It All Blurs Together

There are times when "I hit it with my axe!" is the best way forward.

--Me (probably)

"I hit it with my axe! Wooo!!"

--Youngest mini-Red, in our 2-3x annual 1e AD&D game, as she in turn high fived one of our fellow party members. Yes, both women play Dwarven Fighters. Are you surprised?

If you listen to people talk about Retail WoW after having been away for a while* you can get absolutely lost in all of the systems and designs in the modern game. 

You don't say....

Returning to Classic WoW as a refuge from the complexity is an illusion, as those devoted to the min/max culture brought that back with them to Classic where it has morphed into its own culture in the Wrath Classic servers.**

Every time I think about trying out Retail, I read some blog posts or watch a YouTube video and --story complaints notwithstanding-- I get lost when people start talking about the various systems in game. When I also realize that unless I want to pay Blizzard extra money I'd have to go through Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands to get to Dragonflight, I just kind of shudder at all of the complexity those two expacs introduced. 

If you've been playing the game straight through, that's one thing. After all, the systems and whatnot are gradually added over time. It's when you go away for years and then come back do you realize just how crazy things have gotten. 

***

There was a time when I was the one who preferred the complex over the "easy to learn and hard to master" method of game design. Back in the early 90s, when I was knee deep in games such as Squad Leader, War and Peace, and Battle of the Bulge, an old high school acquaintance invited me to playtest a boardgame he and some mutual acquaintances were working on. 

This was the sort of thing that I played
back then, which is Victory Games' Ambush!, 
a solitaire WW2 wargame.
From Jonathan Arnold of Board Game Geek.

Their game was set in the Star Trek universe, where up to three players were fighting over control of a specific doohickey using several starships each. The three factions --Federation, Klingons, and Romulans***-- were pretty much equal in overall strength and movement.

"Is this like Star Fleet Battles?" I asked.

"No," my friend replied. "That's too complex. We're aiming more for Axis and Allies."

Okay, I thought. Let's give it a try.

The game had potential, but I felt that they lost something with the rules as simple as they were. "The various ships with their number rating is fine," I began, "but have you thought about two numbers, one for attack and one for defense? That'll allow you to have more and different types of starships out there."

"We're not doing any of that Avalon Hill bullshit," one of the team snapped back at me. "That crap is too hard and we want this to get a wide audience."

After that, I realized that they weren't really planning on taking my advice to heart, so I just kept it basic with some generally positive feedback and then found an excuse to leave rather early. 

The irony is that not only am I the one who prefers simple systems to more complex ones these days, the so-called "simple systems" found in WoW's Classic Era are far more complex than what I proposed back then. Computers have a habit of condensing complexity to manageable levels, after all.

***

Kirk: Galloping about the cosmos is a game for the young, Doctor.
Uhura: Now what is THAT supposed to mean?

--From Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

That's not to say that complexity is bad by any means. If you know going in how complex things are, and if said complexity is presented well, the complexity isn't necessarily a problem. The thing is, if complexity is gradually added to over the course of years, you may not realize just how complex things had gotten until said complexity becomes overwhelming.

Or in my case, poking my nose into World of Warcraft after a decade away.

I like to use the Blood Elf starting areas up to and including The Ghostlands as a great way to introduce someone into the various systems of WoW --well, TBC-era WoW-- in a gradual fashion. The build up includes things such as timed events, escort quests, mobs with AoE damage, mobs that chain pull, and mobs that drop the "don't stand in the bad" stuff. In the end, you even have opportunities for grouping up for the two abomination elites as well as Dar'Khan Drathir, but along with everything else that got nerfed in Cataclysm those grouping opportunities were obliterated as well.**** That basic introduction carried my original toons all the way up to max level in original Wrath of the Lich King, because that foundation was utilized and built upon from the beginning. 

From what I've read, the brand new intro zone provided in Shadowlands (Exile's Reach) does a great job of providing a new player a way of learning the basics of WoW, but what ends up happening is that those basics get thrown out the window once you reach high enough level to hit the various expansions.

Not that people can't utilize the basics of "don't stand in the bad", but that you're not exposed to the systems found in the expacs until you reach those expacs.

Like, oh, say, Legion.

Or Shadowlands.

Or even Dragonflight.

Existing players may not notice it at all, or may even think it a new quirk of the current expansion, but players who had been away for years --or are new-- will notice. That wasn't always the case, as the systems found in TBC Classic and Wrath Classic --flying and membership in Scryers/Aldor being the notable exceptions-- are also found in Vanilla Classic.***** 

After a while, all that bait-and-switch complexity just blurs together and makes you feel like an idiot for not understanding it all. If that doesn't happen on its own, the loudmouth toxic aspects of the WoW community certainly will do that for you.

"LOL L2P noob!"
From Memebase via Pinterest.

***

The thing is, sometimes all you want to do is hit an enemy with your axe. Which brings me to Diablo 4.

I'm moderately interested in Diablo 4, but to my mind as someone who never played the Diablo franchise I'd first want to play Diablo 2# and then 3 before finally setting my foot into Diablo 4. 

