Meme Monday: Miscellaneous Memes

Because it's mid-July, I suppose, and I'm not sure anybody wants to see marching band memes right now. (Particularly those who started band camp this past weekend in the heat and humidity, standing at attention on an asphalt parking lot...)

In 2004 I was 35, so I already had those
so-called adult responsibilities.
From Gamerant.

You know, this is what happens when
you play an MMO that encourages mass
slaughter. From Imgflip.

Not to burst your bubble or anything, but
I'm pretty sure the Dragon Queen would have
a few thoughts on the matter...
From Reddit. (Of COURSE it's from Reddit...)

The craziest people I know who I play RPGs
or MMOs with are women. So yes, I can confirm this.
From Pinterest.

If We Had The Chance

Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?

--The Way We Were, Barbara Streisand (Written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Marvin Hamlisch)

The other day I was helping out my Questing Buddy with a run through Uldaman --that mid-L40s dungeon out in the Badlands that is actually the archaeological excavation of a titan city-- when I mentioned something amusing I saw when I got to the Ironforge Flight Point to head out.

"One of the people from [the guild I occasionally help out with Onyxia] was here at the Ironforge FP and they did a keyboard turn as I ran by on OG Card," I reported. "It was as if they saw my full Tier 3 set and said, 'Wait, isn't that the Mage who never reserves anything in Ony?"

"LOL"

I'm sure I got recognized, since that Mage Tier 3 set is pretty distinctive, and having it also means that I was raiding Naxxramas in Vanilla Classic long enough to actually get the full set. In a 40 person raid where you have --on average-- 5-6 Mages, 3 Warlocks, and 3-4 Priests vying for the same drops-- you're competing with over 1/4 of the raid to get 9 pieces of gear.

Too bad I didn't say out loud "I'm the EVIL twin!!" before I took the FP, but because my brain only thought of that now, oh well.

"Maybe they're waiting on the T6 set," my Questing Buddy added.

"They'll be waiting a long time for that," I replied. We both knew that the T6 set was released in Burning Crusade, and Classic Era is permanently set at Vanilla Classic.

After a short pause, I said, "I never got a T6 set. Or a T5 set, for that matter."

"Neither did I." 

Our TBC raid team disbanded after only one try in Sunwell Plateau*, and since I was Loot Manager for our raid, I was also aware of her struggles to get gear in the two Tier 5 raids, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern.

"IIRC, Tier 5 wasn't that good for Enhancement Shamans," I mused. "Maybe two of the pieces were good, but overall Tier 4 gear was more desirable."

"I didn't even get Tier 4 gear at all," she replied, "since Fire Spec Warlocks used the Spellfire set."

"Ah, the Tailored set?"

"Yep."

That was the set that required a Tailor to make Spellcloth every couple of days. While it's one of those 'it sounds great in theory' concepts to spread out the gear acquisition process, what ended up happening in TBC Classic was that people would fanatically level alts just for the purpose of cranking out tons of Spellcloth for their gear. I knew one Mage who actually had FIVE toons making Spellcloth so they could get the gear needed for raiding.** (Yes, they also had a 'normal' full time job.) Somewhere in the back of my head I would have liked to get that set for Cardwyn or Neve, but I looked at how sweaty people were at working for that set, threw up in my mouth a little, and walked away.

The next day, we were killing pirates in Stranglethorn Vale when talk about TBC Classic came up again. 

"I find it surprising, but I'm now kind of missing TBC Classic," I said. "It would be nice to go back and do things differently."

"What would you do differently?" my Questing Buddy asked.

"First thing is that I wouldn't switch to being an Enhancement Shaman," I replied with some heat.

She laughed.

"I'm a Mage, and while I love melee, I absolutely hated the totem-twisting rotation. If you were off by just a smidge everybody's DPS would tank. I know I'd lose my raid spot, but that'd be the case only on the hardcore guilds."

"Yeah, I'd do a lot of things differently," she added. "I loved Warlock Fire, and I hated giving that up to tank [Leotheras the Blind]."

"I don't miss raid leading." Being peripherally involved in guild leadership drama wasn't worth it, particularly the perception that we were the "casual" raid despite our once per week raid trying hard to keep up with the multi-day per week hardcore teams.

"I miss Jesup." Jes ran a lot of alt raids, and she was the one who originally created the Friday night Karazhan run before handing it off to me. She'd burned out on all those alt raids in TBC Classic, but she came back to run some in Wrath Classic.*** 

"How is she doing?" another of our friends asked.

"I haven't heard from her in months," I replied.

