I've mentioned before about our informal Turkey Award, handed out to the person with the most deaths in the progression raids.* And until the other week, I'd successfully avoided taking home that honorary turkey leg.
Well.... The other week that streak came to an end.
I died three times at the beginning of the raid in quick succession, to trash leading up to Patchwerk, and that set the tone for the rest of night. When you don't even get off a cast before an abomination takes you and 8 of your closest friends out, you know things aren't gonna go your way.
That was, ironically enough, the last time I both got Dire Maul Tribute buffs and the spellpower Flask for the raid.
Obviously those deaths meant my DPS took a big hit --the flask notwithstanding-- but it also meant that I reassessed just what the hell I was doing chasing after all those buffs if I wasn't going to live long enough to make much use out of them. That first death was a fluke, as were the second and third deaths**, but I didn't treat them as one. It was then that I realized a pattern had been forming and I'd ignored it until then: when I got extra sweaty and tried picking up all the buffs, I became more aggressive. When I got the bare minimum number of buffs (Heart of Hakkar and Dragonslayer), I became more conservative.
The reasoning ought to be obvious: the fewer the buffs, the more likely I wanted to hold onto them, and the less likely I was to charge in on a skitterer pack to try to get to the top of the meters. Likewise, the less likely I was do to something stupid during the Cultist/Acolyte trash pulls and bounce around out of healing range.
It's a simple thing, really: play conservative because you don't help the raid when you're eating dirt. At the same time, you have a conflicting motive to prove you belong, and the most obvious way of doing that is to improve your DPS. And that means buffs, enchants, flasks, etc. etc.
But helping the raid also means getting your Frost Resist gear (Glacial Set, in my case), farming your Tubers for Loatheb, babysitting the bodies for spawning scarabs in Anub'Rekhan, and getting your teammates off the wall in Maexxna. None of which, I might add, are going to enhance your DPS.
***
After a lot of consideration, I decided to step back a bit from my buff pursuits until I could get my survivability back to an acceptable level. I'd still have liked to get flasks for the raid, but the current price of a Flask of Supreme Power is about 180 gold right now, and that's out of my price range.*** I could squeak by at 150 gold, but that was also when everybody and their grandmother wasn't farming Plaguebloom throughout Azeroth.
So, whether I liked it or not, I scaled back my buffing and played it conservatively.
And it worked.
I've not sniffed the top of the leaderboard for the Turkey Award until Monday night, and the only reason I was up there was that I had exactly one death before we started beating our collective heads on Four Horsemen. (We wiped seven times on Four Horsemen, leading to a second place total of eight deaths, shared with 5-6 other people.) And really, death levels outside of Four Horsemen being so low was quite an achievement from my perspective.
I know my DPS suffered as a consequence, but I was fine with that. I was contributing to the raid by being alive, and that was the important part. Now that I've started behaving better, I'm going to start slowing re-adding extra buffs to my pre-raid night routine.
Now if everybody could stop farming Plaguebloom for a for a while, that'd be great....
*We occasionally bring up the Turkey Award for Molten Core and Blackwing Lair raids, but the "formal" Turkey Award is handed out after the progression raids.
**The third in particular was bad because I'd just gotten rezzed up and was drinking when another abomination wandered into aggro range, surprising everybody. The a-bomb hit with an AOE which only dealt a decent amount of damage to everyone. Except me, who didn't have buffs and full health. Alas.
***Spending time and gold getting the Glacial set made sucked up two weeks' worth of farming, not to mention some of the enchants I started farming the mats for. When you run an Undead Set (courtesy of the Scourge Invasion event), a "normal" Fire Mage set, and you start to replace pieces as you get new gear, all those enchants aren't cheap. I can hear the other mages now, saying to not blow your gold on a Flask when you need the enchants, but when you need so much enchanting done (I honestly thought I'd have replaced almost all my gear by now with AQ level gear so I didn't bother enchants then), it's all a bit much.
Cast your eyes on the ocean. Cast your soul to the sea. When the dark night seems endless. Please, remember me.
--Loreena McKennitt, "Dante's Prayer"*
Yesterday, I spoke with a friend with whom I'd not played MMOs for about a month. He left Classic after an incident** concerning several issues in raid, and he hasn't logged on since.
He had told me immediately before he left the game that the WoW Classic was becoming less and less fun, so I believe that the incident was simply the last straw before going cold turkey. He hadn't given up on MMOs themselves, just Classic, so I felt that the time away was doing him some good. I don't think that he's permanently given up on Classic, but we'll see.
It was a good conversation (via Discord messages), and I hope to continue it in the future. But it also got me to thinking about the constant churn that happens in both MMOs and real life.
***
Churn is to be expected. People move, change jobs, retire, or even pass away. We change over time too, and what we may have once tolerated or even encouraged is no longer accepted by us.
My friend's departure from WoW Classic reminded me of others who have come into my (virtual) life and moved on.
Like the friend who introduced me to the L60 5-mans and encouraged me to explore more of the game than I was content to stay with. Months before the Gates of AQ event, we were in Silithus questing, just kicking around on some quests that he had. At one point we stopped by the Gates, and he told me that he would be here when those gates opened.