If that sounds vaguely familiar to long time readers of the blog, that's the process I used to approach Retail WoW with, starting in Cataclysm. I'd select a toon or two and then level those new toon(s) from L1 all the way to max level when the new expansion dropped. This meant that the crowd had already cleared to max level, begun their raiding, and were sitting in Trade Chat complaining that they were bored before I even killed my first mob in the new areas. It also gave me a chance to experience the game as it was presented, whether that presentation was purposely intended or not.

In the case of Diablo, I'm not one to replay RPGs ad nauseum --because replaying and releveling to the end at increased difficulty levels doesn't engage me-- so if I wanted to try those games out I'd wait for a massive sale## and then purchase those games at the price that reflects the worth of a single playthrough rather than a steady stream of replays for.... whatever reason. 

(I suspect that the "replay" concept of Diablo arose because people would replay the game while they waited for Diablo 3 and then Diablo 4 to be announced and released. Now, it's just... part of how the game is played.)

Nevertheless, when I watch Diablo 4 YouTube videos, what I'm struck by are how much Diablo 4 and World of Warcraft have blurred together, terminology wise. People talking about Affixes, grinding for Renown, and the various Seasons could be talking about either game, really. Add in World Bosses and dungeon grinding, and you'd have a hard time distinguishing discussions between the two games if you weren't looking at the screen.

That does highlight something that I never thought I'd ever have to contend with in an Action RPG such as Diablo: just how much complexity from WoW has bled over into Diablo? I mean, "I hit it with my axe" is pretty much the hallmark of the Diablo playstyle, but if you have to pay attention to all of this other crap just to play the game to completion, what's the point? What else is out there, that if you missed a specific item you were doomed to not playing the game right and that you had to start over? 

We've all experienced this feeling before,
which makes you wonder why you spent
all this time in the first place.
From Gamerant.

Kind of like that ol' Diamond Flask for Warriors in WoW Classic. If you didn't know that was a BiS item for Warriors in Classic/Classic Era, and you missed out on selecting it as the reward from the Voodoo Feathers quest, then you were simply shit outta luck.

L2P noob indeed.

***

In the end, complexity is an aftereffect of how long a game has been in existence. All games will, over time, become more and more complex as additions are made to the base game. Hell, just look at all the additions to the various incarnations of Sid Meier's Civilization over the years. The thing is, just how the game implements that complexity and builds up to that complexity is critically important. 

And that is something that Blizzard's properties need to work more extensively on.

*Such as, oh, 9 years from the date of this post but effectively 12 years.

**You can just opt out of this culture, as I kind of have, but that only goes so far. Even I partake in the min/max-ing culture whenever I fire up sixtyupgrades.com to see if a specific piece of gear is an upgrade or not. Still, Classic Era has been a true refuge from the meta driven culture found in Wrath Classic.

***They were most definitely old school in that they hated Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was the only one who regularly watched ST:TNG, and even then I stopped watching by my Junior year of college.

****I'm pretty sure I soloed Dar'Khan during the Cataclysm expansion on a Horde toon at level, and maybe even soloed the abominations as well.

*****I want to point out that membership in Aldor or Scryers was entirely optional in TBC. You'd think it was required, but I managed to simply ignore it on Deuce while leveling her and never had any issues with that. Of course, I wasn't going to raid, so that meant I wasn't gaining access to any Scryer or Aldor specific crafting recipes, but since I could just buy those if I needed them it wasn't a big deal per se. Flying in TBC wasn't mandatory if you weren't planning on raiding or accessing the Tempest Keep 5-person dungeons, as my old TBC Classic main --Briganaa-- didn't gain access to flying until some days after hitting max level and I absolutely was required to enter into those Tempest Keep instances for attunements. But Deuce, like before, skipped flying entirely until she finally had to bite the bullet and get it at L80 in Northrend. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that Neve still doesn't have flying in Wrath Classic, and she's been at L80 for a long time now. It's... just not a priority for me in the same way that I don't have a single toon in the entirety of Wrath Classic that has epic flying. Somewhere I can hear the collective mass of Wrath players screaming at the audacity to simply not give a fuck about flying anywhere fast.

#I mean, good luck trying to get Diablo 1 to work, if you can find a (legal) copy at all.

##Oh, the irony. I wrote this over the weekend, and between then and now the Blizzard Summer Sale appeared, with D2: Resurrected at 67% off and the entire D3 franchise at 26% off. To be honest, I wasn't expecting this sale right now --more like in November/December-- and my budget is kind of shot to hell with car repairs and my oldest getting her wisdom teeth yanked, so I'll likely pass on D2.

So Here's a Toast

 As I've alluded to over the past few months, my questing buddy has continued to raid in Wrath Classic by joining a Friday night semi-pug put on by a mutual friend of ours. I call it a "semi-pug" because it has a regular group of about 10-15 people and they pug the rest of the spots. Initially the pug was for a full size 25 person raid, but after enough failed raids due to puggers simply not having the gear or the basic skills needed to understand things like "don't stand in fire", the raid lead dropped the pug down to a 10 person raid so that the regulars could get the gear they need to once again ramp up to a 25 person raid.

So... For the past month, that 10 person raid has pretty much worked according to plan. The raid has been getting clears of Ulduar, which my questing buddy was thinking she wasn't going to see at all given how the 25 person raids had been going. That doesn't mean they've gotten to Algalon, because they've not met the requirements for that*, but they have been downing Yogg-Saron regularly now.

