The Game Goes Ever On

Looking back on my history playing MMOs, I'm surprised I lasted as long as I have.

Oh, not from the "does this game interest me" perspective; after all, I still play Civ IV a lot and do get my feet wet in Baldur's Gate from time to time. What I meant was truly how ignorant I was for the first several months of playing MMOs, and how that didn't deter me from playing despite not knowing jack shit about how to play MMOs.

Okay, let me step back a second and explain a few things.

The concept of talking to people and getting quests in a computer game isn't new. After all, you see that in just about every RPG computer game, even in the old Ultima IV days. In the same vein as opening each freaking cabinet or chest in a video game might earn a player some gold (or in the case of Link smashing vases and amphorae, rupees), talking to everybody you see in a game is critically important when you're trying to figure out what to do and where to go. 

That's the case even in Stardew Valley.

Even in pencil and paper RPGs, talking to NPCs is frequently how you find out plotlines and adventure hooks, but in a pencil-and-paper game the GM is free to redo their adventure hooks to make it relevant to the group. Is the group going to the wrong inn, or the wrong town? Never fear! The hooks just swapped names, that's all. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a "meh" GM is one that can't adapt their campaign to accommodate players' various whims and flights of fancy.*

But I digress.

The basic cadence of questing, I understood. And after a disastrous misunderstanding that a Priest != a D&D style Cleric, I adapted to what I was presented with. 

Understanding gearing and how to pick out gear, however? Well....

Let me put it this way: pencil and paper RPGs are a LOT easier to understand than MMOs as far as gear is concerned. And while Pathfinder and D&D 3.0 have all sorts of crunch for min/maxing Classes and Feats and Skills, they don't have anything on the complexity of MMOs for all that.

Probably the biggest difference between the two is that a significant portion of people who play pencil and paper RPGs probably don't care quite so much about min/maxing or making optimal choices for your character as they do in MMOs. When the goal is raiding and killing the big bad, MMOs are pretty unforgiving about numbers. In pencil-and-paper RPGs, GMs have far more flexibility to adjust things on the fly as needed. They can also read the room and make decisions because, well, the GM is the ultimate arbiter of things, and if there's a conflict with what is in game versus the rules, the GM's rule is law.

MMOs simply can't compete like that, so raids become a test of skill. And gear. And talents. And other options such as enchants, potions, glyphs, etc. 

And there's that small matter of physical dexterity as well.  

***

When I started playing WoW back in 2009, I was ignorant of all of that. I was ignorant of even where to go and what to do, as far as gearing goes. I knew Mail (and then Plate once it became available) for my Paladin was good (because armor), but what stats were good was a completely different thing. After all, Paladins do cast spells, and their abilities rely on mana, so Intelligence is good, right?

Well... Not really.

I mean, not even Blizzard had a good handle on things like that in Vanilla Classic, since the gear that comprises your class tier set is frequently not as good for your role as individual pieces cobbled together. And while leveling, you're likely to not even run into gear such as bonuses to Hit and Expertise. You actually have to go out of your way to find such gear, which is why such guides exist.

This screencap is from Wowhead's TBC
Classic Ret Paladin Guide.

Take a look at the listing above, which not only shows the BiS gear for pre-raid Ret Paladins in TBC Classic, but specifically if your raid doesn't have a Boomkin with Improved Faerie Fire. There's a lone piece of Green gear there, which I chose to highlight, that has Expertise. So without looking that up and going down that rabbit hole, the piece likely a quest reward or a random drop as part of a quest chain. That's something that unless you were clued in using a guide, you'd likely have replaced with a Blue or Purple piece at earliest opportunity.

Oh, and the goggles? Yeah, you should have chosen to level Engineering, noob.

This is what I was talking about being ignorant of. 

I had no clue that anything like this existed back when I started WoW in 2009. Sure, I knew of print guides for video games, and I did have a few myself**, but websites that crunched numbers and somehow figured out the math behind the game so they could reliably tell players what they should do to min/max their characters? No, I didn't know that at all. 

Not until Soul and I had a chat in-game while hanging around Org, and he pointed out a Ret Paladin nearby. He told me to inspect that person's gear --I was pretty ignorant of how to do that, even-- and said that this is the sort of gear that I should be aiming for. He then pointed me in the direction of Elitist Jerks and their guides. 

This was in 2010, a month or two after I reached max level in a game that I'd already been playing for months, and I was wondering why I was still struggling to kill mobs when other Ret Paladins were just cruising through them.*** After all, I was finally running dungeons by myself and accumulating Blue gear.

When I finally opened up the guides, they were a revelation.

There it was, in one summary, what I needed to do to properly gem and enchant items for my use. What gear to focus on. What rotation to use.**** And why it was okay to ignore gem bonuses and just go all out on gemming Strength. 

And almost immediately my DPS output leapt upward.

Back then, I immediately became a believer in the usefulness of these guides to make me a player better, and while I can appreciate the work behind the scenes, I'm glad I wasn't involved in creating those guides. That would have taken a lot more work --and free time-- than what I had available to me.

So, when All-Trades Jack talks about the hoops you must go through to raid in WoW in his This Game Wasn't Made For You video, and how a new player would be completely ignorant of all this unless someone points them in that direction, I get it because I've lived it.

***

In retrospect, I was lucky.