Now that we're a few years away from the end of TBC Classic, I find that I've come around to agreeing with Shintar's desire to have a few TBC Era servers around. For all those worried about the player base being fractured, to Blizzard a sub is a sub is a sub, so if they keep you "in the family" in some fashion rather than having you unsubscribe to go play FFXIV or Elder Scrolls Online during content droughts, then Blizz has succeeded.

Preach talks about the "keeping it in the family"

concept here, so it's not just me who thinks that...

I know I'm not the only one who misses the concept of TBC Era servers, given the community driven "fresh" server push on PvP-RP Classic Era servers, as highlighted by WillE here:

Apparently Microsoft/Zenimax is pushing hard

to promote ESO's Gold Road expansion with
all of these sponsorships...

He is right in that Vanilla Classic seems to be an evergreen thing, where there's continual interest in starting over every few years, but another part of it's appeal is that in an Era server you have all the freaking time in the world. You don't have to rush to the end and then start on the progression raiding treadmill because you know an expansion will be coming out in a few years. That's kind of why in LFG and Trade Chat there's an ongoing argument about why pay for a level boost when most of the Vanilla Classic experience is in the leveling itself. 

With Cataclysm Classic in full swing, there is now no ability to see the Old World + Outland + Northrend as it was, so Blizzard is effectively creating a demand by simply going through the progression of World of Warcraft's expansions. While it's not their primary motivation for creating Cataclysm Classic, I'm sure that the WoW Classic team is aware of it. I'm also completely sure that Blizz has at least kept an eye on the private server community to see if there's an uptick in interest in TBC and Wrath Classic servers. 

But we'll see. After my experience in TBC Classic, I never thought I'd be circling back to want to try it again, but here we are. Maybe it's a shot at redemption, or maybe it's a chance for me to finally get some closure from all of the shit that myself and the other leveling Shamans went through, but if I did go back it would be on my terms, not anybody else's.**** 

And that's a start.

 

*That's where you get the Tier 6 gear, along with Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.

**And to sell on the Auction House.

***I'd have loved to have run with her in those, but since she was doing them under the franken guild's name and some people I no longer respect participated, I refused to join. I'm not so desperate to raid that I was willing to overlook bad behavior, which judging by commentary in social media makes me feel like I'm some sort of unicorn.

****Even just writing that last paragraph gave me flashbacks to that insane month I spent and how miserable it was. Slaying that soul-sucking psychic vampire would be very much worth it. Now, where's my fucking wooden stake?

Like That Pat Benatar Song

Word disseminated across the Classic community a couple of months back that a bunch of older servers were going away --my original home of Myzrael-US among them-- and there were free migrations off of those servers to other locales.

My Myzrael-US toons had already migrated to Old Blanchy well over a year ago, where they sat while I began playing Classic Era on the Mankrik Cluster, but I figured I ought to move them before the opportunity was removed. 

The West Coast PvE destination for all of these toons was... Atiesh-US*, which has apparently been suffering from player loss as well. Since I already had a stable of toons on Atiesh-US, that wasn't much of an option. I'd have preferred to migrate my Old Blanchy toons to the RP-PvE server, Bloodsail Buccaneers-US, but that wasn't an option. So, I selected Pagle-US on the East Coast, and that was that.

Or so I thought.

Somewhere shortly after that migration, I began to wonder about the nascent Classic Era West Coast Cluster. After all, I'd saved a copy of the original Cardwyn on the Era version of Myzrael-US for posterity, and when the price dropped to $5 before the ability to save a toon on Era was lost forever I went ahead and saved my two bank toons and my Rogue, Azshandra, as well. These toons were sitting on a dead cluster when all the Era activity was on the East Coast Cluster, and I began to wonder if Blizz in their desire to get people to compress onto fewer Cataclysm Classic servers had also opened up free migrations in the Classic Era realms as well. I was absolutely not going to pay Microsoft to migrate the toons to the East Coast Cluster, but if it was free...

TL;DR: Migrations off of the West Coast were available for free.

The limitation is that you had to move your toon to Mankrik-US in Classic Era, but since I created my current Era toons on Pagle-US, that wasn't an issue.

So.... I now have two Cardwyns on the same Cluster. 

One is Fire,

Ignore the kinda-sorta icy glow.

and the other is Ice.

I SAID, the other is Ice.

That's better.

I still prefer the utility of Frost, but I can't deny the sheer firepower of Fire. That OG Cardwyn is practically at full best in slot, gear-wise, that also means that she brings the pain from that angle as well. I'd like to get newbie Cardwyn up to a much better gear level, but since I'm not planning on switching her from being a Frost Mage there is a certain ceiling to her damage potential. And that's fine. 

*That's the server where my franken guild moved to, and that's where Deuce (Cardwyn Mk. 2) resides. 

