What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Truckin' got my chips cashed in. Keep truckin', like the do-dah man
Together, more or less in line, just keep truckin' on.

--Truckin', The Grateful Dead

In August 2009, I was having a Livejournal mail chat with Souldat's wife when she broached a specific topic.

"[Souldat] and I were thinking of playing World of Warcraft again, and I was wondering if you wanted to play," she wrote.

I'd heard of WoW --it had penetrated the popular consciousness several years ago-- and I knew of its reputation among gamers. Namely, that it is one of those games that ends up consuming your life if you're not careful.

Still, I was happy to be asked. I'd joined LJ less than a year ago --mainly so I could read and comment on SF&F authors' LJ pages-- and I'd made a few new friends online.* But this was the first time one of them had asked me to essentially hang out with them online.

I figured I could at least try the game out, and so I spent one Saturday watching as World of Warcraft slowly downloaded** while the rest of the family watched National Treasure.*** And just when I thought it was finished and I could at least make sure my account worked by starting the game, it began downloading even more stuff.

"Just what have I gotten myself into?" I wondered as I took a bit of heat from my wife for not watching the movie with the rest of the family.

The WoW website didn't exactly help me that much, because the history of Azeroth began thousands of years before the era of WoW, and I kept losing track of who was who while perusing the history. "Okay, is Illidan a good guy or a bad guy? And what about this Burning Legion? And the Scourge? And the Plague?" I had so many questions, and but I figured I should be polite to Soul and his wife and keep them to myself for the time being.****

***

Those first few game sessions were, well, chaotic at best.

Soul and his wife were saints with me as I fumbled around, not really understanding how things such as headsets integrated with a game that took up a full screen and already had taken over the PTT button for its own use. In 2009, I was far more used to games such as Civ III than games that required quick reflexes, so my fumbling and flailing was made all the worse by switching game genres. My first WoW sessions were so awkward that I had my headset hooked up to my work laptop behind me, and every time I wanted to talk I had to reach behind me and press the space bar.

After a couple of sessions I left the sound on, but all it took was about 10 seconds of what I thought was silence when Soul told me that he could hear my breathing. (It didn't help that I had seasonal allergies at the time.) So I learned about dialing back the microphone's sensitivity, which I'd never had to deal with because I used telephones/cell phones for work.

But eventually, after a class suggestion by Souldat to switch from a Priest to a Paladin --the former being too squishy for someone more acquainted with the D&D Cleric class-- I began to enjoy myself. However, I was still pretty self conscious about my online persona, and the first time I followed Soul into Orgrimmar I had the feeling that everybody there was watching me as we crossed the gate. This awkward feeling was made worse when I was accosted by a random player trying to hit me up for a charter signature, and I had a few moments of terror, not knowing how to respond, before the guy went away to pester somebody else.

It was then, in mid-September, that Souldat contacted me outside of the game. I was sure that he wanted to say that the WoW thing wasn't working out for us, and I steeled myself  for what he was going to say.

"Would you like to start a blog with me?" he asked.

***

The idea, Soul pitched, was that we'd write from the perspective of two different people in the WoW experience: I was the newbie, and he was the experienced player.

Soul really didn't have to pitch this very hard, because I looked at the blog as a chance to improve my writing skills.***** I've had ideas in my head for stories, and I've started writing a novel numerous times, but I've never been able to get more than halfway through the a story. Blogging, I figured, would allow me to actually finish something for a change.

But there were two big questions that we needed to answer before we started: what blogging platform to use, and what the name should be.

I personally preferred Livejournal, since that was what I was most familiar with, and I figured we could make that work going forward. Soul, however, researched the most popular blogging platforms and decided that Blogger would require the least amount of maintenance to keep going.# Given that he'd done the research, he didn't really have to push hard to convince me.

But the name, that was a problem.

I couldn't tell you just how many blog names we tried out, but it was over 15 for certain and probably closer to 30. Each time we'd come up with a name, Soul would try to see if the domain was taken, and inevitably it would be rejected. The names themselves are now a blur, but among those that were tried and rejected included Parallel Views and Different Perspectives. The latter was well after the first dozen or so, when we were running out of ideas.

Now, I can't remember exactly who came up with Parallel Context, but when Souldat put the blog name in, it was actually available. So Parallel Context it was.

***

I'll freely admit that Soul put the blog together and I was --more or less-- along for the ride.

While I had a LJ account, I never really considered posting in a blog on a regular basis. It's not as if I had a lot of time set aside to write to begin with, and committing to a blog would mean I'd have a self imposed deadline on top of all of the other family and work commitments I'd have. Sure, there was going to be that initial burst of activity, but sustaining it is the key to making a blog that lasts.

And there's that promotion thing.

Soul had reached out to some bloggers he liked and mentioned that we were starting PC, and after a few posts into the launch we managed to get on a couple of people's blog lists. Meanwhile, I worked on integrating Google Analytics into the site, so we could see just how many people were viewing the blog after our outreach. And the result early on weren't encouraging: the numbers were disappointingly small. Like "this is us shouting into the void" small.

Oh, and during all of this, I was learning how to actually play WoW, so I wouldn't have anyone yelling "Get gud, scrub!" at me while playing the game. Hillsbrad Foothills and Tarren Mill taught me the true meaning of what being on a PvP server really was, and I can't say I was really thrilled. Sure, there was the adrenalin rush of trying to hide while being ganked by a swarm of Alliance raiders from Southshore, but the concept of "we're all in this together" took a real hit during those days. My work schedule and the kids' school schedule meant I was best off playing in the early morning, which meant that I was on at 5-6 AM EST on a server meant for the US West Coast.

That means... Say it all with me now: "Nobody was on while I was learning how to WoW."

I had the freedom to fuck up and nobody was around to see it.

Afterward, I'd return to being a normal husband and father, but during my lunchtime I'd write for the site.

Early on I decided to try to write a post at least once a week, and between Soul's and my output we kept the blog on a steady pace.## Still, there was this big WoW/MMO ecosystem out there, and we didn't know how to really break into it to have our voices heard. Soul suggested a few blogs for me to read to a) help me improve at WoW and b) so that we could learn how to blog better. But for me, I decided that I wasn't just going to read, I'd comment as well.

But that assumed that I knew what the hell I was talking about. So back to playing WoW a bit more to muddle my way through.

***

I think it was way after I dinged 80 for the first time in Wrath that we finally had a breakthrough. I'd made some post about a 5-man PUG fail and why they fail the way they do --that much I remember-- when I discovered a comment from "Tam" making some thoughtful observations.

"Holy crap!" I exclaimed. "Is that who I think it is?"

I followed the name back, and sure enough, it was Tam from Righteous Orbs, who (along with his friend Chas) at the time ran one of the most well read WoW blogs.

My brain processed the information, but I still couldn't believe it. It was as if Geddy Lee from Rush called me up and said that he, Neil, and Alex were going to be in town and wanted to know if we could hang out.

Somewhere in my amazement I clicked back to see the Righteous Orbs Blogroll, and sure enough the words "Parallel Context" was in there.

Other blogs added us shortly thereafter, such as Larisa's The Pink Pigtail Inn, and our readership began to increase. What I also found was a community of MMO bloggers who were supportive of each other and promoted each other's work. Almost all of them were more social media savvy than Soul and myself, as they took to Twitter to promoting each others' blogs and utilizing Facebook and Google+ as well.

I thought things were looking up, and that we'd get the active site we'd always hoped for, but I didn't reckon on life. Or the video game development cycle.

Blogs faded away, such as Righteous Orbs and The Pink Pigtail Inn, due to burnout. Those two tore a huge hole in the WoW blogging community, as they were the watering hole for WoW bloggers where you could see an accurate and current list of blogs. When PPI in particular shut down, PC suffered a huge hit in readership; something around 35-40% of the views came from PPI as a starting point. Blog Azeroth and Orcish Army Knife have tried to fill the void, but the WoW blogging community also suffered hits from the divisive nature of the WoW Cataclysm expansion.#### Others gradually faded away as real life intervened. Soul himself has mostly moved on as he and his wife bought a house, started a family, and have been kept busy every since. Soul still plays, but not nearly as much as he used to.

Even I dropped my WoW subscription toward the end of Mists, when I realized I wasn't having fun any more, and I focused on other MMOs instead.

***

Yet here we are, almost 10 years in, and PC is still around.

What have I learned over the years?

• That I could live on 4-5 hours sleep for an indefinite period. I tend to get my best writing done late at night or early in the morning, when everything is quiet and I can just focus. 20 years ago, I used to get up at 4 AM and get into work by 5 AM just so I could get about 3 hours of uninterrupted coding and analysis done without interference from the hustle and bustle of the day. Ever since, I've treasured the night as when I'm most productive. 

