Who Dresses Up For Plowing the Fields, Anyway?

Waaay back when I first tried out Guild Wars 2*, one of the main complaints I had about the game involved fashion. Or rather, that the game was full of beautiful people wearing their Sunday Best clothing, even when they're out in the field farming and doing menial tasks.

Okay, so I'm in Divinity's Reach.
One of these NPCs actually said,
"He's going to look across a crowded
room and instantly be smitten."
So at least they're self aware.

To my mind, tasks where you get grimy are not the sort of time to be wearing your best clothing, and I likened it to looking at Medieval and Renaissance art depicting people farming in the clothes you'd wear to Mass. 

Take a look at the bottom right, and remember
that those are the peasants.
The Three States of Medieval Society,
from The Regime of Princes by Rouen,
Based on Gilles de Rome's work of
the same name. From classes.bnf.fr.

Fast forward to today, and I still have those opinions, although I can articulate them better now.

As much as I admire Kamalia's fashion design using WoW's transmog capability, I will be the first one to admit that wearing those outfits while "working", ala fighting and adventuring, is akin to those peasants in the painting above wearing their finery while being on the business end of a horse and plow. 

This is an entirely separate argument from the "boob window" and other sins of F&SF armor design, as while the boob window is designed to titillate, the fashion behind RPG gear doesn't really fit with the job description. After all, it's as if we're a modern soldier wearing our dress uniforms while on patrol in a flashpoint area around the globe. As much as camo is its own fashion these days --go to your average Bass Pro Shop or Walmart and you'll see what I mean-- its original and still most common usage is to blend in with the background while hunting/fishing or in active duty military.**

***

If there's one thing that's a trope of any society, it's that fashion matters.

As much as I've tried to dance to the beat of my own drum, even I have to conform to societal customs if I want to blend in and not be noticed.***

Are you going to work? Wear the clothes most commonly worn at work.

Are you going to a wedding? Dress up. In prior years that meant a sport coat and tie, but now you can get away with "business casual", especially if you're corralling a bunch of kids in tow.

Are you going to a funeral? Dress up.

Are you going to work out in the yard? Wear old clothes you don't mind getting dirty.

It's pretty much common sense, and if, for example, you go to religious services --pick one, any one-- you're likely to be dressed up to varying degrees. And if you're a kid and you come home from church and want to go play, well, you'd better change out of your church clothes before you do or you'll have to be really careful not to get those clothes dirty. 

Or you could have parents like mine who, after going to a Saturday evening mass (yay, Catholics) gave my brother and me the ultimatum that if we came inside (even just to change) we had to stay inside. And you can guess what I decided to do: stay outside even though I was wearing slacks/corduroy pants and a button down shirt. And you want to talk about standing out, especially in the Summer, that was definitely it.****

If society places certain demands on fashion now, imagine what that might have been like "back in the day". The scarcity of certain hues and dyes meant cloth made of such colors were reserved for highest classes; such as, oh, Royal Purple. (It's right there in the name.) And that's not even taking into account the types of clothing worn by the various classes of society.*****

***

Now, it's one thing if your toon looks something like this:

Been hanging around with those ne'er-do-well
pirates in Stranglethorn Vale, have we?

Obviously Card's wearing stuff that nobody would confuse with something formal, such as this:

Neve: "A Dawnweaver always presents well."
Me: "Yeah, whatever."

But which look would be more appropriate for getting in a mix-up with some nearby yetis?

Me: "You stay out of this."

I was thinking about the appropriateness of Neve's Robe of Power when I remembered an event well over a decade ago. Back before the woods near our house were torn down and houses went up, there used to be an old wooden shack back there. I used to hear from neighborhood kids at the bus stop while I waited with the mini-Reds about how the shack was haunted --typical kid stuff-- and that people would go back there and drink beer without being caught by their parents. I stuffed that knowledge in the back of my head but never thought much of it until one night in the Spring. It was roughly around midnight when I heard quite a few cars going by the house all at once. Our neighborhood used to have its share of people who would speed through as a short cut, so I poked my head out to see if it was enough of a problem to warrant calling the cops.

It turns out that wasn't what was going on at all.

A bunch of teenagers were parking their cars up and down the street and then walking up toward the woods, carrying six packs. All were dressed in very formal outfits, especially the girls.

"Huh, didn't know it was prom," I mused as I shut the door. I knew exactly what they were all up to that night.#

The sight of those girls in those big bright formal dresses and heels navigating the woods at night is what I think of when I see toons wearing gear that look like this out in Azshara:

Uh, yeah. Shouldn't Card be
at a dance somewhere?

***

We're obviously not playing Dragon Age; the gear isn't getting splattered with mud and blood, and we're not leaning into the grimdark aspects of gaming ala Dark Souls. I'm not advocating for gear that is a constant downer; people want their toons to look good and have fun playing the game. I guess that for me that means that --especially for the NPCs-- their clothing match the their activity. Or at least look like, well, what you'd expect people to look like. 

#Blaugust2023

*A decade ago if you were keeping track.

**I mean, duh. Camo is short for camouflage.

***As much as a red headed bearded guy can blend in, that is. After all, there aren't that many of us out there, and because of that we do tend to naturally stand out.

****I have a story about an event that occurred one evening while I was still in all of that church clothing, but it's one of those stories that requires a very specific topic to dredge up. Let's say it involves puberty, girls, relationships, and perceptions of the same, and it's a story I've never ever forgotten.

*****You know you've been playing too many RPGs and MMOs when I have to clarify what I meant by "classes".

#I know Bruce Hornsby and the Range aren't trendy --they weren't very trendy or popular among fans of the bands I listened to back in the 80s-- but I liked them. And really, if you like what you're listening to that's all that counts.

