Video Game Art: The Elder Scrolls Online

It's been a few months, hasn't it?

I figured that for this Friday, I'd like to highlight some art from The Elder Scrolls Online. ESO builds upon the lore from The Elder Scrolls video game series into an MMO in its own right, and over the past decade Zenimax has figured out how to keep the game alive after its own disastrous rollout back in the day.*

Almost all of this art comes from loading screens for the game, which works well in highlighting the style the game intents to evoke.

Can't have an ESO game without a dragon
making an appearance somewhere.

The character models look so much
better than even the Skyrim days.

This is all of the major NPCs --minus
the faction leads-- in the original game.

If you've ever seen the Morrowind expansion
trailer, you recognize these two. Of course,
the Dunmer is everybody's favorite Morag Tong
agent, Naryu.

These login screens always inspire me.

The loading screen between zones when you
fast travel have a quick overview, but I'm here
for the scenery.

Unlike World of Warcraft --and I'm including
Warlords of Draenor here-- ESO has gone all in
on housing. It's actually quite nice, as similar to SWTOR
there's a variety of houses to select all across Tamriel.

In my wandering around today, I stumbled
across this quest area that I'd never seen before.
Boy, was I out of practice on playing.

These three NPCs are found in the original trailers
for The Elder Scrolls Online. The Aldmeri makes
an appearance in the Summerset trailer, and I think
the Daggerfall Covenant rogue shows up in
another of the trailers. (Can't remember which;
maybe it was Elsweyr?)

*This seems to be a trend about MMOs that came out after WoW. Even WoW didn't have the greatest original launch, people who played back then are fond of reminding me, but still a disastrous launch is very difficult to overcome if you don't have any buildup of goodwill from potential players.

EtA: Corrected spelling.

Just Living in Interesting Times

Oh yay, Microsoft got rid of more people from XBox.

And, as Michael Bell pointed out, Microsoft just announced a $60 billion stock buyback at the same time.

So.

I don't think I'll ever pine for the days of Bobby Kotick, but Microsoft is basically claiming "poor" and cutting people at the same time as they're pumping in tons of cash to prop up the stock price. Given the (lack of) tremendous cost savings you get from laying off 2550 people --hint, it's not $60 billion-- it certainly seems like Microsoft is trying to starve Activision Blizzard into.... Something.

Submission, maybe?

I'm not sure what Microsoft is thinking about XBox long term, because they're struggling to compete with Sony's Playstation. I do know they're going all in on Copilot, as I can't open up my work email without seeing another missive from Microsoft about how awesome Copilot is. Maybe they're hoping that customer service for XBox games will get so bad that Copilot will seem to be an improvement. But I doubt Microsoft is even thinking that far ahead, given that publicly traded corporations have an obligation to "maximize shareholder value" to the exclusion of all else. 

***

On the flip side of publicly traded corporations, there's private equity.

Basically, it's all of the greed and short-sightedness of publicly traded corporations but in a private format where their activity is hidden from public view.

You know, everybody's favorite business: the Embracer Group.

Well, Juraj Krupa of AJ Investments is going after Ubisoft and wants to take the company private.

I have no pity for Ubisoft itself, but I also have little time for corporate raiders. They call themselves "activist investors" now, which makes them sound like a do-gooder, but the reality is they want to take control of a company, maximize their profit, and then get out while profits are at their highest.

What does AJ Investments want to do? Oh, not much. Just run Ubisoft like how Bobby Kotick ran Activision Blizzard, complete with a focus on only a few properties that pump out products every year and maximize cash shops and in-game purchases.

Ay-yi-yi.

May you live in interesting times, my ass.

In Case You Were Wondering...

...I have confirmed that you can't get XP from Fishing in Retail WoW. Perhaps that isn't news to you, but I was curious enough to check since I figured that leveling by Fishing would be slower than leveling by gathering herbs or mining ore.

Bummer.

At least Eversong Forest is unchanged from TBC.

Yes, the graphics are updated in general, but by and large the quests are the same as they've ever been. The zone is filled with familiar NPCs and enemies, frozen in time.

How do I know this? I took my bank alt Rogue from 2010 or so and ran around Eversong Forest to get enough XP from exploring to reach Level 5, which is the minimum level to train the Fishing skill. I got to see all of my old peeps from around the zone. Yes, Magistrix Dawnstrider and Apprentice Mirveda are still there, as was the Dwarf near the Arcane Sanctum and Antheol's wayward apprentices at the bridge crossing.