Less than 3 weeks later, he stopped logging in. He'd never joined Discord --he said his computer couldn't handle it and Classic at the same time-- so for all intents he simply vanished.
Or the other friend I got to know while originally leveling Az; he and I ran several instances together, but eventually work started kicking his ass and he had to cut back on playing as he was constantly working the night shift. He eventually lost his spot in the raiding guild he was in due to lack of attendance, and the last time I spoke with him his wife happened to walk by and she --who he used to play with in Classic-- disparaged the whole MMO genre as a waste of time.
I haven't seen him in months, either.
There are other friends that moved to Retail to check it out --or in one case, return home as it were-- and they've spent by far most of their time in Retail. I see them online, and we occasionally chat, but we never get the chance to group up much any more.
***
And it hasn't been lost on me that my focus on progression raiding has meant that a lot of my time spent online has been focused on getting the mats/pots/whatever for prog raiding together. When I just want to run solo and not chat or anything else, I simply vanish online: I don't mark myself online on Discord, turn myself invisible in Battle.net, and unjoin myself from the raid guild chat channels. It's not perfect, of course, since anybody who has marked me as a friend in game will still see me, but its as good as it gets for silent running.
It is very effective, but almost too effective. More than once I've had a casual friend whisper me that they've not seen me in game for a while, and is there anything wrong. No, not wrong; not really. Just.... Well, just unable to do the things I want when I want to do them, I suppose. And that is very much on me.
That's part of the commitment to progression raiding, that you have to give up something in order to keep going at the forefront of raids. But I do miss other aspects of MMOs, such as 5-person instances, questing, leveling alts, and just socializing.
I recognize that the easiest solution to the socializing part is to just switch guilds. At the same time, while I've grown comfortable with the gang, I'm definitely not one of them. And swapping guilds will not change that. After my wife's friend's death --and a lot of soul searching-- I was pretty much ready to pull the trigger and go ahead and join the guild. But then some of them just had to make a very public attempt in Discord to cajol me into joining.
And if there's one way to get me to not do something, it's to lean on me to do that thing.
I am very much a stoic Midwesterner, and I keep a large portion of myself private. I may be social and chatty --especially for an introvert-- but that is very much a superficial thing. I become emotional and open up with very very few people who have built up a level of trust in me. But I also have a very large contrarian streak in me. One of my previous bosses didn't understand me at first, and an ex-coworker stepped in to explain to her that "Red marches to his own drummer; he has a large amount of pride in doing things his way, and trying to force him into doing something simply won't work." Once she understood that, she changed her approach to managing me and we got along much better.
So, knowing that, you can understand why I saw that Guild push and said "Nope, screw that." You might not agree with it, but now you know where it came from.
***
So coming back to the original thoughts on this topic, the churn I've seen in MMOs is part normal, and part self-inflicted. Perhaps I can repair the self-inflicted part, but I also need to accept the "normal" part of the churn.
And for pete's sake stop trying to force me into doing things.
*The album Dante's Prayer is from, The Book of Secrets, is my favorite album of Loreena's. It's most well known for the surprise one hit wonder song, "The Mummer's Dance", and to be fair nobody --not even Loreena-- saw that one coming. However, the entire album is full of fantastic songs, from her putting the poem The Highwayman to song to the instrumental Marco Polo to Skellig to Dante's Prayer. This version shown below is from the memorial service for 100th commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in WW1 where many of her fellow Canadians perished.
**That incident I will not comment on; it is not my place to say, and as I've said before, I'm not a member of the guild I raid with.
I entered The Deadmines last night for the first time in months.
With me were my oldest's Hunter, Tasarae, one of the Mage team on his Pally alt, and his daughter's Mage alt. I recruited a friend from Az's old Tuesday Molten Core runs, and she came along on her Bear tank alt.
All of us at level, and one of us setting foot inside for the first time.
We wiped three times --the last time trying to down Cookie after Van Cleef was dead-- and we pulled off a couple of fantastic recoveries after we had a couple of packs of ads on us.
All in all, it was amazing. I'd not had quite as much fun in a while.
***
Tasarae got to learn how Hunter pulls in an instance work, and I learned that I can tank --kinda sorta-- if I need to. My Bear friend had never been in Deadmines with a Bear before, and she was thoroughly enjoying how much fun it was to Bear tank things.* And in spite of me having a couple of levels on her, I simply could not pull aggro from her.
My Mage buddy healed us as best he could, and his daughter's Mage learned to enjoy sheeping things and blasting enemies with fire.
The instance itself, as my Mage team buddy said, was pretty much a perfect introductory instance. You learn the basics here and can take those lessons with you later on.
I was teasing my oldest about how she was going to be gunning for our raid team's Hunter puller, and she gave me a look that said "oh HELL no".
"But really," I said, "you're learning the same things that we use in Naxxramas today. That's why I don't like boosting so much, because this is how you learn to play your class."
"I'm still not raiding anytime soon," she replied.
***
The slow reveal of the extent of the weapon of mass destruction was not lost on my oldest. When we reached the final door and blasted our way in with a cannon, she said "Woah! Look at that!"
She knew there was a boat ahead, as we'd been chatting about it in Discord, but she was stunned by the size of the thing. And the weapons.