I mean, I had Soul to point me to the guides rather than being ripped on or called out in group content*****, and he was nice about it. Given that I didn't have any aspirations to raiding, I wasn't trying to do anything more than simply not embarrass myself in an instance. The Quel'Delar questline alone was worth it not simply because it was the best non-raid weapon in the game at the time, it had a fantastic story in the quest chain. Gearing for T9 and then T10 may have started with simply gaining access to better gear than found running heroic 5-person instances, but because the gear looked so damn cool it became a reward in itself.

I don't have the fashion sense that
Kamalia does, but I do like the look
of a well designed set of gear.

Even when I quit WoW back at the end of Wrath, it had more to do with dealing with bots and whatnot in battlegrounds more than anything else. Because of those guides, I could at least hold my own compared to other people, even when I transitioned to other MMOs over the years. 

But if I had nobody there to tell me where to look for guidance, it's not exactly a given that I'd ever have stumbled on those external guides at all before I gave up the game. As much as I found WoW fun and interesting, I felt that there was a level of skill and understanding that separated the end game raiders from me that I couldn't match. Even when I began to get what was supposedly "good" gear, the Blue and Purple varieties, I lagged in output. How much of that poor output being due to a lack of understanding what was important for the role I had chosen --first as a Healer and then melee DPS-- is likely pretty significant. 

What was also immediately apparent once I began reading those guides was the lack of such guides on the official Blizzard website. You'd think that information such as this would be available on the website, or at least the game would have identified as such and oriented certain bonuses (such as gem bonuses) toward what was considered optimal for a player's class and spec. 

Over time, some things were fixed by Blizzard, such as using Reforging to correct gear, and aligning gear stats/drops to better match classes and roles, but also due to the hiring of some of those Elitist Jerk theorycrafters on the development staff. However, the accompanying mindset that brought about those changes reinforced other aspects of WoW (raiding/PvP focus) at the expense of others (older expacs, story, the world). 

***

I can't go back and relive the past, because my experiences helped shape who I am. I can't erase memories, such as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and because of that I know what the answers are likely to be. 

The joy of discovery is gone, because that was a one time event. I never got to experience the Marshal Windsor storyline back in the day, so it was new and epic to me in 2019/2020. Raiding was new and fresh to me, even though it wasn't to most people I have encountered in Classic. Looking ahead to the Wrath Classic release, there will be no fumbling around, trying to figure things out, and getting frustrated when I hit a DPS/healing wall. I know where to go and what to do to discover what the meta should be. 

From all over the internet.

However, I will feel constrained by the chains of doing things the "right way", knowing that most people will simply accept them as the cost of doing business, without stopping to wonder what it would have been like to look upon the game with fresh eyes, with all the joys and frustrations contained therein. 

Will the tolerance be there for those people, I wonder?

*I should know, since I was in a campaign with one for 20+ years. I only found out when it blew up this past Spring that we "missed all sorts of encounters" along the way. Which is pretty silly, given that we had no idea we missed that stuff.

**Such as the in-depth understanding behind the original Sid Meier's Civilization and the first Master of Orion games.

***I went hunting to try and find a post on the matter back in the day, but either I'm just looking in the wrong place or it's simply not coming up. Kind of a bummer.

****In the case of Ret Paladins in Wrath, there wasn't one. I breathed a big sigh of relief that I was actually doing it right for a change.

*****Okay, that happened too, back when I was still leveling as a Holy Paladin, which directly led to me switching to Ret.

The Hell Just Happened?

A little over two weeks ago I had a conversation with one of my fellow "Leftovers" (aka the Leveling Shamans left behind in the Old World when the Dark Portal opened back in June 2020), which between the two of us became a grousing session on how TBC Classic went down, raid-wise. Given that the two of us were the only people online in Valhalla at the time*, we had a good long rant session in Guild Chat. 

I was kind of busy helping get
a waylaid pilgrm to Falcon Watch
at the time.

A day or two later, I got pinged in Discord by him. Would I be interested in joining a 10-person raiding team for Wrath led by himself and another of the Leftovers?

Given that my job situation is such that I could now raid at night, I was initially receptive to the idea, but I needed to know more about what they were looking at. And as I was not planning on joining the franken-guild in Atiesh, I definitely wanted to make sure that joining the guild wasn't a requirement.

Narrator: It wasn't a requirement.

The more we chatted, the more interested I became. I think the clincher was when he asked what level Deuce was and whether I'd be interested in using her in the raid team. 

• Getting a chance to raid on one of the two toons I'd consider taking into a raid**? Check.
• Me not having to raid lead? Check.
• Wanting a raid team that is "more chill" than having the same 2-3 people talking all the time? Check.
• A raid that has a built-in rotation and bench where everybody sits at one point or another? Check.
• A raid not built on either DKP or Loot Council, but instead a Loot Reserve system***? Check.
• A raid that they are reaching out to people they personally liked to group with? check.
• A raid that --unlike our experience with TBC Classic-- people aren't going to have deadlines to get toons leveled so raiding can begin ASAP? Check.
• A raid that won't harass you about getting your gear the optimal gems/enchants ASAP? Check.

They pretty much had me at the first item on the list, but still the entire thing read like a dream. The thing was, I wasn't totally sure if I was going to want to do this again. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to have them dashed by having someone I personally didn't like on the raid team. While I get that I have to tolerate such things at work, I don't consider playing games to be at that level. I'm not interested in dealing with people I dislike just because I want to see content.

But.

The people they were bringing on board read like a who's who of people I've missed playing with in WoW Classic. And it included my questing buddy!

***

Okay, what's the catch?

Well, that's what I was wondering, and I waited for that shoe to drop in a meeting on Discord last night. 