• That I don't have to look for approval to write. I used to worry about things such as pageviews and building PC into a real site, but I finally figured out that PC is a real site. I don't need to ask for approval to post articles, and I don't need to worry about how a post might impact the readership at the site. After all, what readership? I know our pageviews quite well, thankyouverymuch, and I know what our number of readers is, give or take about 10-20 people. I've never bothered with monetizing the site, because I'm not an Influencer and I don't seek to profit off of my friends.

• That persistence is just as important as talent. A blog isn't an easy thing to keep going, year after year. The sort of persistence in keeping a blog up is the same sort of persistence found in a Ph.D student, who keeps the dream alive of getting their Doctorate, through force of will alone. My university degree is in a scientific field that almost requires a Ph.D to get to do significant research, so I've known more than my share of Masters and Doctorate students. And the one thing the successful ones all had was the persistence in getting the work done, day after day and year after year. They weren't necessarily the smartest in their field --I can easily think of examples of the "smart person who never finished"-- but they were persistent. They never gave up. And with this blog, there are times when I thought about shutting it down, but then I've told myself I'm not giving up on my creative outlet.

• That MMO bloggers are a weird breed. We see things that happen in MMOs and think "that'd make a great blog post". We see Gen Chat discussions and get inspired to write something. We take goofy screenshots because hey, the blog.

• That MMO bloggers are family. I found people whose blogs are long since in mothballs, but I still talk to them on a regular basis. My fellow bloggers have been through a lot, through weddings, births of their children, and even deaths in the family. Small victories as well as crushing events. But the MMO blogging has kept us together. I exchange Holiday cards with several bloggers, and we chat about life. I've laughed with them, I've cried with them, and I've been willing to listen to them pour their guts out over what's been bothering them. Because that's what family does. You may not be able to choose your genetic family, but you can choose your online family. I'd like to say that I chose these bloggers as friends, but I know what the reality is. They chose me.

***

So here's to an (almost) 10 years.

To people who have shared the journey and have moved on.

To people who still come by and say "Oh crap, what is that guy up to now?"

To people who share the same weird passion for putting themselves out on the internet for a living.

To Parallel Context, the blog that almost didn't have a name.

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me,
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.

--Truckin', The Grateful Dead

*Online friends weren't a new thing to me; I've been on the internet since before the WWW was a thing. It's that I'd not kept up with the SF&F community since the GEnie online service imploded, and the community had a large presence on GEnie.

**We had a 2.5MB download connection back then. I suppose you could say that "I was unprepared" for the size of the download.

***DON'T get me started about the historical accuracy of that movie. When I first watched it, with my wife, I had to go walk into the kitchen to keep from blurting things out in the TV room. I was told my face turned a bright shade of red numerous times.

****To be honest, I still have questions to this day, but they're more of the "why did you decide to make the history this way, rather than another way?" variety. There are plenty of times when I think that the history of Azeroth sprang from somebody's homebrew D&D campaign that was created when the players were attempting to be worldly and sophisticated.

*****Despite my output here, roughly 4-6 posts per month, I do like to write; I just don't force myself into constant writing when I know it's just not going to work out.

#Blogger's restrictions are far more of a nuisance these days, when most of the blogging customization tools are written for Wordpress. Every time I look into changing the blog around, I run up against Blogger's limitations, and I really don't have the time to spend writing custom code for Blogger itself to do what I want it to do.

##We had also added a third blogger on two separate occasions, but both of them didn't last long. One had a particularly dislikeable post and both of us called her out on it, and she kind of vanished shortly after. We lost the other due to real life issues pulling her away.

###We ran the instances with 3 people, given that Soul was much higher in level than the content and was --at best-- a middling healer. Soul's wife provided ranged DPS as a Mage, and as long as we weren't overwhelmed by adds we did okay.

####Looking back, I can see that a lot of WoW bloggers that I read vanished over the course of Cataclysm and Mists, and I don't believe that was an accident. I've heard from quite a few people in groups in WoW Classic how they dropped their subscription during those two expacs, and it would make sense that the WoW blogging community merely reflected that.

When I Want to Annoy my Wife, I Play ABBA

When someone in Trade Chat said "This isn't a true Vanilla experience because nobody is dancing on a mailbox," I took that as a personal challenge.

Sorry, I'm not planning on making a gif out of this.

"There," I said. "I'm dancing on the mailbox in Darnassus."

"It needs to be in SW for it to count," was the reply.

Challenge accepted.

EtA: No, I'm NOT planning on making GIFs out of these. Corrected the caption.

Old Friends Reunited

One nice thing about getting back into WoW via WoW Classic is running into old friends.

Yesterday I logged in to take care of some items*, and found Ancient, from the blog Tome of the Ancient, online and playing in Classic on Myzrael-US.

"Ancient!"

"Red!"

She was questing in Darkshore, waiting to ding L20 on her Druid, and also waiting for Therylune to respawn in The Master's Glaive area. I was in nearby Ashenvale, so I quickly ran over and had a short but great reunion in-game.

Ignore the dreary atmosphere, that's just
Darkshore for you.

I'm a few levels higher than Kitwynn so I offered to help out, and we spent the next 10-20 minutes talking and killing Twilight's Hammer flunkies, just like the old days.

Therylune took a long time to respawn,
so we had ample time to chat

I couldn't stay long, as I was going to be a taxi for the youngest mini-Red (marching band competiton) while our exchange student was hanging out with some of her fellow exchange students and hosts, so the reunion was definitely short. But since we both play on the same server, I hope we'll group up more often and just have a fun time relaxing. And killing baddies.

Because WoW, you know.




*And I finally got into a Deadmines run!! Two actually, but I'll post about those another time.


EtA: I was so excited to post this that I forgot the title. Oops.

Let's not Overcomplicate Things

It seems that when it comes to video games, I'm a bit snakebit right now.

I haven't been able to play any video games as much as I'd like, and no, this doesn't have anything to do with work.* It does, however, have to do with our family being a bit larger for a while: we've an exchange student residing with us**, and she's been here since the end of August. She'll be leaving in another week or so, but since that takes priority over other items around the house*** I've been gaming less and spending more time on being a good host.

What that translates into is that I've fallen behind in leveling along with the initial wave in WoW Classic, but there's still plenty to do with people who are my current level.****

But alas, my biggest desire --outside of Alterac Valley-- is that I would like to get into some 5-man dungeons, and I simply don't have time for that at the moment.

I keep thinking I'm going to outlevel the content in the Deadmines shortly, so I really need to get there and get in a group. But I also know that a full Deadmines run, particularly given the likelihood of at least one wipe, would take about an hour of complete dedication, and given the intensity of the first part --fighting your way through the mines-- there's no way I could do the 5-man without interruption. And that means really early in the morning or late at night.

But not all is lost: I've been spending some time creeping along, gathering flight points.

Oh yes, I've been a bad Night Elf, sneaking along in areas not meant for an L22 character.

Such as trying to figure out if I could sneak through Burning Steppes just enough to pick up the flight point at Morgan's Vigil. Spoiler Alert: you can't, because there's an Obsidian Elemental parked in the lava just past the (busted open) door to the zone.

Another spoiler alert: doesn't matter if you're stealthed, because a baddie who is high enough level to get the skull icon instead of a number will aggro on you as soon as it gets a line of sight on you.

And based on that result, I didn't try to reach Feralas, although I was really tempted.

However, I did creep up to the Arathi Highlands and picked up the flight point there at Refuge Pointe, and I took the easy route (boat from Menethil Harbor) to Theramore and acquired a flight point there.

Yes, Theramore was still very much non-bombed out, and Jaina Proudmoore had her original hair color (and disposition).

Since I had a flight point for Dustwallow Marsh, the next step was to go get one for Ratchet.

Climbing up the mountains surrounding Dustwallow Marsh isn't an option, and I was low enough level to not make it through the Marsh itself, so I decided my best bet was to sneak through The Barrens' entrance from Stonetalon Peak. If you'll recall, the entrance to The Barrens from Ashenvale is really well guarded by Horde, so you can forget about getting through that way, but Stonetalon's entrance is pretty wide open. Additionally, I'd already been questing in Stonetalon so that I could beef up my level to finish the Ashenvale questlines, so I was familiar with the zone.*****

And I was off, creeping along toward the entrance to The Barrens, and avoiding the Horde players that were running back and forth around Stonetalon. Sure, Myzrael may be a PvE server, but my WoW infancy was spent in Stormscale-US, a PvP server, so I'm more than a bit gun shy about running into the opposing faction out in the wild. That didn't stop the Troll Shaman who made a point of letting me know he saw me by waving at me numerous times.

"You don't see me," I muttered to myself as I crept along.