And in that moment, the plot came full circle.
This was what the Defias were working toward, and what they intended to unleash upon Stormwind.
***
I suppose it comes as no surprise that in addition to my regular blogging I've been writing about Card's continuing adventures on the side, with an eye toward a climax in the Deadmines.**
The questing in the Abbey, throughout Elwynn, and into Westfall all point a player toward a reveal as to why the Defias are the way they are, and even then there's plenty of plot points that a toon never knows about, even after the entry into the Deadmines is completed and the note found on Van Cleef's body points a player in the direction of who might be in league with the Defias within the Stormwind nobility. Hell, even once you get to L60 and defeat Onyxia you still don't know everything there is to know.
In that respect, I believe Blizz did a fantastic job of giving the player enough to go on, but not so much that they know everything. In reality, people don't know everything about what's going on --even if you think you do, you don't-- and so the Defias storyline reflects that. A player may find out everything Blizz has written on the subject (including the comics) but the player isn't privy to that information. And besides, you could make the argument that when what happens in WoW Classic contradicts the comics, I'd argue that WoW Classic should trump the comics in that regard. After all, the MMO is what we experience.
And the Defias' story is a cautionary tale as well, when your belief in your own correctness blinds you to everything else. In a way, it's a perfect tale for the past year or two.
Or, to borrow a few lines from what I've been working on...
"We still don't know who threw that rock," Mathias added. "That
regicide remains our biggest unsolved case. But the Queen's murder not
only crystallized the nobles against the Stonemasons Guild but turned
the general populace against them as well. Tiffin was well liked, and
unless you were here you'd never understand the jolt her death did to
the city."
He stared at the floor for what felt
like an eternity. "At the end of the riots, Edwin vowed revenge and left
Stormwind with most of the Guild members. He hadn't been seen since,
but I guess we now know what he's been up to."
I downed my water, wishing it was rum instead. "But why destroy everybody? That makes no sense."
"He
believes that if you're not with him, you're against him," Mom replied.
"That has always been a fault of Edwin's: he sees things only in terms
of sharp divides. For him, and those like him, there is no morally gray
area; it's only black and white. It's very easy for him to slip from
feeling that he'd been wronged into the view that everybody else is an
enemy. I look at Edwin and think that could have been me or your father,
given the right circumstances."
She looked over
at Mathias, her eyes haunted. "It's.... hard for me to be here, Mat,"
she whispered. "I don't have the control I need any more, and it's
taking all I have to not grab a pair of daggers and hunt for Edwin
myself. He's earned a death warrant from me, but I know that once I
start I won't be able to stop, and I can't risk that."
*Her main is a Warrior Tank, so she's familiar with how.... busy.... it is to be a Warrior tank.
**There's other stories floating around too, such as the Missing Diplomat questline. The Missing Diplomat questline is perfect for someone who has ties to the shadowy underworld, such as a certain protagonist whose family is connected to SI:7. It is also great in that it gets Card out of Stormwind and on the road toward Dustwallow Marsh, where she can begin the quest to assemble her own wand.
I tend to be, well, a bit hidebound in how I do certain things in MMOs.
I'm not a big fan of "gaming" things for exploitative purposes. I don't mean illegal cheats/loopholes, but taking advantage of a weakness in game to obtain a lot of a certain item. Such as a Mage taking advantage of how mobs track to farm immature venom sacs, for example. I've seen the YouTube videos, and I get the how it is done, but I still grumble at the poor design of how aggroed mobs go after you that I have a hard time in game of actually taking advantage of the poor design.
For the uninitiated, you can stand at a certain spot in LBRS, aggro a whole bunch of spiders, and right before they get to your toon you can jump up to a stone walkway beside you and that same mob turns around, runs allllll the way back and then gets up on the stone walkway to chase after you. Do this enough times while AOEing, and you can burn down the entire mob.
Yes, it's legal, but it still bothers me that these elite mobs --and spiders at that-- don't understand the basics of climbing a 3 foot wall.
Or the basics of doing single pulls in Maraudon. Again, not a fan of taking advantage of similar weaknesses in Mara to farm Mara.
***
Some other exploitative runs, such as Lasher runs in Dire Maul East, I just don't get.
I've done Lasher runs before, and after I'm done I sit there and go "That's it? That's all the gold you get for this? That's all the useful herbs you get?" And I shake my head. I was expecting a ton of useful herbs, but all I ever got were a ton of Heart of the Wild, which any Auction House affictionado will tell you doesn't sell that much. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who loves Lasher runs, and he said "it's the grays you get that are worth it."
/sigh
By contrast, I farm herbs in Eastern Plaguelands and Western Plaguelands, and in most normal times I can get some stacks of Plaguebloom, Dreamfoil, and Mountain Silversage and make 90 gold every couple of hours' worth of farming.
Well, that was before the Mountain Silversage market collapsed a month ago.
***
I look at some people in WoW who accumulate a lot of gold, and wonder just how cutthroat you have to be in order to amass that much gold. How sweaty do you need to be? It's not like there's such a thing as compound interest in MMOs*, so you have to actively go out and sell things in order to obtain gold. Whether it's your services (such as selling water, boosting**, or ports), mats, or finished items, you have to sell something if you want to keep up with the increasing demands of raiding and other activities.