As far as that meeting went, I can safely say that everybody there was on board with the concept of 10 person raids with 2 more --maybe 3-- for a rotational basis. We have 8 already, and it's a matter of recruiting 4 more to round out our list. My questing buddy is currently bringing her Priest, and I my Mage, but we are both flexible as to whom we bring. I'm fine with switching to Ret, and she's fine swapping to Warlock, but we both want to make sure we have those holes plugged before we do so. Others are fine with moving a bit as-needed, but we all want to see this group succeed. 

My questing buddy already informed me that she will torpedo any attempt on my part to try to level another toon --a Shaman, perhaps-- from scratch. "You are NOT doing that again," she informed me.

One obstacle that I can mention is that the franken-guild isn't quite as enthusiastic about this raid's existence, because "blah-blah-blah it will take away from 25 person teams blah-blah-blah", but I'm pretty sure the act of trying to compress 3 25-person raids down to 2 will do that on its own. As my questing buddy pointed out to me later, when people discover that they're going to be on the bench --and clearing up to the first boss so that the real raiders can take over from that point onward-- they'll do a "peace out" quicker than you can say "The hell going on..."

Okay, so this is referencing
the NFL's bizarre offseason player
moves this past summer, but it still
is appropriate. From twitter.com.

Regardless, it was pulling teeth to apparently get a chat channel created in the franken-guild's Discord to even discuss the thing, so one of the orders of business last night was to have us move our discussions to a separate Discord without being concerned about any snooping going on by said franken-guild's leadership.

To be perfectly honest, I felt immeasurably better with that having happened, because I did not want to have to be in that Discord any more than absolutely necessary. I'd had one of the people in that guild reach out to me in-game to ask if I was going to join them on Atiesh, and I rather bluntly said "Not planning on it."

And I'm still not.

I don't want to be there when the drama goes down, and I don't want to be there when I know that the questions about "Why move and merge at the same time?" start showing up when people begin complaining about the excessive people signing up to raid. I don't want to be there when the clash of guild cultures ends and the other guild's culture wins.****

Not exactly the clash I was
thinking of. (From Twitch.)

And now my Horde guild is thinking of dipping it's collective toes into raiding in Wrath. Nobody there has asked me yet if I want to raid with them, but given that there aren't a lot of L70 Mages in the guild, I'm kind of expecting to be asked at some point. I'm not sure what to do there, exactly. I'd not mind raiding on Neve, but I also know I don't have the time for multi-day raids beyond what I've already committed to. So, I guess you could say that all that's old is new again.

"Did someone say something about Northrend?"
"Don't worry, Neve. We'll get to you soon."

*There are a few of us that are still in Valhalla on Myzrael-US. There's a ton of alts that never migrated --and I doubt they will-- as well as the people who burned out and left. I keep a close eye on who logs in on a regular basis, just to see if getting any groups together for things are a viable option on Myz.

**The other would be a Ret Paladin. Could be Linnawyn 2.0, or another Ret Pally. Not sure yet.

***I've run Loot Reserve systems in the past, particularly in AQ20 and Zul'Gurub, where people are allowed one soft reserve. It's worked out very well. This particular iteration allows people to take turns on who gets loot, so it's not a Soft Reserve with rolls to see who gets loot if there's more than one reserve, but instead each person who reserved an item --if it drops-- gets a turn at getting their loot. That way the entire raid gets gear together, rather than one person with lucky dice gets the lion's share of gear and the rest are left with scraps.

****What I've been told, that has pretty much happened already. I've been involved in too many corporate mergers over the years to not know how the culture clash will end: there's always a winner and a loser, and the corporate culture I've been on has typically been on the losing side. The lines from Pink Floyd's Time come to mind...

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

Addendum to An RPG From the Past: Dungeons and Dragons (Moldvay Edition)

For the record, I never saw this commercial back in the 1980s...

After I'd posted the previous article about the Moldvay Edition of D&D, I realized that there's a simpler way to gaining access to copies of this edition: DriveThruRPG.

Well, duh. I should have thought of that.

So, here's a few links that would help someone pick up a PDF version of this classic RPG, that you can then print as you wish:

DriveThruRPG: D&D Basic Set Rulebook (B/X Edition)

DriveThruRPG: D&D Expert Set Rulebook (B/X Edition)

DriveThruRPG: B2 The Keep on the Borderlands (Basic)

DriveThruRPG: X1 The Isle of Dread (Basic)

Now, if you're interested in more detail about those two modules, as well as a conversion/update to D&D 5e as part of the deal, Goodman Games (of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG) created several huge books covering various classic modules. These are likely available at your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS), and they're absolutely worth the trouble.

There are six total (as of 09/2022).
Beware that The Temple of Elemental Evil
is two books! I've not sprung for that
one (yet). Maybe with some Christmas funds...

Goodman Games Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into The Borderlands

Goodman Games Original Adventures Reincarnated #2: The Isle of Dread

An RPG From The Past: Dungeons and Dragons (Moldvay Edition)

Back in the ancient days of this blog, I described my first time playing D&D with a friend named Rob who lived in the neighborhood behind our own. We went to school together, played on the same baseball team together, and played Atari video games together. Typical 70s/early 80s stuff. 

I mean, if you've seen Stranger Things, that was kind of my life. Well, except for the monsters from the Upside Down and characters such as Eleven with "powers". 

I swear I had a shirt just like the one
on the left. From cafemom.com.