I maneuvered around the Grimtotem areas, kept to the hills, and "The Barrens" finally popped on my screen.

"Thank goodness. Now I can--"

And then Honor's Stand came into view.

"Uh oh."

The main passage through Honor's Stand went right by the Horde outpost, which effectively blocked the ravine formed from the mountains on one side and the mesa on another, and I had no idea whether the north side of the mesa had a similar configuration.

Doubling back, I turned north, and breathed easier when I saw that those Horde outposts appeared abandoned, so I hugged the mesa and hoped a stray L60 Horde Guard wasn't nearby. A few anxious minutes later and I was into the clear, the plains of The Barrens stretching before me.

Well, except for the roving Centaur and Gnolls, not to mention the Thunder Lizard that had a disturbing tendency to anticipate where I was headed even though I was stealthed, I managed to head south in the direction of where I thought Ratchet ought to be. I turned east on the road and kept on going....

...right into Dustwallow Marsh.

"Oh, you have got to be shitting me!!" I said out loud. "Next time I'm taking the corpse run!!"

Yes, I did (eventually) make it to Ratchet, which was right where the southern edge of Durotar meets The Barrens, but I wasn't very happy with myself.

I should have tried the corpse run first. Or maybe the water route, swimming my way up to Ratchet by hugging the coastline from Theramore.

ANYTHING but stealthing across The @#$!-ing Barrens.




*Well, a little bit, but not nearly as much as in other times.

**She's actually been a lot of fun to have around, but I have to be constantly on guard so that I don't use American slang as often as I do. And to be honest, I've not seen her that much as our youngest has been taking her from place to place, and all I am is the taxi driver.

***No, I haven't used that as an excuse to stop cleaning or doing laundry; instead I've spent a LOT more time doing both than I expected just to keep up with everything.

****Yes, my mantra has pretty much always been "move at your own pace". However, when you're stuck in that questing version of No Man's Land where you can't solo much in Ashenvale right now and you're forced into traveling all over to pick up quests in the low-20s you can do just to get geared up enough to get through those Ashenvale quests, you know what I'm talking about.

*****Stonetalon is another zone that was hit pretty hard by Cataclysm. Not originally, mind you, but in the storyline that followed once a player reached the zone. Even though I'd quested in Stonetalon before in pre-Cata, it was on the Horde side, and I hadn't realized how tilted in favor of the Horde the quests and activity in the zone was, from their flight point (conveniently placed in the middle of the zone) to the surrounding quests themselves. The Tauren-focused quests mimicked a lot of the Alliance/Night Elf quests, and the anti-Alliance quests meant that the Horde were constantly up in Stonetalon Peak, in the Alliance's home territory.

I Survived the Wetlands Fun Run

...at least, that's what I started calling it when the everpresent topic of "how do I get to Stormwind from Darnassus?" popped up in Gen Chat.

You see, the ship from Darnassus' harbor to Stormwind didn't make an appearance until Wrath of the Lich King, so that meant if you wanted to get to Stormwind you had to go the long way: Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands, then a long run around the Wetlands to Loch Modan and then Dun Morogh to Ironforge. Once at Ironforge, you take the Tram to Stormwind.

Given that I cut my teeth on WoW in Eversong Forest and learned the hard way to never go through the Eastern Plaguelands as a lowbie, this doesn't seem too bad, until you realize that the crocs in the Wetlands frequently run across the road in spots.

I waited until I was L18 to make my run, and I even had the advantage of having Stealth, but I had to wait for several intense moments until a croc or two about 4-5 levels above me left the vicinity of the road before I continued on.

And then I remembered that I saw, on the day Classic dropped, a L3 Gnome and a L5 Dwarf running around Teldrassil.

A corpse run indeed.

But based on the jokes in Teldrassil and Darkshore, Blizz should create a t-shirt that says "I Survived the Wetlands Fun Run" in the same vein that 1e D&D players have a "I Survived the Tomb of Horrors".

Yeah, kind of like this.
From d20 Collective, I think, because
I got a dozen links almost immediately
after starting a search.

***

Well, my own personal Waterloo came after I was emboldened by the success of reaching Stormwind (because there was a Rogue quest there), and I decided to brave Ashenvale.

Now let's get something clear: Ashenvale doesn't have the same reaction to me that, say, the Hillsbrad Foothills and Tarren Mill does. When I first set foot in Ashenvale waaaay back in the day, Souldat's wife and I were being escorted to Blackfathom Deeps by Souldat himself, who at the time was on his Death Knight. I was reasonably certain that we were going to be okay throughout the entire experience, because a DK in Ashenvale is really overpowered for the zone itself. And while we were on a PvP server, I still hadn't completely understood what that meant, because I'd largely kept myself confined to the Horde zones at that time.

So, I figured it wouldn't be that hard to Stealth my way into Ashenvale as an L18 Rogue and then reach Astranaar and the other locations where I had quests ending.

Such as the Shrine of Aessina.

I made a point of not trying to cheat by looking online or by using Questie, which is the current hot app for levelers in Classic*, but or the life of me I couldn't remember where the Shrine was. I remembered Maestra's Post, and that was easily found, but all I knew was the wooden post in-game at Maestra's Post said "Shrine of Aessina" following the road south.

"Oh, I know," I said to myself. "It's the place just west of the Horde outpost in the zone."

As I snuck on over to the road that led to Felwood, the levels of the spiders and other woodland nasties kept rising. I managed to put down an L22 spider that aggroed on me while stealthed, but I got really lucky with my hits. And I reached the outpost to discover it wasn't the Shrine of Aessina at all, but Raynewood's Retreat.

Crap.

Trying to remember what things were like pre-Cata, I decided that maybe the Shrine of Aessina is at the Alliance entrance to Warsong Gulch. I wasn't completely sure, however, and if that didn't bear fruit I was going to try in the southwest portion of Ashenvale.

I crept along down the road to the Alliance entry into Warsong Gulch, and took a lot more time going farther around the mobs as they rose into L23 and L24 territory. And then, I reached a point where I could go no farther; the road had too many mobs nearby that were L24-ish**.

Turning around, I discovered that my path was blocked as well, except for a narrow area up a slope and around the top of a small hill or two.

Guess who slid down the hill and right into a mob of spiders and wolves?

This guy.

I died.

I ran back, then respawned in the farthest corner away from that mob, not realizing another mob was right behind me.

I died again.

And ran back again, and tried to sprint away from the mobs, who dazed me and feasted on my carcass.

Multiple times.

I finally threw up my hands and took the Resurrection Sickness option and revived at the Shrine.

And then, once I stepped on the road to go into Astranaar, I was ambushed by another spider, and died once more.

At that point, I admitted defeat, Hearthed back to Auberdine, repaired my gear, and retired to the inn to drown my sorrows in whatever alcohol I could find.

Being a Night Elf inn, there wasn't much in the way of booze, so I just opened a beer from my fridge, sighed, and logged for the night.

Who knew the Wetlands Fun Run would be the easy part of my day?




*Based on the sheer number of people saying they were using Questie in Gen Chat.

**I say ish, because I think some were L23 and some were L25.

Various Vanilla Classic Thoughts 70 Hours In

Well, that didn't take long.

Apparently Blizz has relieved most of the congestion by expanding the number of players who can be logged into a WoW Classic server concurrently.

That explains why I didn't have a 30-45 minute wait last evening to get into Myzrael.* Believe me, I'm not complaining, but I'd actually figured it'd take about 30 minutes to get in, so I logged in and went away to do some cleaning, only to turn around and see Azshandra staring back at me a minute or so later.

"I guess that cleaning can wait for a few," I said as I turned off the vacuum cleaner.**

***

So last night I was told by people in Gen Chat in Darkshore --hey, waiting for your shot at Anaya Dawnrunner means you've got time to kill-- that there's a player who's close to dinging L40 out there. Of course, the slog really starts around that point, so we'll see what happens.

Someone also brought up some numbers that were crunched by Google (or somewhere) that it would take a month straight --at minimum-- to reach L60. I think they were really referencing this article by warcrafttavern.com about leveling. The article does mention that the world record for leveling back in Vanilla was 4 days, 20 hours by Joana, but the one thing it doesn't mention is whether that leveling achievement was done with help or not. For example, Souldat was far ahead of his wife and I in leveling back in Wrath, and to help get his wife to L60 --and into BC-- he basically ran her through Stratholme multiple times so she could get the XP needed to head to Outland. If there's a situation where there's absolutely no help whatsoever, as you're ahead of everybody else, then any advantages of leveling with people who have gone before you simply disappear.