I've been proud of her given that she's new to healing for this expac, and I know from experience that she's gotten really good at it. Part of this is that she attacks the game like a puzzle to be solved, figuring out how to get the BiS gear she needs, and picking the brains of people she knows and respects who are better at healing than her.**

That she does this with three kids --and their associated demands on her time-- is even more impressive.

(And have I mentioned that she puts up with my quirks and foibles? I'd not blame her if she threw up her hands and declared "You're impossible!!" but she just keeps hanging in there.)

The two of us back in early January,
when we were clowning around
in Shattrath before raid time.

So on the eve of the Trial of the Crusader raid, here's to my questing buddy and her success!

*Whatever those requirements are. No, I'm not going to look it up, because when our 10 person raid team broke up I simply stopped caring at that point. Okay, that's not entirely true, because I didn't care all that much to begin with in Wrath Classic, as I was determined to not do what I did in TBC Classic and go all hardcore about it. For me, that meant only giving just as much of a damn about raiding as would pass the minimum requirements to actually get into the raid. (I think I can hear my questing buddy screaming, because for her part of the love of the game is all the plotting for gear.) I know enough about the cadence of raiding that it typically takes a few tries to get the positioning and whatnot correct, and unless you're hardcore enough to get into the PTR to practice, those first attempts "to work out the kinks" will be on live servers.

**This does spill over into Classic Era, too, as she'll frequently drag me along when I'd be more inclined to simply just screw around and fish or something in game. That's how we discovered we could two person significant portions of Gnomeregan as Hunter and Mage at level, and the same with Scarlet Monastery: Library and Uldaman.

Meme Monday: Free RPG Day Memes

You know what's coming up on Saturday, June 24th?

Free RPG Day.

Yes, that annual event designed to grow gaming, where people can visit their local game store and pick up an "introductory" or "sample" RPG to a game they've never tried before. If you want to see if there's a FLGS near you that is participating in Free RPG Day, head onto the official website and take a look.

And in honor of Free RPG Day, here's a few RPG memes to make you chuckle and snicker...

For some people it takes a few
minutes to properly get into character.
From Pinterest.

This is the same reason why my cleric
back in college chose Blind-Fighting
as a specialty: because I wanted to.
And you bet your ass it sure came in handy!
From Joe Jusko.

Oh, for pete's sake... okay, I'll give it a try.
Elwsgas. Elwsgas? WTF name is THAT??!!
Sounds like some disease I'd take Gas-X for!!!
From Fyxt RPG.

Uh oh.
From ifunny.co.

Ha! That happened to our game group
recently, although the intelligent sword
told the Minotaur that picked it up to "get lost".
From facebook.com/RPGenerations.

And one bonus meme:

Fueling the imagination
of the next generation.
From imgflip.

How Did the EU End Up Being the Odd One Out?

That's the question I have when both the UK and now the US' Federal Trade Commission are suing to block the Microsoft acquisition of Blizzard.

Typically the EU is the one these days who is less of a paper tiger for mergers/acquisitions than the UK and US are, but I suppose that everybody is allowed an outlier.

Or maybe the EU plays more Diablo 4 than we guessed.

Meme Monday: Miscellaneous Memes Once More

Since I didn't have a specific theme lined up, I figured that another miscellaneous collection would suffice. Besides, I had a bunch of memes that didn't exactly fit into the themes I'd been using, so....

Even back when I played Darklands on PC
in the early 90s, I'd save gold by avoiding
the inns. From Pinterest.

Alas, I do understand that.
I hate that I can understand it, but
yes, I do understand that.
From ResetEra.

Given that Diablo 4 and Tears of the Kingdom
were both released, this is surely applicable. 
Not restricted to girlfriends, however; my
questing buddy was monopolizing their
copy of Tears of the Kingdom initially.
From... uh... I can't remember.

And subverting the sexy armor meme,
Niels Vergouwen... (Thanks, Niels!)

Beware Alignments

Yes, I'm aware that Bioware (well, EA) is selling Star Wars: The Old Republic to Broadsword. On the face of it, this sure sounds like the game is going into maintenance mode in the same fashion that Rift has been placed, but at least Broadsword isn't Gamigo. Some devs are heading to Broadsword from Bioware, and it sounds like Broadsword is basically two turntables and a microphone as far as development staff is concerned. That means that the SWTOR team will effectively move their culture over, lock stock and barrel, to Broadsword.

Given that I tend to play the "vanilla" areas of SWTOR with little interest in new content, I'm okay with that. (It would be nice if the devs brought out "Classic SWTOR" servers, but that's just me.)

However, one cautionary flag I noted were all of the comments here and there on the internet about how the SWTOR staff is moving to a place that aligns with their interests. Upon reading that, I twitched. You see, back in the early 2000s my division was outsourced to an IT outsourcing firm, and part of the justification in that outsourcing from my company's owners was that we would be in a place where our work is their primary business. Our careers would be better aligned with that new company, we were told, as we would not be a "back office" job but rather a core competency of our new company's staffing.

I said it then, and I'll say it now: that was a huge fucking load of horseshit. 

That was so much horseshit I could have been selling bags of manure for years.

