is the Gartner Consulting Group. They are a $4.7 billion per year consulting business, of which most people know them by their White Papers that they use to identify trends in the business world. I use the word "trends" rather loosely here, because if you talk to people in the corporate world you run up against the belief that Gartner doesn't really identify trends as much as they create them.

I believe I just twitched when I posted this
snippet from Gartner's "About Us".
From gartner.com.

Gartner likes to say that they are data driven when they create recommendations for clients or industry leaders, but when you reach a certain critical mass of influence --and believe me, Gartner has that-- you begin to dictate the trends. By elevating one trend over another, Gartner acts as a force multiplier for those trends as CIOs and others (or their wannabees) in the corporate upper echelons of power implement their recommendations. 

Or use their recommendations to choose a company to do business with. After all, the Gartner Magic Quadrant lays it all out quite nicely: you want to do business with people in the upper right hand of the quadrant chart, because those are the true leaders in an industry. By making these charts, however, Gartner alters the dynamic within an industry by the sheer weight of their influence. They make the industry leaders even more so, and those left behind even farther behind than before. 

Which ought to explain the groans that went up when someone mentioned Gartner at work. There's always a Gartner shill in any corporate gathering, because it's the safe bet. But because it's the safe bet, there's no room for creativity or quirkiness. 

***

Now, replace Gartner with "influencer" or "popular kid in high school" or... say... Wowhead...** and you get the idea.

Or maybe a better way of looking at the meta is under the viewpoint of data analytics, because that's pretty much what it is. Someone crunches the data to determine the optimal way of doing things, and that becomes the meta. Data analytics has even crept into the sporting world, as early adopters such as baseball's Tony La Russa*** led the way for widespread use of data crunching to determine the best way to do things for a variety of situations. 

While perusing the Sports Illustrated for this
post, I realized just how much also happened
in that issue: Hank Gathers of Loyola Marymount
University's basketball team collapsed and died on
the court, and Dayton defeated Notre Dame
and Xavier in their quest to make the NCAA Tourney.
(From Sports Illustrated, March 12, 1990.)

On the face of it, data analytics makes sense: you use raw data to determine what successful outcomes are for a variety of scenarios. You can drill down and add all sorts of variables to help with your analysis, but in the end what you get is the likelihood of success for various situations. The goal is to maximize that likelihood of success, but athletes still have to perform out on the field to realize that success.

In the business world issues such as employee retention, sales success, market penetration, and other things that would make my eyes glaze over are ripe for use with data analytics. The age old problem of how to keep employees in the fold --without simply paying them more****-- has been subject to many a data crunching session. And a Gartner White Paper, to be honest. The thing is, even if the data show you an obvious path forward, there's no guarantee that it'll work. 

Just like in video games, the meta will only get you so far; you have to actually perform to live up to your potential. But just like in video games, if you're not following the identified "trend", then you're already at a disadvantage. It doesn't mean that you can't do the job effectively, but nobody ever got fired for following the current Gartner recommendations, either.

***

As someone who disliked following the current trends, whether it was in school, at work, or in gaming*****, I've struggled to put my aversion to words. Part of it is that I want to maintain my own individuality in the face of corporate sameness. I remember an article from the late 90s about the music industry's infatuation with boy bands at the time, and the assertion was that the industry professionals had figured out how to package music to such a degree that they could influence the trends all on their own. The boy bands of that era --Backstreet Boys, N-Sync, 98 Degrees-- were corporate sameness personified. Of course, the music industry was about to be blindsided by a wave of music file sharing and downloads, proving that dictating trends and thinking you know best isn't always the correct bet. 

Same same but different.
Also, Southern Rap and Green Day
were coming for your ass.
From Entertainment Weekly.

I guess another part of it is the loss of creativity when everybody follows the data driven outcome. If everybody is following it, then where's the fun of finding something else that works for you? Oh, it's out there, but like I mentioned above you're at twice the disadvantage: once for not following the data driven recommendation, and once for people's doubts of your abilities because you're not following those recommendations.

Still, my only advice for people is to be yourself. In the end, "They followed the Analytics" doesn't make for a good quote for a tombstone.

#Blaugust2022

*No, not the even newer and more pretentious "Meta" as in "Metaverse". Even that in it's non-corporate state isn't that new, given that the concept of the metaverse has been around in comics for what feels like ages. It was enough of a trope that when WoW's Warlords of Draenor came out, that "alternate universe" Draenor concept was enough of a turn off for me to contribute to the cancellation of my WoW subscription. But still, Mark Zuckerberg has a certain spot in my heart for pure loathing.