***

I have resisted the urge to go online and hunt for info on finding things, such as the two tablets in Ameth Aran, which meant that it took me a lot longer to find (no sparkles or marks on the minimap) but the satisfaction in finding the tablets was much higher. It also means that I've been considering writing down stuff more often in a notepad, simply because you have to remember more and pay attention to the quest text more in order to find what you're needing. Or you could ask in game; a lot more people are willing to help on Classic (so far) than what I remember especially on my last couple of years in Cata and Mists. If you asked a question in game --assuming there were people around in the zone, that is-- then you were frequently met with either silence or a "go google it, noob".

I'm reasonably certain the outflowing of assistance will die down a bit once people reach L60 and start doing other things, but for now I'll take it.

***

The gear drops are a LOT more whites and far fewer greens; and I'd say of the 6 or so greens that I did get as a drop, only two are usable for a Rogue. Apparently I'm not the only one not getting the drops they want, because the auction house is full of low level greens. Given that I'm saving my in game cash as much as I can, I can look from afar but not touch. Of course, it makes questing that much harder, as you're frequently undergeared even compared to Wrath, but I learned the hard way to cut back on the number of enemies I engage at once.

Classic is a lot closer to Age of Conan than anything else in terms of mobs taking you out, and how easily they aggro on you. This is what I remember the most, especially in the troll city in The Hinterlands, when I was leveling Q as a Holy Pally back then: you defeat a mob at a time, but you progress so slowly (and eat+drink after every fight) that the mobs respawn behind you and make an already difficult job even worse.

One last similarity between Classic and Age of Conan: if you take on an enemy 2-3 levels higher than you, good luck. They hit much harder than you, and you have a much harder time defending against them. Even enemies that are 2 levels below you can take you out if they have the right debuffs against you, such as weakening your armor or making it harder for you to hit. When you finally get an interrupt for your toon, it's a godsend.

***

Finally, the last question: am I enjoying myself?

Yes. Absolutely yes.

Active --and chatty-- zones, old school finding of quests, difficult combat, and random kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing to see. Active guild recruitment is another thing that's nice as well, even though I haven't exactly pulled the trigger on anything yet.

I know, the sky is falling: Red might actually rejoin an MMO guild for the first time since I was last in WoW, 4 years ago.*** That I've been considering breaking my long standing refusal to join a guild after the nuclear meltdown of the Horde guild and the fading away of the Alliance guild is a measure of how different the Classic community has been so far.

But let's be honest, here: 95% of the guild advertisements I've seen so far have all been similar pitches: room for everyone, just having a good time, group or not is fine with us, etc. The rare progression oriented guild advertisement has been polite, but made it perfectly clear they want raiders. I suspect that this guild advertisement imbalance really is a thing, and not just a lot of people happy to be in Classic, because of one big reason: age.

The Gen Chat discussions have repeatedly come back to variations on "wow, this is great to be back, I was ## old when I first played Vanilla, and now I've got kids and commitments." When people in Classic do the "how old are you to be playing Classic?" question, my age**** is never the oldest out there. Frequently I see people saying they're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Those are all people with commitments, families, and activities outside of gaming, and that means they simply don't have the time for raiding that they used to have when they were much younger. And let's be honest, my reflexes aren't what they were 5 or 10 years ago, and I'm sure that people in the upper half of that age group who'd like to raid might be rejected by raiding guilds as people who just aren't pulling their weight. So the desire to play casual, just enjoying the ride, is likely stronger in the Classic group than in Retail WoW as a whole.

Hmm.... I wandered waaaay afield for that response.

Yes. I really am enjoying myself. And yes, I intend to keep going, but I'll re-evaluate after every 60 days.




*In a case of never ceasing to amuse myself, Myzrael is in the US Pacific time zone, while I'm in the Eastern time zone. The reason why I'm so amused is that Stormscale-US, the PvP server I originally leveled Q in waaaaay back in the day was also on the Pacific time zone, so when I would be getting up really early in the day to play (5-6 AM EST) it was 2-3 AM PST. Never stopped me from getting into a 5-man, but still it was amusing to see I really have gone back to the past.

**Yes, the cleaning did get done. No, I'm not one of those people who abandon all activity to focus on the new hotness, but I will stay up late if I'm reading/playing/whatever and I get hooked. (I think I've mentioned that on more than one occasion.) But thankfully, I've not done that with WoW Classic. (Yet.)

***And really, for the final 1.5 years of my WoW experience I was in what was effectively a dead guild. There'd be maybe 1-4 people ever logged in over that time, although apparently there's been a name change and a bit more involvement since Mists, but I don't know what the guild is like these days.

****It's 50. Yes, I really did cross that threshold this summer. Me and Ancient can go hang around in the Old Folks' WoW Home, I suppose, but it was best put by a person in Gen Chat in Teldrassil: "My mind feels like it's 20, but my body feels like it's 60." There wasn't any magical "Oh no, I lost my desire/virility/energy/whatever" that happens when you supposedly reach that number, and unlike when I turned 40 and gray started popping out of my beard, I don't really feel any different. I'd like a bit more sleep, but I chalk that up to decades of getting up early and going to bed late (kids and work, you know).

Ordered Chaos

I managed to login to Myzrael before the servers went live, so I didn't have to deal with the long queues.

Initially.

Recreating my last main, the NE Rogue Azshandra, allowed me to jump in with a minimal amount of relearning. About the only thing I noticed was a bit of lag due to the sheer numbers of people in the Night Elf starter zone:

Not too bad...

Or from this angle.

People were mentioning in Zone Chat that it was apparently bonkers over in the Human starter zone, which made me wonder whether the Goldshire of old will be resurrected along with WoW Classic. I have an almost morbid curiosity about that, and I might want to login to the RP server just to check that out.

After a break for dinner, I'm now waiting to get back into Myzrael, and the wait time is stuck at around 34 minutes. It was 65 minutes earlier, but it quickly shrunk down to 34 minutes where its been stuck for about 10-15 minutes or so.

Oh well.

Back to the Past

Arctus Wilhelm over at The Ancient Gaming Noob has a post about the odds certain items might happen in WoW Classic. I enjoyed the post a lot, but one stretch of the post made me sigh and shake my head:

• Somebody Gets to Level 60 in 12 Hours or Less – Not going to happen

• Somebody Gets to Level 60 in 24 Hours – Maybe

• Somebody Gets to Level 60 in 48 Hours – Without a doubt

I have to wonder what the people gunning for L60 are planning on doing once they get there. Moaning about how there's nothing to do? Isn't the "the game begins at max level" ethos one of the reasons why the MMO genre is the way it is right now?

But whatever floats your boat, I suppose.

Me? I'm going to take my time; I don't have much choice, since I tend to play at odd hours, but I intend to enjoy the ride.

A Little Something for a Friday

Want a feel good video for a Friday?

Have you got about 1/2 hour?

Good. There's a post by Fandom Entertainment that went up on August 6th that is worth watching.

It's an episode of Fandom Uncovered, and while it's not that big on, say, the history of D&D, the episode really delves into what it means to various people who play the game. The episode also emphasizes how easy it is to get involved in a game, and to not let the rulebooks turn you off. 95% of D&D is just, well, roleplaying without any need of dice or ruleset at all. Pencil and paper RPGs are like that.

However, the best line in the episode had to be about the D&D group that Joe Manganiello put together where everybody around the table could bench press 400 lbs. A bunch of buffed dudes whose forearms likely looked like my calves were playing D&D. And enjoying themselves.

Anyway, give the video a try. Besides, we could all use something good on a Friday, right?

At Least it's Shorter than 21 Questions

There have been a couple of posts rolling around in my head (the "Are MMOs Dead?" article that made the rounds last week was the inspiration for one of them), but I decided to put those aside for now and look at something a bit more light hearted.

Such as The Seven Questions from the Blaugust lists.

I saw Joseph Skyrim's post on his answers, and thought "I may have to steal this."

I went back and looked over my scribbles I'd put together for posts, sighed, and said "I REALLY need to steal that writing prompt."*

So, here goes....

***

My Sole** Contribution to Blaugust: Seven Questions about Redbeard

1. What hobbies or interests do you have that you might not regularly include on your blog?
   
   Considering this is a gaming blog, anything gaming related gets covered here. So...
   
   I guess the first hobby is one I've mentioned once or twice, shortwave radio. Although I guess you could say electronics in general, but really I've not tweaked a circuit board in quite a while. I used to listen to shortwave quite a bit, stemming from roughly around the fall of the Berlin Wall, but as the internet has grown shortwave broadcasts have been cut back. Some stations no longer broadcast to North America, such as the BBC World Service, and other simply no longer exist, such as Radio Nederland. In North America, that means that the bandwidth has been taken up by religious broadcasters and assorted conspiracy nuts, so I've not had much reason to listen these days.
   