It wasn't until about 7-8 months ago that I became aware of the concept of the GDKP raid. The "G" in front of the more traditional DKP term means "Gold", as in people bid gold to win items in raids. To join this "raiding of the rich and well heeled" you have to have a certain minimum amount of gold, and the raid leads inspect you to determined if you've got enough gold to play. Which sounds more than a bit like Casino Royale, but in WoW. Just let that sink in a bit: there's raids out there only for those with enough gold to join in.
Still, it's not like I'm the only perpetually poor person in our raids. I know a Warrior who barely makes enough gold to repair his gear between raids.*** And apparently there are a lot of people in our raid who need enchants, which means needing the mats + gold as well.
***
I realize that this sounds like whining, which is why I'm talking about it here rather than on Discord or in WoW. But I believe a lot of this due to my approach to playing the game. If I wanted to earn gold, I'd do it the Gevlon way, which would likely earn me gold but also have some of my in game friends disappointed in my greedy methods. And while I'd like to think that changing my approach to farming in WoW wouldn't change me, I'm not so foolish as to believe that.
How we play is a reflection of ourselves. That doesn't mean that we don't learn or grow while playing a video game, but it does mean that how we approach the game, how we interact with people in a game, and the emphasis we place on in game activities are a window into our own psyches. People who say "I play to blow off steam" and then proceed to act like an asshole in game are showing to the world what they are really like without the constraints of society.****
***
Nevertheless, I have begun changing my approach to farming gold in WoW.
Instead of farming for raw materials, I've instead begun to focus on the finished items. I used to dip my toe into the tailoring market, but my lack of sales there dissuaded me from that approach. But potions? That's something I can work with. I know way too intimately just how much potions cost for raiding, and now I'm taking that knowledge and applying it to Az's potion making. Potions such as Greater Firepower, Mageblood, and Greater Shadow Protection sell well on the Auction House, and I'm focusing on what I can sell based on what I can farm. Sure, the market will change, but if I can can do this, I'm sure I can change with it. I don't need to go crazy while farming, spending all of my spare hours just trying to get enough gold for the next Naxx run, but I do need to be mindful of the lure of gold.
Now, let's just see if this old dog can internalize these new tricks.
*At least ones that I play, anyway.
**Another service I find distasteful. If you already know how to play your class that's one thing, but boosting to merely get to "where the game begins" misses the point. The leveling experience gives you the opportunity to learn to play a class, and you apply those lessons at endgame. Having to learn tanking at L60 when the only times you set foot in an instance were when you were being boosted is, well, a lost opportunity.
***Or so he claims. It's gone on long enough that its now a meme.
****Or maybe within societal constraints. After all, the past four years have been very educational in how people behave when they realize they can get away with anything.
Last Fall I discovered just how out of touch I was with pop culture while waiting for a Molten Core run.
I can't remember the specifics of the conversation, but there was a comment made about surreal comedy, and I piped up and mentioned "Oh, like Andy Kaufman."
There was radio silence, and then a "who?"
"You know, Andy Kaufman, the guy who was the subject of the movie Man in the Moon."
"I don't really remember that movie."
"How about the REM song from the early 90s?"
"Card, you're not helping yourself any with that reference."
Well, shit.
For reference, here's the REM song.
Finally, another raider who was about my age spoke up. "Yeah, Andy Kaufman was in Taxi as Latka, and he did that routine where he challenged that pro wrestler to a fight."
"Yeah, he was kind of nuts to egg that guy who was twice his size on, just like his Elvis impersonations were so out there that you never forgot it."
At least I got the chance to make a semi-graceful exit.*
***
I was reminded of that generational disconnect once more while I was listening to a playlist on YouTube the other day. At one point the old Spinners song "Rubberband Man" came on, and I was bopping along. One of the mini-Reds happened by, and she said "Oh, that's the Guardians of the Galaxy song."
Not having seen anything past the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie --yeah, I'm a bit tired of superhero movies these days**-- I was surprised. "Really? The NBA used to play that song for highlights of players from the 70s and 80s, like Doctor J, Michael Jordan, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and the Big O."
At least the kids knew who the Big O (Oscar Robertson) is, because he played at the University of Cincinnati and then in the NBA for the Cincinnati Royals. I've told them the story several times about how my dad used to ride his bike to go see the Royals play at the old Cincinnati Gardens, and how Oscar was easily the best basketball player he ever saw.
The statue of The Big O outside of UC's Fifth Third Arena. My photos turned out lousy, so I borrowed this one put out by UC.
***
Why mention this? Well, because people --and gamers-- are a product of their generation. To the longtime MMO players who spent years in the old days of WoW (and now WoW Classic) have a completely different view of Azeroth than those who are new to the game.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard over the years that "XXX sucks!" Like my own personal bugaboo, Belsavis, in SWTOR. I can't stand that zone because it just keeps going on and on and on. Just when you think you're about to finish the planetary story, you go through a tunnel and reach yet another mini-area to explore and quest through.
Or the oldest mini-Red's personal dislike, Corellia. She has major issues finishing the final planet in the "vanilla" SWTOR zones because the warzone imagery depresses her so much.