**Or Icy Veins, or even Elitist Jerks if you're old like me.

***Tony was most famous during his time spent as manager of the Oakland A's and St. Louis Cardinals from 1986 through 2011. Columnist and baseball aficionado George Will devoted a large section of his book Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball to Tony La Russa and his managerial techniques.

****Don't get me started on that bullshit. Companies come up with all sorts of ways to keep from doing the obvious two things when you want to retain people: pay them more and treat them like people. I know, I know, what a concept!!

*****I mean, come on. I played D&D during the Satanic Panic, and lost all my stuff to the same. If you ever wanted to meet girls in the early-mid 80s, playing D&D and board games such as Civilization or Axis and Allies was most definitely not the way to do it. I think one of the biggest shocks to my system was during the first week of classes at UD I was at the game room down in Kennedy Union, playing a video game, when a couple happened to walk by and paused to watch me play. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the shirt she was wearing --a Dungeons and Dragons shirt-- and nearly died in the game due to my surprise. That had to have been the first girl I ever "met" who actually was into RPGs. Usually I got the "ew, gross" if any of them ever found out that I played.

Security Alert

Today I had to move a blog off of the MMO Blogroll, but not for the traditional reason of the blog going silent (or vanishing).

Tobold's blog was flagged by Bitdefender for being an infected website.

I checked the alert more fully, and yeah, there's a definite infection there:

Oof.

Alas that I'm unable to contact Tobold, since doing so would require me to visit his blog to then find his email, so I'm kind of stuck here. So, here's hoping that Tobold actually reads blogs and will find this. Or, if someone knows Tobold's email they can contact him about this.

#Blaugust2022

The Soundtrack to My Life

The thing about Blaugust that dislike the most is when you're supposed to talk about yourself.

I don't mean the (mis)adventures I --or my toons-- have, but rather when you explain yourself to people.

Certain times, you kind of just have to talk about yourself because it impacts both the blog and your game playing (from which material for the blog originates), such as my little hospital adventure last November and my subsequent follow-up several months later. There are also other assorted times when I've felt like I had to explain some of the things that go on in my head, because otherwise some of my in-game behaviors would make no sense. That doesn't mean I have to like it when I make those sorts of posts, it just simply is a thing that goes with the job of being a blogger: sometimes you have to explain yourself. 

But actively promoting yourself and giving out your bona-fides under the guise of "Introducing Yourself"?

Gah.

I'd rather run around naked in my backyard.*

Still, this is supposed to be "Introducing Yourself" week, and even though I'm not officially enrolled in Blaugust I do feel obligated to at least pay lip service to saying something about myself.

You know, hobbies, doodads, history, family, and other assorted things that go to make up a life.

That's what you get for letting that little line "things that go to make up a life" slip into my head: a Genesis song.

Hmm.... Maybe that's where I should go with this post: music.

***

I was not born into a musical family.

Oh, my mom's family had musicians in them, but a lot of them were in the 19th century past. My immediate family wasn't musical: my maternal Grandmother was tone deaf and simply didn't like music much at all. My dad's mom and aunt liked the "old timey" songs like Shine On Harvest Moon --my great aunt was born the year before the Wright Brothers' first flight-- and while they loved watching Lawrence Welk** they had no more affinity for music than a squirrel does. My dad wasn't musically inclined, and my mom made a few attempts to learn guitar and gave up soon afterward. Dad liked to listen to what is now called Yacht Rock, and Mom liked religious music.*** Of the two of us kids, I quickly grew bored with the grind of slowly learning piano and passed on learning how to play. My brother, on the other hand, loved to play piano and played mellophone in marching band for his high school. 

The funny thing about all that is you'd not expect my household to be filled with music, but it is

My wife does play guitar and piano, and she took harpsichord lessons in college, but that's in spite of a rather disastrous guitar recital she had when she was seven or so. If it were me, I'd likely have given up trying to play guitar, but she doggedly kept on going. She doesn't play much now, but I'm certain the kids picked up whatever musical talent they have from her, not me.

Me? I just loved to listen to music. I didn't want to play it****, just surround myself with it. I listened to almost everything --with the notable exception of Country-- but I loved anything that made my heart soar and kept my blood pumping.

