Meme Monday: Games with a Reputation Memes

It should come as no surprise that I've come across a bunch of memes over the years where games have earned a certain reputation, good or bad. There's the low hanging fruit, such as GTA 6 vaporware, and the complete disaster of certain releases (I'm looking at you, No Man's Sky). So, for this Meme Monday, I thought I'd dip into my bag of games that have acquired a certain reputation.

Admittedly, Cyberpunk 2077 eventually got much
more stable and, well, complete with the extra content,
but it took a while. I don't think Fallout 76 can compete.
From Reddit.

D&D 4th Edition was extremely divisive to
the player base, the fallout of which directly
led to Paizo's Pathfinder RPG and gave a boost
to the Old School RPG movement. My opinion
was always that D&D 4e would have been better
off as an RPG without being tied to the D&D name,
so it's nice to see someone else with that opinion.
from Reddit.

Ubisoft and bugs. 'Nuff said.
From ifunny.co.

Yes, I know, nudity doesn't exist in WoW.
However, WoW does have that reputation
--courtesy of Goldshire-- that it's a naughty
naughty game. Just try not to think that the
female toon on the screen is probably
a guy IRL. I know I can't. From quickmeme.

How My Brain Works Without Coffee, Part 57

I was perusing my YouTube feed, and nestled in the Pete Rose stuff* and electronics videos** was this from Michael Bell and Bellular Gaming:

Sorry, just the screencap.

"Hm..." I thought. "Isn't Beledar the name of a character from a David Eddings series?"

Oh, wait. That's Beldar. Eh, close enough.

*Because I'm from Cincinnati, as was Pete, and because I'm from Cincy of course I must be interested in all things Pete since he played for the Reds in their heyday of The Big Red Machine. The reality is that there are days when if feels like I must be the only West Sider (Pete's home turf) who didn't like him very much. Yeah, he could hit, but he was a big asshole, his kid was a big asshole, and the Reds were likely held back during his tenure as manager in the 1980s. 

**Yes, another of my hobbies. This time the videos included methods on cleaning relays. My old Pioneer receiver (bought in 1987) needs some cleaning, and when you click on one of these videos you get inundated with others.

The Cheeriest Spooky Theme Around

I've been hunting down Halloween music for giving out candy tonight, and one piece that keeps coming up in my searches and on the local stations is Charles Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette.

Gounod wrote it to make fun of a critic of his --and by all accounts the critic instantly realized the piece was about him-- but it wasn't particularly "Halloween-y" back then.

Then along came Alfred Hitchcock.

Were it not for ol' Alfred using Funeral March of a Marionette as his theme music for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, we probably wouldn't even have this piece in the Halloween lexicon. 

Still, I wonder just how many kids nowadays have ever seen an episode of the series from The Master of Suspense; it's not nearly as iconic as The Twilight Zone, which has marathons on some cable channels around the Christmas and New Year's holidays, or The Outer Limits, which was revived and had another run from the mid-90s to early 2000s.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Meme Monday: Quirky Memes

While I was working on the deck this weekend, I caught myself doing one of my quirks: talking to myself out loud. Apparently the majority of people have an inner monologue that they converse with, but I have an unfortunate tendency to respond to my inner monologue aloud when nobody's around.*

That got me to perusing my meme pile for memes that fit the description of geeky quirks.

OMG yes!
From Titbits and Teacups, and from Nerd Quirks,
which is sadly no more.

I could also use this on a book memes
post, but I figured it works here too.
From ifunny.co.

I have been known to do this.
From @MisterD78UK.

And yes, Reading Quirks does exist as an Instagram
feed. Almost makes me want to login to Instagram to
read all the rest.

*Or I think nobody's around. 

Some People go on Vacation to Rest...

...but I end up working on projects instead.

I'm not exactly sure why I derive such enjoyment from working on a project, but I do. Maybe it's that my job is a case study in never seeing anything truly finished*, or maybe that I'm naturally biased toward working on things with my hands, but when a job finishes up there's a wave of satisfaction that washes over me, if only for a little while.

Of course, things are never that easy. About halfway through a project I get an itch to start another one, and that presents a problem. Sure, the new shiny idea does capture my attention when I'm in the middle of something else, but it also means that I've forgotten why I was excited about the original project in the first place. If I can get through these urges, I can see a project through to completion.

As far as the deck goes, yes, I have felt those urges already.

Still, I've been pushing onward.

