Keep that Hamster Wheel Going

It was inevitable that I'd get on the gear treadmill that MMOs hitch their endgame to these days.

And part of it is, admittedly, the desire to not bring up the rear when it comes to DPS.

Yes, I do have a story about that.

About 3 weeks ago, somebody I knew from running pugs whispered me and asked if I was interested in joining their guild's weekly Zul'Gurub run. "Sure," I replied, "which toon to you want me to bring? Mage or Rogue?"

"Bring your Rogue, as we already have several Mages."

Which was fine with me, as at the time I'd several runs of Zul'Gurub under Az, so I knew what was expected of me. My enjoyment in doing the little things tended to pay off with certain bosses in Z'G. So I grabbed a few potions, rebuilt my poison supply, and accepted the summons to Z'G.

I joined the guild's discord channel, but I decided to stay quiet and listen. This wasn't a pug per se, and I counted about 3-4 people who weren't guild members, so I wasn't going to butt in unless there was something relevant.

The first thing I noticed was how smooth the run progressed. "Like a hot knife through butter," is how I described it in my guild's chat. While I did notice I was running around 11-12 in DPS, I knew that I wasn't as well geared as the guild team I was in, but somewhere in the bottom third was okay for me.

Then I noticed just how many people were in the raid.

There weren't 20 people, but 15.

So, I was barely above the healers, and sometimes not even then.

That made me wonder just what on Azeroth was going on, so I started inspecting people in between pulls.

They were all BWL geared, and poor old Az had a mix of T0 and Z'G gear.

Oh.

Now, the guild was very nice and didn't mention my lack of DPS, although naturally during Jin'do I got mind controlled and critted on a healer, taking her out. As I said in my guild chat later, it would figure that my best crit of the night came when I was mind controlled.

***

So after that experience, I decided I was going to have to work harder at getting raid worthy gear. If I was going to be invited to a raid like this, I wanted to pull my own weight.

That meant two things: I was going to have to complete the T0 sets for both Cardwyn and Azshandra, and I was going to have to be more diligent in raiding on both toons.

Saying I was going to do it was one thing, but doing both? Well, that's a different matter. And, I'll confess, it also involves more than a little bit of luck, both good and bad.

One piece of luck dropped my way soon after the previously mentioned Z'G run: an acquaintance in Classic whom I'd run instances with invited me to their guild's weekly MC pug run. The timing wasn't purely ideal for me --I tend to prefer WoW activity later in the evening after dinner-- but I conferred with my wife and we agreed that we could work in dinner prior to the raid, so I wouldn't have to miss sitting down with the family.

The people in the raid were nice --and several of them were older than me, which made me feel good-- but I'd not done Molten Core as a melee DPS before, and it showed.

As in "I was a splat on the ground multiple times" showed.

My acquaintance felt bad for me about that, but I assured her that I was expecting to die a lot. Melee DPS is a completely different mindset from ranged, and Az was (arguably) geared more poorly than Cardwyn. So when you combine poor gear with "up close and personal with the fights", yeah, you can die pretty damn fast.*

Still, it was an enjoyable experience, so I was happy that my acquaintance and I worked out a regular night for Az to raid MC.

That left Cardwyn, and she has her "regular" MC run, as it were, but her issue wasn't so much as that as that her T0 set (theoretically the Magister's set) had a lot of other T0 pieces filling in gaps. Such as the Devout Crown, because nobody wanted it when it dropped and Card's headgear at the time was a green she'd picked up from trash in Maraudon. The same thing goes with other pieces, such as the Warlock T0 legs, that despite the number of times she's run Stratholme Undead she's never been able to replace.

So Card became more aggressive in running instances that would allow her to fill out her T0 set properly.**

***

For a guy who prefers to play casually --and play by his own rules-- this has been a bit of a shock to the system.

Focusing on raiding has a bit of a team sports mentality to it, no matter how laid back or casual the raiding group seems to be. Having played team sports for over a decade in my youth***, I'm not exactly sure how I'll react in the long run to being part of regular raiding groups. I've had good and terrible experiences playing sports, and I've got a very low tolerance for asshats. So far, so good, but I think I'll have to table any real raiding opinions until I've got a couple of months under my belt. By then, I'll likely have graduated to BWL at the very least, and maybe even ventured into AQ20 once or twice.

But we'll see.

Oh, and this past Tuesday's run had a glitch. Az was jumping across the lava during the Ragnaros fight when I "fell through" into this:

You don't need to pay for Shadowlands,
everyone. I just found the WoW afterlife!!

I couldn't even be rezzed, as the raid team couldn't reach me, so I had to release and run back. But my reward for being glitched into oblivion were the Rogue T2 legs that dropped.

*My first death was also my oddest, as I critted so hard on my first swipe that I pulled aggro and died almost instantly on one of those Ancient Core Hounds. I still have no idea how I did that, because I took some time to let the tank get aggro by positioning myself perfectly behind the puppy, but I still managed that massive crit in just the wrong time. Oh well.

**As of this moment, that Devout Crown was finally replaced, but she still needs about 3-4 more pieces to have a complete T0 Magister's set.

***Started with baseball, then spent the Spring playing baseball and the Winter playing basketball, and finally three years of Track and Field in high school. You'd never guess that I played sports now if you saw me, but yes, I was an athlete.

Something Something Something Motorcycle Maintenance

What now seems a long time ago, I fell in love with playing Tetris.

The game had recently been released in the states. and I remember playing the game on a (then new) 286 PC clone that my parents had bought.* I was in college, and when I was visiting home --and I wasn't up to my ears in homework that came along for the ride-- I'd play Tetris as stress relief.

This is the Tetris that I knew.
From abandonwaredos.com.

After a while, I got pretty good at the game, to the point where the game "slowed down" for me. That's typically a sports slang where a player gets good enough at the level of the sport that they're playing in that they can process everything happening around them and make decisions at a faster rate than before. It's an "a-ha!" moment when someone moving up to, say, one of the top flight European leagues in futbol or the NFL in (American) football suddenly is no longer a step behind because they're still trying to figure things out. They simply just do it, with no direct thought process at all.

For me, once I reached that point in playing Tetris, I was able to detach myself from actually playing the game and simply react to whatever shape was being thrown at me. It was a weird feeling, akin to me watching another person playing the game, and I was merely along for the ride. I described it once as entering a Zen state, where people who perform different actions (Tea Ceremonies, for example) slip into a meditative state during those performances.**

I've slipped into that state in other games over the years, most notably Sid Meier's Civ series, but it's been a long time since I could say that I slipped into that sort of state when playing an MMO. Given that MMOs have two competing interests --story and activity-- that frequently demand your direct attention, slipping into a quasi-meditative state doesn't really happen much. However, I found myself looking on as a spectator when I was in a couple of 5-man instances this past weekend.