I was reminded of that disconnect when her baby Hunter, Tasarae, reached Darnassus for the first time. Of the Alliance cities, Darn has the reputation of being the most disliked. It's hard to get to, it's very spread out, and it's difficult to find anything without inquiring from the guards.
But when Tasarae walked through the open pathways with her new pet owl, she gushed about how beautiful Darnassus was. And when she arrived at Auberdine, the rugged shoreline and evergreen forests of Darkshore captivated her.
It is the seeing of things with new eyes that energizes me. Just like when --very soon-- Tasarae will arrive at Westfall and head out on the questline that leads inevitably to the Deadmines and a confrontation with Edwin Van Cleef, the Stonemason whose thirst for justice led him down a dark path where everyone else was an enemy, and only he and his followers were in the right.
I'm looking forward to this. Tasarae doesn't know what's ahead for her, but I do. And I will once again be able to see this world through her, with new eyes.
*Thanks for covering my ass there, Zwak.
**Not to mention all of the freaking gatekeeping by a subset of geekdom.
It's been a while, but I caught sight of this ol' minivan once more at the mini-Reds' high school:
And, I think, the same Columbus Crew MLS sticker.
Oh yes.
And it turns out they live in our neighborhood, as I was behind the minivan all the way back home.
Given that I've seen Horde stickers around the University of Cincinnati, I'd have to hang around there more frequently if I want to see more WoW stuff, I assume.
However, here's what my oldest's significant other gave me for Christmas:
Beer not included.
Yes, the Lion of Lordaeron etched on a beer glass, complete with "Redbeard" on the bottom.
Have I mentioned lately that I love my oldest's SO?
Now I need to find out where they ordered it from, so I can get some others made. Maybe a "Cardwyn" or an "Azshandra"....
Well, not really, but there was an impromptu Druid Bear form dance party at the Myzrael-US Stormwind Fountain last night. From what a couple of people had told me, it just kind of happened. A few Bears started dancing around the fountain, and then others showed up until the entire fountain area was crawling with them.
And the one player who tried to join in while shapeshifted into a Firbolg.
Alas that I wasn't there to get a pic*, but I did see some of the pics that my friends took, and it was one of those spontaneous moments of pure fun that make playing an MMO worthwhile.
Kind of like this, when I landed in Ironforge and ran to my usual spot:
There were actually two more at first, but they began galloping around the area.
It turned out that I knew one of the people there in the reindeer lineup, and she waved at me. I waved back, and we had a chat while the reindeer patrol looked all nice and proper. One thing led to another, and I was invited to go to AQ20 they were putting on as they didn't have enough people to raid Naxx that morning.**
Just one of those things that you simply can't plan on.
*I suppose I could have asked if I could use one of the pics, but I try very hard to keep my blogging relatively unknown. It's not that I talk shit about the people I play with --I don't-- but I don't want my blogging general knowledge either. I know it's a bizarre opinion to have of a blog, since it's a public endeavor, but I've found being such an obscure blogger very freeing in its anonymity. Here's a link to a post back in August 2020 as to my opinions on the matter, but if you just click on the "blogging" label and you can see the numerous times I've mentioned this particular phenomenon.
Nevertheless, there are a few people on Myzrael-US who do know I blog, but I'm very confident in saying that those who do know don't exactly spend a lot of time reading the blog either. (Or at least they've never mentioned any of my blog posts to me.) Which is perfectly fine with me.
**Card was already committed to another AQ20, so I went on Az. I didn't need any of the drops, but I enjoyed the run. Apparently my friend hadn't seen what the Perdition's Blade looked like, so she was asking me where I got that weapon (off Raggy in MC), and how cool it looked (oh yes, it looks awesome).
One of the few guildies left in my current guild actually put in an appearance today. He'd been consumed with binge watching a television series or two, so he'd been away from WoW Classic during that time. But what really pushed him into logging back in was that he is kind of in "rest mode" due to injury.
He broke his pelvis skydiving.
As he put it, there was a malfunction in the skydiving equipment, so he took the landing harder than it should have. When he landed, the force of the landing drove his femur up and into his pelvis, blasting through it to the other side. So he had to have the pelvis repaired and the joint reconstructed.
By the miracle of modern medicine, he was up and walking with a walker 3 days later.
He still has a 3+ month road back to health, however, but at least he's moving in the right direction. It could have been worse --much worse-- but at least he's expected to make a full recovery.
I blame 2020 for this, as he'd skydived tons of times over the years, so this should have been a no-brainer.
And as an ironic aside, if I'd have left the guild, I'd have missed this story. So go figure; 2020 is conspiring to keep things exactly the same as they are.
For all of the highs I've experienced as a gamer this year, 2020 has massively sucked in general.
And Friday brought more bad news in that one of my wife's friends died of breast cancer.
It wasn't unexpected, as she'd taken one last trip this Autumn to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to say farewell to a part of the country she loved, and you could tell from the photos she posted that the disease had ravaged her. But people still held out hope that she'd live to see one last Christmas.
Needless to say, thoughts of mortality dominated my weekend.*
This was taken on Monday, but it also exemplifies what I was up to last weekend.
