A Bottle of Pinot Noir, Please

One of the quirkier things you find around some MMOs are the shops that the average player doesn't use for buying things.

Of course, I could be talking about the armor vendor out in a mid to high level zone that only sells basic white gear, but my belief is that those are present just so that people can sell trash that they acquired out in the field without it looking too blatantly obvious.

No, what I mean are places like this:

Technically there is a quest for this place,
but it's a quest to get a free bottle of wine.

A Wine Merchant.

Believe me, I'd be in line to buy a bottle in real life, but the average MMO player doesn't really care about a Wine Merchant's shop in game. In modern game design, spaces like this would only exist simply for use at some point during the story, and not strictly for ambience. For example, I went hunting for something similar in Tatooine on SWTOR, and I didn't have much luck finding a shop strictly there for flavor's sake. There are the profession trainers, the class trainers, the vendors for said professions, the other standard vendors, and the cantina, but there isn't a shop just for something that doesn't directly affect the game in some manner.

For me, however, this is what helps to make some of these older MMOs come alive.

Maybe nobody frequents these places in a regular server, but for someone interested in Role Playing, these places fill out a livable world. I can easily see a player purchasing some wines at this place to enjoy an afternoon in a nice park in Stormwind, or even RP-ing by purchasing a case's worth of wine and making the trip to Astranaar to sell later. It's not a matter of profit and loss, but a matter of inhabiting another space for a while.

Maybe a little cheese to go with your
wine? I know where the oldest
mini-Red would be hanging out...

Or, until Pet Battles came along, non-combat pet collecting in WoW was very much a niche hobby.* You'd find a rare whelp out in the field as a loot drop, and you could have a companion while questing. Or you could visit the cockroach vendor in The Undercity or the Crazy Cat Lady outside Stormwind, and you could have a new friend who'd follow you around. The few times I hung around an RP server, having a pet was a great conversation starter.

It does seem that post 2009 or 2010, a lot of MMO devs stopped putting superfluous stores and vendors in their games. I was able to find some in LOTRO, but to surprise there as it is well known for it's RP-esque community, but very little in SWTOR and ESO. The lone exception of that era's MMOs is Guild Wars 2, which does have vendors and NPCs all over the place around the big cities, such as Lion's Arch.

Sure, he's a "Provisioner", but what you're not
seeing are all the other vendors surrounding
the square. He's kind of superfluous.

I can understand the desire to slim down interactive NPCs and just use the background graphics to fill in the blanks, but when you create this large space without NPCs to see or interact with, it just looks embarrassingly empty.**

Perhaps the rise of WoW Classic will also bring about an interest in these little quirky places that help to make a world out of a game.




*I used to collect pets on Quintalan back in the day, but the advent of Pet Battles kind of ruined it for me. Sure, there was the WoW Pokemon aspect to it that I didn't like very much, but it also meant that I couldn't simply collect pets just to collect them. If I'd have one out, people would want to challenge me to a Pet Battle, and that defeated the purpose the simple enjoyment of having a pet.

**I'm looking at you, Silvermoon City. I even wrote about this phenomenon back in... 2012??!! Yikes.

Don't Interrupt a Warlock Making a Fashion Statement

After what felt like the upteenth time of running through Tirisfal to reach the Scarlet Monastery, Az stands at L39.

And nowhere near having enough money for a mount when she dings L40.

Still, I've decided to take a break from the Rogue Life and try something new, so that I can appreciate more of what Classic has to offer. And in honor of the lack of summons' for all of those SM runs, I created a Warlock.

Compared to Launch Day, Northshire Abbey was
really quiet. Well, except for all these Kobolds.
And yes, I got that cloak as my very first drop.

I'd created a previous Warlock, a Worgen named Adelwulf, back on Ysera in Cataclysm and leveled him via Battlegrounds. To say that Cataclysm wasn't kind to Warlocks in BGs is a bit of an understatement. After being jealous of them in Wrath, I decided to create one just as they were nerfed heavily in Cata. Yes, that meant that the BG route was a real slog to get through, and when I reached somewhere around L82 or so I gave it up. I liked that ol' Wolfie, but constantly being targeted at the beginning of Warsong Gulch became a bit much.*

Since Adelwulf was born in a post-Cata world, I never got to see the original class quests, and being a Worgen meant I never got to hang in Northshire Abbey and work my way through the mostly Human oriented quests. Therefore, I decided I was not going the Gnome route that many of the Warlocks I've grouped with went, but instead decided to create a Human with a name in honor of the late MMO Wildstar, Dominius.**

Since the enormous wave at launch has long since passed, the crowd in Northshire and Elwynn Forest has diminished, but there was little trouble in grouping up when necessary, such as with those @#$&-ing Murlocs east of Crystal Lake's more tame version. I re-discovered that without a Voidwalker, I was a bit of a sitting duck if more than one Murloc decided to attack me, so grouping up became imperative if I didn't want an endless series of corpse runs.***

Still, for me the main attraction was to see the Warlock class quests, and they did not disappoint.