Both of these instances were in Stratholme, one on the Live side and one on the Undead side, and I've run them enough times that I knew what to do on both co-mains.*** And in both occasions, once we got the first couple of pulls out of the way, all of us in the group had gotten the feel of each other and slipped into our roles without any issues.

Nothing says "Riverdare's Place"
quite like seeing this on the floor.

In each instance, you get into a roll: trash pull, clear, kill any adds, move on. After some pulls, you hit a boss or an event, and you finish and continue on. Same old, same old, the instance pattern from time immemorial. But shortly after the first boss/event in each instance, my consciousness found myself just along for the ride while I moved each toon around, attacked, performed CC actions, and did other things without even thinking about them. It wasn't until later in each instance, when something unexpected happened (an accidental --and temporary-- disconnect, for instance) that I snapped back into awareness and took care of things as usual.

I haven't had that happen since my Wrath days, running instances such as The Nexus or Utgarde Keep, or even the pre-expansion days of SWTOR, where I'd get into that sort of state in Athiss or Cademimu.

Afterward, I wondered about exactly why this happened. Was I simply so used to my roles that I could handle this, or had my toons had gotten powerful enough to allow me the opportunity to distractedly daydream? After all, I'd noticed how easier things got when I went from a fresh L60 to acquiring mostly T0 gear, and I now notice even more the differences between T0 and T0+MC / T0+ZG gear. My DPS might not have gone up as much as I'd have liked, but in the case of Card my mana certainly had gone up, which allowed me to a) drink less, and b) be able to react when things go bad.

While the ability to understand a role and raw power likely are contributing factors, I suspect that my recent encounters with Zen also have to do with simply just letting go of control and reacting by instinct. I am by nature a bit of a control freak; I prepare for meetings**** by trying to think of all potential questions and having answers ready beforehand, and I was not about to embarrass myself (or my friends) in my first Zul'Gurub and Molten Core runs by not knowing what to do, so I spent the 1/2 - 1 hour prior to each by scrambling to read up on each raid. I've been known to do that on instances as well, especially when I'm specifically invited to join them by a friend. I quest in a conservative fashion, because I realize my physical abilities (particularly my fingers and reaction time) are on a slow and steady downward slide as I progress through middle age.

Giving up control like that is hard for me, not because I can't control the narrative, but because I want to prove myself worthy and not create major embarrassing moments that I'll regret later.

But when I do give up control, consciously or not, something magical can happen.

I just need to accept it.

*Don't ask how much it cost --I can't remember-- but I do remember it running MS-DOS 3.3 in a pre-Windows world. And that it had a then roomy 40 MB hard drive, of which several MB were on another partition because 3.3 couldn't handle sizes greater than 33 MB.

**Yes, I actually remained awake during my Eastern Philosophy class, who was taught by a Zen Buddhist. We did cover other Eastern religions, but it was readily apparent that Zen Buddhism section was his favorite.

***There, I said it. They're both equal right now in terms of time played.

****Particularly those which involve presentations. With management in attendance.

The Not-So-Glamorous Farmer's Life

Back in Wrath and I was a part of the (in)famous Horde guild, I used to spend my spare time at max level cruising around the Icecrown Glacier portion of Northrend, farming for mats to be used by the guild. It was a way for me to support the guild without having the time (at the correct time of day) to raid. It also gave me something to do between instance runs while chatting in guild chat.

Ah, the good old days.

Since I began raiding, I've discovered the need to actually focus on little things I'd previously not given much credence to. Such as storing Greater Shadow Protection and Greater Fire Protection potions for Molten Core, or collecting Swiftthistle to brew Thistle Tea. Sure, those little things would also have an impact on running instances (or in the case of Thistle Team, running battlegrounds), but given the risk/reward on an individual BG or 5-man instance is (compared to raids) pretty low, I was fine not worrying about whether I had enough Thistle Tea versus Flash Powder for Vanish.

But raids are an entirely different animal.

My first real raid --the Zul'Gurub run that I got talked into going*-- I ran while being completely oblivious of the preparation people put into raiding. But by the time I was invited to run Molten Core, I had a better idea of what to expect. Still, I spent the hour before the first raid invites went out frantically reading up about all the fights, which highlighted the need for various potions to mitigate damage enough to get the pressure off of the healers.

Thus began my love/hate relationship with using the auction house for my raid prep.

It takes my gold and gives me potions, at alarmingly high markup rates. But the people who put items up for sale know they've got a racket going, because we need their potions if we want to optimize our utility to the group. (Peer pressure can suck at times.)

Now, with a regular raid schedule and increasingly frequent whispers to join raids down a player, I can't simply throw my gold at the auction house on a regular basis and expect my bottom line to survive. Therefore, I've taken up farming again, but this time for items to sell on the AH and for Az to create potions for.

Sorry about that, Az. Not exactly the glamorous Rogue life.

But such is the life of a raider, I suppose.

As is the need to constantly make sure your buffs are all ready to go.

***

I'd always wondered about the constant stream of Dire Maul-North Tribute Run requests in the LookingForGroup channel; after all, my own first experience in DM North wing left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth (and a lot of broken equipment afterward).

But after having been part of a DM North Tribute Run, I now understand the appeal to the raider.

For the uninitiated, a DM North Tribute Run involves a group entering into Dire Maul's North Wing --the Ogre wing-- and avoiding all of the bosses until you get to the last boss. Once there, you kill only the Ogre King, and then better loot than normal runs drop. However, to the raider there's something more important: buffs. You run around to the bosses you didn't kill, and since you became the Ogre King (or Queen, in Card's case) they grant you buffs if you talk to them. Yes, even the drunk Ogre gives you some buffs in the form of booze to drink.

So that's a pretty clever way to get a player to run DM-North long after the gear dropped is obsolete, just like people who run the Stratholme Live area for the Righteous Orbs.

***

I wish I had some funny stories about my foibles raiding, but far too many of them are spur of the moment quips that lose their amusement value when you step away from the raid. But I can guarantee you that there are plenty of funny moments out there. After all, if I weren't having fun, I'd likely not be raiding.

And I guess that's enough.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some farming to do.

*The (now) guildies who talked me into running Z'G should have gone into sales. They were that good at being persuasive.

Cardwyn, you have the bomb!

When I used to read guild advertisements in chat --no matter whether it was SWTOR or WoW-- and they'd mention raid* clears of specific times, I would kind of shrug and say "Okay, that's nice." I presumed they were decent enough numbers, but given that I had no real reference to compare as I wasn't a raider I had no clue how good these guilds were.