Because I'm Getting Old and Have Seen It All

The other day, I was querying my Questing Buddy how the Friday raid went. "It went well," she said. "We downed Ony first and then got a group for TotC."

"Did you get an Ony bag?" I teased, as that was one of the reasons why people would continue to run Onyxia even late in Vanilla Classic. The "revived" Wrath Classic version of Onyxia returned in Phase 3, a month or two ago.

"Oh, I got it the other week, but I won the head!" (That's the other big reason why people would run Ony.)

"Wait, what?" I was not expecting that reply. "There's an Ony Bag in the L80 version of Ony?"

"Oh yeah! It's a 22 slot bag."

"Huh." I just got outfoxed by Blizzard, as I wasn't quite expecting that they would put an updated Ony Bag in the loot. "I kind of expected it to be a 24 slot bag."

"No, it's like the bag out with the dragon area," she replied, referencing The Obsidian Sanctum raid from Phase 1, which also dropped a 22 slot bag. 

"Hmm..." I replied, trying to remember. "I can't recall if I got that bag or not." Given the amount of effort people put in back in TBC Classic to min-max everything, including bag space, I kind of tuned out these sort of reward drops. I looked at it as representative of the problems afflicting the Classic community, and my appetite for these little quality of life rewards from TBC Classic onwards turned into revulsion instead.

My Questing Buddy, of course, didn't know about any of this. "You DIDN'T?" she said incredulously.

"I just really didn't care if I won it, so I skipped rolling a lot of times."

I could almost see her rolling her eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

I went back through some notes I made on those Phase One raids. "Oh wait," I corrected myself. "I did win it on the last time we went through that raid. I waited until everybody else had won it and then I got it."

My Questing Buddy sighed.

***

There's another reason why I mentioned this story, and it's this:

If you need to click on the pic to bring up
the original size, that's fine. But it's
pretty obvious that I'm not talking about
the regular maintenance window here.

Even if I didn't have some revulsion toward Blizzard courtesy of their corporate behavior, the "fund raising" pet sale in support of Ukraine would have generated a ton of ick all by itself.

Not that I'm anti-Ukraine or anything, because I'm most definitely not, but because of the corporatization of doing something for a good cause. 

It's not any sense of purity that I feel this way --okay, maybe a little, if I'm being completely honest about it-- but that I know that very very few corporations look at something as an altruistic endeavor. Over the years I've seen the man behind the curtain, and I know that at their heart most companies put only profit. Not good deeds, not society, and most definitely not people. So when I see something like this, where Acti-Blizz recruited Mila Kunis* to promote pet sales in support of BlueCheck for Ukraine, I simply can't see the altruism.

At this point, I'd much rather that companies simply stop trying to put lipstick on a pig about their corporate altruism if they're going to prioritize profits over everything else. That's their prerogative to do so, but they're definitely not fooling me into thinking that somehow Blizzard has turned a corner and will behave like a responsible corporate citizen. Maybe when the wheel turns and shareholder primacy yields to another form of corporate activity I'll change my mind about this, but until then I'll do my good deeds out of the public view and not in service of a corporate master.

#Blaugust2023

*Holy crap, she's matured. I don't know why, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that she's grown up and reached the cusp of 40. Before you accuse me of being ageist or something, I think that she looks absolutely stunning, and not just "for her age". Of course, me being in my 50s, I still think of her as being young, but that goes with the territory.

EtA: Corrected spelling.

The Blogging Version of Sitting on the Fence Returns

Apparently there's some blogging thing that's starting today in our little corner of the internet. 

Given that blogging is now so passé that it's due to come around and be ironically trendy again*, that some of us old farts have kept up with blogging all these years means we're either persistent, delusional, stubborn, or a combination of all three. 

Either way, giving a bunch of MMO players --who are used to min-maxing the hell out of everything**-- the opportunity to post for a "celebration" of blogging and potentially win prizes in the form of badges as proof of, oh, I don't know.... "winning at blogging", that's certainly going to bring out some people to post a lot.

Or, if you're like me, refuse to formally participate yet go ahead and post a bunch anyway.***

***

Am I going to post a lot? Mmmmmaybe?

It's still too early to say, because 31 days is a long time, but we'll see. 

#Blaugust2023

*In the same manner as cassette tapes have been. Sure, there were good cassette tapes made, but from a record manufacturer? Oh hell no; you had to make copies off of records yourself onto quality tapes, such as Maxell or TDK, if you wanted a quality cassette made. Ironically enough, the best tapes were made from CDs in that period when CD players were a rarity in cars and you wanted your collection of CDs copied onto tape.

**Or know that everybody else is min-maxing the hell out of everything.

***If you want to call me hipsterish for behaving like that, go for it. I've been like that since before the current hipsters were even born. For example, the summer after my Freshman year of college I spent working at my Dad's office for one of his friends. When the time came for me to leave and go back to university, my Dad's friend wanted to take me out to lunch. I passed, because I didn't really feel like I earned anything special. He tried to convince me otherwise, but I held firm.

Meme Monday: Blogging Memes

Given that the annual blogging event Blaugust* is going to start on Tuesday, I figured that a Meme Monday for Blogging itself is worth a go.

Truth! And I know I don't have
to worry about that one.
From imgflip.

I'd say that 3/4 of the time when I wake
up in the morning I have no idea what
to write about. So, yeah.
From quickmeme.com

Admittedly, I'm not trying to make a living
while blogging. It's more like I blog to
satisfy a need to write, because otherwise I'd
just write fanfic, and.... yeah. Let's not go there.
I know I can't pull that one off.
From wordsalad.com.au.