Meme Monday: Medical Memes

Before you ask, no, I'm not having another "medical event". And no, I don't have Covid, either. The other week I spent my lunch time cutting down some bush/weeds that had grown in the midst of some "regular" bushes and was restoring that part of the yard to what it once was.

...and in true Redbeard fashion, I pulled something on my shoulders/back. Couple that with the next day having a surprise emergency deadline, and...

The past week was... not fun. Let's leave it at that.

Good thing that, given that I haven't healed 
in quite a while. From someecards.

I am the almighty wizard Ambien!!
From Shane Plays.

I can feel this one, given that I've played Clerics
for a very. long. time. From r/dndmemes.

When Tylenol is not enough, maybe I ought to listen
to ol' Arthas... Wait, he's not talking about emptying
your intestines, is he? From World of Warcraft Memes on FB.

EtA: How the hell could I have missed a misspelling in the freaking title?? Well, I did, and I corrected it.

Just How Do They Do It

There are days when I wonder just how some authors, such as Brandon Sanderson, can crank out novel after novel at such a high rate. 

Sure, there are people for whom this is their job, and they get up and do it on an 8 AM - 5 PM basis. I get that. But for me, my writing goes in fits and starts, highly dependent upon whether the bug actually bites me and I can write in an inspired state. When I try to force myself to write, what tends to come out sounds like reports from work.

That might be because report and documentation writing is the least favorite part of my job. 

The beauty of working from home is that I can
be flipping off Lumbergh while he's telling me this.
From makeameme.org.

It's not that I don't realize that the work is important --because it is-- it's just that writing that stuff is bland and uninteresting. It's... well, it's a job, and being forced to write is not nearly as fun as wanting to write something.

So when I see people like Brandon or Stephen King do the 8 hours of "work" of writing per day, somewhere deep inside my brain I hear screaming, as if my creative impulse was bound up and tossed over the walls of the Chateau d'If.

***

I will freely admit that I do have issues with description. There are days when I sit there and see something in my head and think "this would be so much easier if I had the capability to actually draw or paint what I see rather than describe it," but my artistic ability is worse than my writing.

"What does it look like?" I tell myself.

"Nice," I reply.

"Nice... That fucking helps a lot..."

I'm reminded of how the Apollo astronauts were trained to observe and describe objects on the lunar surface. They all had to learn how to describe landscapes the same way that they described activity in the spacecraft they flew, and it took a large amount of unlearning to then begin to build up their vocabulary and phrasing properly. 

While I'm not on the caliber of being an Apollo astronaut, surely I can figure out how to write the turns of phrase needed to describe something properly. 

Ha.

From colorado.edu.

I wish it were that easy. 

My inner critic loves to tell me that I'm no good and that I should give up "playing at writing", but I've found that my addiction to putting words on the (virtual) page isn't so easily vanquished. I don't believe that my speed at writing fiction will ever improve, but hopefully I can actually complete a story without it turning into drudgery.

The Joy of Anonymity

While my son and I were grabbing lunch before visiting our local game store for Free RPG Day*, he asked me if I was planning on playing Final Fantasy XIV any time soon. I'd created a Lancer a few years ago, but I'd never gotten around to playing him. 

"I don't know," I admitted.

It's not that I don't want to give the game a try, I suppose, but it's more like I'm not sure if I'm going to like it very much. After all, I've expressed my displeasure on more than one occasion about the focus of WoW circa Wrath onwards of the player as the Champion of Azeroth.

From ifunny.co.

When the story doesn't involve a telenovela about the major faction leaders, that is. 

From Pinterest. (And ifunny.co.)

I may not know much about the FFXIV story but I do know that your character is supposed to be the equivalent of the Champion of Azeroth, the Warrior of Light, which puts you on the level of a Godslayer or something. Given that we've been killing gods in Azeroth since 2006, this isn't exactly unknown territory. Still, that original C'Thun raid was a 40 person raid, and was a stand-in for an army in-game, even though it doesn't explicitly say so.**

In FFXIV, being called out as the Warrior of Light right from the beginning means that the focus of the story is on you in more ways than one. You're the protagonist in a fashion that's closer to being The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time) or The Child of Light (The Belgariad) from a novel. 

Even Google anticipates the inevitable Mary Sue question.

But that's neither here nor there, since one of the things I've learned as I've gotten older is the enjoyment I derive from being anonymous. 

***

Being a redhead --and having worn a beard since roughly 1990 or so-- I know a bit about sticking out in a crowd. Beards are accepted now, but they weren't that common 30+ years ago. Couple that with a natural hair color that is also the rarest, and you have a recipe for being "that guy" who people notice in a crowd. 