That fateful day I'd never heard of Dungeons and Dragons before, but even though I got stomped like nobody's business when our first encounter was five Red Dragons, I was fascinated by the possibilities the game provided. 

Compared to how they're presented
in D&D 5e, dragons back then are far from
being a force of nature. They're still
frighteningly powerful compared to
a first level player, however.
From the Blue cover Holmes Edition
of D&D (circa 1979).

So, when Christmas rolled around, I asked for a D&D set. And this was what I got: 

The original copy is long since
gone. Because, well... Satanic Panic
and all that.

This version didn't look like Rob's, but the guts of the thing were still there. The same six stats --Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma-- the same funky dice, the same classes*, and the same monsters. Compared to some wargames such as Risk, the game seemed very complicated, but compared to modern RPGs, well...

Really? Really?

I honestly wasn't planning on posting today, because 31 days in a row is a record for me. As I looked at the number of posts for the year, the Blaugust body count shot me past the 2020 pandemic year for second most posts in a year. Right now, I'm trailing only 2010, where we had three (!) people blogging on the site, providing basically stream of consciousness thoughts on what we were doing in WoW at that time.

::looks at last dozen posts::

Oh. Right. Well, that hasn't changed.

But I can only shake my head at the people who --less than a day after the Wrath Classic pre-patch dropped-- already had a Death Knight up to L70. Yes, I ran into them while I was running a few Alterac Valley battlegrounds over lunch on Wednesday. 

And if they thought that they'd wipe the battlefield clean with Neve, they were in for a rude awakening. As one of my fellow defenders in Stonehearth Bunker put it, "This ain't 2008, asshole."

The fact that DKs were already at L70 still kind of irked me, even though we won that BG. I mean, I know there's that Joyous Journeys buff out there, and it's only L55 to L70, but come on. Just why on earth would you spend the entire time from 6 PM EST until Noon the next day leveling a DK, when you've got close to a month before Northrend opens? Your gear will get replaced pretty damn quickly in Wrath Classic anyway, and there's a bit of a delay until the first raids open as well.

What's the point?

I guess I'm getting old, because I play MMOs for the journey rather than the destination. And that seems to be very much the exception these days. The destination will still be there, whether I get there tomorrow, the next day, or even the next month. I can't control how other people play the game, but if by their behavior my enjoyment of Wrath Classic is cut short*, I will not be a happy camper. 

In this case, I'm actually hoping that the increased difficulty of Discount Naxx puts a bit of a damper on the overdeveloped sense of enthusiasm on some of these "high energy" players. 

*By pushing the Classic team to burn through Wrath Classic in about 14-15 months instead of the 25 months originally. Original Wrath dropped in 11/2008, and Cataclysm dropped in 12/2010.

The Accidental Hipster

I was on early yesterday, before work, and people were eagerly counting down the time before the extended Wrath Classic pre-patch.

Rather than living in the moment, I couldn't help but think that in a year from now people will be similarly eager, talking about the upcoming Cataclysm Classic, because of course they will. After all, we're way ahead of schedule for following the original TBC timeline, so why not the same for Wrath Classic? And I'm sure the apologists will be out for Cataclysm Classic too, because "Cataclysm: It Wasn't as Bad as People Thought" is likely to be a headline from a site such as Massively OP or Blizzard Watch.

But that's not what I mean when I said I was an accidental hipster; that's just being a cynic. 

Chris Knight, don't ever change.
From getyarn.com.

Last afternoon, after I got off a late call with a coworker, I noticed that the servers were now up. An actual extended downtime from Blizz for a prepatch that ended right on time? Amazing! So I looked at Discord and found an absolute ton of people on, even those I'd not seen online in months, all with "Playing World of Warcraft Classic" as their status. 

I switched to Battle.net, and found a metric ton of people with "Wrath of the Lich King Classic" as their status as well.

And... I just went and zapped Battle.net for the day and played a little Stardew Valley instead before hitting the hay early. 

***

If that were all I did that'd be one thing, and I'd write it off to merely an aversion to being around whatever the popular crowd is doing. After all, this is kind of my jam; back in the 80s, I used to like bands such as Toto, and then when Toto IV came out and they simply exploded in popularity I dropped them like a hot potato. Another band that followed a similar trajectory was Bon Jovi. I'd been a fan of their first two albums and liked their third --Slippery When Wet-- but when they suddenly became the most popular band in school* I stopped listening to them. 

If Simon and Garfunkel suddenly rocket

up the charts, I'll drop them too, I suppose.

If I'd have been exposed to punk back then, I'd have likely been heavily into punk until Nirvana came along and made punk inspired Grunge a thing. Instead, part of my 90s was spent exploring Jazz and Celtic music --until Riverdance came along, that is-- so I missed out on the worst excesses of the Boy Bands as well as some of the best of the Grunge bands.

And so it goes.

But for some reason, instead of simply not logging in and zigging when everybody else zagged, I just had to turn myself visible on Discord for a little while so that if anybody was actually looking they'd see that I was most definitely not in WoW Classic that evening.

It was the sort of behavior that was absolutely not necessary, and something I very rarely do, but I did it anyway.

After all, people likely didn't give two shits about what I was doing, since they were all focused on things in Wrath Classic anyway.

***

I guess you could say that this tendency not to do what everybody else is doing is part of the reason why I did Blaugust the way I have. 