My workstation on the porch. I thought the
deck was completely attached to the porch,
but having seen the framing underneath, they
are actually separate. Go figure.

Thankfully I bought the miter saw quickstand, because I wouldn't be able to finish this deck project otherwise. The reviews talked about how light the Ryobi miter saw is, and if that's light I'd hate to lift the "normal" weighted saws.

I finished the last of this current batch of wood, but this also involved doing some other work on the deck.

See where that exit to the north is? That's one of the two locations where I'm going to replace the stairs. As you can tell, there's only one post there to attach a stair railing. Since you need two stair rails, that meant either I was going to put in a post now or wait and do it next year when I actually work on the stairs.

I chose the former. Do it now while the area under the deck is exposed so I don't have to take out boards later. 

Painter's tape is a wonderful invention.

I used painter's tape to attach a level, so I could work it without needing an extra pair of hands.

What's hidden by the support board are extra screws attaching
the post to the ledger board.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, that post is taller than
it's compatriot on the left side. I decided it was smarter to
install a longer post and then cut it down rather than
risk installing a post that was too short.

So now, with 2/3 of the rows replaced, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I have 3-4 leftover 16' deck boards that I'll use when the last batch of wood arrives, and once those are all installed I'll be done for the year. I think I'll use this Winter to let my back rest.

*If you work in IT, you know what I'm talking about. Sure, there are "projects" that end up being "completed", but I'd say only 1 out of 10 projects I've worked on ever crossed the finish line to my satisfaction. There's far too much horse trading going on trying to keep the bugs and disruption to a minimum versus finishing within a (so-called) reasonable time frame.

A Truly Remarkable Life

Sometimes I have this urge to post multiple times in a day, after having not a lot to talk about over a week.

Kind of just figures, right?

Several years ago, I was aware of a WoW player named Mats Steen who'd passed away back in 2014 from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and his parents were surprised when several of  Mats' WoW friends showed up at his funeral. The events were picked up in a story first presented for the NRK (in Norwegian) in Norway in 2019, but translated and presented on the BBC in English.

It was a touching article, and a reminder that the friends we make in MMOs impact far more people than we may never know. People like Mats are the reason why I play MMOs: not for the shinies or the achievements or the story, but for the people. I'm afraid that too many players lose sight that it is people that make these games special, and not just your buddies on a raid team. It's all about the friendships you make along the way. However, I thought that was that, and the memory of Mats faded over time.

Then I was surprised to see this pop up on my YouTube feed on Tuesday:

From BBC Channel 4.

About a minute into the interview, I realized that yes, I remembered the story of Mats, but... What is it with the animation?

Then I realized that someone (Benjamin Ree) had made a documentary about Mats, and his main, Ibelin. I quickly searched for The Remarkable Life of Ibelin and found the trailer on YouTube:

How did I not know this was coming?

The documentary releases on Netflix in the US on Friday; I was concerned it might be only watchable in Europe. It's already garnered a bunch of awards and nominations at Sundance and other film festivals, so that's a very good sign.

And yes, I checked and we have enough tissues so that when I'm ready to watch it, I can.

More Silence on the (Guild) Banking Industry

I figured I ought to provide an update on the Great Blizzard Bank Heist. Kurn dropped yet another YouTube video Monday evening,

Basically, Blizzard hasn't done much of anything, despite Kurn trying to stir the pot to at least get some visibility on the matter. She's also tried to get some visibility by going to Bellular Gaming, Wowhead, and Blizzard Watch (among other people) without so much as even an acknowledgement response. Blizzard saying nothing I pretty much expected --anybody who has had to try to navigate Microsoft's helpdesk knows how frustrating that can be-- but I at least expected better from Michael Bell and Blizzard Watch.

The Retail WoW community in general has collectively shrugged and moved on in the same way that people not directly affected have moved on after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

Other than that, I don't have much to add. I guess there's a big patch coming up in the next day or two which also includes some changes to the banks, so... Uh, good luck with that.

Meme Monday: New to MMOs Memes

We've all been new to an MMO, right? Whether it's WoW, Final Fantasy XIV, SWTOR, LOTRO, New World, or some other game, we've all been the newbie to the genre. So this is dedicated to those first few months that we've spent figuring this genre out.

Trying to figure out what MMO to play is always an
adventure, and not necessarily the good kind. And no,
I don't know what game the scantily clad elf is from.
My guess is BDO. From YouTube.

(And if you understand MMOs now, let me know. I still have a curve ball thrown at me every other week, and I've been  playing since 2009.)