Even if I'm not trying, I used to be able to stand out in a crowd just because of what I wore. I remember one time I went to a Star Trek convention back in the late 80s and I stood out because I was one of the few people who did not wear a t-shirt with a logo, a jean jacket, or a Star Trek outfit of some sort***. I figured just dressing like I was going out to a baseball game or to Kings Island would be appropriate; who knew that wearing a pretty basic polo shirt and shorts would make me stand out like that? Oh well.

Fast forward about 30 years, and the older I've gotten the less I stand out. More people wear beards these days, more people dye their hair****, and my clothing is for the most part jeans and t-shirts unless I go somewhere where I have to dress up. I'm just Joe Average, and I'm fine with that.

It's quite freeing, being able to go places and people not really giving a fuck about you at all. If you've ever been to a car dealership and you're pestered by the sales force ad nauseum, you now understand the beauty of being invisible. Sure, it sucks when you actually want to speak with someone and you can't find anyone, but I'd rather have that problem than fighting off the vultures as they swoop down on you.

From @itsmariah.

But if you're famous for some reason or another, you can't just blend in with the crowd.

Maybe you don't want to blend in, but when you're famous or of high rank (pick an organization, any organization) your time is not your own. 

This may surprise some of you, but back in the mid-late 90s to the early 2000s I was a member of the Parish Council at the Catholic church we attended. As such, I got to go over items such as the budget and planning for the next fiscal year. Let me tell you, it was pretty eye opening. But even more than that, it opened a window as to how the time spent by the Pastor was divided. What we saw, as handling Mass and other Church observations, was merely the public face of their activity. There was a ton of stuff (sorry, not at liberty to discuss) behind the scenes that took up a lot of their time. When someone asked during one of the Parish Council meetings about something concerning the Archbishop, the Pastor told us a story about one of his recent discussions with the Archbishop. During the meeting the Pastor asked about scheduling some time for the Archbishop to work on a particular line item, the Archbishop opened up his calendar and pointed out that his time was booked solid for the next three months, and there was a backlog just to get on the calendar for non-essential items. The conclusion of the story is that if we thought we could get to the Archbishop for anything, well... Good luck with that. "He has no time for himself, and it's been like that for him since be became Archbishop."

***

If you take that experience into MMOs, you begin to see how my own real life experiences have colored my in-game experiences. I've known teachers who have moved well outside of the school district they teach in because they want to have lives separate from their students,***** but that only works in the modern era where you can be that far away and still teach. If you're in Fantasy Land, you could potentially do that if you're a Mage,

Neve: "Of course I can."
Me: "Oh shush. Shouldn't you be hunting
on the plains near Garadar or something?"

but most everybody else would be stuck wherever they were at. And like celebrities everywhere else, you're not going to get a moment's peace from anybody who wants your ear.

So while it would seem at first blush to be pretty awesome to be the central character and the Warrior of Light, I'm not so sure that's a blessing. Being the hero and being able to rush out and do your own thing whenever you want is very much a best of both worlds for the player. It's like partying all the time while you're the king, because it gives the impression that there's nothing to ruling a kingdom: you just show up and things take care of themselves.

Having seen how it all works makes it that much more difficult for me to appreciate MMOs (or other video games) where you can be the hero without consequences, because my brain won't simply shut up and enjoy the ride. Kind of like me, the guy with a Minor in History, having to leave the room when I watched National Treasure for the first couple of times because I simply couldn't take the butchering of history that was done in the movie. (My wife can attest to this, as I did it while we were watching the movie together.) 

I do have to admit it was very well acted and

plotted, however.

I guess I may eventually play FFXIV, but I need to push through the inevitable doubts that are going to crop up in my head.

*Last June 22, if you're curious.

**If you're in a 40 person raid versus a 10, 20, or 25 person variety, you can feel the difference in scope.

***They weren't cosplayers by any stretch, just people wearing a Star Trek jacket or shirt or wearing vulcan/elf ears. There were very few people who dressed up in costume (as we called it then), but quite a few people who at least made some effort to put their full-frontal nerdity on display. 

****That's so they can either hide the graying of their own hair or so they can have it a funky color. Either way is fine with me, but you'd never catch me doing it myself. 

*****::something something middle schoolers::

Meme Monday: Melty Summer Memes

It's Summer, and yes, it's hot. You know, "Welcome to Summer."

Both, Dude.
From Pinterest.

Very astute of you, madam.
From Imgflip.

The heat dome went that-a-way.
From Imgflip.

Or, as my oldest put it, you could put
"allergies" for all seasons and it'd be accurate.
from Facebook Memes.

I'm Not a Monk, You Know, But Come On...

I sometimes wonder about the YouTube algorithm and what shows up on my YouTube front page.

For every video that appears that's from a channel I subscribed to --or one in which I've watched videos of without subscribing-- I get some suggestions that came from out of nowhere. 