Here I am, on August 31st, the last day, and I've written a post for 31 days straight.** I swore I would stop posting if the stress got to me, but... I haven't felt any stress at all. If anything it's been relaxing, knowing that I'm under absolutely no pressure to post and keep up appearances. I didn't sign up for Blaugust because I didn't want to toot my horn and wave a flag shouting "LOOK AT ME!", which is quite ironic since this is what I'm doing in this post right now. The thing is, I'm writing this post with the knowledge that only a handful of people will ever see it, so I don't really care. 

Even if I did sign up for Blaugust, I'd be only one of 68 blogs, which is miniscule compared to the entirety of the internet, but it would be also more than twice the core readership of this particular blog. We'd be back to territory PC hasn't seen since Righteous Orbs and the Pink Pigtail Inn were active. But it would also mean that I'd have to make a decision about what I want to do with PC, given that back then there were two of us writing and Soul was actively trying to grow the blog's readership.***

If I truly wanted to market PC, I suppose I could have done so by getting on Twitter and engaging with the community more. Or commenting on more sites and blogs. Or something more than what I've been doing (which is nothing). There's no guarantee that any marketing will bring eyeballs here to the blog --or any blog-- but it is certainly better than simply not doing anything at all. What might have happened, knowing me, is that I probably wouldn't have kept at blogging for this long if I felt like I had to keep posting. Without any pressure, I can post what I want when I want to, and the schedule is my own to keep. 

In a world where it feels like everything is dictated by someone else, having complete control over something is a rare luxury.****

***

If there's one thing that I don't like, it is the concept of the hipster as tastemaker and critic. Even though I only rarely engaged with the hipster crowd, I always felt that the things I liked --and by extension myself-- were considered "less than" by them as a way to make themselves feel superior. 

And now, here I am behaving in a similar fashion to them, and if I looked deep into my own soul I have those same feelings of superiority that they do. I'm not too proud to realize that likely they, like me, are probably nursing a severe case of insecurity that is actively masked by this behavior. This does not excuse such behavior, but I do understand some of the reasons why. 

There's more to it than that, of course. There's a certain level of resentment for all of those people who have no qualms about dropping subscriptions and restarting them on a whim, because Blizz has tailored Retail around spikes in subscriptions every time there's a content patch to the point where the grindy daily systems designed to keep you logging in --and subscribed-- became the raison d'etre for how Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands were designed, even more so than the tailoring of the expac toward the highest end raiders/Mythic+ participation. 

This spiking, the ebb and flow of an expac, isn't exactly unusual. I knew people back in the 90s who would change long distance carriers at the drop of a hat if another carrier came along with a slightly better deal. Hell, people even in our neighborhood changed trash removal companies if they saved about $5 a month. (Yes, that happened.) So this is not new, but knowing that companies such as wireless carriers today still tend to prioritize --and give better deals to-- new customers over existing ones leads to a certain level of behavior among the general populace.***** 

I realize that I'm old, and that I value loyalty to my detriment, but this behavior creates additional resentment in me because these spikes in subscriptions and activity also drive the desire by the Classic Team to push content harder and faster, to keep the subs up and to get to what? Potentially Cataclysm Classic and oblivion, I suppose. If anything, I'd prefer that the Classic team slow it down, because I know the end is coming next year, and I'd like to enjoy the ride as long as I can. 

***

But I need to do better. I need to stop being small minded and resentful when I should celebrate that so many people came back. Their fun doesn't directly impact me at all --well, considering the way I play it doesn't-- so I need to stop being an accidental hipster and instead enjoy the ride. 

This isn't how I expected to end a series of Blaugust posts, because nobody likes to be a downer, but I guess the prepatch brought up some thoughts that I needed to address sooner or later, such as the impending demise of WoW Classic next year (or very early 2024).

#Blaugust2022

*That was when Bon Jovi became known as "the 'metal band' your girlfriend likes".

**Well, I have, assuming my sudden aversion to actually posting this last post and completing things doesn't override my desire to just simply get it over with. 

***I took the more cautious approach of trying to write well and actively comment on posts that interested me. By engaging people that way, I developed friendships that have lasted until this day. "Hi, Gang!!"

****If anybody wants to take a lesson from this post --aside from "don't be a hipster"-- create a blog because you have complete control over it. People can try to tell you what to do, but in the end you have control. Absolute control. 

*****AT&T was heavily promoting their change in policy last year that they would give the same deals to existing customers that they gave to new customers because it was such a departure from the norm. And before you think I approve of AT&T over other carriers, I don't. I only use AT&T because my employer pays for my service; if it were up to me, I'd use another carrier because AT&T has several dead zones less than 2 miles from my home that they are quite well aware of but have done nothing to alleviate over the past 15 years. And for the record, I most definitely do NOT live in the boonies.

EtA: Fixed grammatical issues.

A Time for Visiting

I've been helping my questing buddy out with her Mage alt, and one of the fun things I've done is to do the Marshal Windsor questline with her. Part of what made it fun was that this is only the third time I've gone through the questline, as I have so few Alliance toons at L60 or above.

This was Linna's time to shine, and she didn't disappoint.

"Just sayin'..."

This is one of those quests that the
RP walk was made for.

"Like hell you will."

He may have known it was coming,
but it still doesn't make it easy to watch.

But the Marshal Windsor questline is merely the beginning. I know where this leads, having done it twice, but I'm still amazed at how Blizz doesn't give you any clues as to where to go next. This was truly a "get out in the world and explore" questline. When I first went through this questline, I didn't fall back on Wowhead or any guides. I had already been exploring on Az, and I happened to stumble upon a lone Queldorei out in Winterspring. So when I first was given this quest, she happened to be on the list of potential suspects to complete this quest. The leads in Swamp of Sorrows and Burning Steppes didn't pan out, so I went to Winterspring. And there, Azshandra and then Cardwyn found someone who would become an old friend...