Yes, there are spoilers, even after all this time, because it's been since --2011, maybe?-- that we saw these class quests in all their glory?

Coming Soon to an Overgrown Wild Near You...

In an announcement, Blizz said that Dire Maul would be released on October 15th, ahead of the Phase 2

I don't think we're in the "we're bored" levels of Classic yet, but considering that the player base is wanting PvP in the worst way, this is likely a bone thrown to keep us preoccupied while the rest of Phase 2 is being completed.

While I've done a full Blackrock Depths clear in Wrath, I've never done a full Dire Maul clear at level. That ought to be fun.

My only question now is, how are we going to distinguish Dire Maul from Deadmines in LFG? I guess Dire Maul will have to be "Dire", because otherwise there's going to be a lot of disappointed L60s when they join a "DM" group to discover it's populated with L20 toons....

Doing This Because I Can, I Suppose

Being a Stealthie means you can get yourself in trouble.

As in "I shouldn't be in this zone and I'm gonna die" trouble.

I've mentioned this before, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I snuck into Western Plaguelands before I hit L30:

Or that I snuck into Feralas and was chased by Tauren guards around Camp Mojache. (Sorry, no pics there, because I was too busy trying to stay alive.)

Or that I was running up to the Cenarion Sisters outside of Shadowprey Village in Desolace, and a Troll guard from the village aggroed on me, even though I could (I thought) barely see him. (Still no pics, but I could swim like 40 Naga were after me.)

Or that I got waaay too close to the Dragonkin in Bough Shadow, because I forgot that it existed in Ashenvale.

***

Still, there's that sort of getting in trouble, and there's the "getting in trouble" you get from a superior.

Back when I first started with Az, I reached Dolanaar and met with the Rogue Trainer there, Jannok Breezesong. I thought him a slight bit loopy, as if Phoebe from Friends were reincarnated as a Male NE Rogue, but essentially harmless. But after you reach L10, he gives you the quest called The Apple Falls, in which he confesses his, well, obsession with a Night Elf named Syurna in Darnassus. He recruits you to deliver a rose to her, which doesn't sound like a big deal.

Well, trying to find Syurna without using a mod such as Questie proves challenging. You can --and I did-- spend a lot of time wandering around, with the "If I were in with Rogues, where would I hang out?" running through my head.

Craftsman's Terrace? Nope.

Warrior's Terrace? Nope.

Some secret lower level in an Inn? Nope.

Some secret section of town, close to the Temple of the Moon? Nope.

At about the point where I was thinking that maybe they were holed up in waaaay up in the Northern section of Darnassus, far north of the Cenarion Enclave, the little dot appeared just as I crossed the bridge.

The Cenarion Enclave? Are you kidding me?

But where..... I spotted a tree to the left, with absolutely no guards nearby but a couple of people in a platform above. I quickly climbed up the tree and discovered a Poison Vendor, but no Syurna. I scampered down the path, turned around, and found the opening I sought, leading down.

This is it, I thought, as I followed the curved passage downward. Damn, they hid themselves well.

At the bottom of the passage it straightened out, and I could see Syurna in the distance. And she was not pleased.

"Isn't this wonderful," she purred as I approached. "You've brought flowers for your own funeral."

Oh Shit.

Even though I'm now in the 30s,
when I drop by I still feel... inadequate.

Since I'd never leveled an Alliance Rogue prior to Cataclysm, I wasn't certain what would happen next. But it turns out that she had a job for me, which involved pickpocketing a demon.*

Yes, that became pretty standard and sure, she may be an NPC, and "just a trainer", but you know, that quest certainly colors my perception of Syurna to this day. I don't have a similar opinion of Mathias Shaw, even though I really ought to.



*And if you know that quest, said demon is hanging out on the edge of a branch dangling out over the edge of Teldrassil. Given my ineptitude at maintaining my balance in game (and out of game, really), this was not quite an easy task.

EtA: Fixed the word "town".

You Just Keep Being You

One of the things about WoW Classic is that in it, like Vanilla*, your reputation as a player matters.

If you act like an ass or a jerk, you'll find yourself being shunned.

Oh sure, there's plenty of people on an individual server, and there's --on average-- nothing that keeps you from finding other people to group with. That doesn't mean that word won't get around, however. Guilds can spread word among members, and outlets such as Reddit can spread word about people who act like an ass.

And then there's just word of mouth.

I was waiting for the ship from Menethil Harbor to Theramore, when I saw a player jumping around and challenging people on the dock to a duel. And yes, he eventually dropped a duel invitation to Azshandra, currently sitting at L35.

The toon in question was L56 Warrior.

I immediately declined. He could wipe the docks with my carcass with that level disparity.

The toon didn't care, as he just went to the next person in line while we piled onto the ship for Theramore.

"It takes a real jerk to challenge someone significantly lower than yourself," said someone out loud.**

The toon ignored her and challenged an L46 Pally.

"Just how old are you?" the Pally responded, and declined the duel.