Thank goodness for the Blues Brothers,
otherwise you'd not get this little gem.

We didn't make the kids take music lessons in the way some parents force it on their progeny in the vain hope that it'll pad a future college resume, but my wife took them to preschool music appreciation programs when they were around toddler through preschool age, and as they liked it and wanted to play the instruments themselves, we signed them up for lessons. Aside from that, no pushing on my watch. All I did was simply play music while I worked, cleaned, drove the parental taxi, and did just about everything else in life. And like a love of reading, they just kind of fell into it because of the exposure.

So our lives eventually have come to this: maneuvering around a drum kit in the basement, tripping over guitars around the house, and a keyboard on my wife's dresser.

Oh yeah, and me building speakers for stereo systems around the house.

But you know, I'd never change it for the world. Music keeps me going and it provides a nourishment that I can't describe. It's not exactly an addiction, and to be honest I've had tinnitus since roughly 2018 or so, but I make a point to simply enjoy music for what it is.

#Blaugust2022

*And believe me, it's been more than a few decades since I was in good enough shape to even think about pulling that off. And no, I've never been drunk enough to consider it, either.

**Oh yes, the horror. I had to put up with that show being on --along with Hee Haw-- whenever they babysat my brother and myself.

***I really hate the music played at churches. And no, I don't mean the traditional fare found at weddings, such as Wagner's Bridal Chorus. As a kid at a Catholic grade school, singing hymns was pretty much all we ever sang in Music class, and the few times we did something other than that sort of Relgious fare, it was (and I kid you not) Country Western Music. Like we were somehow going to be happy it was that and not another version of "On Eagle's Wings". About the only Religious music I like to this day is that found in the Classical repertoire, such as this:

****Okay, when I was in high school I used to daydream about playing guitar or bass in a rock band in a cartoony sort of fashion: rock star by day, SF hero by night. I suppose you'd say that I'd be up for a male version of Josie and the Pussycats or Jem, or even Batman if Batman weren't a billionaire playboy but rather a rock star. That had about as much chance of happening to me as getting bitten by a radioactive spider and turning into Spider-man, but a guy could dream.

A Short Interlude

Sometimes I login to a game just to enjoy the scenery.

The Burning Crusade Classic

The Elder Scrolls Online

Guild Wars 2

The Lord of the Rings Online

Star Wars: The Old Republic

World of Warcraft (Retail)

#Blaugust2022

What Happens When Mages Ponder

You'd think that I would know enough about Mages in Classic (and TBC Classic), but every so often something pops up that catches me by surprise.

Like how I was helping my questing buddy's Mage run through Sunken Temple --I was on Linna-- when one of the pulls went a little haywire. We managed to kill off the pack, and then my questing buddy mentioned that "I didn't know you could Ice Block and break a sheep."*

I paused a second. "I had no idea either."

Honest.

Most of the time I'm sheeped in Alterac Valley my Ice Block is on cooldown, and when it isn't I'm likely about to die anyway so I'd rather not waste it. And in instances where you can get sheeped, such as Sunken Temple and Zul'Farrak, Ice Block may be available (if you pick up the talent in the Frost tree) but it's typically not what you're thinking of when you get sheeped. Especially with a 5 minute CD and the potential to get sheeped multiple times in one pull.

And to be fair, Cardwyn 1.0 has been Fire Spec for almost two years, so I'd kind of forgotten that Ice Block for all specs was a change made in TBC Classic. I'd probably have continued in blissful ignorance --courtesy of the leveling grind Card went through-- until sometime in Wrath Classic.

***

While that's one example of me learning new tricks, there is one surprising part of TBC Classic where I, uh, by accident kind of broke the game.

Okay, maybe it's by design, but it was waaaay too much fun to not do it.

If you're a Mage in TBC Classic you're familiar with the Spellsteal Level 70 spell. For the uninitiated, Spellsteal allows a Mage to steal a buff that is currently on an enemy and use it for yourself. This is the how a Mage can perform Mage Tank duties during the High King Maulgar fight: the Mage uses Spellsteal to take the Spell Shield buff from Krosh Firehand, rendering him vulnerable to spells, and the Mage (mostly) invulnerable to the same. In my case, I've used Spellsteal from time to time with Neve in Alterac Valley, stealing heals and other assorted buffs from enemies, often to their displeasure (and Neve's inevitable death).