"Card is doing well, thanks.
She sends her regards."

If there's one thing that I am pleased about in Retail, it's that the Cataclysm revamp kept Haleh alive. It could have been so easy for Blizz back then to have simply eliminated her as her quests became obsolete, but she's still alive and kicking. 

And she changed her outfit, too.

So on the day of the Prepatch for Wrath Classic, it's good to visit some old friends that have survived until today.

#Blaugust2022

Fate and Circumstance

(The genesis of this story was provided by my questing buddy, who was inspired by the Wrath Classic Beta Test. She provided part of the story as well as the overall plot, and I filled in the rest and edited the overall story. As the two of us collaborated on the entire thing, she and I share the authors' credit for the tale.

I wanted to release this before the Wrath Classic pre-patch, but trying to fit in the last bit of editing while being knee deep in Blaugust 2022 wasn't exactly the smartest thing I've ever done. Still, it's finished, and here it is. 

Some final notes: This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Honest! Any characters created by Blizzard for WoW Classic, TBC Classic, and Wrath Classic remain their property. This work of fiction uses WoW Classic, TBC Classic, and Wrath Classic as the reference points, no other version of WoW. This was written by Redbeard of Parallel Context and Zargala-Myzrael, 2022.)

Fate and Circumstance
By Redbeard and Zargala

“Okay Lewys, once your mom uses the paddle to move the bread to the edge of the oven,” I instructed, nodding at Karyn who nudged a golden-brown loaf over, “then it’s your turn.”

My nephew Lewys stood atop a chair in the kitchen, knitted his brow in concentration, and whispered the short poem I gave him. We’d been practicing for this moment for a couple of weeks, and now all I could do was wait. I bit my lip as I stood behind him, watching helplessly as wisps of the arcane came to life and swirled around us. He finished, reached for the bread, and dropped it into the cloth covered basket beside him.

“I did it!” he shouted, jumping up and down on the chair. “It was just like you said, Aunt Cardwyn! Once I got done with the poem the bread was cool enough to move!”

“You sure did, kiddo,” I exhaled, grabbing him from behind and ruffling his hair. “It’s all in the patience and the poem. Do you think you can now help your mom and Grandmama out on baking day?”

“Yeah!” Lewys turned toward my brother’s wife and gave her a hug. “Mom, I did it! Woo!”

“Good job, Lewys!” Karyn smiled with relief as she set the paddle down and returned the hug. She then looked over at me with a question in her eyes.

“He certainly did it,” I echoed and nodded.

“Good,” Mom replied, tapping her foot. “Then the two of you can help us finish up faster.”

“Well,” I said, scraping my foot on the floor, “I don’t want to take away the job I just gave him.”

“Okay then, maybe you should go check to see if something needs doing, like turning the manure.”

“Mom!”

“Caaard!” she replied, a grin spreading across her face.

I sighed. No matter how old I got, I was always going to be her kid. “Okay, okay, I’ll go check it out. But Lewys,” I added, turning back to my nephew, “remember to whisper the poem after your mom moves the loaves over, okay? It’s all in the timing.”

“Got it, Aunt Cardwyn! You go turn that manure!”

“Uh… Right.” That kid was picking up all sorts of bad habits from Mom.

A Collection of Guild Names, Part Deux

I've been collecting more guild names that provided me amusement, so I'm ready to unleash a few more on unsuspecting readers.

What did you think it was gonna
taste like?

You know, if you have to put it
in your guild name, odds are...

Uh.... "Moistly"?

Meh. I kind of like the dead
servers over the Soyent Green
servers, myself.

"Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requim..."
::thwack::

Found the guild that
Shaquille O'Neal is a member of.

"Hello there!!"

I guess "Girls Gone Wild"
was taken...

Oh, the feels.

Hey, an Oingo Boingo fan!

David Hasselhoff and
Pam Anderson play Classic?
Who knew?

And here I am, merely
bad by accident....

An Our Gang fan club? Wow!

Here.... /hug

Sure.... Everybody's 
a critic....

#Blaugust2022

Swimming Against the Tide

It kind of goes without saying that I found this Josh Strife Hayes video interesting.

The entire point of his video, that you shouldn't make players go through a slog just to be able to play and do group content together, is a pretty sound one. And that entire slog, as found in Retail and Classic, is the reason why boosting exists.

Of course, boosting by various methods also becomes a problem --as Josh points out-- because you don't learn how to play your class, never mind your role, in group content. 

When people asked me why I wasn't boosting my Shaman Briganaa via instances, I said that I needed to learn how to play a Shaman, and leveling one the old fashioned way allowed me to learn by doing. Now, with Wrath Classic imminent, I've decided to re-learn how to be a Paladin that way as well. The Paladin changes from TBC to Wrath are significant enough that trying to figure them out like I kinda sorta did with a boosted Linna isn't ideal for me. I kept fumbling around for a while until I finally figured it out, and even then I was reluctant to take Linna into instances because I didn't know how well I'd be handling things.*

Learning how to play your class is important, and MMOs do that in spades by peppering low level content with quests designed to teach. For example, the undead troll quests in The Ghostlands are a Blood Elf player's first opportunity to encounter the "don't stand in the bad" mechanic**. The Deadmines expose a player to mobs, adds, and even adds that come from behind after a boss kill, so you never really get a chance to just hang back for a moment or three. Ragefire Chasm exposes a player to a "good luck trying to find your way" dungeon that becomes more important in places such as Maraudon.***

The problem is... well... players in MMOs such as WoW have learned their lessons too well. The horse has left the barn, and players who are interested in the journey rather than the end aren't the focus of MMOs. I may agree with Josh that MMOs should focus on putting raids and dungeons in the hands of lower level players, but the player base doesn't seem to care. Or at least enough of them don't for developers to make it worth their while.