   Another hobby of mine that I haven't mentioned is audio. No, I'm not an audiophile --I simply don't have the money to be one-- but I do enjoy good sound and good music of pretty much any genre. But what I mean by this is that I've built my own speakers and I've installed car stereos (and speakers) many times. Yes, I really have built my own speakers. I've gotten the urge to build a new pair from time to time, but I don't have a lot of stereo equipment lying around that need speakers, so I've held off on that. However, seeing a design like this or this gets my juices going.
   
2. Are you learning any skills at the moment? If not, what would you like to learn?
   Well, I suppose you could say that I've been spending the past year or two keeping up with the PC industry, watching the major players in PC component space, and reacquainting myself in how to build a PC. While I've built numerous PCs over the years, the last one I built was in 2003. When I went to replace that PC in 2007 (motherboard died), I priced build vs. buy and decided it was cheaper to buy a PC at the time. I performed the same cost/benefit analysis in 2012 when that PC had graphics card and motherboard issues, and bought the current desktop PC we own. But now, especially for gaming, the numbers have swung in the direction of building a PC, so I'm gathering as much info as I can before I pull the trigger in the next year or so and actually build a PC just for myself.***
   
   As for what I'd like to learn, I'd like to learn to play an instrument. However, I think my brain is wired differently than a musician's brain is, because I can understand the concept of scales, but when I try to learn to play, I don't think in terms of "High C" but rather "Note #15 starting at Middle C". I blame those "anyone can play music" books that reduced the notes down to numbers, which made perfect sense for me, but doesn't help at all when you're trying to learn the nuts and bolts of music. Therefore, I'm content to be the roadie (and DJ) of the family.
   
3. If you were invited on a one-way trip to Mars to establish a new colony, would you go?
   No. Not because I wouldn't love to try to make it in a new colony, but because I'm not a big fan of dying by asphyxiation. I can handle dying from radiation exposure (pretty likely in a new colony in a world that doesn't have Van Allen Radiation Belts the same strength as Earth's does) or even starvation (I would joke that I can certainly use the diet), but asphyxiation... No.
   
    
4.  What is the one thing that you most want readers to come away from your blog with? A feeling, thought, or understanding.
   I approach the blog as a series of extended conversations about gaming, so if people read the blog and say "Hmm... That was interesting," then I'm fine with that. I'm not going to be an Influencer in the industry, and PC isn't going to be anything resembling trendy, so I'm fine with just a few readers who find my posts interesting.****
   
   This is a post for another time, but I still shake my head at how Influencers make money posting on blogs or other forms of social media. I realize that one way to make money is to be in-your-face argumentative along with aggressive marketing, but that's not my style. Besides, the social media mob can turn on you at any moment, and I'd rather not be caught up in that. The Internet Giveth, and the Internet Taketh Away, I suppose.
   
5. What excites you most about having a blog?
   If this were in the early years of PC, the mere fact that I was posting on an MMO blog --and the blog was acknowledged by some of the bigger names of WoW Bloggers (Tam of Righteous Orbs and Larisa of Pink Pigtail Inn) was thrilling enough. There was also the Twisted Nether blogcast that I participated in, and that was a thrill. But now, I'm just glad I keep posting on a regular enough basis to maintain about ~70 posts/year.
   
    
6. If you could make one thing from a book, TV show or movie real, and in your possession, what would it be?
   Hmm.... That's a toughie.
   
   When I was in my teens, I'd have said --almost immediately-- "Anduril, The Flame of the West, born from the shards of Narsil reforged!"
   
   That would still be cool, but I think I'm going to have to go with the treasure found by Edmond Dantes on the island of Monte Cristo. Unlike Dantes, however, I don't have any revenge to plot; I'd much rather use the treasure for a lot of good causes.
   
7. They say everyone has at least one book in them — if you were to write a book, what would it be about?
   
   That would be the novel I've tried to write several times, and I end up getting stuck about 50-100 pages in. The novel is a Fantasy (naturally), but not the classic D&D (or WoW) style High Fantasy, where it seems everybody has access to magic of some sort. It's also set in a timeline where parts of the world are in a Renaissance equivalent, and others are in the Middle Ages. The world is almost completely human --except for some Fey, who are found pretty much only in their hidey holes deep in various forests. Those who wield magic are very few and far between, and like a lot of other Fantasy worlds, don't gain access to their magic immediately: something has to happen to them, typically tragic, that causes the magic to manifest. This means that magic is viewed not only with awe but also a measure of pity, where the vast numbers of non-magical humans would rather not walk the path of those who can wield magic.
   
   Okay, that's a really short description of the world dynamics, so I won't go into much more detail than that. If you want a non-polished elevator pitch, here it goes:
   
   "Marcus Dartana is Bound to a Mistress he has never met, fears the dreams that sleep brings, and is pulled onward by a Fey device he can't throw away. His saviors hunt him, his friends use him, and he's convinced the gods are laughing at him. All he wants is to be free. Or dead, whichever comes first..."
   

*I wrote and entire post and decided to delete the damn thing because I couldn't adequately describe my opinion, and the longer I wait the less current the post will seem. That's the risk of waiting too long to respond to an article that popped up in (gamer) news.

**At least until the next interesting prompt shows up.

***The current desktop will serve my wife for a long time to come, assuming that the motherboard doesn't croak on that one, as she doesn't tax the system at all. I'll likely be replacing the main drive with an SSD this Winter, so she'll see performance improvements that will keep her happy for quite a while.

****I know that at least one mini-Red reads the blog, so if nothing else I've got one reader.

T-Minus.....

We're a little over two weeks away before WoW Classic drops, and people have started weighing in on what's going to happen.

And I'm sure you're figuring that this is going to be another one of those speculative posts, especially given that I've made predictions fairly often in the past.

This time, however, I'm just going to let it roll.

About the only prediction that I can make is that the WoW Classic servers will be swamped on Release Day, and I'm not entirely sure that Blizz is truly ready for that. I don't even know how many Blizzard people are left from the WoW glory days of the Vanilla, BC, and Wrath drops, but I've heard stories about how much a wait to login and lag time there was, particularly compared to Cataclysm's release. Of course, server architecture has become more robust in the 15 years since, so I guess we'll find out.

As for myself, I'm debating whether to login on Release Day or not.

Two of the mini-Reds will be away at their respective colleges*, and the youngest mini-Red will be at Drumline** practice that evening, so I will have some free time.

That being said, I'm not looking forward to any potential lag, and I really have no idea whether old guildmates (and Souldat, for that matter) will be logging in. Given that WoW Classic is designed to require more grouping than what WoW has evolved into --no LFG, for instance, so you have to group up the old fashioned way-- I guess we'll see what happens.

Maybe Blizz will capture lightning in a bottle again, and maybe the conditions that were perfect for the WoW phenomenon are no longer present.

Buckle your seat belts, everyone. We're in for a helluva ride.




*One is already at her university, because the Marching Band has Band Camp for the next couple of weeks, and she arrived even earlier than the rest of her bandmates because she's part of the leadership team, and she brought with her a plastic jug full of earplugs, because she's going to move from flute to piccolo for the band's performances this Fall. Between that and --I believe-- one of the pieces the Chamber Orchestra is playing this fall is The Lark Ascending, she'll be pretty busy, music-wise.

**For those not familiar with US-style Marching Bands, the Drumline is the percussion section of the marching band. While it can mean just the portion of the percussion that is marching out on an (American) football field during halftime, Drumline can also include the portion of the percussion section that is on the sideline, playing vibes, marimbas, keyboards, etc.

Time to Roll the Dice

I realize that for a lot of people the High Holy Days of Geekdom already happened, as San Diego ComicCon wrapped up on July 22, but for me this week is the big week.

Gen Con Week is upon us.

Because you can't have enough dragons.
(From gencon.com.)

I'm going to be having a lot of live streams running in the house during Gen Con, catching up on the action.

Here's a short rundown on some of the live stream channels:

The Gen Con Team Main Page -- Contains a broadcast schedule and links to the Official Gen Con Twitch Pages

BoardGameGeek TV on Twitch at Gen Con

Geek and Sundry on Twitch

Twitch TV Search on Gen Con

YouTube Search on Gen Con 2019 livestream

The Nexus Blues

The other day, Lewis Burnell published an article on Ten Ton Hammer entitled I Miss Wildstar.

It's been 9 months since Wildstar shut down, and Lewis makes the argument that the MMO should have been allowed to live, particularly when he believes that the game was --in his opinion-- "one or two patches away from greatness."

I can't disagree with the need for a couple of patches to fix some persistent gameplay issues in Wildstar, but I'm not convinced that Wildstar would have survived even then.

Sure, Wildstar did a lot of things right, such as the storyline and even the overall gameplay. People who played around with the in-game housing loved it*, and the cartoony graphics evoked a classic WoW-esque feel that more "realistic" graphics designs in other MMOs don't.