I am quite aware that the TBC starter zones are off on their own little area, so have been completely unaffected by the Cataclysm revamp back in 2010. Additionally, there might be further phased changes to the zones so what I'm seeing is the "initial" result before, say, a Legion or Battle for Azeroth change happens. Still, not interested in finding out. (I was there for the fishing.)

If nothing else, the Blood Elf starter zones are unchanged from 2007, and that brings to me a measure of comfort in a changing world.

Meme Monday: Traveling Memes

My wife and I just got back from visiting our oldest this weekend*, so we put in a lot of hours on the road. That got me to thinking about all of the traveling memes out there, so... Here we are.

We also had an ulterior motive for the trip, which was to drop off the rest of her items that she couldn't fit into our SUV the first time around (if you'll recall, the U-Haul was up in Dayton so she could only fit a few boxes in before I left to bring the truck up there.)

Yeah, that.
From supermeme.ai.

And so we tried our best to stuff everything into the CR-V. Somehow, we succeeded.

Away we went.

My brain checked out Friday morning, but
it quickly re-engaged when I got pummeled by
work that came from out of nowhere to land
in my lap. I'm still dealing with the fallout
from all that. From memeshappen.com.

This is a problem that only truly became
an issue after about 2010 or so. But now,
just making sure you have a charger and
cable is half of your packing requirements.
We had those two items, but somehow were
missing other things. Such as toothbrushes.
From mpora.

That's something that does kind of annoy
me. Unless I just get a McDouble from McDonald's
for lunch, you're going to spend more money on
food than you really want to. So when your
wife brings up a restaurant to eat at that you KNOW
she has complained about the prices in the past, you
just know that lunch is not going to end well.

We used to do this, but apparently the new trend
is to have these large bottles of soap, shampoo,
etc. in your hotel room that are pretty much
locked in place, so you can't walk out with them.
On the one hand it's nice to not have to worry
about having enough shampoo, but on the other
hand I wonder about sanitary conditions. From imgflip.

*It was her birthday.

Channeling My Inner Boss

I've been dipping my toe back into some raiding. Nothing crazy, mind you, just regular old Molten Core on Wednesday nights. One of our little group got into that MC on his Paladin, and when I happened to login earlier than usual on that Wednesday, he asked if I wanted to come. My wife was already beat and was going to bed early, so I said sure.

Hmm... Have I been here before?

It didn't hurt that the Good Twin got a couple of pieces of gear, the Azuresong Mageblade --it's made for a Mage, because it has "Mage" in the name!-- and the (Mage Tier 1) Arcanist Bracers. Between those two pieces of gear --plus an offhand I had obtained as a reputation piece via Alterac Valley-- my damage on an unbuffed per Frostbolt hit went from mid-600s to mid-700s. Which ain't so insignificant when you think about it.

***

There's also been all sorts of sneaky activities that my Questing Buddy and I have gotten ourselves into.

Because I simply can't keep my mouth shut.

She and I --on my old Classic Rogue, Azshandra-- have been sneaking into Zul'Gurub and picking herbs, hoping for Bloodvine to drop. 

In case you're wondering, Az's spec is a customized mixture of Combat and Subtlety. I designed it so that I could go just far enough into Subtlety to pick up Improved Sap and then into Combat to get the bonuses for dual wielding daggers. (Oh no, a Dagger Rogue! And a non optimized one, too!)

Eh, it works for me. She's not raiding. As a bonus, she has advantages in stealth that a regular Combat Rogue would never have, and that means she can help my Questing Buddy with Operation Bloodvine.

When we're not dead, that is.

There's a reason why I'm still hidden.

Those of keen eyesight among you might notice that my Questing Buddy's Druid doesn't have any real gear on, and that's because she'd died enough times that her gear broke.

The idea is that we target an herb node, she casts heals on herself, mounts up, and pulls the nearby mobs. Then I stealth in and grab the herbs and any nearby Hoodoo Piles, then stealth away before the mobs come back. She typically manages to avoid the mobs long enough to find a reset point, but as you can see above she occasionally pulls too many enemies or she runs into one during her escape.

Still, the reward of Bloodvine for some of the best non-raid gear in Classic Era is worth it. The Bloodvine 3-piece cloth set is great for Warlocks and Mages up through Blackwing Lair, and only starts being replaced in the AQ40 T2.5 set pieces. Back in the Fall of 2020, once I obtained my Bloodvine set on OG Cardwyn, I kept it until I began getting replacement pieces in Naxxramas.* My Questing Buddy was hunting for Bloodvine to make the set for herself, but Bloodvine alone is worth a pretty penny on the Auction House. 