#Blaugust2022

*Even then, when I finally started going into instances I still got called out by someone saying "You should use Seal twisting as Ret!" My response to that little editorial comment was "If you get it exactly right, you get a boost to DPS. If you don't it's a waste of mana." Which is the truth. Unlike totem twisting for an Enhance Shaman, seal twisting in a Retribution Paladin is very much a thing for the highly skilled player only, and even Icy Veins' guides mention that it is an advanced tactic and difficult to pull off. After my retort the player shut up about seal twisting, but I could tell that he didn't like that I wasn't doing 'all the things' necessary to be the best. If you play MMOs long enough you can just tell; even though body language isn't a thing in MMOs, there are subtle cues.

**I did not pass that first test. Just sayin'.

***Alas that Blizz went away from dungeons that just sprawled out and were their own thing. There was a huge adventure behind places such as Maraudon, Blackrock Depths, and Blackrock Spire. A true city, such as Blackrock Depths, that could take well over an hour (sometimes close to 3 hours) to clear. It was players first and then canonized by Blizz that those dungeons were broken up into what they've become today. 

It Happens Every August

Our FF XIV player heads back to college* today.

He brings with him some Warhammer minis to paint and run stuff with --which he discovered was very cheap overseas when he spent six months in England studying abroad**-- some Starfinder splatbooks my sister-in-law's husband gave him to give to a friend of my son's, and a poster book of FF XIV art.

Yes, he's gonna have FF XIV art on his walls, right next to his flag of Bavaria and posters for other things.

Now that I've finished embarrassing him --he does read the blog-- I hope he has a great time his senior year.

And maybe I'll get off my ass and give FF XIV a try. It won't be my main --pretty sure Classic will still be that-- but it's something to look forward to. I actually created a Lancer on a server, courtesy of me having spent time reading Alfred Lord Tennyson's poetry*** recently, now I need to actually follow up with it. 

Catch you on the flip side, bud.

#Blaugust2022

*Literally a college: Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

**He discovered they were so cheap that he bought some minis and shipped them back home here in the States and they were still cheaper than buying them here.

***Why, you may ask? Tsk tsk...

Just One of Those Days

There are days when a meme just sums up what you're feeling....

Yeah, I had one of those days of
existential dread about how
Dragonflight would work out.
From memegenerator.net
via World of Warcraft Memes FB group.

#Blaugust2022

Of Course It Would be Armor

Some days I struggle finding things to write about. Other days I know what to write about but simply have no time to do so.

And then there are days like today, where I'm reading things in the morning and a topic --or two or three-- literally appear right before my eyes.

Okay, maybe not the best choice of words.
(From YouTube, That Works' channel.)

The kernel of this post came from a comment I made on this post by Bhagpuss, wondering about why so many Asian MMOs and RPGs have women/girls in frilly skirts/dresses. in the mini discussion that followed, Bhagpuss pointed out that it's pretty much a trope among Asian video games akin to chainmail bikinis among Western MMOs/RPGs, and why should I be taking it seriously anyway*?

I never miss a chance to bring out the old chestnut from Collegehumor, but my mind immediately went from the ubiquitous chainmail bikini to its cousin, boob plate.

This looks better than my copy.
From amazon.com.

Precisely ten days later, the princess, with Durnik once again in tow, returned to Delban's workshop. The mail shirt the craftsman had fashioned was so light that it could have almost have been described as delicate. The helmet, hammered from thin steel, was surmounted with a white plume and was encircled with a gold crown. The greaves, which were to protect the legs, fit to perfection. There was even an embossed shield rimmed with brass and a light sword with an ornate hilt and scabbard.

Ce'Nedra, however, was staring disapprovingly at the breastplate Delban had made for her. It would quite obviously fit--too well. "Didn't you forget something?" she asked him.

He picked up the breastplate up with his big hands and examined it. "It's all there," he told her. "Front, back, all the straps to hook them together. What else did you want?"

"Isn't it a trifle--understated?" she suggested delicately.

"It's made to fit," he replied. "The understatement isn't my fault."

"I want it a little more--" She made a sort of curving gesture with her hands.

"What for?"

"Never mind what for. Just do it."

"What do you plan to put in it?"

"That's my business. Just do it the way I told you to."

He tossed a heavy hammer down on his anvil. "Do it yourself," he told her bluntly.

"Durnik," Ce'Nedra appealed to the smith.

"Oh, no, princess," Durnik refused. "I don't touch another man's tools. It just isn't done."

--From Castle of Wizardry, by David Eddings, pg. 315.

Trying to make sense of boob plate armor --outside of the simple aesthetics of the matter, which are to emphasize a woman's chest-- you kind of have to go into the historical record. Oh, not that a lot of women fought in wars in ancient history, but what armor was supposed to represent. After all, in ancient history, we have this sort of breastplate too:

This bronze cuirass dates
from the 4th Century BCE.
From The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
there's even an audio description!