Like this:

I don't play Final Fantasy VII, never have, and probably
never will. But I ain't blind, you know.

Or this:

As if you didn't know, the picture --and likely
the rain sounds-- are AI generated.

Or even this:

What I did not know was that tents that use inflatable
"tubes" as supports are apparently a thing. Not exactly
sure how that'd work, but it is a thing.

And that's not even counting the YouTube videos of women "trying on" see through clothing, which suddenly blew through my feed and then vanished after a couple of weeks. To which I had to ask just how those videos got past the YouTube "adult" filters.

I mean, I get where all of the screencaps of the videos above are similar --I am a guy, after all-- but why these videos suddenly made their appearance is beyond my understanding. But there they were, intermixed with videos about D&D, sports, woodworking, MMOs,  and other forms of gaming.

Oh well. If I don't respond to their pretty obvious clickbait, they'll go away after a few weeks. But even my oldest has been getting these sorts of videos in her feed, and she's been annoyed by them as well.

Meme Monday: Questing Memes

Presented without comment, because I'm pretty sure we've all been there before.

Apparently boars don't have livers.
From Pinterest.

Judging from the background,
probably Shattrath City.
From Pinterest.

Remind me again how you're the Champion
of Azeroth. From quickmeme.

The bane of quests: the escort quest.
From @pepevaro3.

And, of course, there's the quest reward sent by mail:

Amazing what they can stuff into a fantasy
mailbox. From Pinterest. Again.

Meme Monday: Scheduling Memes

I thought about having this Meme Monday cover one of the things people love to do during Summer, which is go to the beach.

Well, I started collecting a few of my memes I'd left over that cover this, and realizing I needed some filler, I went in search of some more RPG or MMO beach memes.

Given what I found --sometimes I can be quite naïve, particularly where fandom is concerned--  I think it's safer going to Plan B: trying to schedule an RPG game!

This is highly topical, since my game group that plays 3-4 times a year is having some difficulty with that Summer scheduling slot. We were supposed to play this coming Saturday, but conflicts by several people kept this from working. So... we worked on our July schedules, and... No go there either.

Oof.

So, it's a work in progress.

Yeah, that's another way of putting it. From d20.pub.

In a post-pandemic world, this actually works.
From Pinterest.

Heh. From Facebook's DnD_Memes.

Hey, it's better than nothing!
From Pinterest.

Speaking of Pandora's Box

Long time blogger Kurn has tried out Follower Dungeons in Retail WoW recently, and wrote about her experience with it on her latest blog post. To say she was impressed with the NPC groups she had is an understatement.

My original comment on her post, that it was a technical solution to a people problem, is likely the most obvious take. After all, MMOs in general --and WoW in particular-- is infamous for toxic behavior toward tanks and healers in instance and raid groups. This solution, presented in Retail, is an obvious way toward allowing people to see group content without actually fixing the toxicity itself. 

The more I've thought about it, however, the more I wonder whether this will become the ultimate goal toward making an otherwise dead or empty location in an MMO feel alive. 

If you go to a place such as Silvermoon City or The Exodar --both out of the way cities that first saw light in WoW's Burning Crusade expansion-- other than a few bank alts and some new toons running here and there both cities are dead.

Blizzard tried to make them seem more alive by having a few groups of NPCs roam both cities, but the paths followed and statements made are pretty much on repeat. There are similar instances of in-game NPC interactions throughout Azeroth that are gradually more elaborate but still on rails throughout all of the expansions I've played. While I give Blizz credit for trying, it isn't even close to what it's like to having a real vibrant community.

If you hop over to Guild Wars 2 and Divinity's Reach, that's a bit more of what I believe Blizzard is attempting to do. By comparison, Divinity's Reach is a lot more "alive" with NPCs --namely that there are more of them around so that the place feels less empty-- although NPC interactions with the game world are still pretty limited. 

But what if you programmed NPCs to act more like what you find in Follower Dungeons, but interacting in the game world itself?

You know, a step or two away from Westworld...

It's from Pinterest, but it's a screencap
of HBO's Westworld.

Of course, Westworld is what you'd get if a Renaissance Faire were entirely composed of robots who never broke the fourth wall (or never were aware there was a fourth wall).

The bane of MMOs isn't toxicity, but apathy. If there's nobody to interact with, the main selling point of MMOs is dead. But if a game company can fill a game world with NPCs that interact with the game world as if they were real players (minus the toxicity) then you can negate the worst problem of the MMO genre.*

It's a tempting proposition, isn't it?

And holy crap, I just realized how this could be used in "adult" MMOs. (Again, just like Westworld.) 

Yikes.