Emblematic of all games, but MMOs in particular,
it's hard to understand the lingo and systems
while you're getting acclimated. From Reddit. Again.

Keeping new players engaged is a real
problem, and weaponizing FOMO is starting
to get a bit old. Once it gets past a certain
point, game companies are going to have to
figure out something else, because the cynicism
will overhwelm any sense of FOMO.
From Reddit. (Do I detect a trend?)

Yeah, this sort of thing happens all the time.
From Pinterest.

Interacting with other players can be good, 
but some MMOs encourage toxic behavior
by design. From Reddit (once more).

Some games are highly customizable with addons, 
which... becomes a problem. Then again, a lot of
MMO players turn off the music and sound and
focus on the addons anyway. From Reddit.

And finally, you knew there was a Starter Pack about MMORPGs...

I feel like they're picking on WoW Classic and
Old School Runescape here. From Reddit.

Making Sense of Incomprehensibility

Sometimes I wonder just how traffic flows on the internet.

Oh, not the technical version, mind you, because at one point I could tell you precisely how networking via TCP-IP actually worked*, but I meant in terms of why traffic flows to a specific location.

If you know the name of this character that Peter
Falk is playing, you might want to go schedule
a colonoscopy. From Tenor.com.

I keep up with the Meme Monday posts for a couple of reasons, namely to push myself into posting more often by having a regular column and having an outlet for my snarky sense of humor. However, another reason to post Meme Mondays is that --by and large-- more eyeballs look at those posts than any of my other ramblings on this blog. That shouldn't be a surprise since those posts have the broadest appeal as opposed to the gamer-geek centric fare typically found on the blog.

Still, I can be surprised by what takes off and what doesn't.

When a post takes off within gamer space, that's typically driven by eyeballs on a post itself. What I mean is that traffic goes directly to that post because it got a bump from somewhere out there in the blogosphere, such as the times when a post from PC would get a mention on the now-defunct WoW Insider. The first time that happened, on the series of posts I made comparing Blood Elves and Draenei back in December 2011, caught me by surprise. All I knew at first was that our traffic had spiked from a dozen or so views to 2000 or more, and I had no idea what the hell was going on. It was only after I dug into the data that I realized almost all of the traffic was coming from WoW Insider, whereupon following it back I discovered we'd gotten a mention in their weekly blog spotlight column. The traffic eventually reverted back to normal levels, but for a week or so PC got a nice boost.

This sort of behavior has happened from time to time, based primarily upon getting a mention in other blogs or websites with readership far greater than our own, but it could also be due to pertinent data appearing in a post. Such as Souldat's post on How to Effectively Tank the Lich King from 2010, which remains our single most viewed post on the blog. It didn't get a spike in viewership, but it had a steady number of views for several years. That it used to get on the main page of Google Search results didn't hurt.**

That being said, by and large the majority of spiky traffic that does come to the blog goes to the blog's main page rather than a specific post, which tells me that that traffic isn't driven by the gamer geek ecosphere.

Here ya go; the last three months' worth of traffic.

While I can guess what might have driven some traffic --the spike at the end is likely due to the magic words "Discworld" and "Kickstarter"-- a lot of those spikes come from way out of nowhere. I can't assume that a single post drove traffic to the blog, because the spikes in July, September and October show up during my "dead time" between posts. Blaugust is also no help, since you can't look at an individual post and say "yeah, that's brought people here". There's also the undercurrent of web crawlers and whatnot that will flow through all of your website creating a higher base level than what I'd call the true number of regular readers.

***

I've always known that the internet is a fickle beast, but blogging over the past decade and a half has reinforced those opinions. I still laugh at people --typically business types and marketers-- who think that "making something go viral" is just what internet creators do. "We need you to create a viral video for this" is a query I've heard on occasion***, as if you can snap your fingers and views will magically appear, but it's the sense that some people who "get" the internet and can manipulate it to their own ends that drives me batty. 

The internet doesn't work like that; what goes viral and what doesn't is pretty much an unknown. So I'll just continue to wonder just what the hell it is that occasionally makes PC's viewership spike.

*If you gave me an hour or two I could refresh my memory on all of the details beyond the basics of hubs, routers, setting up a local LAN behind a firewall, etc.

**In case you're wondering, the advent of Wrath Classic and the opening of Icecrown Citadel did not result in a corresponding spike in views. I presume everybody ran to Wowhead to find out what the currently accepted strat is for the Lich King fight. Since I never actually got to raid ICC, I couldn't tell you whether the current meta matches what Soul had written down over a decade ago.