But Wildstar had... issues.

The game released at the tail end of the big MMO boom, when the massive herd of MMO players would try a new release out, invoke the WoW mantra "the game begins at max level", and proceed to rush through the leveling content only to find the end game content locked behind some truly Old School raid attunement. This led to the bizarre combination of "there's nothing to do" and "it's too hard" from different parts of the player base.

Wildstar also promised updates at a pace that proved too good to be true, which meant that people who were promised an everflowing font of "stuff to do" never saw that happen.

Therefore many of those same players, who played Wildstar in the Summer of 2014, were more than happy to put aside their dalliance with Wildstar and return to WoW when Warlords of Draenor was released in November.

The "return to WoW after trying something out" was pretty much a theme of the MMO era up through Legion's release, but was most telling in the reactions to the original releases of Age of Conan, SWTOR, ESO, and of course, Wildstar.** All of those had issues in addition to a fickle initial player base, but only Wildstar lingered far too long in the strict subscription model before switching to F2P in an attempt to save the game.

Finally, Wildstar had the misfortune of being run by Carbine, which if the comment in the Kotaku article I linked to above is true, was very poorly run. When you piss off your parent company, that's one thing, but when you piss off NCSoft as your parent company, you're kind of screwed.

To answer Lewis Burnell's article, I miss Wildstar too. And yes, I think it could have hung in there longer, fixed several issues, and had a much longer run than it did. Hell, Age of Conan is still going on and I have absolutely NO idea how they're managing that, given how few people I ever see when I'm logged in. But I also realize that Wildstar's demise didn't have as much to do with Wildstar itself as the MMO market circa 2014 and how Carbine Studios was run.

I realize that Wildstar as an MMO is probably dead, but I don't necessarily think it's the end of the intellectual property. But we'll see, I suppose.




*I never took advantage of it, so I'll never know.

**Rift was an odd duck out, because the people who populated the original Rift release were those who didn't like the direction Blizz went with WoW in the removal of skill trees and whatnot, so Rift went on their merry way for quite a while with a devoted fan base.

It's Been a Month Coming....

I post about loot boxes and gamer burnout and crunch, and I get views but no commentary.

I post about LOTRO's potential successor, and the comments come out of the woodwork.*

So, what'll happen when I mention about some of the updates coming out tomorrow in SWTOR?

Such as quality of life improvements to F2P and Preferred players, such as an increased credit cap, an extra quickbar, and free Medical Probe/Quick Travel?

Oh sure, SWTOR fans have been discussing this for almost a month, but still these changes will make the F2P and Preferred lifestyle more bearable. Now about that bank space thing....

I kid, I kid. But on FB you'd think that people were jumping off of tall buildings because they couldn't remove their helmet without paying a few Cartel Coins for the privilege. But I do have to admit that it is better than the "This game sucks!" and "We want KOTOR 3!" and "What, this pile of trash is still around?" that I see in frequent comments about the game.

Trolls just gotta troll, I guess.




*Relatively speaking. It's a pretty quiet place, here.

There's Enough Room For Only One of Us

Well, the big news of the last day or so in the MMO world was that Amazon Studios is now developing the "new" LOTR MMO. Of course, that's the same MMO that Athlon Studios was creating, and now the "based on the literary world of JRR Tolkien" MMO is being developed by the same people that are bringing you the new Middle-earth streaming series. The latter is presumably set in the Second Age, so that makes me think that the "marching orders" for the new MMO are to be set in the Second Age as well.

After all, between Sauron and his minions (and depending on when in the Second Age, Black Numenorians) and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, there's plenty of space there for a two faction MMO set in the Second Age. Or even the First Age, for that matter.

But this news doesn't necessarily bode well for LOTRO. When Athlon was running things, I kind of shrugged and figured that LOTRO wasn't necessarily in danger. But now, with Amazon's financial might, LOTRO could be in trouble.

And this comes right when there's an optional 64-bit LOTRO client out there, which warmed my heart to no end.

Hey Bioware, how about a 64-bit client for SWTOR? If LOTRO can do it, surely you can....

A Nice Way to Check out Azeroth

I suppose you know they're out there, but I was shopping over at Target the other day and verified that yes, Blizz still has 60 Day Wow Subscription cards for sale at Target.*

And yes, they're $30. However, if you're like me and has a spouse who works at Target, you can get a 10% discount. I believe Best Buy has a nice discount too, but I don't know what that translates into with the 60 Day WoW card.

Still, 10% off a $30 60 Day card translates into $13.50/30 days, a better deal than a 3 month subscription price ($14) but not as good as the 6 month price ($13).

Of course, that does come with the catch that you have to either work at Target yourself or have a family member who does. But hey, I know how I can keep my costs down and still peruse WoW Classic without any excessive breaking of the bank.




*Alas that Target didn't really work out in Canada, as apparently they tried to keep things similar to whatever company they bought out rather than basically transport the Target experience to Canada itself. After all, based on traffic across the US/Canada border that's what people wanted, and I'm still scratching my head why Target's management thought otherwise.

Just One More Time....

When I wrote my last post, I honestly didn't know that Jim Sterling would create his latest Jimquisition taking on gambling mechanics. And that it'd be released today.

And that I'd be so pissed at the game design that Torulf Jernstrom talked about inside the video.

Oh, I knew on an intellectual level that it existed, because a lot of it is "modern marketing" amped up to an extreme level, but the brazenness of the major dev houses is really galling. And here I am, falling for that trap, because I'm thinking "yeah, I have to login to ESO so that I can get the daily reward" in much the same manner that a long time ago I discovered I was on an addictive precipice in smoking the occasional cigar.

This is not good.

On the flip side of it, now that I recognize what is going on, I can adjust my habits as much as I can to walk myself back from the ledge.

But for those who have fallen off the precipice, there's no going back.

They can't stop.

And the video game industry is happy to oblige, because they can make a ton of money off of these people.

If nothing else, the overall amorality of the video game industry toward this situation will be their downfall. Here, I was thinking that self righteous moralists shifting blame from everything from teen suicides to mass shootings onto the video game industry might have an impact, but the reality is dawning on me that the video game industry is setting themselves up for a fall by this behavior.

It's not too late for the major dev houses to walk all of this crap back and get rid of gambling mechanics in their games, but that window is shrinking. I'd imagine that the EU is going to crack down on them in the next year or two, and that potential player base is large enough that the dev houses can't ignore them.

Or they could try, but if there's one thing that the investors in today's market want, it's a maximum amount of money. And if the EU says jump, the investors will push the dev houses into finally saying "How high?"

How About a Nice Game of Chess?

A lot of MMOs these days give rewards for logging in, and if you log in enough times in a month you're likely treated to a little perk. ESO does this with daily rewards that (especially at low level) come in handy for potions, and they have three special perks per month. Typically at the 21st or so day of logging in per month, you might get a pet, an outfit, or maybe even some downloadable content.

Other MMOs, such as Age of Conan, TERA, and Rift, all do this as well, and WoW and other MMOs do this with daily quests.*

However, I do wonder about the nature of "push button, get reward" rewards that encourage daily logins.

It's one thing to throw a bone to regular players, and I do get that, but when I'm in the middle of doing whatever around the house and I think "Gee, I have to go login now because I want to make sure I pick up the daily rewards" and then before I know it I've stopped folding laundry and am halfway to the PC, yeah that does become somewhat worrying.

***

In its own way, the "push button get reward" reminds me of when I played the Age of Empires mobile game, which would give you a small reward with daily logins, but would then encourage you to spend money to get those rewards faster (the classic P2W environment). While not all MMOs go the P2W route with daily logins, a lot of them do "encourage" a player to peruse the cash shop to see what you'd get if you accumulated rewards faster (i.e. "paid for them") by making the reward accumulation just slow enough to drive you batty at times. And in mobile games, making the reward accumulation key to being able to survive an enemy onslaught, well, that just sucks.

And yes, just like when playing against a guild group in Warsong Gulch, when you try to simply use the free option and not purchase extras, it can feel pretty hopeless at times.

So "free" doesn't really mean "free" if you actually want a shot at winning, so even in winning you "lose" something (money).

Or, as Joshua put it in Wargames, "A strange game. The only way to win is not to play."




*I remember logging in daily during Wrath to get that daily 5-man run complete so I could get my badges and slowly accumulate at first a T9 set and then a T10 set of gear. For a non-raider, that was the best I could get.

Perusing the Landscape

I've been poking my nose into a few of the MMOs that I've tried and not really done much of anything with, such as Rift and TERA, and found that the environments are somewhat stable.

Well, kinda.

For example, the last several times I logged into Rift I was practically the only person around. Just about any sign of life would be better than what I found at the time. After it was pointed out to me that it was likely that a particular server might be more active when I was logging in, I made an effort to try various times and days of the week. Still, I saw hardly any activity.