Whether or not we like it, I think that there will be some game companies that will move video games toward truly immersive experiences, with NPCs that interact in a more lifelike fashion with each iteration of generative AI. 

And I'm not exactly sure what I think about that.

*I guess the bots would quickly follow suit and up their own game, wouldn't they?

EtA: Corrected a sentence from "to to" to "to do". Got all that?

Meme Monday: Age Disparity Memes

No, I'm not talking about what is colloquially known as "robbing the cradle", where one adult has a relationship with a much younger adult. It's more an issue with Fantasy as a genre in novels, movies, and video games. Inter-species romance aside --and I have issues with that as well-- there's the issue of age disparity in relationships. 

Hell, never mind relationships, there's the issue of skill level disparity:

From REIQ.

But yes, relationships.

The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on, alone. That's the curse of the Timelords.* 

 

 

That. Pretty much that. So... some of those memes.

From imgflip.

I wish I knew who did this meme; it's great.

Obviously this person never knew about
Beren and Luthien. From Owlturd.
(Really? Sheesh, what a name.)

And leave it to Spidey to have the
last word. From Reddit's r/dndmemes.

*From School ReunionSchool Reunion. the third episode of the revived Doctor Who's second season.

Me and My Big Mouth

After that post on my upcoming deck project, I've been reading up on the building code for said deck. 

And I've found a few problems.

You know how I mentioned that I had no idea how the deck passed inspection because of the slope of the stairs? Yeah, I found that if there's three or more steps in place then a rail has to be there. That 3 steps is kind of critical, because the north steps have only one step, and a very steep one at that, so I guessed right and that they avoided needing stair rails there because of the lack of steps and barely making the minimum slope for the steps. Still, it's not optimal.

However, I did find out that the gap in the balusters around the deck was required so that a 4 inch sphere could not pass through the gap. Not because they don't want a ball falling off of the deck, but a toddler being able to stick their head through the gap.

And the gap in our balusters is 5 inches. 

/sigh

While I was measuring, I also found out that our railings were 35 inches high, while the code minimum for the railings is... 36 inches. That may sound bad, but I can actually make 36 inches by changing a few things on the rails. I was going to rebuild them anyway, but it is annoying.

I mean, really? REALLY? How close
can you get and still mess this up?
But yeah, putting a 2x4 or 2x6 on top
will push me over 36 inches.

For a few anxious moments I thought the length of the deck railing wasn't up to code either, as the "how to" deck books I was reading mentioned a 6 foot maximum length between railing posts, and ours were a maximum of 6.5 feet. It turns out that the building code for the county states a maximum length of 8 feet, so I don't have to do major surgery on said deck. 

And at least the spacing on joists is 14 inches, not wider than the absolute minimum of 16 inches.

Rebuilding the rails isn't that big of a deal, and I'd been considering it anyway as the railings had been out there, exposed to the elements, for 35 years. However, if I'd have needed an extra 5 or so rail posts, that might have been enough to require a rebuild.

And a reinspection.

/ugh

What I've decided to do is do what I can right now that is most important, and that is to redo the deck boards themselves. After that, if I've the time and money, I'll fix the north steps, the skirting, and the west steps in that order. Last on the list will be the deck railing, because a) it's been like that for years so an extra year won't hurt, and b) I don't have little kids who could stick their head through the railing. (Any more, anyway.)

Time Past

I was eating dinner out with my oldest last night, and talk turned to MMOs. We'd discussed LOTRO for a bit --she mentioned that our house was out of storage-- and about several of the changes made to legendary weapons. Because of the changes, you didn't have to swap out your weapon every so often; you could keep that same weapon as long as you wanted. 

"I still have my original weapon," I mused. "I doubt I'll ever get rid of it."

We covered some of the other changes made to the game over the years, as she'd continued to play LOTRO actively long after it became a niche event for me, then we discussed another MMO we'd played a lot in the past.

"I miss SWTOR," I said, "but that bug keeps me from playing it."

"The companion bug?" she asked.

"Yeah, that one."

"I have that bug too, and it drives me crazy."

"It's the only game I see where a companion just simply does not keep up with me over time. I typically last as far as Alderaan until I can't stand it any more."

"That's a shame," she replied, "because I loved the story in Alderaan."

"I used to think it was a problem with the Radeon graphics cards," I added, "but when we bought my current PC it runs on an NVidia card that's far more advanced than anything we had in 2012 and it still does it."

"I wondered if it had something to do with server congestion."

"There was more server traffic back then, so I have no idea what the problem is. I have seen it on two separate installations of the game, and now three if you're seeing it too. It's not like Bioware hasn't made games with companions before or after, so I don't know what the issue is with this one single game of theirs."