***
I decided early on to not dwell on her suffering, because there wasn't anything I personally could have done. The only people who could have done something were her caregivers, and I had to assume that they did the best they could with the cards they were dealt. I also thought of what her family went through, and watching her decline reminded me so much of what happened to my father in May/June 2017.** He fell and was admitted to the hospital on Derby Day (First Saturday in May), and was gone before Father's Day (Third Sunday in June). When the oncologist told my Dad in early June there was nothing he could do, he asked what my Dad wanted. "That I go quickly," Dad replied.
But what I kept coming back to was the concept of "a life well lived".
I've heard people describe it as "working to live rather than living to work", but A Life Well Lived is more than that. It's about finding and keeping meaningful relationships, exploring and doing new things, and doing things because you want to do them rather than having to do them. If a lot of that sounds like you'd have to have a lot of money to basically thumb your nose at American Corporate Culture, you're right. You would have to be independently wealthy to do that.
Or poor and have no attachments. A modern day hobo, if you will.
Okay, it's not really that bad, because exploring and doing new things doesn't require you to have a lot of money to accomplish. After all, there's libraries, parks, free concerts, etc. to be explored. Still, telling your boss to get bent and going off and doing your own thing, ala American Beauty, is a dream that very few get a chance to fulfill until retirement.
Ah yes, Homer Simpson did live that out. From The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror. I think fourth season.
It's one thing to experience death in a pandemic from members of our extended family, whom we may talk to once every year (if that), and then quite another from someone that the family regularly converses with. The stench of death that surrounded 2020 can depress even the hardiest of optimists, but it can also force a re-evaluation of your own life, leading you to ask whether your life has truly been a Life Well Lived.
***
And that it has.
My wife has issues playing around on the computer when it's nice outside and there's places you can go. So did my father, who was a certified golf nut.*** If it wasn't raining, he was golfing. If he wasn't golfing, he'd be at a driving range. If he wasn't there, he was outside in the front yard or back yard, practicing with a pitching wedge. And if he wasn't doing that, he'd be watching golf on television.
He loved golf even more than his beloved Xavier Musketeers basketball team, and if you knew my dad, that's saying quite a lot.
But at the same time, Dad subscribed to the Puritan work ethic, which I liked to sum up by using the H.L. Mencken quip that Puritans had "the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be happy." He worked long hours, was a perfectionist, and was never satisfied that something he worked on was "good enough".
If you know me, either in MMOs or in real life, then this meme has probably popped into your head:
Yeah yeah yeah... I get it.
I have tried very hard not to burden my kids with my faults, and I think I've largely succeeded. They study, they play, and they work hard, but they don't overdo it. The girls are obsessive and perfectionists at music, but as long as it's limited to just that localized area, I consider that a success.
But still, my dad didn't have a father figure growing up, and his uncle (who never had kids) was the closest one he had. So he basically imprinted himself upon me, and as time has gone on I've had to fight that Puritan ethic that tells me that playing games without any real focus other than pure fun is a waste of time.****
My wife hasn't exactly helped either, as I can't tell you the number of times we've had a lazy day off and sometime at the end of the day she gets upset that we didn't do anything. She's so used to her parents always doing things outside, visiting places, and simply doing things that the concept of just screwing around and decompressing frequently has the opposite of its intended effect. If we go on vacation, if we're not where we are supposed to be bright and early so that we can maximize "fun" she gets really upset.*****
And if you think you know where this is going, yeah....
I spent the weekend alternating between two wildly contrasting views: that I should stop being an ass and join the guild I raid with (and have Az join another guild comprised of friends I group with on a regular basis); or that I should stop playing MMOs entirely and focus on "better things to do with the life I have left."
There was absolutely no fucking middle ground here.
Both have compelling arguments to them, and when you're listening to sad music from Simon and Garfunkel, the Carpenters, and other staples of my parents' record collection, both feel equally valid.
Or this song from Fannigan's Isle, A local Irish band.
One one side, it only makes sense that I'd finally join the guild I raid with, and at the same time place Az in a guild that has several other friends I run with. After all, they're acquaintances and friends that I enjoy hanging with, and it only makes sense to finally join the club.
However, there's also the risk of burnout.
I've seen some of the guilds currently raiding Naxxramas out there raiding Naxx 5 or 6 nights a week. The sheer number of mats and potions to keep that grind up is absolutely insane, and I don't see how guilds can keep that pace up without cracking soon.
And likewise, I do raid a ton myself. That's because I want to see a lot of the smaller raids put on succeed, such as ZG twice a week and AQ20 on Sundays. Then there's Molten Core Thursday Fun Runs, which I also know need regular raiders to succeed. So I show up because that's what friends do, they support each other. And to be fair, I don't buff myself much for those runs because I'm geared well enough to not require it. Yet I can see where I can't simply keep this going week in and week out.
There's also the push to get "sweatier", as in working harder and harder to get to the top of my raiding game for the progression raids. Other Mages in the guild diligently farmed Necrotic Runes in the Scourge Invasion event and ended up with 6 to 8 stacks (or more) of Blessed Wizard Oil, so they'll have BiS oils for Naxx raids practically going into BC. Me? I had real life to deal with, and managed 3 stacks, which should get me to February. I say to myself that should be good enough, but is it really? Do I really know if I'm measuring up if I'm constantly 6/6?