***Never directed at me, thankfully.

Adding to the "To Be Read" Pile

I knew that Sir Terry Pratchett's novels were popular, but I underestimated just how popular they are.

As of 5:05 PM today.

This is kind of bonkers, but it also underscores the popularity of Discworld.

I never read any of Sir Terry's work, even though I was very much aware of it, because I've been a bit intimidated by it. I'm aware that there's a lot of puns and humor in the novels, and my concern was that I simply wouldn't get the humor in them. Kind of like watching Red Dwarf, I know there's humor there, but a lot of it simply flew over my head because it was so British that I didn't get the context.*

Or maybe trying to understand some of the Monty Python's Flying Circus social commentary, particularly with (then) current political and celebrity characters appearing as caricatures. To me, I simply had no grasp of the context at all, so it could have been humor surrounding Warren G. Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal for all I knew. The Parrot Sketch? Sure, I got that one. The Ministry of Silly Walks? Yeah, because every country has a blasted bureaucracy. But a lot of Terry Gilliam's cartoons? Eh, not so much.**

But given Sir Terry's popularity, underscored by the support for the Discworld RPG, I think I might give the series a chance.

Yay, one more book (or is that set of books?) for the TBR pile.

*Before you ask, yes, I gave Red Dwarf a chance. My brother-in-law loved the show, which is how I was introduced to it.

**Although I did see a graphic of Edward Heath in a couple of them. I know him not because of The Beatles' Taxman song ("Uh oh, Mister Heath"), but because I attended a question and answer session with Mr. Heath when he was in Dayton for something or another back when I was in college. Let's just say that Mr. Heath does not suffer fools very well, and I'm glad I decided I wasn't going to ask him a question even though the opening was there.

Kind of a Busy Day in Crowdfunding Land

I guess Tuesdays are a good day to launch crowdfunding initiatives --in the same way that it used to be book and music release days*-- because two initiatives I'd been keeping an eye on dropped today.

The first, the Kickstarter campaign for Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG, launched at Midnight Eastern Time, and has already blown way past it's abnormally precise goal of $130,549:**

As of 12:41 PM, EST.

To say that Sir Terry's novels are popular is kind of an understatement. While this Kickstarter covers editions in English, German, Spanish, and Polish, the French edition is being handled by Arkhane Asylum.

For the curious, the Discworld Quickstart Guide PDF is presently available from Modiphius (both the US and UK websites) for the low low price of.... FREE. The link is from the Kickstarter that takes you to the UK store, but when I went there it asked if I wanted to move to the US store instead.

At this current rate, I'd imagine that Modiphius is going to break the $1 Million barrier by tomorrow.

***

Long before I became aware of the Discworld RPG, I knew that Atlas Games was going to put together a crowdfunding campaign for a reworked version of the Ars Magica 5th Edition rules. 

To which I can loudly say: THANK GOODNESS!!

The more I dug into the 5th Edition of Ars Magica, the more I felt that while the rules were good the presentation was lacking. I didn't mention it in my RPG From the Past entry, because I was still working my way through the system, but you could tell that the game was written with an eye toward people who had played previous editions of the game. As I tend to be a person who rails against that self-limiting design and story in MMOs (looking at you, Retail WoW), I'm sensitized to that weakness in other things. The layout could be better, the art was closing in on 20 years old and hadn't aged as well as older editions, and in general the system needed some good ol' TLC.***

So when I found out about a year ago that Atlas Games was planning on creating a "Definitive Edition" that basically presented the same rules in a better format, I was on board. 

Then Atlas Games announced that Ars Magica's crowdfunding would include an Open License; a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. This would allow players and creators to legally share and publish their own additions and modifications to Ars Magica, allowing people the same sort of creative outlet that other games such as Pathfinder, D&D (for the moment), and FATE to have. 

The Ars Magica Definitive Edition launched at Noon Eastern today on BackerKit, seeking a goal of $15,000. While not having the sizeable fanbase that Sir Terry's works has, Atlas Games saw their crowdfunding effort shatter that goal in a grand total of 3 minutes:

As of 1:32 PM, EST.

The Definitive Edition is definitely aiming toward the fans of the game with an elaborate slipcase cover that holds the Core Rulebook, a Reference Guide, a Storyguide Screen, and a Poster Map of Mythic Europe. The physical edition isn't cheap at $150, but a digital only version of the core rulebook is $40, and a bit more practical if you're trying to save money. 