Well, as I've dipped my toe into raiding I now know how long it takes to raid Molten Core or Zul'Gurub as a pugger.**

With that context, I now raise my eyebrows at the entries that I see in guild advertisements.

***

None of the Molten Core raids I've been in have been wipes. And, for the most part, Cardwyn has been somewhere in the 20s in terms of damage. That's due to several things:

• She's a Frost Mage, dealing less damage than a comparatively geared Fire Mage. I'm fine with that, as I prefer mana efficiency and general utility over pure DPS. Besides, a Fire Mage draws a lot more threat than a Frost Mage does, which might not a big deal in a raid but is a larger deal in smaller groups.
• She had close to a full Tier 0 (pre-raid) set, and only in the last two Molten Core runs has she finally started to get some Tier 1 gear. Judging by the inspections I've performed, she's one of the least geared toons in the Molten Core runs.***
  
• I still lay off the DPS at first because I prefer to let the tanks get good aggro, whereas most of the other players just go balls to the wall with the DPS, trusting the tanks will hold aggro no matter what.
• I've become the "Mage Mom" the past couple of Molten Core runs, constantly checking the raid group to see if they've all got Intelligence buffs and correcting as needed, making and distributing extra water during the raid when people run out, and other small things to keep everything going. That keeps me in a constant state of having to drink to keep my mana up, which means I'm always one of the last to start attacking during a mob pull.
  

So I'm doing okay in terms of damage. Plenty of people are doing more DPS than me, so we're not a bunch of noobs out here trying to complete Molten Core.

Still, we're averaging about 1:50 - 2:00 hours for a Molten Core clear.

Contrast that with guilds who are advertising 1:00 hour Molten Core clears.

By my way of thinking they have to be basically cutting as many corners as possible, avoiding tons of trash, and still sprinting their way as much as possible through the raid itself.**** At the same time, they have to be at least a full set of Molten Core gear, with some Blackwing Lair gear mixed in.*****

***

I have personal experience on the difference having Blackwing Lair gear (versus a mix of T0, T1, and T2) in a raid, so I can attest to the vast difference that makes.

At the beginning of this week, I got a whisper from someone I'd run Upper Blackrock Spire with earlier in the day asking if I wanted to join their guild's regular Zul'Gurub run. They were fine with me bringing Az --and to be fair they actually preferred I'd bring Az-- so I got the invite and away I went.

We began clearing trash and steamrolled so quickly through the first couple of bosses that I failed to noticed two things: We were running Zul'Gurub with only 15 people, and I was 11th on the damage meters. I realize that Az isn't the most geared Rogue out there (aforementioned chestpiece in the commentary below), but I'm used to her being somewhere in the middle of the pack.

So I started inspecting the other people in the raid and discovered almost immediately that people who had primarily Molten Core level gear were in the minority: almost everybody else was Blackwing Lair geared.

And until we ran into Jin'do, we were carving up Zul'Gurub like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

At Jin'do, the lack of a full 20 people in the raid hit us hard, and we wiped 3 times. For the 4th try, however, they enlisted an extra Warlock who helped put us over the top.

We had two wipes on the Hakkar trash, but Hakkar himself went down so fast that we only needed two (2!) Sons of Hakkar to DPS it down.

I was very grateful that nobody called me out on my lack of DPS, but I did my thing in providing the interrupts as needed.

So yeah, I can fully believe that Blackwing Lair gear would provide a huge advantage in Molten Core itself.

***

Still, I do have an issue when guilds put in their advertisements at how quickly they clear a raid and then proceed to say "we're a laid back social guild!" My response to that is simple: if you are laid back and social, the clear times on specific raids wouldn't matter, right? Or at least you wouldn't brag about your clear times, because posting them is a signal that you're hardcore enough that your clear times matter.

Don't get me wrong: you can be a progression oriented guild and be social, but frequently one is more important than the other, and your guild will reflect that.

I've seen people leave guilds because they want a more hardcore WoW experience, and I've also seen progression oriented guilds poach players from other guilds for their raid teams. I've seen guilds break up over their approach to handling different aspects of the game, and I've seen people just up and vanish without a trace.******

***

Okay, rant over.

The fact that I'm still raiding speaks to the enjoyment I'm getting out of it. I'm not on the progression grindstone, and the raids I've been in have been really good at keeping things calm and low key. Okay, not so much "low key" as keeping the situational humor going, but it all works even when things don't go well.

Nothing at all like this old chestnut:

*Or the equivalent, which in SWTOR are called "operations". I rarely see guild advertisements of this sort in, say, Elder Scrolls Online. There, I typically see guild advertisements that focus on making gold for some reason.

**I'm not quite sure where to place Upper Blackrock Spire. Yes, it's technically a 10 person raid, but compared to 40 person raids such as Molten Core or the 20 person raids of Zul'Gurub they seem almost miniscule by comparison. That point brings into sharp focus the reduction of raids to 25 person and then 10 person in subsequent WoW expacs. And that's long after I used to think 16 person operations in SWTOR for world boss takedowns were huge.

***I think Cardwyn is actually better geared than Azshandra is at the moment, because while Az has more Zul'Gurub gear, she is still running with an L55 Green chestpiece and has a Blue PvP-oriented dagger (Frightalon) as her main weapon. Az has absolutely terrible luck at getting those chestpiece drops.

****Another item that cuts raid time is the distribution of loot; in some raids the distribution is done along the way, and in others it's done after the raid is over. For obvious reasons, the latter allows a raid to keep going with minimal downtime.

*****Zul'Gurub's drops end up somewhere between the T0 pre-raid sets and T1 Molten Core gear. That means that eventually I'll need to bring Az into Molten Core to gear her up further, but I don't raid that much. And in the Molten Core raid I attend, there are already about 6 Rogues signed up, with anywhere between 3-5 Mages (including Card) on a regular basis.

******In a post Covid-19 world, those are the most worrisome. It's one thing to unsubscribe due to a variety of issues, but with Covid out in the wild there's always the concern in the back of your head that maybe that person you hung with and just vanished actually contracted the coronavirus and is in the hospital.

Open Trade for Water*

I have further proof that the Alliance can win in Alterac Valley:

The numbers don't tell the whole story.

We had a lot of healers in AV --probably about 10-12 Priests/Pallys/Druids combined-- and that made a huge difference in the match.

But for me, this was my biggest takeaway:

Yes, you read that right.

I wasn't BG Leader until about halfway through, and the original Leader didn't drop, so I guess he passed it off to me without me noticing.