The past few weeks, however, I've seen an uptick in the activity in Rift on both factions to the point where I can be reasonably certain that if, say, I needed an assist on taking care of a Tear, there would be someone in the vicinity to help out. I would definitely not call Rift as having a healthy population, but it's better than the "dead" it certainly seemed to be several months ago.

***

TERA is in a better situation than Rift, but that's not exactly saying much. Unlike Rift, TERA is still being actively developed by Bluehole --they recently released a new race/class combo, for instance-- but TERA still has that "shameless"* look that a lot of Korean MMOs have. For better or worse, that look tends to attract some people and repel others.

The look aside, TERA had finished server merges and gotten down to two servers: one PvE and one PvP. From my end, I think the server merges where absolutely the best thing to do for TERA, because there's a viable population in both. What I can say is that there seem to be more people active in TERA at any given time than Rift, but I'm not sure if the population is at the level that is good for the long term health of the game. Let's put it this way: if TERA were owned by NCSoft, I'd be a bit nervous about NCSoft shuttering the game.

***

Which brings me to ArcheAge.

I've been seeing YouTube videos for a couple of years about how "ArcheAge is dead" and "when will they kill ArcheAge?", but ArcheAge is still here.

I do have to wonder how much longer, however.

I have two toons in ArcheAge --one of the quirks of the game is that you get EXACTLY two toons total across all servers, unless you subscribe-- and with one parked in a mid level/upper level capital and another in the intro/low level zones, I simply don't see the population there. In Rift, at least, you do see people creating new toons in the intro and low level zones, but ArcheAge feels dead. Perhaps the decision to allow only two toons total has something to do with that, because if you want to experiment on different servers with race/faction/class combos before subscribing you have to be in a constant state of deleting toons. And lets face it; not everybody is so keen about constantly zapping toons because of that artificial limitation.

But the thing is, ArcheAge seemed a bit healthier in the intro and low level zones before the server merges** than after.

Even though the population is likely higher than Rift, at least Rift is in maintenance mode while the devs for ArcheAge are still trying to put new content together. And there are other, glaring problems that are more obvious to an English speaker than to a Korean speaker, because the English port is, well, a bit inconsistent. You have NPCs speaking to you when you walk around, and at first I thought the reason why I couldn't understand them was because I was an Elf and they were Human. It turns out that they were speaking in Korean, and the devs for ArcheAge never bothered to provide English voice acting for these NPCs. I wouldn't necessarily mind, but having to constantly check out the text box to make sure I'm not missing anything does get really annoying after a while.***

Okay, I doubt the English port is a deal breaker for most people, but the overall lack of toons to work with in the free portion of the game is. And I'll be honest, outside of the lack of toons and the English port, there's not that much that sets ArcheAge apart from its other Korean MMO competitors (Black Desert Online, TERA, etc.)**** And when you've got such a low population as ArcheAge seems to have, that's a problem.

***

Anyway, this wasn't by any means an in depth analysis of the state of those games. These are just overall impressions of hopping back in after having been away for a while, and just seeing what's around.

One MMO that I really ought to get back into playing is Neverwinter, because despite the overall generic nature of the Forgotten Realms I do look on that D&D setting a bit like comfort food. Now, if someone had created an MMO based on the D&D world of Krynn, I'd be up for that. I still have my copies of the original Dragonlance Chronicles around, and if you gave me a chance to hang around with Tanis and company....



*As Rohan put it, which is likely the best way to put the toon and clothing choices.

**They took place a year or two ago, right when I was testing the game out.

***I'm used to "make sure you pay attention to everything because you might need it later" mode you get when playing RPGs for as long as I have. Besides, if you're an Elf and you're in Elven territory, you ought to be able to understand everything said (presumably in Elven). Wandering into Human territory is a different thing, and I'd not expect to understand the language. But having a foreign language everywhere just breaks immersion for me.

****All the P2W debacle aside, you could argue that was a problem with Rift. While I found the story intriguing and the fact that Rift deliberately kept the talent trees around, if you're looking for a new game to play Rift would have a hard time standing out from the crowd. Other fantasy MMOs had better known properties (Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, D&D, Conan, Elder Scrolls) which give it an initial leg up on Rift, and that becomes hard to overcome.

Some Friday Humor

I came across this on Facebook today, and laughed:

So in honor of some of the Vanilla WoW memes (and experiences), I came up with the following:

It was hard to limit my options to these.

As you might have imagined, distilling all of people trying out Vanilla WoW having only experienced BC and later down to 25 Bingo options was hard. I suppose I could make more sheets, but this one will do for starters.

Maybe I shouldn't have taken a bite of that Apple

I spent the latter part of last week at mini-Red #2's university orientation*, and while it was wonderful to look around and enjoy the university atmosphere, I couldn't completely shake work from the back of my mind.

Wrong time of year, perhaps, but there were vistas
like this across campus.

You see, work often means being beset by business terms ("business-speak"), discussions about how to do more with less, and the steady advance of business analytics.

The concept of business analytics isn't exactly new, given that methods of separating customers from their money have been around for millenia. However, computers and electronics have grown to the point where the "Big Data" of business analytics is now a huge business. The "targeted advertising" in the past has yielded to analytics driven methods of optimizing sales.**

Even getting away to a university in a small town hasn't allowed me to escape all of this stuff.

***

And what, you may be asking, does this have to do with a gaming blog?

Everything, actually.

Why do you think live services, lootboxes, and other in-game purchases are so big (and yet so reviled) with game dev houses right now? Because they do a great job of utilizing analytics to target the gamers who will pay for such things.

There are companies who market toward dev houses to help them maximize their profit. And if you said "Well, of course there are," watching their sales pitch is less about watching a meeting in a dev company and more about watching something that'd have been at home in a traditional corporate boardroom.

Here's a snippet of one, from Jim Sterling's The Jimquisition from back in 2017:

Sorry about adding the 50 second preamble, but I thought it was better to get a sense of the overall situation rather than simply dropping it into a post as-is. And although I do take issue with Jim Sterling at times, this entire episode of The Jimquisition does cover a lot of items that I used to see regularly as a salesperson at Radio Shack back in the early 90s.***

***

I guess you could say that --as a player of MMOs-- I ought to be inoculated to this sort of monetization, but there are times when it does bother me a lot. Like when I'm walking through a small college town, enjoying the scene, and see something that makes me think "You know, if [pick a storefront, any storefront] knew their customer base better, they could really do well here in town."

It's like being a musician, and not being able to turn your analytical brain off and simply enjoy the music any more, only far far worse.

And I really am concerned that monetization schemes in the gaming industry will become not only more invasive with time, but paradoxically harder to detect. And also I fear that game companies --particularly the major corporate dev houses-- have lost sight of the reason why games truly exist: for fun.




*Although he and I had been at his university twice to visit, my wife hadn't. Therefore, both of us tagged along with him for orientation. The drawback to those extra days off from work is that there was an absolute pile of work to get done when I got back. Yay me.

**BINGO!!! I WON BUZZWORD BINGO!!!!

***Sorry, but the term back then was "Salesmaker", not salesperson. Radio Shack loved their own lingo to no end. And boy, could I tell you stories about life at "Rat Shack".

A Quick Check-In

Yes, I still exist.

No, the blog isn't fading.

Yes, I do have a couple of posts in process, but nothing that's finished and ready to post.

But no, none of those posts are things that I'm particularly proud of, so they may never see the light of day.

Yes, I've been sucked into watching the FIFA Women's World Cup, and yes, I've been enjoying the matches so far*, but yes, it does cut into my gaming time.

And finally, yes, I've been watching E3 with a great deal of interest, and more than a bit of a jaundiced eye after the disastrous releases of Fallout 76 and Anthem (not to mention the Blizzard layoffs and other things happening in the gaming industry). But AMD... That is interesting. VERY interesting.

Anyway, I'll try to check back in next week (if not sooner).




*Except the US' nuking of Thailand. Not the score itself, because the only way the US could have stopped scoring is to simply kick the ball around the midfield for about 45 minutes, but the goal celebrations that went on after the US shot past a 6-0 score. Some people seem to think that this celebration backlash was because "women aren't allowed to show emotion", but in my case, I just felt bad for Thailand who were so clearly overmatched that I could have been playing out there for them and nobody would have noticed.

A Little Bit of Music for a Friday

If your first exposure to an MMO soundtrack was WoW's Blood Elf starting zone, you likely remember the cello piece The Sindorei:

That piece of music set a theme of melancholy against a backdrop of beautiful Eversong Woods, highlighting the aftermath of the events of Warcraft III.