Yes, the rules are exactly the same as that found in the current 5th Edition of Ars Magica, but the layout has been reworked and all of the "extra" rules scattered across all the supplements have been incorporated into this version of the Core Rulebook. Throw in the new artwork and layout, and...

Well, here's hoping that the reorganized 5th Edition Rules explain the game better, because if you want to grow the game you have to get people involved and up to speed on all the details. 

As for me, taking the Mythic Europe setting and the Ars Magica rules and creating a rules-lite version using, say, FATE, would be absolutely awesome. (As I've gotten older, I prefer a more free-wheeling type of game. Can't you tell?)

*I was informed by my wife that music releases have moved from Tuesday to Friday close to a decade ago, and given that she works at Target she ought to know this sort of thing. I'm not that plugged into music release dates anymore, since I rarely buy music when it first comes out (and I'd rather support smaller or local artists).

**Aha! Found it! That value is a conversion to US Dollars from a backing goal of £100,000.

***Tender Lovin' Care.

EtA: Added in the source of the $130,549 goal.

EtA: Helps if I include the link to the Backerkit project for Ars Magica Definitive Edition!

Meme Monday: Weekend Warrior Memes

I spent some time working on the deck the past few weekends, and that push has gotten me to thinking about people who tackle projects on the weekends and evenings for a variety of different reasons. And that, naturally, led me to memes about this...

When you've got a project, you don't think in
terms of "having the weekend off". From the NFL.

This was me last night, and I think it carried
over to today. Still, I'm not a morning person
per se, so this may be normal.
From @corporatebish and Cheezburger.

Okay, I'll admit it: I put this one here for the Knight
Rider GIF. From Yarn and Knight Rider (naturally!).

But the really bad part about being a Weekend
Warrior is that Mondays bring no comfort...
From Cheezburger.

And Here I Thought it was Lester's Imprint

A week ago this short video about Judy-Lynn del Rey from the PBS show American Masters was put on YouTube:

If you look at my bookshelf you'd see Del Rey books represented all over the place; many of my favorite SF&F authors wrote for Del Rey, so I thought I knew the imprint pretty well. 

Uh, nope.

I always thought it was Lester that was the dominant factor in the imprint, but it turns out it was his wife, Judy-Lynn, instead. Maybe Del Rey was called that because of Lester's name, but Judy-Lynn made it the force it was back in the 80s and early 90s. There were some novels that I ordinarily would have passed on but picked up back then because of that Del Rey imprint, such as Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night. I don't think I can be blindly loyal to a publisher like that anymore, but I did enjoy those novels far more often than not.

Still, it's a fascinating bit of SF&F history about a woman who made her mark in genres I loved.

Meme Monday: 90s Memes

Yeah, I was on a 70s kick for a while, and I've some posts cooking that will result from that, but I've been listening to music from the late 90s the past few days. (Help! I have Fly by Sugar Ray in my head and I can't get it out!!) It seems that the tunes that I've been reminiscing about have been happier ones; I'm aware that it's the rose colored glasses effect, but the music took a darker turn after 9/11 in the same way that Grunge ushered in a more depressing tone in music after the late 80s' pop and hair metal. (Or it could be just Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, and Alice in Chains.)

So, here's some 90s memes for people who need to remember a time when the Internet was young (or felt young and innocent).

Yes, that is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
From Imgflip.

Ah yes, before viral videos, there was
Bob Saget showing us people doing stupid
things on their own video recordings.
From Imgflip and throwbacks.com.

Friends is 30 years old as of this fall. For reference,
seeing it on television now is like seeing Gilligan's Island
on television back in the mid-90s.
From odetoclassy.

I have this exact model of portable CD player.
It was part of a combo CD player, cassette adapter
for the car, and foam earphones that my parents
got me for Christmas one year. I used it all the time
to play CDs in the car during my commute from
the West Side of Cincinnati to the East Side where
I worked. No, I never had pants so large that I would
consider putting the player in there.
From TheGamer.

This is more of an 80s thing, but cassettes were
still going strong in the early 90s.
From The Daily Drawing comic.

And finally, one bonus 90s meme:

I laughed; I know, I'm a bad person.
And if you don't know who these two Olympians
are, well, Google "90s ice skating drama".
From Imgflip.

No FDIC Insurance for Your Guild Bank

Kurn posted an update on the Great Blizzard Bank Heist:

The short summary is that no new items were restored, and she provided commentary on the comments from her first video.