And finally....

Yes, yes I can. In fact, there are a few
of them on the blog itself. You might
not realize it, but yeah, they're there.
From memesmonkey.com.

*Is there a Trademark on Blaugust? One of these days I ought to find out.

All Hail Glorbo

With AI driving content at places such as Z League's The Portal --go read up on the Glorbo prank here from Ars Technica-- I have been wondering whether you can set one AI against other AIs. 

Bellular News' take on the whole AI thing.

The TL;DR of Glorbo is that The Portal uses AI to scrape Reddit for content, with AI-created articles that push what the AI believes will increase pageviews to The Portal. Several Redditors created a fake World of Warcraft expansion, Glorbo, and began posting about the "expac". Z League's AI picked up on those posts and began flooding The Portal with a lot of "Glorbo" related content. Only afterward did Z League realize their AI's mistake and they had to "correct" all of those posts to identify them as "satire" and then later took down WoW related content.

My thinking is that we could "seed" a second website with AI-generated articles based off of The Portal's content, potentially supplemented by posting AI-generated articles to Reddit, creating a feedback loop where the AI's basically feed off of each other in escalating content craziness.

If someone were to do this with AI generated art, I'm not exactly sure what might come out of it. Given the sameness a lot of the AI art from Midjourney, I suspect the "human" or "humanlike" art will give rise to an AI version of the "Hapsburg chin". 

It's all an interesting exercise, as long as said AI's don't become sentient and turn on us in revenge, I suppose...

Meme Monday: Health Memes

Okay, if you can't laugh at yourself, then I guess you're not me, because we're gonna have some health memes today.

Not Healer memes, but Health memes. 

I just finished the last of my mid-year updates, this time with the diabetes team*, and since they're happy with my progress, I figured I'd celebrate with a few health related memes.

(Yes, it's okay to laugh at them. Permission granted.)

That's one big problem with high blood
pressure: I take my evening's high blood
pressure reading after I've been gaming for
a bit. I'm sure that also colors my opinions
of group content. From Reddit.

I laughed at this, because it is so true!
(At least it's the case for someone my age...)
From imgflip.

On those days when you have low blood
sugar and you have to do something quick,
you kind of do look like a junkie hunting
for munchies. From imgflip.

And this is why you have to pay
attention to source material when
relatives try to be helpful and tell you
"about something about your health problems
I read on the internet." From quickmeme.

And finally, it's not a meme or anything, but I saw this when I was helping my son move into his apartment for grad school:

Yes, doughnuts stuffed with ice cream.
And yes, this is outside the Busken 
Bakery commissary. If the name "Busken"
sounds familiar, it's in the song M.A.G.E. by Nyhm.

*/waves  Hi, Dawn! You know, just in case you happen to be on this obscure little gamer blog on some weirdo corner of the internet.

I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday...

One thing about WoW Classic Era that I've had to reacquaint myself with is just how poor a new player is in the game. 

Most MMOs don't have this issue. Creating a new toon on LOTRO or SWTOR, for example, will have a person poor, gold-wise, but they're still easily able to afford their training, regular mats, and their mounts. (Yes, even in SWTOR's original form, where you could select the Slicing profession and basically open lockboxes for free credits. #SWTORClassic)

My time spent in Age of Conan had limitations, of course, but most centered around mandatory grouping once you got out of the starter zone.* Other MMOs I've played extensively, such as Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and Wildstar, also don't have gold or monetary issues. Sure, there are other limitations to the games, such as gear or weirdness surrounding the auction house --I'm looking at you, ESO--  but money has never really been a problem.

WoW Classic Era, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish.

My first toon in Vanilla Classic, Azshandra, was so poor that she didn't get enough gold for a riding mount until L47-ish, and then I spent a lot of time fishing for lockboxes to open and sell the contents on the auction house. Before you ask, no, I didn't read "gold making" websites or watch any YouTube videos about it, because I wanted to experience Vanilla Classic without min/maxing my way to a ton of gold. Besides, I don't play video games to make a ton of virtual currency in the same way I don't work irl to amass a horde of cash.**

Progression raiding in Vanilla Classic did me no favors with my gold supply either, as the costs involved keeping Cardwyn raiding --particularly through Vanilla Naxxramas, where the potion/flask requirements for raiding were fairly high-- also kept me gold poor. I frequently found that scouring Azeroth for the mats myself was far more cost effective than being cute and trying to play the auction house as if I was some junior investor for Goldman Sachs. So when the time for TBC Classic --and my corresponding switch to the Shaman Briganaa happened-- I had little gold in reserve to afford mounts for her until well into Outland.***

Fast forward toward the end of TBC Classic and I'd created Cardwyn's clone, Deuce, on Atiesh-US. At first I thought that the ease of which I was able to acquire gold on a brand new toon on a new server had something to do with the knowledge I'd acquired over the years of playing Classic. 

Or maybe it had something to do with the population size. 

However, going back to Classic Era and creating yet another version of Cardwyn has disabused me of either of those beliefs.

Vanilla Classic is simply designed to keep a person poor so they will keep going out in the world.

There, I said it.

***

I mean, it's not a big surprise. The monetary rewards from quests are smaller, the costs associated with class training and everything affiliated with mounts are higher, and the failure rates at professions are also higher, so all of that adds up to a player having to pick and choose what abilities to train and level along the way. 

And if you select a profession such as, oh, Enchanting or Blacksmithing, be prepared to shell out gold**** for enough mats to finish the grind to max profession level. 