The other day, I had gotten it into my head to farm some Runecloth on Cardwyn 1.0 to replenish my depleted supply, and since I could also use some extra Winterfall Firewater as a cheap melee DPS buff I figured I'd head out to Winterfall Village in Winterspring. The Winterfall Firbolgs drop both items, and Winterspring is typically empty anyway, so why not?

Now, anybody who knows anything about WoW probably perked up their ears when I mentioned Winterfall Firewater. It has two effects: you get +35 to your Attack Power for 20 minutes, and you get a bit of an increase in size for the duration while it is active. I used to use it with Azshandra all the time until one fateful Blackrock Depths run where I was heading to the entrance of the instance and I jumped down from the outer walkway within Blackrock Mountain onto the ledge below, which serves to break my fall at about the halfway point in the drop so I don't plummet to my death. Well, that was the idea, but Az had consumed some Winterfall Firewater and had correspondingly grown large enough that she couldn't fit properly on the ledge, and so she bounced off of it and died in the lava below. 

My groupmates had a good round of laughter at my expense. 

"Helluva way to find out if your butt is too big, Az!"

I still use Firewater from time to time on Card when I'm goofing around, even though she doesn't need it at all**, just because she can then almost look a Draenei in the eye. But I did use it on Briganaa and Linnawyn when they were out in the field, because it's a cheap buff and I acquired a ton of them when I was working on the Wintersaber mount grind. 

But my supplies were running low, so I headed out to Winterspring.

While I was obliterating Firbolg for fun and profit, I took a note of something:

Hmm....

The buff that you see there is the Winterfall Firewater buff on the Firbolg. All of the Winterfall Firbolg have it, so at first I didn't notice anything. But do you notice the highlight around the buff? That means the buff was a candidate for Spellstealing.

When I was last farming up here, Card was L66, and that buff wasn't highlighted. After all, Spellsteal is only learned at L70.

But that got me to thinking.

So I used Spellsteal and yes, I noted the slight size increase and I got a 2 minute version of Winterfall Firewater with a boost to the buff itself:

Instead of 35 AP like the regular
version, this one was 70 AP.

Convinced this was a cheap way to amuse myself, I attacked another Winterfall Firbolg and used Spellsteal there.

And much to my surprise the little bump in height happened again.

Sure enough, there were now two Winterfall Firewater buffs active:

I checked, and the buffs did actually stack in Attack Power as well. So I wondered if this was like the little "cheat" to the system in Karazhan, where a Mage using Spellsteal and a tank keeping one of the Ethereals with their stackable caster buff could get up to 10 stacks of said buff and absolutely obliterate Netherspite.***

Well, it wasn't exactly the same, as the Spellsteals for Winterfall Firewater were separate buffs, but...

I drank one of the Winterfall Firewater potions Card had on her (after one of the buffs had fallen off) and....

Now this is interesting.

I went out and killed a few more Firbolgs, stealing their buff, and each time Card grew a little more. It didn't seem like she was that large...

But when I ported to Theramore as my questing buddy needed a hand with something, I was greeted by this:

This is with four stacks.

I sent that screencap to my questing buddy, who said "She's huge!"

I mean, I've had multiple buffs before, with Heroism + Firewater + Alterac Valley Belinda buff, but this was something entirely different.

Just exactly how many stacks could I do at once? 

Mana would become an issue, as would killing the Firbolg I pulled. But I figured "why not" and at my earliest opportunity I went back to Winterfall Village and got to work.

I discovered that 8 stacks was the practical limit given my constraints...

I could hit 9 stacks, but one would fall off just as soon as I put one on, so I just left it at 8 and ported into Stormwind.

"I look like a raid boss!" I said out loud, and then I tried to exit the Sanctum:

"I can't get out the damn door!" I cried.

So I had to wait for a few stacks to burn off and only then could I squeeze through.

"Who's the Archmage now, Malin?"

I should have checked what my Attack Power was, but just being able to game the system like this was awesome. No idea if this would work in Wrath Classic, but I've the screencaps to prove that it does in TBC Classic.

Totally worth it.

#Blaugust2022

*Or maybe it was a frog. Can't remember and I'm tired.

**It's a melee buff, not a caster buff.

***We tried this out one Friday night with a friend who'd just specced Fire for the first time --so she even wasn't aware of using Combustion or the Fire Mage rotation at all-- and she absolutely dominated us in the DPS meters.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

EtA: Corrected some more grammar.