The first thing that "new company" did was get all of everybody's workload and compensation, and then cut said compensation by turning everybody into to salaried employees. Then they began cutting people left and right to "align with the need to bring the account into the black".  Finally, they began offshoring positions overseas; first to Costa Rica, then to India and Indonesia, and finally to the Philippines.*

From makeameme.org.

In the case of history repeating itself, 14 years later our division was once again outsourced from that IT firm to yet another IT firm, and we were fed the exact same lines of crap about how our work would "better align" with the new firm. 

Guess what happened once we got settled into the new company?

From Digital Mom blog.

So yeah, I don't believe that bullshit for a single minute. And neither should the SWTOR devs.

If there is a silver lining to this, it's that Bioware will now have nothing to stand on other than their single player games that they've been doing just so damn well with. I mean, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem were just fantastic releases, except for those damn SWTOR devs, amirite?

*When the Philippines office opened up, people on my team from India were suddenly concerned for their jobs, because the Philippines personnel were paid a fraction of their salaries, and they were underpaid compared to other IT companies in India.

Meme Monday: Satanic Panic Memes

Okay, so there's this game that's officially releasing to the public this week --yes yes, I know that if you paid extra you can get access now-- and it has a certain element to it.

A Satanic element to it, which is something I'm kind of familiar with:

Yes, this was a real newspaper clipping.
From Patheos.

So I figured, hey, let's make a little trip down memory lane and dredge up some memes about the ol' Satanic Panic? After all, they touch on all the bases I was familiar with back in the day: Heavy Metal, D&D, ostracized nerdy teens, etc. For those of you who didn't get to experience it firsthand, because you weren't in (or in the vicinity of) The Bible Belt, or your church didn't have an Evangelical bent to it, allow me to say it first: YOU LUCKY BASTARDS.

Yeah, it sure felt like this.
From Reddit.

This is also back in the day when
Tolkien's world was viewed as being
satanic as well. Nowadays, that's
considered "being cute".
From Reddit again.

Yes, some parents considered
Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers
to be Satanic, because they dared
to educate kids without beating them
up from time to time. From imgflip.

Okay, I laughed my ass off at this one.
If I had a dollar for all the times my 
parents tossed me outside to "go play"...
From 9GAG.

And one bonus meme, flipping the ol' D&D thing on its head:

From Scott Metzger via Reddit.
Something tells me Reddit didn't
ask for permission.

It's That Shark Music Again...

'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.' 

--From 1984 by George Orwell. Part 3, Chapter 5.

I think I have discovered what my deepest, darkest fear is. 

No, not her. Sorry, this isn't a Diablo post.
From diablo4.com.

And no, it isn't missing out on raids. I get that this is primarily a gaming blog, but come on.

In the realm of nightmare scenarios, I could have chosen family related events such as watching my kids or wife die, existential fears such as nuclear war or a pandemic far more deadly than Covid-19 was, or even personal fears such as losing my job, getting cancer, or causing us to get kicked out of our home. However, it is a particular subset of the dreaded loss of control that I fear the most.

The aftereffects of a stroke.

I've seen it happen to my father, when he had surgery back in 2002 or so. He had a brain tumor that needed removal, so the surgery process was to pop out an eye*, go in through the front where the tumor was, and remove it. With luck, they'd get the whole thing in one swoop and put the eye back in place. No fuss, no muss. (Relatively speaking.)

So we waited around at the hospital for hours on end as the surgery progressed, and sometime about 6 hours after he was wheeled into surgery the surgeon emerged to speak with us. The process was a success, he said, and all of the tumor was removed and sent to determine its malignancy.** However, there was a catch: when they began to bring him out of the deep anesthesia he suffered a stroke. It wasn't unusual for that to happen, he informed us, and they caught it early and were able to administer drugs to control the stroke. However, he said, we'll have to watch him and how he recovers.

The first thing I noticed was that Dad sounded like he was on speed. 

There was absolutely no filter on him at all: whatever popped into his head came right out of his mouth. It was a completely unrestrained Id for all to see. The nurses were used to this sort of thing, but watching it in action was disheartening. 

He used to listen to Soft Rock / Yacht Rock, so on the way home from the hospital I put on some old Sting (Nothing Like the Sun) and about one or two songs in he told me "That's just crap; turn it off." Given that he used to listen to this music for hours on end shocked me, but I took it in stride.

Then, when I kept him company while my mom got some medication for him, he angrily blurted, "I heard you tell your brother that I'm on speed."

WTF and holy shit.

I made a mental note to explain things better to my brother, and informed my dad that it was more like he didn't have speed bumps; your words are just falling all over each other in a rush to come out.

He grunted and subsided. I doubted he suddenly gained control of his Id, so it was likely he had nothing to say.

We got him home, and the next day my mom informed me that it was a rough night, where he was ranting and raving about this and that or how my mom wasn't doing things right or whatever popped into his head. I think I should be glad I wasn't there, because I might have had trouble being so understanding, which would have done nobody any good.

Eventually my dad recovered, but he was a changed man. He became far more impulsive than ever before, and he did lose the ability to write or sign his name. Some complex concepts were no longer within his grasp, and we had to keep an eye on whether he might just up and decide to go somewhere and not tell anyone while he was out in a group.

But for me, those first several days were like watching a nightmare unfolding in real life.