Now, there are some ways to generate gold that don't involve begging for gold in Stormwind or Orgrimmar --yes, that is very much a thing-- and they involve leveling a gathering profession. Herbalism and Mining do come in handy, but Fishing does give a player a good bang for the buck in the long run.

I'm sure I'm not giving out any secrets when I say that there's a trick to gaining access to Moonglade at a (relatively) low level if you're not a Druid. Why Moonglade, you may ask? Because the mythical home of the Druids and the Cenarion Circle is also the lowest level area where you can go fish up the Raw Nightfin Snapper. A cook can turn the Snapper into the Nightfin Soup, which is sought after by casters as a raiding buff, which is in demand on the Classic Era auction house. At the present, the Raw Nightfin Snapper is selling for about 6 gold per stack of 10 on the AH, and the Soup commands a higher amount for a stack of 5. You can put two and two together, of course: that's a pretty good gig for steady work. 

The thing is, there's only a few places around Azeroth where you can fish for Nightfin, and there's the issue of having to fish for it between the hours of Midnight and 6 AM Server Time. I mean, it is in the name: Nightfin. By far the lowest level area is in Moonglade, which if you're not a Druid is gated by having to run the gauntlet of tunnels commanded by the hostile Timbermaw Firbolg tribe. While you can eventually build your reputation with them, the Firbolg are all roughly Level 50 enemies, and the entrance to the tunnels is deep in Felwood, a L48-L54 zone, so if you don't want to roll up a Druid you'd either work on leveling a toon or... Get creative.

Besides, you're not old enough for the
shenanigans at Goldshire, Simba. And... Wait.
Why are they talking about Goldshire already?
Shouldn't Simba have "The Talk" first?
From imgflip.

That "get creative" means taking advantage of a glitch in the game where you enter into the low level zone of Darkshore, ride/run/walk all the way to the top of the zone --which abuts Moonglade's zone-- and swim north. Once you get far enough north, you enter into Moonglade's zone, and there you... die.

Seriously.

Once you die, the graveyard you respawn at is Moonglade's graveyard, so if you ask the Spirit Healer to rez you and accept the resurrection sickness debuff, you're smack in Moonglade. Go get the flight point, and you can fly to Moonglade whenever you want to.

Easy peasy.

***

So easy, in fact, it won't surprise you that I never used it.

Ever.

Yes, I drove my questing buddy batty by never taking advantage of this cheat to start fishing Nightfin at a much lower level but instead fished up Oily Blackmouth to sell at a much cheaper price, biding my time until I got to a high enough level to fish up Nightfin at another location.***** This, combined with me disenchanting every magic item in sight severely hampered my ability to accumulate gold for a long time. 

Why not take advantage of the glitch?

Because it's a cheat.

Sure, it's technically in the game, and no, people haven't been banned or anything for it, but to me it's against the spirit of the game in the same way that it's against the spirit of the game to farm mobs in Maraudon or Lower Blackrock Spire or Zul'Gurub for boosting purposes. If a friend asks me to run them through, say, Deadmines, I'm more than happy to. But I would never ask to have it done to any of my toons, and if offered I'm likely to refuse.

It's the same way why I won't go on Heroic Plus Plus dungeon runs, given the current Meta is to simply run past the initial bosses, allowing them to reset. 

I was chatting with my questing buddy the other day, and I saw (via a DBM alert) that she was fighting a boss. A few seconds later there was a "Zarlie has wiped on XXX Boss" announcement.

"Ouch," I responded. "Sorry about that [wipe]."

"It lies," my questing buddy whispered.

"What?"

"DBM. It lies. We ran right through the boss and it reset."

"Oh."

Why do this strat? Because the badges people want --and the loot people want-- only drop off the last boss. There is literally no reason, Meta-wise, to do any of the other bosses and most of the trash, so the bosses and as much of the trash as possible are skipped. 

I mean, at this point why even have the dungeon in place at all if people are simply going to skip to the end?

Impressive Clergyman: "Have you the wing?"
From imgflip.com.

And why do I get the feeling I'd despise Mythic Plus in Retail if it involved a metric buttload of skips and bypasses?

***

Ahem. I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes, about gold in Classic Era.

When you're that starved for gold, you have to be choosy about what abilities to train with when you level up. You start with your primary attack abilities --which for a Frost Mage those are Frostbolt, Frost Nova, Blizzard, and Cone of Cold-- and then select a few other critical abilities to keep current and then let everything else slide. So while the next rank of Conjure Food and Conjure Water may make the cut, Fire Ward and Frost Ward will not. On the original Cardwyn, I reached max level so far behind in a lot of my non-critical spells that I spent my first 120 gold after reaching max level just catching up on a lot of these missing spell ranks. 

This time around, however, I took the gains from my first few Nightfin sales on the Auction House and blew them all on catching up on my spell ranks.

ALL of them.

No, it wasn't ideal by any stretch, but it meant I had a full set of spells to work with. Such as, oh, Mana Shield, which might save my bacon in the Plaguelands. 

It was only after my training was complete and that I was caught up did I save up enough gold for a riding mount. But I haven't stopped there; I realize that I'm going to need enough gold to buy enough mats to finish Tailoring and Enchanting, so my Nightfin activities haven't stopped. If I want an epic mount it's going to take a lot more fishing than what I've accomplished so far, so I'm not in any hurry to get there. 

Maybe there's a purple kitty grind in my future, but I've already done that once. Not exactly the most fun thing in the world, if you ask me. But it is something that can't be skipped, so there is that at least.