So the lure of "free gold" --minus the gear repair bills-- is strong.

When my Questing Buddy is running back from having died, I find myself with time on my hands. So I've taken up dancing and singing while hidden. Because I can.

Yes, I remember Born in the USA quite well.
Between that album, Purple Rain, 1984, and
a host of other classic albums, 1984 was a good year.

***

Oh! And I ran into an old friend in Feralas.

Fancy meeting you here.

It's good to see Rexxar out and about like this, and not tied up at a Horde-only base in Outland.

***

And, uh, this person is back too.

/sigh

Sometimes you just can't win.

*Why is it so good? Because the Bloodvine set has two distinct advantages over most other gear: it has superior spellpower bonuses, and it also has hit bonuses. If you want to go raiding, a Mage has to get to roughly +17 to their Hit bonus to reach the cap and have the greatest chance of hitting a raid boss that's roughly 3 levels higher than you. The Bloodvine set alone gets you a +4 to Hit, netting you a quarter of the bonuses you need to become "Hit Capped". The drawback is that there are absolutely no Stamina bonuses to the Bloodvine set, so you don't have even close to as much health as wearing Tier raid gear will get you. That is.... kind of deadly in places such as Blackwing Lair or AQ40.

EtA: Apparently I can't spell the word "keen". Fixed.

Did You Ever Anticipate THIS, Sir Terry?

For those who are fans of Sir Terry Pratchett, Modiphius Entertainment is going to be bringing an RPG based on Discworld to Kickstarter in October:

From the Kickstarter page.

Here's a link to the announcement on Modiphius' website, and here's the email I received via screencaps:

Okay, here's hoping that this works, but I'm going to put the links for a sign up for Kickstarter updates here, and signing up for the Quickstart Preview here.

Meme Monday: Gatekeeper Memes

You all know about them. 

You've likely seen them in action.

Gatekeepers.

The people who try to make whatever hobby or fandom or whatever an exclusive club, to keep the "riff-raff" out. They're the sort of people that would try to take over a Homeowner's Association just to create rules to turn a local subdivision into their own little fief. 

Video games are definitely not the only fandom or community that has their share of gatekeepers --I have personal experience about that-- so now that I've gone down yet another rabbit hole of a community I'll be posting about sometime in the future, I figured I'll get these memes out there to poke some fun of the "KEEP OUT" crowd.

Yeah, pretty much. The old H.L. Mencken
line about someone somewhere having a good time
springs to mind. From X.

Poor Gandalf. I imagine Gatekeepers imagine
themselves like this. From Twitter and Sales Evangelist.

Like I mentioned, gaming isn't the only
hobby that has its share of gatekeepers.
From Reddit.

Amazing how frequently this pops up
whenever I poke my nose into comics.
From Facebook's Dungeons and Dads group.

Red Needs Water Badly

On September 4th we received our next batch of wood for the deck.

The guy delivering the wood warned me about
some of the pieces. He didn't pull them, but if
he had he'd have gotten me better boards, as he
builds decks as a side job on the weekends.

That meant I worked on the deck this weekend.

I have 42 rows to replace, so I bought enough wood for 21 rows plus a bit extra to compensate for any bad boards.

So today, I put down nine rows.

One more row here will barely fit within the
length of a 16 foot board, and then I'll have to use
combinations of 8 foot and 12 foot boards.

It was also quite the adventure, given that I dropped a couple of things that fell down under the deck, so I had to crawl under it to get to the drill bit and screws. I was sure not going to go on another trip to the hardware store for another countersink bit.

The hardest part of the deck work has been ripping out the old boards:

The damage.

I'm going to have to break those down and safely remove/bend the nails before I can get too much farther along. These 4 inch-wide boards may look pretty, but there's a lot more of them than there would have been if the previous homeowner had used the more commonly used 6 inch wide boards. Sure, I could have replaced the 4 inch boards with 6 inch, but that would have required me ripping out all of the boards so I could properly do it. And I really wasn't going to do that and leave the deck in an incomplete state for a couple of months.

The weather today was fantastic. Almost too much so, because in my focus on my work I neglected to hydrate and even eat some lunch. (I did have a handful of nuts, so I wasn't completely crazy.) Right now, I'm paying the price by nursing a headache while I drink water. 