I even blurted out in Chat "Holy shit, why am I leading?" but nobody seemed to care.

It's not like I was on the front lines, either, as I stayed back on defense at Stonehearth Graveyard. There were four of us back --2 Mages (including Card), a Holy Priest, and a Rogue-- and we were able to keep the Horde from flanking as well as keep SHGY out of Horde hands while the main team did the dirty work. It did feel weird when the Holy Priest and I were pushing against three Rogues in advance of the rest of the Defense team, and the Priest was shouting "Nobody touches my Mage!"

Our defense team moved forward to protect Iceblood Graveyard when that was captured, and once more when Frostwolf Graveyard was captured. By then, my job was to make sure we had a tank and off tank identified while we waited on the Relief Hut to be captured.

I did rush forward once we got the Relief Hut and got in some blasts on Drek before he died, but really I was a small cog in the match. The healers did the hardest part of the work, keeping the team upright and out in the field, while the rest of us were disciplined enough to want to push for a win rather than rep farming.

It's not like I'll get this gig very often, so I'll savor it while I can. And I can say that my record as BG Leader is 1-0.

*The title references the fact that Mages are in charge of distributing Water and/or Food before any group event. After I started Raiding, I took my job in BGs as "Water Girl" a lot more seriously.

This is Gonna Leave a Mark

So, this happened yesterday:

I didn't do nuthin'! I swear!

I was walking across a parking lot, going to get something for lunch, when I felt a pop in the back of my left knee, and then I hit the ground.

I found myself unable to put any pressure on the left leg, and so I hopped my way back to the car and drove back home. Later that day when my wife got off of work, we took a little trip over to an urgent care facility to have the knee checked out.

An x-ray revealed no broken bones, and the doc said "there wasn't anything crazy in there", so they gave me the brace and told me to rest, elevate, and compress for a week to see what happens.

Normally you'd think that this means more game time, but given that I game from a regular desktop PC, sitting at a desk, I'm not so sure about that. But we'll see how it works out.

So... um... yay?

Well, That's That

I've been intrigued by the impending release of Cyberpunk 2077, as I'd spent some time in the past* playing Shadowrun. A cyberpunk game set far enough in the future --but not too far-- to be intriguing? Yes, sign me up. However, I knew it was coming some time in the future, so I shelved my interest until the release date approached.

Then I saw the previews hitting social media, and noticed that it was almost completely in first person perspective.

A short time searching articles later, and I confirmed that the game was going to be only first person, except for a few short set pieces.

Well, scratch that game off of my list.

/sigh




*Okay, the long past, as it was back in college when I was exposed to Shadowrun.

Charge of the Ram Brigade

WoW Classic's Alterac Valley has been heavily dominated by Horde wins ever since the Alliance was banned from creating premade AV teams. Even then, the map by default favored the Horde so it would take a superior game from the Alliance --combined with poor luck on the Horde side-- to eek out an Alliance victory.

That being said, in all of my AV runs in Classic I'd never seen Ivus the Forest Lord summoned or the Ram Riders charging into the fight.

I got to see both the other night.

I wasn't around to summon Ivus, as I was defending Stormpike Graveyard at the time, but I was around to help get the ram riders ready.

Here's a few pics for those who have never seen it before:

After the last ram turn-in, they appeared.

All that was missing was the theme from
the movie Patton. (Or Rocky, I suppose.)

Back when the commander led
troops into battle.

Cardwyn followed along
as they charged through Dun Baldar...

...across the bridge...

...into the ravine...

...and toward the Field of Strife.
The Horde never knew what hit them.

We ended up losing this match as it turned into a DPS race at the end and we didn't have enough people south to kill Drek before Vann went down. But still, it was an inspiring sight.

EtA: And when I meant the theme from Patton, I meant the march:

Wait a Sec... Just HOW Long?

One thing I've discovered about writing fiction that I've never much thought of before was that it focuses me on just how long it takes to perform certain actions.

I don't mean how long it takes to cast a spell, for instance, or even how long it takes to travel across land or sea. The first is completely arbitrary, and the second is configured this way to make the game practical.* But I mean something a bit different, and the older I get the more ridiculous it sounds.

I mean just how long between events in the Warcraft universe versus what we're seeing in game.

***

The reason why I'm picking on the Warcraft universe as opposed to other MMOs I've played is because it's the one MMO whose game release schedule matches the MMO world's real time environment. Other MMOs don't try to tie down in game changes from expac to expac to a specific timeline like WoW (and Warcraft before it) does, so that creates issues of believability.

Okay, look, I know we're talking about a fantasy game that includes Orcs, Tauren, Elves, Spellcasting, Undead, Dragons, and Male Humans who look like they're all Arnold Schwarzenegger clones with a steroid problem.

And yes, the Warcraft story frequently devolves into plotlines that would do a soap opera proud. You don't think so? Go read up on the Lo'gosh plotline from the WoW comics, and try to explain to me why the two Varians story doesn't make for a perfect WWE or soap opera plotline.

But the thing is, the more I've delved into timelines the more I look at the game world and say "this is simply NOT possible."

***

For starters, let's use the 'unofficial' WoW timelines found on various places like WoWWiki and WoWpedia.

Now, there are variances between the unofficial WoW timelines, and the "official" one that used to be on the World of Warcraft website was taken down years ago when Blizz moved to Battle.net, but there's enough overlap to make it usable.

For starters, let's see the "official" one that WowWiki preserved, and I'll focus on the big items:

0      Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (PC game)
6      Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness (PC game)
8      Warcraft 2X: Beyond the Dark Portal (PC game)
20     Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos (PC game)
21     Warcraft 3X: The Frozen Throne (PC game)
25     World of Warcraft (PC game)
26     World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC game)
27     World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC game)

Now, the official result of Warcraft 1 was that the Kingdom of Stormwind (and Stormwind itself) was destroyed. It was only at the end of Warcraft 2 were the Kingdom and City of Stormwind re-established and then Stormwind was rebuilt.

I'll be charitable and say that Warcraft 2 ended around year 7.5, giving WC2 about 1.5 years worth of fighting instead of 2. But what that means is that WC2 effectively ended and people could return to Stormwind around Year 7.5.

Putting that into more important terms, the time between Stormwind's reestablishment and the beginning of WoW Classic/Vanilla is 17.5 years, and that's being generous.

So what that means is that if a Human player was 18 years old when they left home and began adventuring, then you were one of the first kids born after Stormwind was reestablished. If a Human character started at 21 years old, then you likely have vague memories of being a refugee. Your older brothers and sisters were all refugees and likely had bad memories of this. Your parents were refugees and/or veterans of the First/Second War, and were likely scarred by the conflict. On top of it, either date is not enough to get Elwynn Forest back to a pristine condition, Redridge to seem so wonderful (as if it were Autumn), or even Westfall or Duskwood to be as alive (or undead as in Western Duskwood) as all that.