After a brief pause, my oldest added that if there were Classic SWTOR servers ever created, she knows several people who would jump at the chance to play those again.

"Like your brother?"

"Yeah, he disliked how easy the game became."

"I miss the difficulty," I said, taking another bite of my salad. "The Consular end boss in particular was originally really tough until they nerfed it. And even after it was nerfed it was a hard fight."

"Remember the final zone in the Tatooine story?" she asked. "You kept going through this long maze until you got to the end, and now it's 'you take an elevator and you're there.'"

"Yeah. Or remember accidentally touching something out in the field and discovering that was a World Boss spawn point? Or when you'd be assembling a group to take on a World Boss and someone from the other faction would run up and cause the WB to spawn, grabbing it for the other faction?"

"I remember that. Or those Heroic 4 zones out in the field. They're all 2+ Heroics now."

"I haven't set foot in a Flashpoint since they changed the design so that you didn't need a healer or a tank," I confessed, "and you have those self-administered healing points scattered around the instances. But boy did I love the original Flashpoints they had." 

"Yeah."

You know you're getting old when your daughter starts reminiscing about how things were back in the day, I suppose.

Who's Playing This Game, Anyway?

I'm not a big fan of guides.

Yes, I'll use them from time to time if I'm stuck and multiple hours of beating my head against a wall hasn't yielded any results*, but by and large I'll avoid guides and walkthroughs and the "correct" way of doing things. 

That is both the joy and curse of doing group content in an MMO: everybody has their own opinions, but if what you do is different than what is considered optimal, are you simply wasting other people's time? 

For the average random group or raid, the answer is likely yes, you ARE wasting people's time if you're not doing your best. And for those people, 'doing your best' means following the correct build and performing the correct rotation in an optimal fashion. 

It's the "Sure, you can do whatever you want, but it had better be what you're supposed to be doing!" conundrum, embracing the concept of freedom for all until it starts to impact your own freedom to complete things as quickly as possible.

I think that's partially why I tend to stop worrying about completing quests when I'm with people who are 'questing together': my idea of fun and questing is different than other people's, so in the name of expediency I just kind of tag along as 'hired muscle' and go back and do the quests at my own pace later. 

Well, Josh Strife Hayes has been playing Mass Effect on his stream, and apparently some people have been telling him "he's doing it wrong" or "you need to do X next". Josh kind of squashed that one really fast.

Yeah, I'm on board with Josh here.

He articulates my issues with guides and guide culture very nicely, without me having to add any extra commentary to the matter.

***

On a semi-tangent, Runescape streamer and content creator J1mmy created a video about 3 months ago that kind of blew up:

Now, you have to settle in, as it's a 42 minute video, but considering that he'd never played WoW before but was familiar with MMOs (courtesy of Runescape), I found it fascinating to watch. He does have a very dry wit, and it's very much worth a watch. 

I also found WoW PvP streamer Xaryu's reaction to it very interesting as well, as he points out that the problems that J1mmy highlights are not easy ones to fix. 

Do I have answers to the problems? I'll be honest here: no, I don't. And to be fair, I'm not exactly sure if a significant portion of WoW's fanbase believes there even are problems that can't be fixed by a good expansion and the presence of Chris Metzen. Kind of a 'wave your hand and make all the issues magically go away' sort of thing. 

But what J1mmy and StarCraft streamer Day9TV (see above) found in their initial exposure to WoW highlight is that we, as gamers who have played MMOs in the WoW and WoW clone subgenres, have too many blind spots about the game that only become apparent when someone outside of the ecosystem tries to play. 

When I saw a neighbor try WoW for the first time --during Cataclysm in 2011-- and he got totally flummoxed trying to figure the story and everything out, I understood. All of the richness to the story of Azeroth is wasted if it's not presented in an understandable manner to a new player. And the problem is compounded by almost 20 years' worth of additions to the base game. **

Maybe what's needed is an expansion that absolutely, positively presents itself without a single iota of reliance upon prior expansions or even the base game for the story. If you cut out the albatross that is 20 years' worth of lore, you stand a chance of making this particular expansion's story more understandable.

It's a thought, anyway.

Just how would you do that?

Beats me, but whatever they come up with surely has to be better than t-shirts proclaiming "What Sword?" as an in-joke for Legion veterans. I kinda get it, but if you asked me any details beyond "There's a sword out in a zone that was untouched by Cataclysm", I'd simply make some stuff up.

And that highlights a bit of a problem for WoW. Modern WoW is made for people who play WoW already, not people who may in the future play WoW. 