EtA: It's countersink, not counterstrike. /sigh

Not For Lack of Trying

In case you didn't know, Retail WoW has a new expansion out...

This was what I saw when I logged in on
Sunday night, and it's not the first pop-up
I've had either. I think that this is the second
or third one in the past week or so.

Even on Monday evening, when you login to Battle.Net your main screen on WoW Classic is this:

Just in case you missed it, you know...

I'd say they're hyping the hell out of the new expansion. Not exactly sure just how much interest they're going to get from the various shades of WoW Classic players (the first Classic-oriented news bit is the fifth article on the main page and it's about Cataclysm Classic), but they are trying.

Although I will say that the WoW Classic community is probably not Mythic Dungeon Invitational and the Arena World Championship's target audience. Just a hunch.

Kind of like this, but replace
'MMORPG' with WoW.
From Quickmeme.

How Much Choice is Too Much?

One of the reasons why I prefer an MMO such as WoW Classic Era is that it simply doesn't have that much choice when it comes to in-game activities.

Sure, you can go wherever you want in the two continents, you can go into dungeons, Battlegrounds, and raids (if high enough level), and you can even do some repeatable quest grinding out in Silithus if you're so inclined. Or just hang around and fish or just kill things. It sounds like a lot, but compared to a lot of other MMOs it isn't.

Even compared to other video games it isn't that much.

In the early part of the Summer, I played through My Time at Sandrock, the sequel to My Time at Portia. 

That was about the best I could do to create
another Redbeard. Considering I was supposed
to be a "youngster" of about 18-20-ish, it'll do.

Compared to the original game, the new one has several quality of life advancements and presents more of the post-apocalyptic world than ever before. The story, while a bit grimmer than that found in My Time at Portia, is well done.* If you've ever played a sort of building / creating game such as My Time at Sandrock, you know that romancing and potentially marrying a character is a big part of the game. 

And that, my friends, is where I fell down on the job.

There are potentially 21 romanceable options to choose from, and based on my own personal preferences I've whittled it down to 9.** Well, I couldn't make a decision, so I kept putting it off and putting it off, and then... The game ended. 

Damn.

That wasn't what I had in mind. I was going to focus on someone, but I found the options presented to me so appealing that I couldn't make a choice before the game ended.*** All of the characters spoke to different aspects of my personality and what I found attractive, yet no single option presented itself above all others. 

Again, in my experience real life doesn't operate like a video game in that manner --the Tinder-fueled appeal of hookups notwithstanding****-- so when you get right down to it, I had nine options to choose from and I couldn't select one. When everything has a certain level of appeal, trying to decide which option to choose leads to a form of analysis-paralysis.

***

This is not a new phenomenon, as it's been studied before. One of the more recent studies, conducted by researchers from the University of Buffalo's Department of Psychology, discusses how trying to make a choice between options that have a high level of importance make people freeze with indecision based on the number of choices presented. Maybe selecting what you want for dinner from a menu may not be a life altering choice, but if you present it in the context of a first date or a business lunch with a client, the stakes are raised and selecting poorly may cost you in other ways.

Or, to put it another way, take a look at Covenants in a recent Retail WoW expansion, Shadowlands.

You'd think that Blizz or Wowhead would have a usable
graphic, but nooo.... I had to go to a boosting service's
website, Boosting Ground, to find a good version.
Still, just remember that you're DEAD if you're looking
at this. Well, theoretically so, and handwaving is involved.

When you reach the end of the main questline where you have visited and quested in all four Covenants, you're asked to choose one. One of those four would provide a good buff to your abilities, but if you choose the wrong one, you originally had to work hard in-game to be able to switch Covenants to the "correct one". 

If you don't have any knowledge of which Covenant to select --"What is this Wowhead you speak of?"-- you kind of just have to wing it. Knowing WoW players as any MMO player worth their salt does, if you don't pick the "correct" one you're going to get crapped on in group content. And let's be honest, switching Covenants as originally designed would have put you far enough behind any friends you play with that, well... Yeah, the stakes are pretty high here.

Sucks to be you, homie. 

                    --Blizzard, probably

So while the number of choices isn't high, the stakes were high enough that the potential was there to simply freeze with indecision.

Blizzard eventually learned their lesson and eased the restrictions on Covenant selection, lowering the stakes a bit, but one place where they haven't really learned their lesson is in the volume of activities found in Retail WoW.