However, if you read quest text in the Human areas, you don't get those impressions at all. The area around Elwynn Forest, and even Duskwood and Redridge, are filled with quest text about "normal" things, not "boy, am I glad that we survived the Wars!"

It's as if there's collective amnesia about WC1 and WC2.

And believe me, people in Westfall would absolutely remember the Horde invasion, because based on the timeline they would have just gotten back on their feet when the Defias cut their legs out from under them.

If you thought that timeline might be off, here's the one from WoWpedia**:

0      First War
4      Second War
8      Warcraft 2x: Tides of Darkness
20     Third War
23     Warcraft 3x: The Frozen Throne
25     World of Warcraft
26     The Burning Crusade
27     Wrath of the Lich King

As you can see, the dates are pretty similar except for WoWpedia moving the Second War back two years.

***

You might look at that timeline and think "yeah, that seems about right."

But you know what I see?

The Thirty Years War.

It was one of the most destructive conflicts in history, went from 1618 - 1648, and was responsible for the death of 1 in every 5 German language speakers*** in Europe. Wikipedia puts the number of European deaths at 8 million, and although I'm not completely certain it's accurate, it's good enough for me.

The sheer brutality of the conflict made the Thirty Years' War one of the first that you could arguably call "total war", where entire regions were laid waste and depopulated, and entire nations mobilized.

You know what I don't see?

Evidence of the Thirty Years War --Warcraft Style-- in WoW Classic.

Bucolic. That's a good word for this, and there's nary
a sign that a short time ago this was supposedly
all devastation. Those certainly don't look like 15-20 year
old trees, even if you have rapidly growing ones such as silver maple.

And before you say Burning Steppes, Searing Gorge, or Desolace, all three happened prior to the timeline above. The only regions that you could safely say fall under the "entire region laid waste" designation are the Blasted Lands (home of Ye Olde Dark Portal), the Plaguelands, Tirisfal Glades, Felwood, and the southernmost part of Winterspring, where the Burning Legion is still present along the border with Hyjal. And of those, only the Blasted Lands stretches back to the Second War; all the others happened only a few years before Classic, in the Third War.

Azshara? Been that way since the War of the Ancients.

Silithus? Been that way for thousands of years, since the Kaldorei and their allies shut the Qiraji inside their prison.

Stonetalon Mountains? It's not so much as laid waste as an ecological disaster brought on by the Venture Company.

I find it hard to believe that the Cataclysm expac had a greater impact on the Eastern Continent than the Wars between Orcs and Humans.

***

And don't get me started on the buildings.

I knew that castle building was a huge endeavor that drained the coffers of more than one monarchy (Edward I of England for one), so the reconstruction of Stormwind being hugely expensive doesn't shock me. But building a castle in Medieval times took anywhere from 2 to 10 years, depending on the size and complexity of the job.

But an entire city?

A decent comparison is how long it took to rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666, and it took about 50 years.****

And that's with mainly wooden structures, not stone.

Compare that with Stormwind's less than 17.5 years --probably more like 10 given it takes time for the Defias afterward to take root-- and you're left scratching your head.

10 years? Yeah, but if you had far larger population
than what the ravaged Human lands --Stormwind +
Lordaeron + the rest-- have.  It took a far larger English
population 50 years to rebuild London after the Great Fire.

And don't forget that on top of that, there's places such as Menethil Harbor, Lakeshire, Goldshire, Darkshire, Sentinel Hill, Theramore, and the (now abandoned) areas of Raven Hill and Moonbrook. Oh, and the towers scattered throughout the area.

Don't forget that Dalaran was rebuilding within its bubble too.

And somewhere in all that Nethergarde Keep was built, manned, and then was the staging area for the invasion of Draenor.

***

Speaking of buildings, let's talk about the Horde cities too.

The Undercity, well, that was always there underneath Lordaeron, so let's just assume it was made (un)livable with minimal effort.

But Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar? They just sprang out of the ground within 2 years? Looking like that? And while the Tauren encampments around Kalimdor were built (and designed) for a nomadic, Native American asthetic --which are believable-- but the size and scope of constructing Orgrimmar alone, particularly while the newly reformed Horde with the Frostwolves in charge were constantly under threat, makes me raise my eyebrows.

I don't have an active Horde toon, so this one is from
Blizzard Watch. BTW, if you want info on all things
Blizz, they're the one to to go check out.

I could see this in 2 years, but that's only if Thrall and Co.
weren't constantly fending for their lives.

So yeah, call me skeptical, but I look at that timeline and think "Nah, not happening." Even if you enlist the help of Mages to build all of this, the sheer volume of activity might require every single Mage found in Azeroth to get it done properly in such a short timeline. And believe me, any Mage worth their salt would make sure that YOU NEVER FORGOT THAT.

And remember, all this construction had to be completed early enough so that it feels like all of these buildings have been there for quite a while, because nobody surely talks about the "before times". Hell, there are quests in Elwynn Forest that imply that people grew up and grew old on the farm. (It's the lover's questline.)

***

The only difference in the timelines that makes any sort of sense is the time between the end of the Third War and WoW Classic/Vanilla. Everything else, well, it doesn't really make sense.

If you extend the time between the end of the 2nd War and the beginning of the 3rd War to about 30 years, that makes the reconstruction and fading memories more realistic, but it then proceeds to throw off the personal timeline of major NPCs, particularly Thrall, Jaina, Vol'jin, Arthas, and others.

I can see why Blizz would want to keep the timeline intact for the NPCs' sake, but they could have easily altered the world they built in WoW to reflect the true state of affairs rather than present a bucolic countryside that they did in the starting zones for Tauren, Orcs, Trolls, Humans, Gnomes, and Dwarves.

And I'll be frank, I'd never have noticed how off the timeline really was until I went and looked up the timeline because I was writing fiction. When I figured out the true timeline based on what was found on the original WoW website, I blurted out "Bullshit! That is not what is presented in game!"

Oh, hey, Kira. Card says 'hi'.

*Movement at the speed of plot and all that.

**I removed every little detail that was provided in the Wowpedia version and instead matched the major events with the "official" version.

***You can't really say Germans, since Germany as a state didn't exist until the 19th Century.

****The Museum of London has a great pdf file on the Great Fire, which I won't link to because of potential security risks. However, if you type in "how long did it take to rebuild london after the great fire" it'll pop up as being one of the first hits.