*And, I might add, when I'm out of ideas. While inaccurately attributed to Albert Einstein, I am a big believer in the credo "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." So, if I find myself doing the same strategy without making any changes, just hoping that "I'll get it right this time", after a certain point I'll cave and go look at a strategy. For the record, I haven't done that yet in Baldur's Gate 3, which is kind of amazing given how much I have to police my feed and usage of social media.

**Before you ask, yes, I don't like the modern story very much. I really haven't liked it since about Cataclysm onward, and now having gone back and played Vanilla and BC in their Classic incarnations, I don't like Wrath's story much either. That being said, just because I don't like it doesn't mean that Blizzard should simply give up and not bother trying to make the story understandable for new players.

Meme Monday: Summer Memes

Because it's June, and hence it must be Summer...

Yeah, I get that. Even our youngest
is going to be a senior at college this fall.
From Imgflip.

I should try this.
From someecards.

Alas, mine will be the latter.
From imgflip.

Uh... I've heard of overkill, but...
From Pinterest.

My, How Things Have Changed

I'm one of those people who end up gravitating toward a standard way of playing, and despite my willingness to try different strategies I end up following the same old path.

Take Stardew Valley, for instance.

Yes, I actually used Cardwyn for this
particular playthrough, because here her
name is kind of unique.

Despite all of my best intentions, the sheer volume of games that I've played there with variations of Redbeard as my character's name can look pretty daunting. The current playthrough I'm doing is yet another permutation of my own name, and yes he has red hair and a beard.

Another quirk of my Stardew Valley games is that I end up with a similar layout of crops and animal habitats. Not because it's the most efficient, per se, but because the crops are grown close to the shack I live in and I clear that area first. The next area I clear is a path leading to the woods to the south, so I stick the animals in a fenced area over there.

Kind of like this.

And so on, and so on.

Finally, although I make a point when I start each game to tell myself that I'm going to try to romance other NPCs, I pretty much always end up selecting Penny or Leah. This is not an accident, as both of them have qualities I see in my wife. That they are both redheads is kind of a cherry on top of the sundae, so to speak, as I've a thing for redheads.*

In spite of that, I have at one occasion or another romanced almost all of the other eligible candidates out there, just to see what their storyline is like all the way to the end.

There's been a few major updates to Stardew Valley since I last played, and it seems that Eric Barone has make some dialog changes to the characters. While the main cutscenes up through to 10 Hearts is unchanged, the dialogue when you talk to all of the NPCs has been expanded by a bit. While it's not a complete overhaul, for a few NPCs it does make a measurable difference.**

Okay Leah, I get the hint. Have you been
talking to my doctor or something?

It made Haley more interesting, which surprised me.

Haley, for those who haven't played the game, is the stereotypical popular blonde girl who is pretty superficial. If you've ever talked to someone in high school who looks on you with active disdain for not being 'with it', that's Haley. Of the romanceable NPCs in Stardew Valley, she and Alex are tied for the most vain and disliked by me. Yes, I know that some people might think similar things about Shane or Sebastian --or early Abigail interactions-- but being not one of the popular kids in real life meant I had a similar visceral reaction to Haley and Alex when I first began playing. 

In this most recent run-through, I was expecting to pretty much stay with the tried and true, but early on I noticed that some of Haley's most annoying commentary had been trimmed (or I'd gotten lucky and avoided it) and some of her new commentary wasn't all that bad. (By her standards, anyway.) That intrigued me, and when you combine that with her Spring birthday she ended up with more hearts than she usually gets in one of my playthroughs. 

Well, I thought, she doesn't seem quite so stuck up as usual, so I figured I'd let the chips fall where they may and let the game progress naturally. 

As usually happens, my traditional romance partners caught up and passed her, but Haley did hold her own, so when decision time finally came for me --selecting which NPC to turn from a friend to a romantic partner-- it came down to Penny, Leah, Abigail, and Haley. The two tried and true, the adventurous wildcard, and Haley.

In the end, I selected Haley.

I'm pretty sure this is one of the new dialogue options.
The Winter clothing definitely is new.

I was quite surprised how much she'd grown over the course of the game, and she really blossomed into a caring woman. Her 14 heart cutscene** really showed she's no longer a shallow person, and that she had the drive and initiative to do something without making that something all about her. While she still enjoys the beach and makeup and whatnot, there's a lot of caring and depth to her now that I'd never seen before.

Who knew?

*Yes, my wife is a redhead.

**I'm aware that Stardew Valley has a ton of mods out there for it, ranging from mild to risqué to converting the game into a mathematical exercise that a WoW add-on user would love. Among the mods out there is one that changes the dialogue of the NPCs, and I suppose that is the inspiration for some of these changes that Eric made in Stardew Valley.

***If you haven't played the game in a few years, yes, there's now a 14 heart cutscene for married companions.

EtA: Corrected grammar. They're their there...