*The starter zone, Tortage, is still probably one of the best starter zones I've ever encountered in an MMO. I suppose that the reversion to a "traditional" MMO once you leave that starter zone --not to mention the bugs-- was a huge part of the "bait and switch" impression I and a lot of other people felt the game gave to players.

**This is a US-specific issue, because most of my relatives died with barely a penny to their name. As their health declined, the federal government would only step in and support their stay at a nursing home or a hospice for their final months after they had depleted all of their savings. And the US healthcare system is perfectly happy to oblige in racking up fees and charges. Many of my relatives had a decent nest egg upon retirement, so watching all of their savings being sucked dry by a medical community that is at times part savior and part leech was disheartening to say the least. If nothing else, the lesson I learned from it is that if you die, make it quick so that the healthcare companies can't gain access to all of your money. 

***Trying to level fast meant bypassing extra quests and other activities --such as fishing or picking herbs-- that I could use to supplement Brig's income. When Brig crossed the Dark Portal, I had a total of 80 gold spread across all of my toons. Thank goodness for the Ghost Wolf form that a Shaman has, which allowed me to delay paying for a mount for quite a while.

****That's in addition to never selling any magic items ever again. You're always either keeping them to use, holding onto them to use later, or disenchanting them for mats to use for Enchanting. It's a grind that any Enchanter has to pay eventually, and in the case of the original Cardwyn I paid it later, after I reached L60. Going back and running low level instances just to get magic items to disenchant wasn't exactly a lot of fun, but at least I got to level weapon skills along the way.

*****There's a location in Feralas that worked, so Card needed to only reach the mid-L40s to safely fish there.

EtA: I corrected the grammar before posting but forgot to remove the "in". Oopsie.

Meme Monday: Relaxation Memes

One of the things about Summer is that you have to spend some time and relax a bit. While I may not go on vacation, I do try to take it a bit easy on things.

Of course, MMOs have their own unique spin on that...

I think this kind of fits my experience in
World of Warcraft to a T.
From Reddit.

And yes, I am a filthy casual
a lot of the time.
From Thunderdungeon.

Ain't that the truth.
This is a Redbubble poster,
found here.

Then again, maybe I should take up
another hobby that I could find
relaxing. Like gardening. From Reddit.

The Soft Glow of Electric Sex Gleaming in the Window*

When you were a kid and you wanted to be outside but couldn't, you'd press your face against the glass window pane, smudging the window to the point where you left a soggy mess when you pulled your mug away. Rainy days, frozen days, days where you had to go to some important family event, just pick one and they're all the same. That longing of wanting to be where you couldn't made your entire day miserable. Even later in life, when I wanted to be reading about different worlds found in SF&F novels, if I had to be somewhere else I'd not be in the best of spirits.

I mean, who wants to go take a Chemistry test if they had the option to go play Risk or read Dune instead?

This is my copy, circa 1985.
I mean, look at the price on
this paperback! $3.95!!

Tonight is my questing buddy's regular Wrath raid night, and while for the most part I'm quite happy to be no longer in the grind given all the Heroic Plus Plus** "runs" she's been doing lately***, I will confess to missing out on all of the trappings surrounding those raids.

More than anything else, I miss the camaraderie in the raids, chatting and enjoying the company of each other, than the raid itself.

Ever since the transition from 40/20 person raids in Vanilla Classic to TBC and now Wrath Classic, the raids have felt "less than" compared to those early raids. I know that it could be argued that 10 person raids in Wrath Classic truly are less than, particularly given the differences between 10 person Wrath Naxx and 40 person Vanilla Naxx, but I've felt that way ever since I set foot in every 25 person TBC raid I participated in****. Blizzard may have made it easier to field a raid team in terms of numbers, but they also left some magic behind. 

It's an acceptable trade-off, I guess, but for me raiding hasn't been the same. 

But it's a bug I can't completely leave behind, despite my obvious refusal to "play the game" and catch-up to the current raid tier in the most expedient way possible. The raids themselves don't exactly hold much in the way of charm for me, and Trial of the Crusader holds bittersweet memories for me.

***

Back in 2010, I almost became a Wrath raider.

Oh, you never heard about that? Well, there's a reason why I never blogged about it: why blog about an event that ended up not happening? I didn't expect that I'd ever be back in this situation in a Wrath of the Lich King Classic edition of WoW, either, but here we are.

Remember this guy? Here's Quintalan,
complete in his T9 Liadrin's Battlegear, earned
the hard way by running plenty of dungeons.

Back in Satyana's very brief period of joining Parallel Context, I'd been logged in one evening when she whispered me "Hey, you want to join a raid?"

This was back when I severely restricted my WoW time because the mini-Reds were truly "mini" and they took priority over my game time, but this particular evening I had a few hours to just kick around. Still, my brain kind of froze at the prospect. I still had a hard enough time dealing with the 5-person pugs in the LFD tool --not that I didn't now what to do in those instances, but the very nature of dealing with random strangers on the internet-- and here I was being asked to make a huge leap into raiding. 

"Uh..." was my oh-so-brilliant reply. "I've never been raiding before."

"Oh, you'll love it! It's fun!"

She kind of had me over a barrel there. "Okay, what are we doing and do I have enough time to read up on it?"

"It's Trial of the Crusader, and don't worry, I'll tell you what to do."

That didn't exactly make me feel any better. But since I didn't want to let my co-blogger down, I joined the raid team that Satyana was putting together, and she cast about for 3 or so more people to finish filling out the raid.

Raiding was such an unknown to me that I didn't even realize there was a "raid" channel, so imagine my surprise when I started seeing chat messages with an unfamiliar color popping up in my dialogue box.