And there's the perpetual gear grind, and I'm sitting here wondering when I'll ever catch up to the rest of the Mages. I've been assured repeatedly that I'm doing fine, but as I pointed out above, I'm my Dad's son, and that "I'm not good enough" mantra is alive and well within my psyche.
For the other side, it kind of goes without saying. Save some dollars, free up some time to do other things, such as read or fix things around the house, and maybe go out and get back in shape. Without my MMO habit, I'd not be seriously considering building my own PC. That's saving quite a few dollars right there, that could be better spent on "more important stuff".
Like studying my work more, I suppose. I've been told I need to brush up on this or that, or pick up a new skill to keep myself relevant. Dropping MMOs would free up the time for me to do that, and to take the certification exams that do keep me relevant.
And yet, do I want to become my father? Do I want to be dead at age 69? I spent my life running from having "He Did a Good Job at Work" chiseled on my tombstone, so why should I change now?
Do I want to become sweaty at work instead of in a game?
***
What will I do?
/sigh
Fuck all if I know.
I don't have any answers, which is why I wrote this all down.
I am my father's son, for better or worse, and because of that I have my own demons to overcome. And there are plenty of times when that inner voice shouts louder than any voice of reason, whether it comes from myself or my friends or my family. And no matter what I do that voice will still be with me, sowing doubt.
Like I told some of my fellow Mages when I tried to explain what's going on right now, "I need to get my head screwed on straight first, and then maybe I'll be able to do something."
(But it wouldn't surprise me if I just remain in purgatory, in this wandering between the two ends. Because my inner voice would like it like that.)
*At times like this, I pour gasoline onto my internal fire by playing this piece from the Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War. I first heard it about 30 years ago, and every time I listen it feels sadder and sadder, so be warned. And for pete's sake, don't listen to this if you've a couple of drinks in you.
**If you wondered why the blog output declined during that time, now you know.
***When he was growing up, he'd even play golf in the snow; his uncle would take him out to the golf course near old Lunken Airport and they'd play there. My dad was very very good at golf; he could have been a local PGA pro at one of the courses around the county if he wanted to, but he never considered himself good enough to be able to do that. Hell, I'd have liked to have seen him try out for the US Open on the amateur side. As a measure of how good a player he was, he's played at both Pebble Beach (California) and Valhalla (in Louisville, KY), both places on the PGA Tour, and he's either made par or gotten under par. No handicap, just skill.
****How he reconciled his golf obsession (and college basketball obsession) with that work ethic is beyond me, so don't ask.
*****Yeah, vacations are anything but relaxing.
EtA: Added an extra pic. EtA: Corrected some grammar.
The Scourge Invasion continues, with tons of (re) dead Scourge in our wake...
Shouldn't we be burning these piles?
And yesterday was the first day of The Feast of Winter Veil, so I got into the holiday spirit in Ironforge:
Take that, Ao! (Yes, we do know each other in game.)
Another acquaintance decided to continue the fight while his toon was wearing a fancy dress.
But for me, the highlight of the day was this:
It sure looked better before I took the screenshot. Now it looks like Card is hiding her face.
Yes, that is the oldest mini-Red with her first WoW/WoW Classic toon, a baby Hunter.
Her finals are over*, and we obtained a replacement laptop, so here we are.
She was amused that her Night Elf is taller than Card, and made certain to let me know. But she also thought it awesome to actually meet Card in game.
I deliberately laid off a bit so that she could explore on her own. Having played LOTRO for years, she's familiar with more of the Old School MMOs than most people her age, but Classic was even more Old School than that.
You know, with the lack of pointers telling you where to go for a quest.
I did suggest Questie, the add-on that takes care of that, but she said she was fine with learning it the old fashioned way. She was really impressed that even though it's a very old game she felt it was so well put together, which even after all these years I remain impressed by with Vanilla/Classic.
So if I'm on a low level toon in some low level place, you'll know what I'm up to.
And boy, if she thinks she'll be anonymous for long, there are some friends of mine in-game who want to meet her...
*Yes, she's a senior at college. Not so mini anymore.
Early this past Sunday morning, after my wife had left for work, I was catching up on some work* when Discord pinged and I saw that Azuregos had spawned. I've been involved in raids that killed two of the Dragons of Nightmare, but I hadn't had the chance to kill Azuregos yet. So, I quickly responded with an "I'm getting online" and hopped on Cardwyn. I received the raid invite almost as soon as the loading screen finished, and I headed out for Azshara for a morning breakfast with a blue dragon.
Sunday mornings EST on a PST server aren't a great time for a pug, much less a raid for a World Boss, and we made an attempt after temporarily stalling out at 9-10 people. Without any true healers the raid wiped, so as we bandaged our wounded pride we waited for more people to join up. We eventually got about 17 - 18 people, and our decision to wait for 20 was made for us when a couple of scouts for the top guilds on the server began to appear.
We pulled, and once everything settled down, we were able to grind out a kill.
About midway through the fight, someone from the top guild on the server dropped in and asked if we needed a healer. I didn't notice any response --and I wasn't the raid leader either-- so I focused on doing my part to down Azuregos.