EtA: Corrected a few grammar issues. That's what I get for changing my mind on how to present something and forgetting about the grammar leading up to those changes.

EtA: Forgot Felwood in the list of regions affected by the WC1 through WC3, but my premise still stands, as Felwood happened during WC3.

At Long Last

It only took from the beginning of Classic until now, on both co-mains, but this finally happened:

It was one of those epic 3+ hour AV fights that you hear people who used to play in Vanilla brag about. The battleground started like any other, where the Alliance held off the horde for a while but eventually we lost the Stonehearth Graveyard. That usually signals the beginning of the end, because the Horde gradually accelerates their gains from there. But something unusual happened: the Alliance was able to push back and eventually --after an hour-- to retake the Stonehearth Graveyard.

During this time I --on Az-- found myself with only another rogue for support, so we both sent back the Wing Commanders* and then I took the southern mine. That mine capture is typically a love-it-or-hate-it move, with very few people on the Alliance side in the "meh" camp. Luckily this time our side was happy for that, and I quickly gathered the 10 resources, killed off some wolves for the pelts, and made it back up north just in time to become a member of the backcap crew.

And there I spent the vast majority of my time in-game, part or a 2-3 man crew defending the Dun Baldar bunkers and graveyard from Horde who'd outflanked the main force.

During this time the main force continued their unusally strong push and had a breakthrough by capturing the Snowfall Graveyard. We were able to hold both graveyards, and in the process kill off the Horde Wolfriders and their Shamans.

When the Horde lost their Shamans, their morale broke.

We were then able to capture the Iceblood Graveyard, and our gains accelerated rather quickly until we finally downed Drek.

I've been waiting for what felt like forever for this, as this is the typical result we see:

So a victory like this, hard fought from beginning to end, was something to savor.

*Two of them made it back, which was unusual in itself.

Let Me Expand on That

Not too long ago, I mentioned that I'd gotten into my first true raid.

Ever.

That was a Zul'Gurub run that, looking back on it, was a fairly wipe filled run that lasted almost 4 hours.* However, I will say that the raid leader was a real saint; he kept calm and never raised his voice, as he patiently explained and reexplained how to handle each boss.

In that raid I learned three things:

• For a raid to be effective, you have to be in a voice app of some sort. You may not have to talk --I saw people reply in raid chat to requests-- but you must be able to respond to the raid leader's (and others) directions. We had one person in the ZG run who was not in chat, and that person was simply not following instructions, even the written ones.
  
  As a sub point on that, everybody not only has to be in a voice app, but be able to understand the language spoken. Being in a voice app does you almost no good if you don't understand what's being asked of you. And yes, that 4 hour ZG run had at least one person in the raid who didn't understand English, and also didn't know the raid. It made things difficult at times.
  
• I like to perform interrupts and stuns on Az as part of my work in regular 5-man instances, and that part of being a Rogue becomes important in ZG. In the ZG run Az was literally the only rogue, and I got assigned the job of interrupting the healer in the Raptor boss when he (it?) splits into three people. Once that boss was burned down enough, I and the off tank were the only ones on that boss for a large part of the fight, with me eschewing anything resembling DPS in favor of watching for the healing action and then delivering a solid kick to stop it. While my job in ZG overall wasn't very taxing --mainly don't stand in the bad, do what the raid leader says to do, and just keep my DPS Slice and Dice ability running-- at this one point I had the big job to make sure we don't make a boss fight that much more difficult. And I was able to do the job because I enjoy those little things about being a Rogue.
  
• Raids in Classic take about as long as the longer instances in WoW. If you compare a Classic level raid (Molten Core, Zul'Gurub, etc.) with the longer Classic instances (Blackrock Depths, Maraudon, etc.) the Classic instances are either as long or longer than the Classic raids. So the time commitment by me would be pretty much the same. The only thing that the raids have over instances are the buffs and the consumables, where Mages, Alchemists, and others who handle both items spend considerably more time in preparation than the people who don't have those classes and/or professions.

But despite my initial concern about what to do in ZG, I found the explanations easy to follow. And I learned very quickly that "bat riders go boom" as I put it in guild chat afterwards.

***

What?

Oh, that.

Yeah, I joined a guild. It's a small one, and not even close to being in the same orbit as some of the huge guilds on Myzrael-US, such as Sunrise or Stance Dance Revolution, both of which have over 400 members. 

More on this another time.

***

Anyhoo, I went on another ZG run a week later, and that run was as smooth as butter. It clocked in at just under two hours, and we only had one wipe, on the trash leading to Hakkar. We even handled the Jin'do fight without any problems.

So fast forward a couple of weeks, and a friend who I'd run quite a few instances with over the past months whispered me on Friday. One thing led to another, and this was the result.

Yep, still running with that BRD Green drop
for my chestpiece. Still, Card only died once,
the Majordomo teleported her up front. Twice.

It was an alt run put on by two guilds, and they pug the extra people.

The most amazing thing to me was that when I zoned in, I discovered that I knew about 1/3 of the people there. When I mentioned it to my friend, he laughed and said "that's the Vanilla experience for you."

Maybe I can do this raiding thing after all.





*This ZG run was on Az, for clarity's sake.

Well, That was Unexpected

Back in pre-history, when people still loved the live action version of Game of Thrones on HBO, the question arose what would happen when the showrunners ran out of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice as source material. After all, George wasn't known as the speediest of authors, and anybody could see that the series on television was going to finish long before the books were.

Well, it was revealed back in 2014 that the showrunners had met with George and already knew the broad strokes going forward, including how the series would end.

And while Season 7 had its moments --including the Hodor masterstroke that the showrunners confirmed was George's idea-- we all know how Season 8 ended the series.*

I was thinking about that debacle, where there were only broad sketches of what came after the books ended, when I read Kamalia's post about the existential horror surrounding WoW retail's upcoming Shadowlands expac reflecting on Battle for Azeroth. Namely, exactly how much of the Warcraft/WoW story is planned out ahead of time?

And when I mean planned out, I don't mean for an entire expac, but rather years in the future.

***

As I commented on Kamalia's post, back when I was in college --and even before the red beard itself-- I'd read about how soap operas were plotted out. I was curious about this because I developed an addiction to Days of our Lives my sophomore year in college**

Yes, it was really this cheesy.

and I wondered just how much of the plot was planned in advance and how much was just made up as they went along. In spite of the "bad acting" that goes on in those shows --and when you consider that they film/record them day in and day out with very few outtakes due to the schedule, it's actually pretty good-- the plots, stories, and scripts are written months in advance of actual filming. Add to that the shows frequently had months of filming already "in the can" as the saying goes, the storylines were frequently plotted out about a year or more before airing. While this isn't saying a lot for a regular prime time television show, a soap is broadcast almost without fail, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. At maximum, that's 260 possible episodes, but in reality --due to holiday programming and other factors-- the number is somewhere between 200 and 260. For a 24 episode prime time season, that's 10 years worth of episodes, and for a BBC or cable type of series that's more like 20 years' worth.