So it's not that unusual to see ancient breastplates made in (male) heroic proportions. But of course, that's not the reason why in F&SF art you find the boob plate: something something something sexy.

I'm not one to deny that it can make a woman look sexy, because I'd be foolish to say otherwise. As opposed to the chainmail bikini, at least it's on the "protective armor" side of the spectrum, but not as far on the spectrum as armor meant to be protective from the start yet also accommodate a woman's build**, such as this modern piece:

This is Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the US Army
surgeon general (in 2013), trying on the new
tactical vest specifically designed for the
female physique. From an army.mil article.

As you can see, not sexy, but damn impressive and practical.

***

But just how protective is boob plate anyway? 

While the intent from an artistic standpoint*** is to emphasize that the person is a) a woman and b) sexiness, as a practical matter does it protect the wearer? Or is it, as some have asserted, worse than wearing no armor at all?

I think of the assertion as a bit of a straw man, because boob plate that covers the abdomen --and along with other pieces the arms, legs, and head-- are obviously better than no armor at all. The question isn't that, but whether creating artificially enhanced metal boobs actually weaken the armor in the breast area and provide a false sense of security.

Well...

Let's just say that you can go down the rabbit hole on this subject and spend a lot of time on research.****

Okay, let's get started here.

There's historical precedent --as I demonstrated above-- for male attributes to make it into armor. I'd forgotten about the codpiece (I know, get thee to a Renaissance Festival) but I'd also forgotten that in Medieval times a small waist among men was considered ideal, and guess what made it into Medieval armor? Yes, the small waist. 

So if more women did fight in Medieval times than the historical record shows, odds would have been good that armor would have been made to emphasize certain aspects of female anatomy. 

Now, about boob plate...

As Shad pointed out in this episode of Shadiversity, the complaint about boob plate funneling strikes into the sternum would have to also be applied to that small waist, where two separate metal plates intersected, which would have actually been more dangerous than boob plate made of a single piece of hardened steel. 

However, there's a big caveat: both areas would have been made of hardened steel, which is still pretty damned strong. So an attacker would attempt to hit areas where there wasn't any hardened steel instead. If an attacker were using a polearm --a pike or lance, for example-- then the "weak points" wouldn't matter, because the blunt force that such a big weapon would deliver would hit home whether or not it struck the boob plate.

(I know, kind of obvious in retrospect.)

Understanding the historical aesthetics behind armor is also important, and here's a relatively long video expounding on that from That Works:

Considering the sex appeal inherent in historical armor that we never see because we see the pieces through modern eyes, it is entirely feasible that in a Fantasy world where women fight and have power, they too would wear armor that demonstrates such power via sexuality. 

That's not to say that Fantasy armor as seen in art is, uh, realistic at all. And we're not talking codpiece level of snickering, but a whole other level of "you gotta be kidding me". Like so...

Yep, someone we'll be seeing a lot
of, starting next month. And don't
even think about calling her a barbarian.
But Neve certainly recognizes those Wanderer
Stitched Trousers. From Wowhead.

By comparison, some of my own toons are just fine the way they are. I've no problem seeing Shereleth like this:

Standing next to an honor guard at
Vivec City. The armor is actually
the Frostedge Bandit Disguise,
you get for a quest in the Dunmer
faction's starting area. I just liked it so
well that I've kept it all this time.

Or Briganaa:

The accents to the armor are designed
to draw the eye to the chest, which
is fine. It's a thing, and actually
more understated than a codpiece.

Or Linnawyn:

Even though it's more boob plate,
it's understatedly so. Don't
mess with the Knight of the Silver Hand.

But.... No...

Josh Strife Hayes described TERA as
feeling "like you've invaded a Victoria's Secret
Fashion Show and given everyone a giant
medieval weapon and one girl you've
given a massive SciFi laser cannon."

But I think this is the real reason why people bitch so much about boob plate:

Yep. From dailydot.

And they're not wrong. Give female toons the option of ridiculous boob plate/chainmail bikinis or boob plate on "normal" armor, and there's nary a complaint. It's the lack of options between the two that's the problem.

#Blaugust2022

*That "why I should take it seriously" is a topic for another time.

**This reminds me of big innovations that Cincinnati Children's Hospital and other children's hospitals around the country are making toward medical equipment that fit children's sizes. For the longest time, people simply thought they could make adult sized equipment small and that would fit children, but it turned out not to be the case. Hence, the ongoing research on the matter is hugely important. In fact, this research came in handy when the Cincinnati Zoo reached out to Cincinnati Children's to help in saving the life of Fiona, the hippo born six weeks premature, back in 2017. Be warned, you can spend a ton of time on YouTube watching Fiona's story. (I know from experience.)

***And yes, the male gaze. I'm not a dummy, you know.

****Okay, Rule #0 is that men forget that women's breasts don't behave like someone attached rubber balls to their chest. If nothing else, this is where having sisters --or mothers who aren't so freaking uptight that they don't even want to fart while being in the vicinity of their sons-- is a godsend. And yes, my mom was that uptight: the biggest laugh my (now) wife ever had was when one time we were some place and she happened to rip one, and I had a look of disbelief on my face. 

"What?" she asked.

"I didn't know women could fart," I replied.

"WHAT??!!"

"My mom never farted."

My wife practically collapsed on the floor laughing. "I can tell you that yes, women do fart, and yes, your mom did too," she replied while gasping for air. "She was just so anal retentive that she hid it all the time!"

EtA: Really? A "they're/there/their" error? Sheesh.