Well, the cello is back in the intro music to the new ESO expac, Elsweyr, but used in a very different manner:

The Jeremy Soule theme is given a grim reading by the cello, which launches the rest of the piece with minor chords and a discordant sound more reminiscent of Knut Avenstroup Haugen's Age of Conan's soundtrack than anything we've typically heard from Elder Scrolls Online. It gives a feeling of foreboding, forcing you to look over your shoulder, rather than being a heroic upbeat piece like Summerset's Main Theme was.

Given that the dragons' return to Nirn is a major plot point in the expac, the worry and grim overtones are perfect for being concerned whether a dragon is going to drop on your head when you least expect it.

I'm looking to the release of the full soundtrack just to hear what else is in store for us.

Culturally Speaking

ESO's Elsweyr expac finally dropped, and I celebrated by hanging around Vvardenfell and doing some crafting and questing.

What, you thought I'd do something else for a change?

No way, man. I'm not getting in the middle of the mad rush over to Elsweyr. And apparently I'm not the only one, given the crowd over in Vivec City. As Shintar put it, ESO does a good job of spreading people out, but I also think that it's now baked into the game's DNA.

The reason why I'm bringing up the "baked in" part is because I had a conversation with the oldest mini-Red today. She's home for (part of*) the Summer from her university, and she's spent the past two weeks catching up with friends and getting in some MMO playing.

This evening, while I was working on dinner, she and I were talking about MMO culture. She said that in LOTRO today, the main discussion in World Chat centered around a new player who had recently left WoW and decided to try out LOTRO instead. The new player simply could not stop praising LOTRO's in-game culture, talking about how nice everybody is, when back in WoW the culture was so toxic. Given that LOTRO has their own culture issues with a few notable malcontents --on the Gladden server at least-- I was kind of surprised by the story. "Had WoW gotten that bad?" I wondered.

I'd also been reading in chat on ESO about an influx of WoW refugees finding that ESO is a more pleasant gaming social experience than the present atmosphere in WoW, and I knew of posts on Reddit (of all places) mentioning that SWTOR is a more pleasant gaming experience than WoW.

This kind of begs the question whether the WoW experience is now more toxic than it was when I left.

***

The only way to really find out what WoW is truly like is to resub and then login to an old toon. However, I wasn't planning on doing that until right before (or right after) WoW Classic comes out, so it'll be only then that I'll find out exactly what Trade Chat has devolved into.

That being said, I realize that it has been about 5 years since I last subscribed to WoW, so my remembrance of WoW's Trade Chat has faded somewhat. Since then, Blizzard's fortunes have waxed and waned, and WoW itself has bled both subscribers and devs. You know things have changed when Elitist Jerks has faded into nothingness as people from EJ have been hired on by Blizzard itself.**

My great fear is that WoW now has a toxic culture baked into the game in as much the same way that League and some other MOBAs now are more well known for a toxic culture than being incredibly popular worldwide. It's also entirely possible that the type of person who is attracted to WoW's dictum that "the game begins at endgame" is more likely to engage in toxic behavior than those who don't subscribe to that belief. Other MMOs, such as LOTRO or ESO or SWTOR, have more of an "enjoy the journey" attitude toward their MMO design, and aren't defined by toxic culture.

But this is all a "who came first -- the chicken or the egg" sort of speculation, because people could have left for other MMOs because of the toxic culture in WoW, or WoW became toxic as people left.

***

I don't believe that a game's culture is set in stone. Blizzard can change WoW's culture, but it requires Blizzard to invest in more aggressive policing of Trade Chat, Zone Chat, and other areas where poor behavior has been allowed to fester.

Reputation, however, is much harder to change than the culture itself. Once a game acquires a bad reputation, combating that will take a lot of effort above and beyond the effort needed to fix the cultural issues. And it takes the one thing that WoW likely doesn't have in abundance any more: time. Blizzard is on the hot seat to "turn things around", and a corporate quick fix won't correct a poor reputation because quick fixes are designed to make things look good on the quarterly balance sheet, not address any underlying long term problems.

Poor Bobby Kotick. The two things that are required to fix problems in WoW --time and money-- are things that he doesn't want to use. He'd much rather cut costs and demand people do more with less than actually fix the long term problems.




*She'll be spending a few weeks back at her university during the Summer as a camp counselor/chaperone for a Summer Music Program, and then spending another week away at a double reed camp. Then she'll move in early because of Band Camp, which is a boon to us because we'll be taking her brother up to his first semester at a university during the time she'd ordinarily need to go back.

**Courtesy of Reddit, here's the thread Why did Elitist Jerks die out? There's also the additional nail in the coffin as EJ was bought out by Ten Ton Hammer and the latter tried to monetize the site. I could have told them that EJ was --more than anything else-- a labor of love, and trying to make people pay for that will inevitably backfire.

Farmer Red Out Farming

It's been a long time since I farmed mats.

How long? Well, I used to support the ICC-10 runs that our Horde guild had by farming mats in Icecrown Glacier as a relaxing activity in between 5-man runs.*

Sure, I farmed ore and cloth a bit in Cataclysm and Mists, but without the need to support a guild's raids my farming activities were reduced to a (very) small sidelight of my in-game WoW activity. I was happy to level my crafting up to max and that was pretty much it.**

The past several weeks, however, I've been hanging around Vivec City in ESO, leveling the various crafts that I have by completing dailies. I've done some questing --and I had completed the ESO Morrowind expac already on my first toon, so I know what's coming-- but when I venture out in the wild I've been keeping out an eye more for mats instead of actually working on the various storylines. Truth be told, Vivec City is pretty much ideal to use as a base for farming and crafting, because all of the crafting stations are close to the delivery crates, there's a bank located in the center of the crafting area, and all three are close to a wayshrine so you can hop over to a specific locale and go mat farming.

Many of the mercantile oriented guilds have already figured this out, because the distance between the wayshrine and the crafting area is filled with various guild merchants.

***

If you're like me and used to the more traditional MMO expacs where everybody abandons the previous expac's hub(s), seeing Vivec City as both relevant and active is quite a sight. When Cataclysm dropped, I parked Neve at Dalaran and conducted a robust business opening ports for players. After a month, however, Dalaran had turned into a ghost town in the same way that Shattrath was largely abandoned when Wrath dropped.

The reasons for this happening can be boiled down to two simple design decisions: the zone resources and hub vendors were limited to their affiliated expac's mats and rewards, and the ability to transport to different locales is by "realistic" transportation. For example, if you want to mine Fel Iron, you go to Hellfire Peninsula. If you want Copper, you go to an intro or low level zone in WoW's Old World. That doesn't change, so if you want to mine the latest mats you have to go to the latest zones. If you want the latest vendor gear, you go to the current expac's hub(s).

And transportation to and from those hubs can take a lot of time too. At least WoW has flying mounts for waypoints, because with LOTRO you're frequently stuck with riding hubs, and in SWTOR the speeders from the travel hubs tend to follow the roads and/or buildings.

ESO utilized a different set of design decisions.

The first major design decision was to utilize phasing to change the "leveling" materials to coincide with your toon's Crafting level. If the highest level blacksmith mat you can utilize is Orichalum, you find Orichalum nodes throughout the ESO game world. If it's Ebony, you find Ebony. And this remains the same no matter where you're located, whether it's Coldharbour, Vvardenfell, Stonelands, or Kenarthi's Roost. This makes gathering mats a lot easier to handle, and frees a player from having to restrict themselves to the latest expac's zones.

The leads right into the second design decision, which answers the question "if I can go anywhere to find my leveling mats, how do I easily get to where I want to go?" In this case, ESO adopted the GW2 method of wayshrines for easy point to point transfer. You pay for transfer to a wayshrine out in the wild, but there's no cooldown, either. And wayshrine to wayshrine transportation is free.

Finally, as part of the the rewards for completing a crafting daily, you have a shot at getting a map directing you to a rich deposit of mats in a specific zone. The map isn't so detailed as to take out all sense of adventure, but it does give you a pretty decent sense of where the rich deposit is. Once again, not completely handheld, just making it easy enough to quickly handle your farming activity.

***

While the ESO method does make farming for mats quick and fairly painless, that doesn't necessarily mean it's superior to the more traditional "grind it out" method. The former works great for the casual farmer --of which I am one-- who doesn't want to spend 1/2 hour a day farming mats to perform dailies. The latter is better for a more realistic world, where mats are found in specific regions. If you've got the time, the latter is better. I, however, don't have that time that I used to, so the former is better for me while I play ESO.

Still, I'm sure that when WoW Classic drops I'll become reacquainted with farming again while trying to build up any sort of gold pile.





*I learned the hard way to land your mount first and then enter into a 5-man. Only the most ridiculous of "GO-GO-GO" players wouldn't wait for that.

**That's the completionist in me talking.