I, uh, kept my mouth shut throughout this, but I had a feeling that I was going to need to go on Ventrillo if we were going to run this raid. Oh yay, I thought. Mister Introvert is going to have to be in a voice program with 8 strangers and look like a complete idiot along the way.

I hung around Dalaran for a few minutes and after consulting with a WoW website --maybe Thottbot-- I flew up to the Crusader area in Icecrown.

It was then, while I felt like I was waiting for my own funeral, that it began to dawn on me that Satyana was having trouble filling out those last few spots. 

Over the next 15 or so minutes we got to 9 raiders twice, then someone would drop.

"Anybody know anybody who can join?" Satyana asked in raid chat.

Nobody said anything, and my hopes rose some more.

A couple more people dropped, and we went down to six raiders.

"Okay, I'm going to call it," Satyana finally said. "We'll try another time."

I breathed a big sigh of relief. 

That "another time" raiding with Satyana didn't materialize, as she moved on from both the server and from Parallel Context shortly after that aborted raid attempt.*****

***

Thirteen years later, Wrath Classic has returned to Trial of the Crusader, and I can't help but think of what might have happened then. 

Would I have liked it? (I don't know.) 

Would I have screwed up royally? (All signs point to yes.) 

Would my fellow raiders have tolerated my mistakes? (Come on, this is World of Warcraft we're talking about; what do you think would have happened in a pug like this in the era of GearScore?)

I do believe the trajectory of my MMO career might have been totally changed if that raid had actually happened, but my suspicion is that it would have made me even more reticent about raiding when Vanilla Classic became a thing. Even then, I had to be fast-talked into those first raids I went to in Vanilla Classic: Zul'Gurub and Molten Core. Yes, I ultimately had fun in both raids, but there was a learning curve. And the weight of expectations was not upon me. If anything the only expectation was that if we didn't loot the Corehounds like we were supposed to, we were gonna get called out in that first Molten Core raid. (Luckily for me I stayed on top of that job; I only got called out once and was in the middle of looting when it happened so it went something like "Cardwyn, loot the-- oh, nevermind.")

At times like this, I do wonder whether I deliberately sabotage my gearing and playstyle just so I am never put in the situation where I'm asked to join a raid. You can't have someone reach out to see if I'm interested if I'm not geared enough, and with my avoidance of running 5-person H+ and H++ instances, I'm guaranteeing that I won't have the gear.

Still, I do have to periodically clean the smudge from the window, looking at all the fun, wishing I was there.

*From the movie A Christmas Story. Here's the reveal of the now classic "leg lamp":

**For those who remember their programming languages, I always hear Heroic Plus Plus and think of C++. Kind of weird how this stuff comes back into your life after being away for a couple of decades.

***I put runs in quotes because the current strat for those runs is to basically run through all of the boss encounters to get to the final boss because badges for the current raid tier only drop off of the final boss.

****For the record, that does not include Hyjal, Black Temple, or Sunwell.

*****It's been forever since I've thought about her, but my biggest memory about her time here was the time she made a post criticizing someone and disparagingly wondering if someone had Downs Syndrome. My biggest regret was not standing up to her more forcefully than I did for that behavior.

EtA: It's co-BLOGGER, not coworker. Sheesh.

Meme Monday: Armor Memes

This was going to come up eventually, right? I mean, armor can be made fantastically beautiful --just go see the outfits that Kamalia puts together for that-- but there are tons of memes surrounding armor in MMOs, video games in general, and RPGs that just are ripe for the picking. 

I could easily put down twice as many memes as I've chosen now, but let's try to keep this within reason. After all, I'd not mind having material for a second Armor Memes post...

Admittedly, with plastic surgery this
look could be achieved today.
From 9GAG.com.

Oh look, it's TERA. Believe me,
the "underwear being less revealing
than the armor" thing is NOT just
a TERA thing, but it's one of the more
dramatic displays of it. From 9GAG again.

Basically TERA vs. FFXIV.
LOTRO would be on the FFXIV
side as well, but I digress.
From Twitter.

Uh, ouch.
From makeameme.org.

Then again, there's Warhammer 40K.
From imgflip.

What on Earth is Red Reading This Time: The Lost Family

What if something potentially fun and lighthearted, or just a personal curiosity, takes a sharp turn off the highway and deposits you in the middle of nowhere, adrift without any cell signal nearby?

This isn't the plot of a novel, but metaphorically speaking this is what happened to Alice Collins Plebuch when her work on her family tree took a decidedly unexpected direction. All she had to do was spit into a vial and send it off to a DNA testing site, such as 23andMe or AncestryDNA, and await the results. What she got back, however, wasn't the Irish ancestry she expected. Alice experienced what genealogists call a NPE, a Non-Paternity Event, where your parent isn't the one you thought they were. Sometimes it's an adoption that was hushed up, it's the usage of donor sperm for insemination, or the byproduct of an affair. Or sometimes the NPE was something darker. The result of experiencing an NPE, however is that it can turn the recipient into what is known as a "Seeker", trying to find out the answers behind the NPE no matter where the path leads.

Uh, yeah. Basil Rathbone I ain't.
From Pinterest.

This story, and a study into the practice of what can be classified as recreational genomics, is the focus of The Lost Family by Libby Copeland. The book evolved from what was originally an article for the Washington Post*, and Libby interwove Alice's search with an investigation into how genomics has evolved in the past decade to where it is today, including both the positive and negative aspects of this opening frontier into what our genes say about us. 

I'm surprised the photo turned
out as good as it did. It's a wee
bit cloudy outside today.