To keep everything straight, therefore, long term plotting is essential.

Now, let's translate this into video games.

An MMO such as LOTRO, which is based on a completed series of fantasy novels, has a great advantage over MMOs that are on the Game of Thrones plan. You know the plot, you know the characters, and you even know the geographic locations and the potential for in-zone quests. All you have to do is fill in some of the details and extrapolate based on the author's works (and in Tolkien's case, both finished and unfinished). While I'm not saying it's easy mode, for a developer it's far less stressful to fill in a portion of Middle-earth than it is, say, the Star Wars universe with SWTOR.

Sure, there's a lot of potential reference material out there for SWTOR, but there's also a huge amount of freedom for a developer to change things around. The Old Republic era of the Star Wars universe doesn't have to tiptoe around the old Expanded Universe novels (outside of the Revan ones, obviously), it doesn't have to worry about any of the movies in terms of settings and plot, and it certainly doesn't have to worry about the vast majority of Star Wars fans upset with either the jettisoning of the EU or the direction the prequels and/or sequels took.

But it is under constant scrutiny by everyone and their grandmother for whether SWTOR is "Star Wars enough" to be considered Star Wars.

Between that and the constant pressure SWTOR's development staff is under, courtesy of Bioware executives and EA overall, it's no wonder that the direction of SWTOR's story has swung wildly over the years.

***

Warcraft and WoW fans may not be as rabid as the Star Wars fanbase***, but they do have definite ideas on how their beloved franchise should progress. However, unlike SWTOR and LOTRO, WoW's fanbase dictates a bit of a different focus than what you'd come to expect.

Remember the maxim "the game starts at max level"? For WoW, that means the focus is on Endgame more than anything else. However, I personally don't think that Endgame itself is Blizz' focus, narratively speaking.

If you look at the expacs for WoW --at least the ones that I've played up until I dropped by subscription-- it seems that Blizz's focus is toward specific set pieces, and plot/narrative is driven in service of those specific set pieces.

From Burning Crusade --with the dramatic conversion of Lady Liadrin prior to taking up the leadership the Shattered Sun offensive-- through Wrath with the Wrathgate event, and even into Mists with its multiple video cut setpieces (and the Siege of Orgrimmar), that seems to be what drives the WoW expac.

But for me, the question is whether there's an overall narrative plan stretching across multiple expacs, or whether their service to the set piece means that the set piece is developed first and then the expac is developed around it.

***

The reason why Kamalia's post is so important is because she lays bare that the upcoming Shadowlands expac takes all of those dramatic death scenes --or moments of sacrifice/suicide missions-- and makes them horrifying because death isn't the release people thought it was.

And yes, I agree with her completely on her point.

But I don't believe that was a primary objective of the expac; it was merely a side effect of the WoW expac development process.

I find it very hard to believe that all of those raids, starting from Wrath onward, that have bosses who die and exclaim that "[insert end boss here] controls me no longer", would have led to this existential moment where death turned out to be a horrifying alternative. Instead, I believe that Blizz said "Okay, let's do [XXX] set piece. Cool, isn't it? Now, how do we get to there?"

That's the thing about these set pieces: they only work if they are part of a cohesive whole that extends from expac to expac as part of a long term story that Blizz wants to tell. Right now, it certainly seems that Blizz is creating these set pieces without any sort of long term plan.

Why would I say that? Because if the set piece creates some jarring plot holes large enough to fly a zeppelin through, then maybe the set piece is the one that needs to change.

Speaking of set pieces that
drive expacs (or movies)...
From wikipedia.org.

For example, in the lead up to Mists there was the "mana bomb destroying Theramore" set piece. On the face of it, a major Alliance city so close to the Horde capital city would naturally be a military target in an Alliance vs Horde war. However, if you played the Horde (post-Cataclysm) questline in Stonetalon Mountains --which made use of another mega-sized bomb-- the total destruction of Theramore makes absolutely no sense, as Garrosh (in an earlier set piece) executed the Stonetalon Horde leader for displaying a lack of honor in slaying non-combatants. And, as everyone knows, there are plenty of non-combatants in a major Alliance city --with a sympathetic Alliance leader-- that had in the past sided with Orgrimmar over their own faction's potential interests.

Because someone decided edgier is better.
Hmm... There's something about that statement
that fits right in with the DC Universe....
(From metacritic, of all places.)

But when set pieces (and to a lesser extent the endgame) rules the decision making process, plot holes happen.

Just ask all those Daenerys fans about Season 8 of Game of Thrones.

From Vanity Fair.

Or maybe not.

*And that's coming from a guy who had no interest in reading or watching either version. George takes maniacal delight in killing off characters, so I took a wide pass on any of his writings.

**I only overcame this addiction when I was watching an episode and blurted out loud after a supposed major reveal "That was incredibly stupid!!" It was then that I realized bad storylines couldn't keep me engaged forever.

***I'd imagine that Blizz employees would beg to differ on this point.

Saturday Morning Amusement

I saw this on Reddit, and I was amused.

"Mommy, where do Druids come from?"

I tried chasing down the original, and this is actually a screenshot of a screenshot. Therefore, I'm not exactly sure who truly created this, but as a pencil and paper RPGer I found it the sort of "D&D legalese" way of getting out of the price of a Fey's pact.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go drive 6 hours each way to get the rest of my son's dorm stuff, as the county in Pennsylvania that his university is located opened up and the university is allowing us on campus to go get his gear.

The Hidden Nemesis

I've been pondering something a bit while I've been working on my fiction, and that is how MMOs translate things such as death into a game.

An MMO is a strange beast in its own way: by design it is a multiplayer sandbox where people get to experience all sorts of interactions (such as quests) in their own time. Sure, you can group up, but the multiplayer nature of the game means that death --for both the baddies and you-- isn't permanent.*

You die, you respawn. They die, they eventually respawn.

Items such as phasing as implemented in WoW with the Wrathgate event, as well as other MMOs' version of such phasing, is an attempt to alleviate this. Making it seem like you truly have an impact on the environment is the goal.

But what I've been thinking of is something else entirely: what is the psychological and physical impact of death on people in an MMO? And how did people deal with this in real life when they were drafted, given some basic training, and then shipped out to go kill people?