And the toon came right back to me. I declined again. "He could kick my ass all over the place," I whispered the Pally. "What's the point in that?"

"He's probably a kid," came the whispered reply.

"Or maybe he came from ArcheAge or something."

The ship to Theramore docked, and we disembarked. The Pally gave me a Blessing of Might, which I thanked him. "Hey, if you're looking for a guild, let me know," he said. "We're a bunch who behaves like adults."

"Thanks for the offer," I replied, "but I'm going to stay independent for a while. I've been involved in some pretty spectacular guild breakups in Wrath and Cata, so I'm reluctant to get back in one."

"Sure, np."

***

Being guildless means that I get a lot of guild invites. While that may sound like I'm being barraged by random toons out there spamming people with invites, it's not like that.

Okay, it is to an extent, but not like what it was being guildless in Wrath.

Let me explain.

When I was guildless in Wrath or in parts of Cata, the sheer number of guild invites --at least 2-3 every session in late Wrath-- forced me into turning on the Auto Reject for Guild Invites.***

I don't have that issue now. I do get the "WoWGold111----whatever" Chat Channel invite on an average of once or twice a week, but that's not that bad. And I've only had a handful of direct guild invites to reject as well.

But what I do get are people asking me to join their guild via whispers.

A lot of them are exactly what you'd expect, a slightly more polite version of a guild recruiter spamming Guild Invites. I'd say that all of the random invites took my polite "no thanks" for an answer, which is a good thing because I'd rather not have to block people.

The rest are guild invites that I'd actually consider, because they arose organically out of grouping up with people. A successful 5-man instance, random grouping out in the wild because people need assistance, and other groups that came out of sheer serendipity would end with an exchange of Friending and/or a guild invite. Those are the ones that are hard to say no to, because those came out of respect and appreciation for the accomplished task.

***

And yes, I have been grouping up in MMOs, far more than I've ever done since roughly 2015 or so. Classic has done that to me.

I think that part of it is that the people coming into Classic are more open about requesting help in Zone Chat, but it's also the knowledge that there is no LFG option in Classic that forces people to group out in the open. Sure, there will be the guild groups out there, and the larger guilds won't have trouble getting people to join to fill out an instance, but the smaller guilds will struggle and will need to go onto Trade Chat or Zone Chat to get slots filled.

For the most part, however, I've yet to join a guild group to work on an instance. But I've discovered that the Golden Rule**** applies in Classic far more than it did once LFG appeared in Wrath.

As an example, the other day I was holding my own in Arathi Highlands, picking and choosing my quests/enemies based on whether I was over/under leveled against them. Someone in Zone Chat asked for help in taking out Myzrael, as the adds were a big problem. I knew that I ordinarily too low a level to help out, but I figured that I was just a meatbag in a fight like that and if I died, no big deal. So I said as much in Chat and got an invite to the group. The decision was made to ignore the adds and simply burn down Myzrael as quickly as possible, and one of the group volunteered to heal. We started the quest, Myzrael spawned and declared her treachery --bad move, Big Lady-- and we beat her to shreds.*****

You can tell that this is WoW Classic
as opposed to, say, TERA, because
Myzrael is clothed. Or at least more
clothed than some other MMOs.

Afterwards, we all went on our merry way, and I eventually ended up working on the Witherbark Troll quest. I found a Mage there on the same quest, and we agreed to team up to finish the quest more quickly. To get the Shadow Hunter trinket as part of the quest, we eventually made our way into the cave, and we accidentally pulled an extra Shadow Hunter at the same time a Headhunter wandered into the fight. Things looked grim for us when another player appeared and helped us beat off the Trolls. Who was the other player? The player I helped earlier with Myzrael.

***

This doesn't mean that there aren't bad PUGs out there, and I've been in 5-man groups that got frustrating because there were issues with Hunters rolling need on everything, people wanting to go without waiting on the casters to drink, etc. But for the most part, I've found those to be far more the exception rather than the rule in Classic.

I think that it's the knowledge that people are --by and large-- working together has made Classic more enjoyable than I expected. My main desire with Classic was to see the zones and quests as they were originally meant to be, but I've discovered that the community that people loved to talk about "back in the day" actually is present. I consider that a bonus, but something that'll keep me playing longer than I expected.





*And to a lesser extent BC and early Wrath. Once the dungeon finder dropped, all bets were off.

**I'm paraphrasing here, and likely editing the language.

***The guild invites were very much a WoW thing, as in LOTRO the mini-Reds and I have our own guild, and with other MMOs (SWTOR, ESO, AoC, etc.) I never got hit up for guild invites. I'd say the most often I'd ever see as far as guild invites goes was in the early days of SWTOR, but even then that was a rare event.

****"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or, in it's Internet equivalent, "Don't be a Dick."

*****Having two Rogues provide interrupts on a regular basis helped a lot, too.

On This Day...

...in 2009, Souldat posted PC's first blog entry. I'd already posted the long, sordid details in the last post.

In lieu of cake, have a cookie:

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?"