Sometimes the positive and negative are part of the same story, such as the usage of DNA genealogy databases in the apprehension of the long elusive Golden State Killer. That Joseph James DeAngelo was caught was one thing, but that DNA genealogy databases could be exploited by law enforcement without people's knowledge was quite another.

Remember those fingerprints we all provided 
when we were kids back in the 70s and 80s
so that law enforcement could find us if we
were abducted? Yeah, like that only much more so.
From imgflip.

But this book, while it makes for an engaging read**, has a personal angle to it that goes far afield from anything that this blog typically covers. 

***

Over the past decade I've seriously considered having my DNA tested numerous times, and even within the past month I've gotten to within a few clicks of signing up for AncestryDNA's DNA test. (Luckily for me I didn't, because a couple of days later that money --and some Father's Day cash-- was sucked up by car repairs. Yay, car repairs.) Some of it is curiosity, as I've always considered myself a bit of a mutt as far as my ancestry is concerned, and my mother insisted we have some Native American ancestors on her side***, and putting the question of where my ancestors came from to bed would solve these two items. But there's there's more to it than just that. 

We know absolutely nothing about my father's father.

("Oh, a puzzle!" my questing buddy exclaimed when I mentioned this to her.)

My dad was always told that his mom and dad met, moved out to Colorado, got married, and his dad died when he was an infant. As you might be able to read between the lines, that was simply a fabrication by my grandmother and my great-aunt, her sister. One of my dad's cousins finally spilled the beans to him about 25 years ago before my grandmother passed away: apparently my grandmother got pregnant, she and my great-aunt went out west, had my dad, and then came back home with him. My dad, being the sort who would apologize if he ever cursed with a word stronger than "darn it", was incensed and demanded an explanation from his mom. 

"Who told you that?!" she responded.

"I want to know the truth!"

I don't know all the details, but what I do know is that in addition to the above story my grandmother had "doctored" my dad's birth certificate, which made it difficult for him to receive Social Security benefits because his name didn't match that on the certificate.****

So... Who was my grandfather? Outside of a name that may or may not be real, I don't have a clue.

I also don't know if there are any genetic risks for cancer or heart disease or whatnot that I don't know about either.

As for relatives I don't know about, well... I'm of two minds on that one. Unlike my wife, who calls her parents multiple times a week and chats with her sister and her other relatives on social media all the time, I tend to keep my distance from my family. They all tend to be far more religious than I am, and far more prudish as well, so I'm happy to keep them at greater than arm's length. 

And, oh look, here's this little DNA test that has the ability to upend entire families' understanding of who they are if I were to spit into a vial and send it off to get studied.

That's the thing that keeps me from pulling the trigger: I already know that something will likely come up, and that I won't be interested in reaching out to these people, but will those people then find me? Or if I don't get test but another relative does, and suddenly I'm the one getting the metaphorical knock on the door by someone claiming to be a cousin I never knew existed? 

In a post pandemic world, where I saw the worst of humanity broadcast for everyone to see, do I really want to know these people? I can select my friends, but I can't do the same to family. Unlike many Seekers I don't feel adrift because I'm missing part of my life, but I am curious. But am I curious enough to find out answers I might not like? 

***

Finally, there's a question about my genealogy that has nothing whatsoever to do with my non-existent grandfather, and that has to do with my family's search into their own family tree. 

One of my mom's sisters has been conducting research into my mom's family, and supposedly she's found all of this interesting stuff about where the family came from, yadda yadda yadda. However, my aunt isn't exactly known for her academic rigor, so without me reviewing her research I look at her claims with a skeptical eye. So for my edification if nothing else, I'm interested enough into my own verification of these claims that I've begun collecting a database on the family history. Yes, I use Ancestry's database, but no, it's not public. DNA testing might help to solidify some of this genealogical research, but then again, it might open up a can of worms. 

Jeez, Rowan, the least you could have
done is gotten me into the Opening
Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics...
From memegenerator.net.

***

Some reviewers think of this usage of recreational genomics --and the book itself-- as basically First World Problems. "I don't think that the world really cares who your great grandpa bonked," is what one reviewer on Goodreads said. The world may not, but this isn't really about what the world thinks. The book isn't really written for Genealogists either, as they likely already know everything in the book and would look at it as rather simplistic.

From Cafepress, where you can get this
on a coffee mug.

I don't get to say how your ethics and morality play into what you might find in your family tree, and to be fair what people think of genealogy in the US and Canada --where a lot of people's ancestors came from somewhere else-- is going to be different than the viewpoint of someone from Europe or Asia. 

If I were to look at it as purely an academic exercise, I'd most likely pass on a DNA test. From that perspective, the potential downsides outnumber any upsides. Still, I'd be a fool to not acknowledge an emotional component to this: the desire to know as much as possible. While I may keep my family at a distance, knowing a bit about their collective history --my history-- is a very strong pull. Plus, I want to set any records straight: I'd be going in ready to accept things such as hidden names or even different family names than what is commonly accepted today, because history is messy like that.

What? Oh, the book! Right.

About the book...

Yes, I liked it. For people worried about there being too much Biology in the book, don't worry; if you lack detailed knowledge about genetics you won't have any issues following the book. You had better expect to think critically about the subject, however, and for people who thought that getting your DNA tested on a lark or as a present to a family member the book is a bucket of cold water dumped on you. If you want to go ahead, do so, but go into it with your eyes wide open as to any consequences you might encounter. And to be fair, you don't even need to have been tested to personally feel the effects; Big Data is seeing to that.

*In much the same way as Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer was originally written as an article for Outside Magazine. Alas that the original article appears to go to a follow-up article about people who are obsessed with Chris McCandless.