***

I realize that the unrestrained Id is a kind of terrifying thing to behold; the Id just absorbs things, churns them around, tosses in pure volatility and emotion, and spews out words or thoughts without consideration of consequences. (Kind of like Twitter, only worse.) But we as functioning humans have control over our Id and keep it from carpet bombing everything with napalm. Maybe some have greater control than others, but the point is still the same: to function in society you have to rein in your worst impulses.

"There's a time and a place for certain discussions."

"Don't burn your bridges."

"No, you can't have that right now. Control yourself."

It's all well and good, until something happens and our control is lost.

Like a stroke.

Or Dementia.

And then suddenly all those thoughts that your mind says "That's bullshit --and you know it-- and you're not saying that," suddenly stand up and cheer and head for the nearest exit (your mouth).

THAT is what I'm terrified of.

***

When I had my "old man procedure" last year, I was put in a semi-comatose state while the stereotypical rectal probe checked me out. The docs may say I was semi-comatose, but for all intents and purposes I was out like a light. When I finally came to***, the nurse and my wife informed me that I was yammering on and on about checking the mail, and whether the mail had come this morning or not. 

I have absolutely no memory of this at all, and I don't know why my brain popped that particular thing out of my mouth.

My wife and the nurse were amused by my performance, but I wasn't.

I mean, what if I'd said something else, such as sharing intimate details of my dating or married life? Or what I thought of the attractive neighbor next door who had the personality of the Wicked Witch of the West? Or what I really thought about some of my ex-coworkers? Or details about private conversations among some of my closest friends online? Or.... You get the idea.

I'd like to think that somehow my brain would step in and keep things from getting out of hand, but I know better. Under the right circumstances the best thing for people standing nearby is to put on a raincoat and galoshes, because the shit will be flying fast and heavy.

Maybe it's about the image I project, or the face I put to the world. Losing all sense of control and just spewing whatever would be a nightmarish blow to my self image. I mean, I'm not egotistical about it, but I do take pride in doing the right thing and presenting an example for others. I know I'm not perfect --oh crap, do I know that-- but I believe in setting a good example for people to follow. I can't look my kids in the eye and tell them to do things the right way if I don't try to follow it myself. "Represent," is what I said to my kids when they wore clothing with their school name on it, "You are representing your school whether you like it or not, and people will judge others from your school based on your behavior."**** In the same way, people will judge me based on how I behave, so I try to keep myself under control as much as possible.

And that loss of control throws that concept out the window.

***

So there you have it. My greatest fear isn't even fear of heights, which I do happen to have, but something far more existential in nature. I'd have likely never even realized it were it not for my dad's experience with a brain tumor, but once unleashed that fear can never be quite compartmentalized as much as I'd prefer. 

It's like a Rogue in a battleground, always sneaking along out there and ready to strike when you least expect it.

*Yes, I still shudder at that part.

**It was benign, but rapidly growing, so it was very much a good thing that all of it was removed.

***Yes, everything checked out fine. The doc said "While I was down there, I figured I'd check your prostate too, and you're okay. See you in a decade." I could almost hear the snap of the latex gloves on his hands when he said "I checked your prostate" and shuddered.

****This is a reason why I prefer to not wear clothes with logos or drive a car with bumper stickers or whatnot on them. I like the anonymity, and I know how people judge others.

EtA: Fixed a grammatical quirk and a conjunction.

EtA: Fixed yet another grammatical error. Sheesh.

The Critic's Nightmare

I came to a realization last weekend while I sat in the audience and watched a concert given by the Louisville Winds*, of which my youngest plays in.

It was a pops oriented concert with a lot of standard wind ensemble fare --John Williams soundtracks mixed in with arrangements of some older popular tunes-- and then this made an appearance:

Oh yes. 

MacArthur Park, that song written by Jimmy "Wichita Lineman" Webb that Richard Harris sung in 1968.

I'm being generous when I say it's a song, because to a lot of people --myself included-- that song feels like so much pretentious bullshit. 

While introducing the piece, the Winds' music director admitted that the song has its detractors, but she programmed it anyway. And much to my chagrin while the Winds played, there were people humming along or softly singing the lyrics. Including my wife.** 

Okay, I thought, I'm going to have to re-evaluate a few things.

I got on good ol' Google and punched in the "is MacArthur Park one of the worst songs" query, and got a Wikipedia link to an aggregate list of songs across the decades that groups have considered "the worst songs ever". Among the songs on that list were:

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da by The Beatles

True by Spandau Ballet

Sussudio by Phil Collins

Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice

What's Up? by 4 Non Blondes

Barbie Girl by Aqua

Nookie by Limp Bizkit

You're Beautiful by James Blunt

Rockstar by Nickelback

Yummy by Justin Bieber

and of course MacArthur Park.

What, no Bee Gees? No Kajagoogoo?

I sighed and listened once more to Richard Harris' rendition of MacArthur Park, searching for why that song resonated with so many people. 

To be fair, you can tell the song was written and orchestrated with an American Musical in mind. Richard Harris had just starred in movie version of Camelot, so he was used to singing in that manner, as can be seen with his rendition of Camelot on the Ed Sullivan show:

And yes, the orchestration of MacArthur Park is overdone in a way that would resurface years later in The Grateful Dead's Terrapin Station, and an orchestration that according to the liner notes of The Best of the Grateful Dead CD the band hated.