That Blizzard hasn't provided any communication on this issue isn't surprising to me, because a huge monolithic corporation --Bobby Kotick's version or Satya Nadella's-- has other things to worry about if the contract doesn't call for their explicit attention. Put another way, the people who lost items are too small in stature for Micro-Blizz to care*, and it also wouldn't shock me if Blizz never bothered with a proper restoration because that cost money (in terms of people and space).

The longer this has gone on, the more it seems to me that changes under the hood that led to the deletion of massive amounts of items from some guild banks was actually a data wipe; items that were no longer in the game or may have had some potential data corruption from years of activity were simply removed, and that was that. I've seen "database cleanups" that have had this sort of effect before, particularly on unstable databases. At those times, you have to do a manual dump of the database contents and potentially clean up the database by hand. It is by far a miserable task, but cleaning up a database like this is something that ought to be done. It will take a ton of time, but there also needs to be a full amount of transparency involved with the customers (us).

I'd actually respect Blizzard a lot more if they were up front about what they were doing instead of this whole "too bad, so sad" non-response after items were removed. If the answer to "fixing" the data meant removing all the items from a guild bank into a temporary guild bank and then putting items back into a rebuilt guild bank to fix any potential corruption, that should have been done.

***

Oh, and once again, a Season of Discovery rollout affected Classic Era. As of a week ago, all of our bars were reset, so you have to go back into every toon on settings and re-enable your action bars.

One of my WoW friends was in Blackwing Lair on Thursday night, and the drakes in there were massively bugged. They hadn't wiped to them in ages, and yet they kept wiping due to wonky drake behavior. I didn't get any real details other than "this crap sucks!", but let's say she's not a fan of SoD impacting Era's raids.

And some pull down menus, like that found on your toon to reset a dungeon, have that table's font and font size absolutely huge compared to the rest of the UI. Given that Blizz has implemented "some changes" into Era in the past few months, I'm not confident that this will ever get resolved.

*If you think that if you were a larger customer you'd get better customer service, well... Let's just say that some Fortune 500 companies are beginning to discover that Azure Cloud and AWS don't really give a crap about any special services for them, unlike when they might have gotten that extra service in the past from outsourcing firms that had their own datacenters. 

EtA: I meant to write action bars. Corrected.

All That's Past is Prologue

Sometimes I wonder if Blizzard's legacy of an RTS game developer has unduly influenced their World of Warcraft expansion design.

Oh, not that WoW is going to turn into an RTS, despite what a subset of the player base might want, but where --or more precisely who-- the emphasis is on in an expansion.

Compared to some RTS games, such as Age of Empires, Blizzard's RTS design incorporates leaders into a story and makes them the central part of the story the Warcraft and Starcraft games told. Sure, you're there as the player, but the story revolves around these central characters. 

From Starcraft Remastered, you can
see that the leaders are incorporated into the
mission design and not just cutscenes.
From resetera.

Not only did the polish and gameplay set Blizzard's RTS games apart, but the stories they told influenced their design of the Diablo games as an action RPG with a defined plot.*

From Diablo 2 Resurrected.
Screencap from Ars Technica.

Blizzard's second last RTS game, Warcraft III, went all in on the story and leaders, where more RPG elements were added into the RTS design than ever before, more tightly integrating the story with the RTS game itself. 

So Blizzard did something unexpected, they pivoted and created an MMO that doesn't have any of those central design tenets.

***

The release of Vanilla World of Warcraft was not only a departure from Blizzard's RTS core, but a change in design emphasis. Sure, there are faction leaders and other important personnel around throughout Azeroth, but the game design didn't revolve around them. There wasn't a main story in the same way that other Blizzard designs had, but a bunch of smaller stories that were strung together with quest chains. Instead of a tightly integrated story with an emphasis on the leaders as main characters, the player was the main character in a vast world with minimal emphasis on the heroics of the few people in charge.

I guess that wasn't bound to last, because a decentralized game world wasn't in Blizzard's DNA. 

It took a few expansions, but by Wrath of the Lich King WoW had pretty much returned to the Blizzard fold in that the leaders and a central story were tightly integrated into the game, and it's been that way ever since. This is what Blizzard is most familiar with developing, and your job as the player is to basically facilitate the story that the faction leaders are involved with. Like or hate the story, this is the pattern that formed in the Warcraft and Starcraft games, and that is what Blizzard knows best. 