***

In Retail WoW you don't suffer from a lack of things to do.

This is no means an exhaustive list, but off the top of my head as a Classic Andy here's what you can do in Retail WoW:

• Quests
• Main Questline
• Leveling Questline
• Max Level Questline
• Side Quests
• Daily Quests
• Weekly Quests
• Monthly Quests (are these still a thing?)
• Grind Reputation(s)
• Darkmoon Faire
• Transmog Collecting
• Professions
• Crafting Orders
• Weeklies (no more dailies, is that correct?)
• Just craft/gather to sell (or wait for a queue to pop)
• Delves
• Dungeons
• Normal
• Heroic
• Mythic+ (Coming soon!)
• Raids (Coming soon!)
• LFR
• Normal
• Heroic
• Mythic
• Battlegrounds
• Arenas
• Various 2x2 through 5x5
• Solo Shuffle (have I got that right?)
• World PvP
• Marked as PvP (or whatever it's called now)
• Duelling
• Are there flying races that could technically be put in here?
• Pet Battles (Is this still a thing?)
• OLD STUFF
• Things to do from previous expansions
• Level an alt
• Sit in a capital city and talk smack on Trade Chat

On the face of it, all of this choice must be good, right?

But to me, I look at this list and kind of mildly freak out. It's like going to Jungle Jim's here in Cincinnati and trying to figure out what hot sauce to buy:

Look, this is only half of their display; the other
side has just as many different hot sauces.
From Reddit, but since I go several times a year,
I can confirm that this is accurate.

If you know what you want, great. If you're planning on following whatever Wowhead or Icy Veins tells you to do, kudos. If your guild has already mapped out what you should do --and you're fine enough with being told explicitly what you're supposed to do with your time-- go for it. But if you're new, interested in trying something new, or you have no particular choice in mind, well... Good luck with that.

Yes, this list above does cover a wide range of activities, but if you're new/returning to the game, the number of choices alone can induce analysis-paralysis.

Or you feel like you have to do all the things, and that induces burnout. Just ask Battle for Azeroth or Shadowlands veterans about all of the activities you were expected to do if you were on a raiding team, as if you were just checking off boxes on a daily checklist at work, and they'll tell you the burnout was real.*****

All of these choices might not be readily apparent to long-time players, because they've slowly been added to over the years and as a consequence they're used to them. It's only when you take a step back, walk away for a while, and then return do you realize just how much there is to do and how it can easily confuse people. And that's not even counting all of the systems changes over the years. 

The problem is that the game is going to be 20 years old in a few months, and 20 years is a long time for a video game to acquire baggage. But every time Blizzard actually cuts things from the game --didn't this happen with trimming abilities back in Warlords or Legion or something?-- you get a certain subset of the player base who goes absolutely ballistic. 

The thing is, to grow the game Blizzard will have to do something about this huge list. Something will have to get trimmed out, and some players are going to get butthurt about it. Otherwise, Blizzard will only cater to those who have kept up with the game, and that's a finite number of people. Those people over the years have already prioritized and ranked what they're going to focus on, so they don't have the analysis-paralysis that new or returning people will have. 

Unless someone already has things planned out for you...

To be honest, I'd imagine that there will be
a Generative AI solution for all of this work
in a year or two. Just have an addon play
the game for you and do all of the busy work
before you need to re-engage in time for raiding.
From Maru and Reat via Reddit.

*I can see that --in terms of gameplay-- people may look at Sandrock and think it's pretty much exactly like Portia. That being said, story-wise there's quite a few differences. Well, that and the personalities involved. The moment I arrived at Sandrock, I took an instant dislike to my new boss and I liked the other new builder, which was the reverse of what I experienced at Portia. There are twists and turns to the story, and there were at least a few times where it went in a direction I didn't expect. 

**Of course, real life doesn't work like that, but bear with me on this one.

***Yes, the game does apparently continue after the credits, but... Come on. The game ended. That's like the "Just one more turn..." option in Civ IV after you win the game. You've already ridden off into the sunset, so to speak, so whatever you do doesn't really change anything.

****I could go into a long post on how my psyche works in terms of the hookup culture and how on the surface it might seem fun but that hookups aren't appealing to me, but that's not something I'm going to talk about. Besides, My Time at Sandrock isn't a hookup-fueled game anyway; you first have to become a friend with the person and then you can move into a relationship. That is, if the person agrees to do so, as some of your romance options can push you off and say "nope, not now, I'm busy" or "maybe later" or something to that effect. In that respect, that can be more representative of real life than the "you hit 8 hearts and now they'll say yes" that you get in some games such as Stardew Valley. Even if you do enter a relationship, there's no guarantee that they'll agree to marry you in the end either. (I found that out in My Time at Portia.)