So I could see how it pushed all the right buttons at the right time which catapulted the song into global popularity, but to a lot of people --including me-- the song is just pretentious bullshit.

***

And THAT was when it hit me: ALL music is just pretentious bullshit to somebody.

It's more a matter of the reality being that you can't please everybody, so what one person loves another person hates. Sometimes popularity breeds contempt, such as how Toto's Africa was so overplayed in the early 80s that I simply couldn't listen to it for well over a decade.*** Other times a generation came of age hating that what the previous generation liked, such as how those of us who lived through Disco as kids grew up despising the stuff, yet the generation after us was quite okay with Disco.****

Even some of our generation came out as being fine with Disco. Such as the Foo Fighters.

I guess I should have known better, since after all I'm a huge Rush fan. Rush is one of those bands that had a cult following, yet were frequently dissed by the major music critics of the day. 

So that I liked a band that was often overlooked or dissed by the music tastemakers should have given me the clue that it's okay to like something other people don't, and that maybe songs or bands I don't like do have some merit after all. 

***

Yes, I can roll this back to gaming... and pretty much everywhere. Outrage and dismissiveness brings eyeballs to whatever you're opining about, and in this modern internet world the concept of shades of gray seems to frequently get thrown out the window. 

This little revelation is just a corollary to the black and white we paint ourselves into, because it's so much easier to view things through that lens rather than actually use our noggin and understand the shades of gray***** that life is populated with. 

From XKCD #2184.

*A community driven wind ensemble in Louisville (naturally), composed of people from high schoolers up through retirees. It's not affiliated with the University of Louisville, but several students in the School of Music play in the Winds and that's how my youngest found out about it.

**I knew she liked the song, but I figured she was an outlier.

***And in the strange case of deja vu, Weezer's rendition had the same fate. Good thing I don't listen to the radio that much these days or I'd have been driven crazy by the same song twice in my lifetime.

****My wife and I were at a wedding in the late 90s, and one of the people at our table at the reception worked as a DJ in his spare time. When Stayin' Alive came on during the reception, we watched in stunned amazement as all of these teenagers flooded the dance floor. "Oh yes," our table-mate informed us, "the teenagers all love this disco crap. I put on Disco Inferno on request once, and all of these big high school football players ran out onto the floor and were boogieing away, doing the Saturday Night Fever dances."

*****Or the 50 Shades of Grey. /rimshot

Meme Monday: Outdoor Memes

As Monday is Memorial Day, the unofficial start of Summer here in the US, I figured that it'd be a good idea to mix RPGs, video games, and the outdoors. Because.... why not?

Having done a bit of hiking,
I can attest to watching where
you're going. From 9GAG.

Seriously.
From Pinterest.

Time to embark on that
great adventure...
From fyxt.

And for those that need to go
outside a bit more...
From imgflip.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Another six months have passed, and I figured I ought to check in with an update as to how ol' Red is doing.

I had a checkup in April with my Cardiologist and in early May with my primary care physician, and both were pleased with my progress. I've maintained a steady weight* and exercise, and my shoulder and knee are behaving themselves. My physician wants me to begin adjusting my medication so I can start weaning myself off of the insulin, and now that my son's graduation is finished I intend to start that process. 

Of course, my medications occasionally kick me in the ass and I end up spending the night in the bathroom, but considering the alternative I'm okay with this side effect.

Hey, I take that drug!
From ifunny.co.

***

So.

Let's talk about the rest of it all.

It's been a year and a half since my life has been upended, and while physically I've done quite well --my body's stubborn inability to push past this weight I've been stuck at for 8-9 months notwithstanding-- my brain is finally realizing that this is going to be my situation for the rest of my life. I could cope quite easily with that first year, because I had to spend time learning how to deal with my new condition and being hyper vigilant to any changes. Now that I have more than a full year's cycle under my belt, I'm starting to unclench a bit, but that has also allowed the enormity of the situation I'm in to seep into my consciousness. 

I suppose it's not a great surprise, then, that people with chronic health conditions such as Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension are at greater risk for depression. 

And I completely understand this, even before mental issues kicked my ass. Trust me on this one.

I'd be foolish to not admit that my bout of congestive heart failure has also taken a mental toll on me, with the long term survival rate of people with congestive heart failure having an on average a 10 year survival rate of 35%. On the bright side, the younger a person is who has had a bout of CHF the greater the chance of long term survival. So my having congestive heart failure at age 52, being less than age 65, works in my favor. Kinda sorta, but I feel like it all evens out in the end; people who are over 65 might not live that long but if you're under 65 you do but that gets you caught up, age-wise, to about the same age as the over 65 person kicking the bucket. For example, someone aged 55 has a better chance of survival and they live another 20 years, that gets them to 75. Then, someone aged 65 lives only 10 years and they live until age... 75. 

So, like someone who is diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, I do have a time limit on my lifespan. It's not a question of if, but when.**

All of that knowledge doesn't exactly help with this:

Uh... Thanks, I think. But is the Sindorei
the person I'm supposed to have a fling with?
Knowing Elves, I'm pretty sure she's NOT
younger than me. (From this Etsy site.
I'm seriously impressed.)

Yeah, helluva time to have a midlife crisis. Although I suppose you could argue that it might not be a mid-life crisis but a full blown "rest of your life" crisis.