People --myself included-- rail against the so-called lobby-based nature of Retail WoW, but when you consider it is the spiritual successor to the earlier RTS and ARPG games that built Blizzard's reputation, it's not a great surprise. When you throw in the lobby-based story found in shooter games such as Call of Duty, Blizzard is providing what they believe gamers expect out of a game. 

In the same manner that turn-based isometric RPGs are tightly integrated into Larian Studios' business, what we are seeing out of Retail WoW is in Blizzard's. It would take a monumental effort to break out of that design philosophy, and I'm not altogether sure it would be a good idea for Blizz at this point to do so. As much as I prefer Classic Era, Blizzard's fanbase doesn't expect that decentralized, non-story-driven design out of them. They expect lobby-based story beats with an emphasis on the faction leads and the other chief protagonists. If anything, the leveling process in the game world is the anachronism here: it's a nod to an era when Blizzard broke out of what they did best as a company to try something new with different design parameters, and Blizzard can't bring itself to shed that vestige of it's old MMO design. Instead, Blizzard uses the leveling process to move the story from the introductory phase to the "why" of group content at the end; it's not an end in itself, as it was in Vanilla WoW, but in service to the endgame, which is where the real story in Retail WoW begins.

No, I was NOT going to put that line from
South Park in here. If you want it, you can go
find it via a quick search. From YouTube.

It is kind of funny in its own way that the Retail WoW player base argues about details in expansions such as systems, whether the group content is any good, or the quality of the story, but they have simply accepted the larger design philosophy as-is. What you see out of Blizzard now is what you will get, because they have no incentive to try anything truly new. Even Season of Discovery isn't that new; it's just a reshuffling of the cards, as it were, but keeping the same basic design in place. Since Blizzard is now the "MMO and Action RPG developer" in Microsoft's stable**, they are most likely destined to stay in their lane and only work on those items. If you've a dev team that wants to try something new, don't expect to find yourself under the Blizzard arm of Microsoft Game Studios; you're better off going independent.

*Yes, I know, I'm not that fond of the plot in Diablo. There's a lot more "action" and a lot less "RPG" in the Diablo games. That doesn't mean there's no plot, however; "no plot" is more akin to playing Gauntlet than Diablo, despite the mechanics' similarities.

**Apologies to The Elder Scrolls Online, but Zenimax/Bethesda is known for first person RPGs, not MMOs. In my opinion, it wouldn't surprise me if ESO eventually gets moved under Blizzard because "they're the MMO developer" for Microsoft. Never mind the game world or the corporate culture; there's always a bean counter somewhere who wants things to align perfectly under their proper silos.

Meme Monday: Autumn Memes, 2024 Edition

Yes, the Autumn Equinox was a week ago, but with the remnants of Hurricane Helene arriving here this past week it finally has started to feel like Fall. Yes, I know it sounds kind of strange to say that, but the rain and cooler weather has finally broken the drought and heat.

In honor of that little factoid, here's a few memes for the season...

From Bestlifeonline.

And allergies, apparently.
From rd.com.

I miss having pie.
From truebookaddict.

I can really get behind that last one.
From Ebaumsworld.

Time for a Learner's Permit*

On September 29, 2009, Souldat published the very first post here at Parallel Context. 

Fifteen years ago.

In blog years that's pretty old for a continuously updated blog, but not nearly as old as some other blogs I follow. You probably know one of them --The Ancient Gaming Noob-- and there are others that PC is almost but not quite as old, such as Priest With a Cause, but that's the breaks. We're survivors in a field where participants' timeline is typically measured in months, not years, much less decades.

And for the love of God, don't read my early posts. I still cringe at them when I occasionally wander back that far, hunting for something I might have written back then.

*Well, in six months or so, according to Ohio law. You can get a learner's permit for driving at age 15 years 6 months, but you can't pass a full driver's test until age 16.

The Engine of Bureaucracy at Work

Well, it took CurseForge about a month, but they finally updated the World of Warcraft graphics.

It certainly makes the current WoW expansion look like a catfight right out of a night time soap opera (such as Dynasty, to pull an 80s show out of a hat), or the "Good Sister" versus the "Bad Sister", but it's Blizz's artwork.

Forget that 'Builder' Part, How About Being a Governor?

Well, that's the major shift in focus for the newest entry in Pathea Games' 'My Time At...' series, My Time at Evershine.

The Kickstarter is now live, has already passed it's initial goal, and is well on its way through the stretch goals.