*****As in most expansions, if you come back to it after it's been supplanted by newer expacs, you'll find things not that bad. That confuses the point, however, since you don't have to grind and grind and scrape your way through upwards of two years of doing similar things on an endless treadmill, so yeah it feels better. I discovered that doing the Quel'Danas grind was not my cup of tea in TBC Classic when you have people in guild and outside of guild yelling at people to DO YOUR DAILIES! to progress the story in the Isle. But when I did it on my own back in Cataclysm, I had fun just noodling around Quel'Danas. My past self would never have believed you if you told him what happened in TBC Classic.

Meme Monday: Miscellaneous Memes... Uh, just how many of these are there now?

I figured that for the US Labor Day holiday, I was going to take a break from Meme Monday and post some miscellaneous memes that I've hung on to but haven't put into another post (yet).

So, here you go...

This one is for the old folks like me.
Us old farts know this is Peter Frampton,
and yeah, he is totally bald today.
From Ridiculous 70s Memes.

Truth.
This was a riff on those old Jack Chick
Christian comics that warned of the evils of
D&D. Seriously. From Demotivational.

Don't ever change, Dork Tower.
From John Kovalic.

Uh, yeah. Sure. I'll agree with that.
From.... Well, I'm not exactly sure. I didn't
mark it down. Whoops.

Wake Me Up When September Ends*

We are now into September, but as far as weather goes that doesn't mean much.

What it does mean is that Blaugust is over, and I participated without ever signing up or mentioning it directly in a post.

Yeah, it's kind of hipster-ish to participate by not participating, but I've found that when I do explicitly participate in something by signing up for it --I'm looking at you, NaNoWriMo-- I never actually get close to actually doing much. Therefore, I decided if I was going to try to post once per day for an entire month, I was going to do it my way and without drawing any sort of attention to myself.

When you throw in the several trips that I've had this month, including the Big One up to Milwaukee, I'm surprised that I pulled it off. Another funny thing is that since I don't play Retail WoW, I didn't rely upon the new expansion's release to fill my content. Based on the tags I put out, I only had four posts that referenced Retail WoW, the second one being the only one that addressed my dislike of the direction the Modern game has taken.**

I kind of wrote about things that were of interest to me, such as re-discovering some of the radio material in storage and some of the adventures I had as people returned to Classic Era and began playing Alterac Valley once more. 

What you don't see very much of are adventures pertaining to more "traditional" MMO activity, such as leveling, questing, raiding, dungeon running, etc. I don't level alts much at all, which I already covered, and I don't really want to bother with a regular raiding schedule either. I'm fine with simply hanging around and not doing much; this is a form of social media that I'm fine with. If I did play Retail WoW right now, I'd probably be one of those people who would just level a toon by fishing, because I really don't need to rush out and do all the things (or see the content).

I mean, I am that guy who leveled a toon to max level in TBC Classic by not setting foot in Outland.

I still have the proof of that.

Actually, that does bring up the question as to how slow can you intentionally level in Retail WoW and still be considered to be "leveling"? I know of DoubleAgent and their factionless Pandaren who has leveled to max level by just gathering herbs and ore in the Pandaren starting zone, but is that really the slowest way to level? Can you go even slower? If you go even slower, you could probably level so slowly that by the time you get to the starting point for the current expansion the price of The War Within would be 75% off or more. When I last was in Retail, I leveled the original Azshandra from scratch at the beginning of Mists, and by the time I was ready to head out to Pandaria it was nine months or more after release. Actually, if you level slow enough, you could level so slowly that you don't even have to pay for The War Within, because the pre-patch for the next expac would be released.

Hmm... I wonder...

Of course, I could just fish in Classic Era and do effectively the same thing.

***

Still, looking ahead, September is going to be busy all by its lonesome. I'll be working on the deck some more, probably going to at least one of my youngest's concerts down at UofL, and my wife is already getting itchy to visit our oldest up in Milwaukee.

And somewhere in the middle of all that I'd like to actually relax a bit.

*Holy crap. That Green Day song is 20 years old.