***

In an MMO we can make light of death, given that to the player it's an obstacle to overcome. Listen to MMO players talk about wiping in raids or instances, and it's just no big deal. You can even hear bosses express relief at their death, meaning that "Hakkar controls me no longer".**

But nevertheless, "Kill Ten Rats" is just a stone's throw away from "Kill Ten Kobolds" and then "Kill Ten Defias."

I choose the Defias for this because of their origin story, which is something that a lot of people would identify with.

Since there are a few people --including the mini-Reds, who I know occasionally read this blog-- who don't know the Defias origin story, I'm going to put this behind a big ol' cut:

Spoilers ahead

Friday Musings

Yes, I get a bunch of these "thinky thoughts", as my wife calls them, from time to time. Stuff not worthy of a separate blog post, but also things that make me go "hmmm...."

So here we go, a compilation of curious thoughts that I couldn't quite get rid of.

***

What is the appeal of The Cult of the Damned?

I get that there are some people who are psychotic and are so in love with death that they'll seek the Cult* out, and that there's the occasional person who wants power so badly they'll sacrifice everything about their human form that they'll willingly become a lich, but come on. All these people in Scholomance, the Plaguelands, and supposedly throughout Azeroth as Cult members?

What is it; do they throw great parties or something?

Looks like they could use a keg
of beer and some red solo cups.
Or at least a television with Mario
Kart running in the background.
From thelurkerlounge.com.

***

Black Diamond would make a great name for an 80s rock band. I've mentioned that in a few Blackrock Depths runs, but only us old folks find it amusing.

***

If there was one thing that a Mage in WoW would dispel, you'd think it'd be a Magic debuff. But no, it's "Remove Curse". Go figure...

***

Every time I play Star Trek Online, when you talk to an NPC for a quest, there's just something about their eyes that is so unnatural that it creeps me out.

When the eyes shift from left to right...
It just looks like an alien pretending
to be human. From Playstation Nation.

***

People who write quest text should be forced to read it out loud as if they were talking to someone. If nothing else, it would force them to write quest text that actually sounds like a conversation rather than what passes for quest text these days.

Have you ever tried reading quest text out loud? It can be an incredible struggle to do just that. At the same time, it's supposed to be a conversation, so it should just flow properly like as if you were speaking to your buddies.

But you know what? It only rarely sounds normal.

If there's one thing that the SWTOR writers nailed, it's the quest interactions. Those cutscenes for questing are absolutely dead on, particularly in the original "vanilla" SWTOR areas.

*No relation to Blue Oyster Cult or even The Cult, both damn fine rock bands.

Notes from Nowhereland

I took the weekend off.

Oh, not from playing games or anything, because there were plenty of things that went on:

• I got stomped pretty badly in a game of Settlers of Catan.*
• I got into my first raid since my Horde guild back in the day did a 10 man raid of AQ40 in Late Wrath.
• I'm seriously considering joining a guild. (Yes, this and the raid bullet point are related.)
• I ran Dire Maul - North with someone as tank that I've not run an instance with since Az was last in Razorfen Kraul. (He is still as good a tank as ever.)
• A person on my Classic server (Myzrael-US) passed away and his guild honored and remembered him by a long slow walk to the entrance of Molten Core.

 But I took the weekend off from the entire blogging process.
I even ignored my email, Reddit, and Facebook for the weekend, and the latter two turned out to be a very good thing because I would have been driven nuts by seeing all the lack of social distancing going on.**

It was freeing to not have to worry about coming up with anything for the blog, because suggested posts kind of fell in my lap regardless, but the one thing I couldn't seem to get away from was the endless parade of "Why aren't you in a guild?" questions.

***

On a very early Saturday morning, I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, so I figured I'd get on WoW Classic and do some rep farming until I felt sleepy again. While I was perusing Cardwyn's current rep status and quests, I discovered I'd never finished the Marshall Windsor questline on her. I had the last quest in the Windsor portion of the chain, but I never completed the event. Therefore, I rode down to the entrance of Stormwind, waited for the person currently on the event to finish, and started it for Card.

About partway through Stormwind --for those Horde players who never performed the Alliance only questline, you end up walking rather than running-- a priest decided to tag along. She buffed me --and I returned the favor, because that's the polite thing to do-- and as we walked along she checked to make sure that I was aware of what I was getting myself into. After exchanging pleasantries and discussing WoW lore***, she then asked the inevitable question that people quiz me over: why am I not in a guild?

I explained the usual situation, about how I've been burned in the past and I'd really not deal with the drama in my gaming any more than in real life, but she made a point that stuck with me: I'm not obligated to remain in a guild if I don't like the drama. She herself had left a previous guild because she wasn't interested in drama, and the guild leadership was basically a generation younger than herself****, so she didn't have those social touchpoints to connect with people either.

Perhaps the reason why it resonated with me so much was because when I join a group such as a guild, I try to make it work. I put in time to be social, to help out in farming mats, and doing other (non-raiding) activities when I can. And I guess that makes me more loyal than it should. Certainly, if a guild's members or leadership don't reciprocate, I'm not obligated to remain with that guild. At the same time, I hate to leave people I like behind, but nothing says that I have to break ties with them just because I left.

Yes, you'd think that this is Adulting 101, but at the same time my tendency toward loyalty does become a problem this way. Even if I don't like a situation I'm in, I'd prefer to not rock the boat until things simply become untenable.

Or they blow up.

***

Because of this, I've spent a lot of the rest of the weekend thinking.

It's easy to tell others that they have to grow up and act in a more mature fashion, but not so much to shine the harsh glare of reality on yourself and practice what you preach.

And one of the things I've decided was that I invested so much time in my independence while gaming that it's become a large part of my identity, and likely to my detriment. That while it is fine to be independent, I shouldn't shy from making connections. I shouldn't reject everything because of a couple of bad experiences, and instead I should approach this in a more nuanced fashion.

This should be an interesting week. We'll see how things land.





*That's what I get for playing the percentages rather than "trusting my feelings".

**I saw the lack of social distancing in action on Friday when I "noped" out of walking around in the small town the oldest mini-Red's university is located. I drove through, saw all of the people hanging out and congregating in big groups, and said "oh HELL no" and took a pass.

***I mentioned that Christie Golden is a friend of a friend of mine of Facebook, and she got all excited as Christie was her favorite of the WoW authors. I did confirm that she seems nice on FB, but I don't really have any interactions with her. So beyond the occasional comment on our mutual friend's FB page, I don't really talk to her.

****She was my age. (Or at least she said she was, and to be fair if she was lying I don't know many people who'd lie and say they were older than they really were.)