"You have my axe..."
From 9GAG.

As I pointed out in the links above, this is not an unusual situation to be in. And I totally understand that. That doesn't exactly make things easier, but it makes it understandable. From there, I can cope.

In a bizarre way, playing WoW Classic Era has been a panacea because I don't have to worry about any external pressure to perform to a standard that I can't maintain without a lot of effort. (If at all.) Without any existential fear of letting the raid down --or worse, getting "The Talk"-- I can at least hang out and just be me for a while.

Not you again.

Okay, I'll pretend to be someone else for a while. Happy now, Card?

Anyway, I now have yet another thing to keep track of going forward. Barring any other surprises, however, my cardiologist expects to see me on a yearly basis, and my primary care physician concurs. Carry on carrying on, I suppose.

*Occasionally my weight drifts upward, and an extra diuretic pill takes care of that. Before you ask, yes, my Cardiologist told me to do that if I have weight gain without any changes to my diet or exercise, and that excess water will get flushed out. It's only if that isn't working then I'm to give her a call.

**Okay, we all have a time limit. As the old saying goes, we start to die as soon as we're born. Still, the direct knowledge that I know what will kill me in the end isn't exactly comforting.

EtA: Replaced "older" with "younger". Older, younger, same difference, right?

They Actually Did It Part Two: Preach-ing to the Converted

Okay, excuse the bad pun.

Preach of Preach Gaming came out with a video that does a pretty good job of explaining why some of the WoW Classic playerbase has gone ballistic over the introduction of the Wrath Classic WoW Token:

Of course, if you are part of a progression raid team and don't partake in GDKP, the introduction of the WoW Token won't have an impact on your ability to play Wrath Classic. (Myself, for example.) However, there will be inflation in the prices found in the Auction House, and that might just have an impact on me.

After all, I'd like to do the Quel'Delar questline on Linnawyn at some point, but I do realize that given my history of getting that Battered Hilt to drop* I'd expect the AH to be selling said Hilt for well over what I paid for it back in the day. Then the question becomes "Do I want to farm for the gold to buy the Battered Hilt on the Auction House, or do I want to buy gold via the WoW Token?"

Or maybe a better question is, "Is it worth it to try to recapture some magic from the old days when I know it's destined for failure?"

At this point, I'm starting to think that it's not worth it. Era has been a shot of adrenaline to my system, and I'd be foolish to give that up.

*Narrator: It didn't drop for Quintalan in original Wrath, and Q had to pony up 5000 gold on the Auction House for the Battered Hilt.

They Actually Did It

Well, MadSeasonShow was right.

In addition to the return of Joyous Journeys to Wrath of the Lich King Classic, there was this little ditty hidden below the top of the news section:

Woah.

The WoW Token has come to WOTLK Classic, which means you can pay money to buy a WoW Token for Wrath Classic, and in turn sell the token to buy gold in game. You don't need to go spend money on a third party site, just give it to Blizz instead.

The details upon clicking are this:

So the Token is for Wrath Classic only --for now-- but I guess you can go out and buy your way into Ulduar runs legally via in-game gold you purchased by selling said WoW Tokens.

To say there are some unhappy people is an understatement. Reddit's r/classicwow has suspended their rule banning promotion of private servers, and it wouldn't shock me if Blizzard gets ClassicWow suspended shortly for promotion of basically pirated content.

This won't end well.

I kind of presume that Blizz is adding the Wrath WoW token to not only boost their bottom line, but they figure that people will come back when Icecrown Citadel opens and they'll want to gear up as quickly as possible. Or, to be blunt about it, to pay people to get them geared as quickly as possible.

Or to put it a third way, the Kingslayer title is now officially for sale via GDKP runs and carries, with Blizzard approving. For Blizz to keep the Random Dungeon Finder out and bring the WoW Token to Wrath Classic, I have to wonder who Blizz was listening to. Most of the heat generated over Wrath Classic was from the RDF, not from any lack of the WoW Token. But the Token directly generates profit for Activision Blizzard, and the RDF does not.

Oh well. 

A Big Problem of Epic Proportions

There are only so many times the characters can save the world before it becomes old hat.

--AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Masters Guide (1989), page 123.

That little quote from the 2E DMG highlights a big problem in a lot of consumable media today. Every conflict has to have bigger and bigger stakes, and each movie or book or game's conflict has to be earth shattering to draw your attention and give the protagonists something to do. While I realize that some might blame this on the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe --or Star Wars, for that matter-- this issue of constantly raising the stakes has been a staple of SF&F for decades. 

Works such as Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories have all had epic consequences that result in a heightened form of dramatic tension. Even Michael Moorcock's Elric short stories, while typically not so epic in scope, over the course of the cycle build toward a world shattering conclusion in the sixth collection, Stormbringer. You could even make the argument that stories that may not have such dire circumstances, such as Isaac Asimov's original Nightfall or The Martian Way, still present a conflict epic in scope.

Yes, yes, I know, it's right there in the name "Epic Fantasy". Duh.

The thing is, the SF&F genre and the media industry as a whole (movies, television, video games) has a big epic problem: everything needs to be epic in scope or in conflict.

And to borrow that oft used term from The Incredibles, if everything is epic, nothing is.