**As for the 'Green Eggs and Ham' crowd of 'try it and you might like it', I've seen enough cutscenes to know that I don't like it without playing the game at all. (In fact, I didn't 'play' the game much from early Cataclysm until I officially stopped playing in 2014, but I instead only played Battlegrounds.) My dislike of the PvE game has nothing to do with how a class feels or the quest design or systems or anything like that; I'm sure if you play that you'll like it. I simply don't like playing a godlike character. Well, that and after 20 years I begin to ask the "doesn't this seem like an awful lot of world-ending events to happen to one world over the course of 20 years?" type of questions. I'm sure there's some in-game handwaving there too, like "well, all the other titans are dead so Azeroth is this one special place where they can be birthed once more." (I'm going off of The Last Titan as the name of the last of the trilogy of expansions; I have no understanding of anything regarding the story since... probably late Cataclysm?)

EtA: Grabbed the wrong screencap. The original screencap was for me hitting L68, as proof that I could go to Outland. I replaced it with the one for L70 itself.

#Blaugust2024

Nothing Lasts Forever

I don't know what life is like where you live, but we've been in the middle of a drought that's gone on for about two months. We did have several days' worth of rain right in the middle of the drought, but it wasn't enough to actually break it. The occasional thunderstorm hasn't exactly helped much either, since the rain simply rolls off of the hardened earth and down the storm drains.

The heat hasn't been unbearable --save for this week-- it's just been dry. 

So with that in mind, there haven't been a lot of reasons for me to work outside much.

I've been taking a couple weeks' worth of break from working on the deck because I needed to recover from helping my oldest move, and I wasn't planning on baking outside in that heat this week.

So, what have I been up to?

Cleaning. And organizing.

Not exactly fun work per se, but it is satisfying to see some of my stuff finally get organized. 

We also have an electronics recycling coming up in a couple of months, so I finally decided that it was time to clear out some spare parts and whatnot that I won't be using ever again. Such as 15 year old graphics cards from our old Microsoft Vista machine that is also going away. That PC missed the last recycling day because I hadn't properly wiped the hard drive, so I'm not going to take any chances and will do that work sometime in late September. 

That cleaning was how I rediscovered my old scanner, and I've also found some of the doodads you need to set up a shortwave antenna outside. As I organized the parts, I noticed I was missing a few items so I hopped on to my go-to site for all things shortwave, Universal Radio, to see what the prices were to fill in the gaps on my supplies. Universal is in the suburbs of Columbus, a couple of hours' drive away, so I always felt good about supporting the semi-local economy when I bought items from them.

Alas, this is what I found when I went to their online catalog.

You have to expand it to read it properly.

I knew that this day might come, but November 2020? How did I not know this before now?

***

This isn't the first store that I've supported that has closed its doors for the owners' retirement. Boardwalk Hobby Shop on the east side of town shut down in 2020-2021, and if I had the money I would have loved to have bought the place to keep it running. Since I knew I didn't know beans about actually running a business, let alone a game store, I had to pass.

I first walked through that door in 1991,
not knowing what to expect.
From Davion M. via Yelp.

It hurts seeing this.
From the Mt. Lookout Business Association.

But still, I spent a lot of time in that store. My kids grew up going there with me, and Marilyn --one of the owners-- used to hold the kids when they were infants. 

Myra's Dionysus, a small Mediterranean inspired restaurant near the University of Cincinnati, was a fun place to eat at. 

From this article by CityBeat that came
out a year before Myra's closed in 2014.

It was in the storefront of a century old building, a hole-in-the-wall place, really, but it was one of the first places I'd ever eaten at that had a heavily vegetarian menu. When my youngest decided to become a vegetarian, Myra's became more than just a place to eat at, but an inspiration. When Myra's closed because she was in her 80s and wanted to retire, that hurt. I couldn't begrudge her retirement years, but I really miss that place. At least Myra's daughter has begun posting some of Myra's old recipes at Myra's Kitchen Legacy. I've made the hummus, and it is dead on for what we used to eat at Myra's.

***

These are all memories now.

I never quite understood when people my grandparents' age used to talk about places that don't exist, such as some of the theaters downtown, but I do now. It's both a blessing and a curse of aging, I suppose, to see things change and long for what once was. But time does move on, and new memories are always made. We don't live forever, so we shouldn't expect our world to remain constant either.

#Blaugust2024

A Short Ponderable For a Friday

One of the things I've just gotten into the habit of doing is logging into CurseForge before I enter into WoW. Considering that it only takes a few seconds to make sure my addons are updated, it's not a big deal.