I guessed correctly that the events in My Time at Sandrock led directly to the North Development Plan and recruitment of you as the new Governor of the Evershine Settlement. 

In case you didn't know, you're the Govenor now.
From the My Time at Evershine Kickstarter page.

The North Development Plan is an ambitious plan by the Free Cities' Alliance to repopulate the area near the border with the Duvos Empire. That northern border has been empty since the last invasion by Duvos, and you can bet dollars to doughnuts that that area is still coveted by the Empire. The Duvos Empire has not exactly been quiet, given the events in My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock, so you can bet you're going to see them again in this newest project by Pathea.

Judging by the YouTube video, the character design is looking more mature than that from the first two My Time games, but given the switch in perspective from that of a Builder to a Governor, it seems a good time for such a change to be made.

Apparently Pathea has learned a thing or two about tightening things, such as reducing the number of romanceable characters* from a metric ton (my opinion) to a more reasonable number of 8. They are also tightening the story a bit further, which is also fine with me.

Oh, and I won't spoil it for you, but apparently Pathea has learned a thing or two from the last two Legend of Zelda entries. (You can watch the video for those cues.) Given that it seems they've been building the game in-house over these years, that they were able to integrate more capabilities to their series is a welcome addition. 

(Now, can you PLEASE take these learnings and fix the pathing in My Time at Portia?)

***

Will I support the Kickstarter?

Well, they don't exactly need me right now since already they've shot past their initial goals, so I'm content to ride out the development cycle and purchase the game when it goes live. To be honest, I'm rather shocked by the number of people who backed the game at the $500 and higher levels, because that's not exactly small potatoes.** I am impressed, however, and I will eagerly await this release when it gets closer. 

The little crew at Chongqing, China continues to impress me with their vision and work ethic, so best of luck to them in getting this project to completion.

*If you so choose, that is.

**That's not my money, though, so I kind of just shrug and move along.

The Great Blizzard Bank Heist

I kind of keep an eye on Retail WoW, but I don't follow much in the way of details. For example, I couldn't tell you the names of any of the zones from areas after Mists of Pandaria (and probably only half of Mists itself), or any of the bosses in raids since Wrath.*

However, Kurn of Kurn's Corner had a post this morning about what she's calling The Great Blizzard Bank Heist. She also posted a video on YouTube describing the situation and what she'd lost out of her own personal guild bank. A lot of items you simply can't get anymore, such as the various dragonscales that would drop from drakes throughout the pre-Cataclysm world and in Blackrock Mountain instances/raids.

Being a bit of a packrat myself, I can feel for her and for all of the others who'd been squirreling away rare and no longer obtainable materials/gear/patterns only to find them all wiped out by the data changes made by Blizzard in prep for The War Within.

Yeah, it's all just pixels. I get that. And yes, I'm sure that Blizz has hidden away in their Terms of Service some language meant to protect themselves from problems such as this, describing it as "Best Effort".

That doesn't mean you are immune to the emotional impact of the loss of items you'd been collecting for years --or well over a decade, in Kurn's case-- and being without any recourse other than maybe getting a few items back really sucks. That's the real tragedy here: the accidental reveal by Blizzard that you really own nothing, and despite what we may believe and what attachments we have to in-game items and achievements, they're all just a misclick away from it all vanishing into nothingness. Blizzard pulled that curtain back, and we can't unsee what they showed us. Even if people were to get everything back like they ought, nobody will ever forget that Blizzard could take it all away again in the blink of an eye.

*To be fair, I didn't know the names of many raid bosses at all until I started raiding in Classic WoW.

Meme Monday: The Return of Fake Book Memes

I've had so many of these fake book memes in my file, waiting for the proper time and place, that I figured I ought to bring them out sooner or later.

And that time is now.

I'm pretty sure we had the original book
this is based on as kids, but I can't remember
what it was titled for the life of me.
From Pinterest.

Hey, that's my job!
From Pinterest. (Yes, you detect a trend here.)

Somebody got into the keg of
Hudy 14K in the school's gymnasium
again! (Yes, there were kegs of beer there
where if you were clever you could turn
the kegerator on and have a drink.
Must be a West Side of Cincinnati thing.)
From (you guessed it) Pinterest.

Sometimes my inner Middle Schooler
comes out. The first time I saw this one
I giggled so hard I began coughing.
From Pinterest.

And one extra Fake Book Meme....

I'm pretty sure I'm going to Hell for
putting this out out here. From Facebook.