**Not everything in the book is as annotated as some people might like, but I was comfortable with it given that NPEs and other genealogical surprises are kind of a touchy subject, and genealogists weren't always so keen to put their names and faces down on these discussions.

***Which I no longer believe, I might add. Apparently, that is a fairly common family backstory that people have, and it frequently turns out to not be the case.

****It took months, but eventually things got sorted out.

EtA: Changed a couple of words for clarity's sake.

Meme Monday: Reading Memes

Given that a lot of people I know who are into RPGs and MMOs are also readers, it kind of figured that this version of Meme Monday was going to make an appearance.

But if you're like me, you can relate
to this one. A LOT.
From someecards.

I'm with Stephen Colbert on this one.
From Pinterest.

From Debbie Tung and
wheresmybubble.tumblr.com,
quoting Stephen King.

And alas, this is me as well.
This happened last night, hence
that first meme. From memegenerator.

You Know You've Been Writing for a Long Time When...

...you spend hours editing a document that should have been properly reviewed by someone else.

Yes, this was a document for work, and there were work things attached to this document that I'm not at liberty to discuss. However, a cursory glance of the doc told me that it needed help.

A LOT OF HELP.

And I've been spending hours on this thing, and I'm close to halfway done, just trying to deconstruct what the author was aiming for and how to fix it. 

The funny thing is, I'm not mad at the author for the state of the document.* Who I am grumpy at, however, are the people who reviewed it before me who said "Yep, looks good!" and passed it on.

Who knew that all these years of writing ol' Parallel Context would come in handy like this?

*Again, for reasons I can't discuss.

Meme Monday: Vacation Memes

Okay, I don't take vacations very often.

The reasons for my lack of interest in travelling places are pretty diverse, but the single biggest reason for a long time was that we couldn't afford to go on vacation somewhere. A couple of times we camped via car camping to save money, but the sweltering Midwestern heat did us no favors with the "great outdoors". 

I suppose we could go on vacation now, but I'm at that stage of my career where going on vacation is actually more trouble than it's worth. I have to get ahead of the pile of crap that is in my to do list just so I can leave and not be pestered by somebody --and yes, that has happened several times before*-- and then when I come back there's three times the amount of work waiting for me to deal with than if I'd just stuck around.

You tell 'em, Ron.
From Parks and Recreation,
via Pinterest.

There's also the issue of me working around off days from getting kids back and forth from college, and now all of my little extra doctors' visits, so I've just kind of looked at what vacation days I have and take a day or two off here and there. 

I do look at those people who could simply take a week or two off on release of a game they've been waiting for --or an expansion-- and wonder how they could pull that off. I mean, there were so many people who were going to go balls to the wall** when TBC Classic and then Wrath Classic were released, and now Diablo 4 has generated the same interest:

And oh look, there's a Zelda thread about pretty
much the same thing. From Reddit.

Still, that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate a good vacation meme, so here's a few to tickle your funny bone...

The few times we have gone on vacation,
this has been my wife, wanting us to make
sure we get to the place on time.
From Pinterest.

But this... This is me.
From Someecards.

Alas, this is me as well. After
over 20 years of working from 
home, I have issues not thinking
about work. From quickmeme.

And then it's all over.
"It must have been love, but it's over nowwww...."
From Memegenerator.

*And this was done by people who should have known better. They thought that my being "on vacation" meant I just wasn't visible on the company's Microsoft Teams. When they asked me to get on the network to look up something on a server, they were genuinely shocked when I told them I was 3 hours away from my laptop and was going to take this discussion up with their boss when I got back.

**Yes, it's more than just the title of a song by Accept.

Friday Night... Repairs

I think I jinxed my questing buddy.

She logged in to raid last night and... Wrath Classic barfed and wouldn't let her in. Multiple times.

So after a lot of debugging by disabling addons and other tips that the raid lead was providing --and weren't working-- she decided to take drastic measures and uninstall/reinstall Wrath Classic.

While she was waiting, I kept her spirits up with some pics inspired by what was going on in LFG Chat in our Classic Era cluster.

I found this on Redbubble:

My oldest wants this.
Because Night Elf Hunters, you know.

And then, because I was curious, I found a companion to that one:

I'm not so sure I'd want to, uh,
advertise about that fact.
Again, from Redbubble.

Right about then, I stumbled onto a pic from Reddit that Sam Hogg had created as a commission, and I about fell over:

!!!!
This is the Artstation version.

"OMG I FOUND CARD!!!" I practically shouted in Discord.

I have no idea who the hell the Draenei is, but that is Cardwyn to a tee. Well, outside of the fact that she would more likely not be in her robes, but still...

Whomever got that as a birthday present got something priceless.

***

Shortly after that, my questing buddy finished with the Wrath Classic installation, but still she couldn't login. So I took the data she could give me --her laptop's basic info (processor, memory, etc.) and the error code-- and did some quick research. Luckily for me, I'd been wrestling with this exact problem on my son's old laptop before it gave up the ghost, so I knew where to look for the legacy AMD FX Series drivers. I found the one for her laptop, gave her the link, and waited.

And hoped.

...and it worked.

She was able to get in finally, and it turned out the raid waited for her while they filled out the rest of the slots. But since she'd uninstalled/reinstalled the game, all of her addons were gone. So... she had to reinstall and reconfigure all of those too.

But the worst part of the fight was over. She was back online.

Now the raid under the Friday Night Lights can go on.

In the meantime I'm going to admire that artwork some more while fishing. And listen to Todd Rundgren:

EtA: Corrected a grammar problem.