But yesterday, I just realized that something is a bit out of date:

No, not my Addons.

She's nice and all, but why hasn't Alexstrasza been replaced by that elf that looks like a purple female version of Kael'thas?

Either someone at CurseForge is lying down on the job or Blizz hasn't provided a new graphic for use. I remember that when Dragonflight released, this graphic was already set at about a month before the Dragon Isles opened up.

#Blaugust2024

I Ain't Blind and I Don't Like What I Think I See...

I've been on a bit of a 70s kick lately, and that doesn't mean I've been wearing loud clothing* or considering putting in wooden paneling in the house.

Sorry, that's not Boston, but The Doobie Brothers. (True story: my dad had absolutely no clue what a "doobie" was, so when I made a joke back in the 90s about the Doobies' concerts probably smelling pretty dank, he looked at me like I'd grown another arm. "Dad," I said, "A 'doobie' is another name for a joint. So the band's name is a bunch of friends smoking marijuana.")

Anyway, as I've been cleaning since my oldest left home, I've stumbled on the old Intellivision console that we now have in a plastic storage container, and I've begun some investigations as to how to get that and our Atari to connect to a modern television. Ironically enough, the easiest "solution" out there --outside of finding an old CRT television-- is to pull out a VCR and use it to convert the RF signal to a composite signal. Still, I'm not entirely convinced of this method, so I'm poking around at solutions that actually work that don't involve another large piece of electronic equipment.

It may not look like much, but given a 4KB
game limitation, it's really quite impressive.
From YouTube.

I periodically check out the prices of old 70s-era receivers and other audio equipment, and the asking prices make me cringe. Knowing that a lot of that equipment would likely need the electrolytic capacitors replaced as well as the belts for the cassettes, it's rather sad just how insane the used market has gotten. 

Instead of that, at least I could listen to music from the 70s. Hence that Doobie Brothers' line from Takin' It To The Streets in the title.

***

I suppose with a title like that you'd be forgiven if I was referencing the shenanigans happening in Retail WoW's latest expansion, The War Within.

From a blue post on Blizzard forums.
Thank you, Snip-and-sketch.

I'm not surprised, and my natural inclination is to look at this as a way to convince more people to spring for Early Access for the next expansion. After all, the beta test ought to have shaken this sort of issue out, but maybe that's an indicator that the beta wasn't as useful as it could have been.

But in general, I'm not shocked by this sort of behavior. 

Does anybody else remember the Quel'Delar questline that began with the Battered Hilt drop in the Icecrown Citadel 5-person dungeons in Wrath? When those dungeons were first released, the Battered Hilt dropped far more frequently than intended, so those first several days a ton of people got to work on their Quel'Delar quests before the drop rate was nerfed down to intended levels. Those of us who followed behind those who rushed ahead were left scraping for the occasional drop if you didn't want to spring for 5000 or more gold for one on the Auction House.** Of course, that was a drop for a specific questline, not a general nerf to the actual leveling experience in the game.

Again, given that Microsoft plopped a ton of money on purchasing Activision Blizzard, they want a maximum return on their investment. So, while this ain't loot boxes, this is a way of using FOMO and other psychological tactics to convince people to hand over their money. I expect more of this sort of behavior in the future from Blizzard. Even if the entire issue is an innocent one it will always be viewed from the lens of profits first, players second, because once the trust between developer and player has been broken, it can't easily be restored.

And that's all I'll say about that. 

*With or without Garanimals tags. You don't know about Garanimals? Hoo boy... Where do I begin?

From Pinterest.

Whomever came up with Garanimals basically made pattern matching easy for parents. Clothing came with animal tags on them; match the animals up for the different pieces (shirts, pants, skirts, etc.) and you have matching clothing. Sounds great in theory, but the joke among my peers as we became teenagers was that the clothing was so loud you needed help just trying to figure out what was supposed to go with what. Garanimals were all the rage in the late 70s and early 80s, but they've recently made a comeback aimed at clothing for babies and toddlers.

**Even back then I was pretty poor, gold-wise.

#Blaugust2024

Rawr, She Said

My Questing Buddy has been going into Alterac Valley with me the past week, as she has her eye on some gear that you can buy once you become Exalted with the Stormpike Guard. I know she'd had a rough time in Warsong Gulch in TBC Classic when one of her BiS pieces was available from the Silverwing Sentinels, but I think I might have miscalculated how her competitiveness was going to surface in AV.

#Blaugust2024