Yes, this one is back again...

I didn't realize just how pervasive this was until I started rummaging around the SF&F section of bookstores, looking for something new to read after being away from the fiction section of bookstores for several years. The shelves were full of massive tomes with taglines such as "Every age must come to an end" or "The greatest sagas are written in blood" and... I couldn't get excited about any of them.

That lack of interest has nothing to do with who is writing, and neither does it have to do with the setting. I'm sure that some people would tell me that it's because of "woke" culture or a "politically correct" setting or some other bullshit answer, but the thing is, I don't have issues with any of that. Yes, I read a lot of "Classic" SF&F back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s* so I have my street cred, and I have absolutely no issues with new voices or settings for Science Fiction or Fantasy. It's just that I'm tired of the same old "the world/universe/nation needs saving" Epic story trope, because in the end the stakes are of the same variety that I've seen countless times by now. 

And video games aren't exactly helping.

I've said it before about World of Warcraft and it bears repeating now: I prefer the original, vanilla version of WoW because of the overall lack of an Epic plot to the extent the expansions put into place. Sure, there are storylines riddled throughout the leveling areas, but nothing so laser focused on an epic conflict to the extent that you see in the latter expansions. You've got Nefarian, C'thun, and Kel'Thuzad, but you didn't have two continents' worth of quests focused on the storylines behind those three. That lack of an overall epic narrative meant you could forge your own story, picking and choosing what to do and where to go, without having an overarching epic story to direct you.

Let's be honest here: video games and novels are one thing, and movies are quite another. I mean, look at the tons of movies and shows that are churned out year after year in the MCU alone, not to mention the DC Universe or Star Wars. Everything is epic in nature where the MCU is involved, and even a movie such as Captain America: The First Avenger Goes Fishing would somehow turn Steve Rodgers' catch of the day into an epic worthy of Ernest Hemingway. 

I had no idea this existed... I SWEAR!!!
From a YouTube video by Reel Hazardous.

But therein lies the blandness of it all: you've seen this story a few times, and it all starts to blend together. And trust me, given the amount of books, video games, and movies I've consumed over the decades, I've seen far more than just a few versions of the same trope. 

I need to be perfectly clear: I'm not saying that "[insert content here] sucks", I'm saying that I'm tired of these stories. These books could be incredibly well written, the video games programmed and designed to an exquisite degree, or the movies insanely well crafted, it's just that I've seen it all before. And to get my attention something else needs to be done. 

What doesn't need to be done is do what's been done to death in video games: the moving goalposts problem. You play a video game with an epic story, finally defeat the big bad, and then either in the final cutscene or a lead-in to the next expansion/installment in the series there's a revelation that "it wasn't this Big Bad who was behind everything, it's this NEW Big Bad!" 

Or the "Princess is in another castle!" meme.
From knowyourmeme.com.

Or you saved your town in this video game? Now you get to save an entire province! Then the next expac is "Now you have to save your country!" Then "the world!" Then "You now have to save the Afterlife!" (Oh wait, that's Shadowlands...)

That's a huge trap that authors and developers alike fall into, where the stakes have to ratcheted up more and more to keep people's attention. (After Infinity War, what then, Marvel? Multiverse Mayhem? Well crap, that's exactly what they're doing now...)

***

What's the solution? Hell if I know.

And besides, if I did know the way out of this, do you think that publishers and developers and producers would be beating a path to my door? Oh HELL no. Right now, the sound of dollars from the people who consume their content is louder than anything I can say or do. If I've learned anything in this world, content creators want a sure bet on where to put their money, and it's a lot easier betting on the same old same old than trying something new. Of course, game companies discovered that breaking their games up into pieces got them a lot more money than release it all at once...

Dorkly, don't ever change.

That doesn't mean that I've turned into a costume drama loving highbrow (or lowbrow, or midbrow-or-whatever the Hallmark Channel fits into) consumer, it's just that I want something more than what we've got right now. 

It also doesn't mean I want to eschew standard novel formats and instead go with modern novel constructs; I had to read Virginia Woolf in an English class at university and that experience alone put me off of reading any novels designed to be "modern" for a couple of decades. The English professor who taught the class I read Mrs. Dalloway in warned us away from taking his Modern Novel class, because non-English majors sign up expecting to get to read modern popular novels, but that isn't anything at all what they actually read.

Probably the best way to put it is that maybe the sentiment "go big or go home" is missing the point: perhaps not going all out will result in a better story. 

*And part of the end of the 00s/beginning of the 10s.

Meme Monday: Allergy Memes

If you're like me, seasonal allergies kick your ass multiple times per year.

The one major drawback to my son's graduation last week was that Meadville, Pennsylvania, where Allegheny College is located, is in the middle of their big pollen bloom for the Spring. And for me, that was, well, kind of hellish.

"Just when you think you're done with seasonal allergies, they drag you back in!"

--Michael Corleone, maybe

So in honor of those who scarf down a bottle of Zyrtec every Spring and Fall...

Yeah, kid, I feel it too.
From Science.abc.

From imgflip.

Don't get me wrong, Benadryl works.
Faaar too well. From izismile.

Yeah, Geralt, I get it. Really do. If
you're a hypochondriac, Covid offers
a whole new set of paranoid fantasies.
From Reddit via mematic.