Afterward, however, said player struck up a conversation with me.
On the surface of it, the chat was pretty general in nature: how'd we do, any decent drops, how's your guild doing on Naxx, etc. etc. But at the same time, the toon was chatting me up in that he'd seen me around, have I run with his guild before**, what do I think of several different bosses, etc. etc.
At some point the lightbulb went off in my head*** and I thought to myself "Am I being recruited?"
I almost immediately followed that with: "WTF, has he even seen what my DPS is? He's hitting on the wrong player in my raid."
I kept the conversation aboveboard and polite, and eventually it ended and we went our separate ways, but the entire thing was so surreal that I still can't quite wrap my head around it. (Hence this post.) On the one hand, it was entirely likely it was completely innocent conversation. But on the other, after having described it to a friend on the server, he said "Oh yeah, Card, you were definitely being recruited. They just don't want to come out and say it, as some guilds take poaching seriously."
So maybe that was my "brush with greatness" on the server. But I could also say that "There, but for the love of God, go I." That guild is also known as being the sweatiest of the sweaty guilds, and the amount of prep and training and practice that'd take to appear semi-competent in that guild would burn me out faster than you'd believe.
It was flattering, but I vastly prefer the raid team I currently run with. I know my role, I know the people, and the raid suits me well.
And really, nobody wants to be near me if I'm sweaty.
*Don't judge me. I'm not a workaholic, and I knew going into the weekend it had to get done.
**Yes, I've been in some 5-man runs with his guild. Never had a problem there. But at the same time, this was the same guild that the tank from THAT AQ20 run was from. so make of that what you will.
You won't break me
You won't make me
You won't take me
Under blood red skies
You won't break me
You won't take me
I'll fight you under
Blood red skies
--Judas Priest, "Blood Red Skies"**
Okay, I can breathe again.
Our first night in Naxxramas is over, and it only took an hour for me to shake off the adrenaline and finally get some sleep.
Ironically enough, the couple of hours of sleep that I got turned out to be pretty good sleep, because when I woke up and got some coffee in me, I was able to keep plugging along all day without any need for rest.
***
Where to start?
How about 5 days before, on December 3rd, when the Scourge Invasion began.
The view a minute before it started.
Just a normal day in Azeroth, I suppose. Obviously we players all knew what was coming, but the NPCs were blissfully ignorant.
Of course, all that changed.
The skies darkened and the Argent Dawn began the call to arms.
I joined up with a group of my fellow raiders, and our first order of business was to fly up to Light's Hope Chapel to check in and discover what needed to be done to beat the Scourge back.
We arrived to find people across Azeroth answering the call.
We scanned our maps and found that our best bet was to go to Burning Steppes where the region close to Morgan's Vigil was swarming with Scourge. But first, a side trip to Ironforge for a few of us to get some gear, trinkets, and extra potions.
Flying out of Ironforge, we were confronted with a floating necropolis. That's when you realize this is a big deal.
When we landed and rode out to the first invasion site, it was chaos. Just like that first battleground I ever found myself in, I just said "go out there and hit somebody."
Blood Red Skies indeed.
This continued for about 45 minutes until I had to drop for other things, but you kind of get the idea.
***
The next day, while Az was farming herbs in Eastern Plaguelands, she came across our goal:
"Young Mage, I have seen Hell. Elune be with you in that seat of vile darkness."
***
I spent the weekend doing some of the Scourge Invasion, but ironically enough I wasn't able to get online very much as I had other errands to run around town. Even in a pandemic, stuff needs to get done.
But come Monday night, I was nervous. Were we going to be okay? Was I going to be okay? Was I going to look like an idiot in there? Did I have enough gold to cover all the potions I needed?
That last one was bothering me all the way up until an hour before invites went out, and I had to sell some Large Brilliant Shards I'd been stockpiling in order to squeeze all of my requirements in, leaving barely enough gold to cover two or three hefty repair bills. Between all of my toons, I think I had about 25 gold total.
And that 15 gold Card was carrying (Clothies don't need nearly as much gold as Plate wearers for repairs) vanished pretty quickly when I did need to repair my almost completely broken gear twice.
I'm pretty sure I drove my wife nuts by wandering back and forth around the house, sitting down to read up on the strategies, and then getting up again to pace aimlessly. Normally I take a nap to get some rest in, but I simply couldn't do it. So when I zoned in, I was nervous as hell.
Before we buffed and pulled, however, our raid leader had a surprise for us.
Like the Songs from the Raid CD (coming soon, honest!), our raid leader added an extra Discord mic, pulled out a guitar, and sang a Naxxramas and guild themed riff on "Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's entitled "Hey There Valhalla". I hope someone captured the performance, because it was really good. Even the oldest mini-Red approved of Lojze's performance, especially given that Discord isn't the greatest platform for musicality.
"Freebird!" one of my fellow raiders called out after the song was over. If I could have held up a lighter in game, I'd have done it.
After that performance, I calmed down. It was going to be okay. We were gonna do this.
I'm in there somewhere.
We pulled our first piece of trash, and I lived to tell the tale.
That didn't last long, however.
After 3.5 hours, we downed four bosses but were stymied on Heigan the Unclean, wiping 4 times before throwing in the towel as we hit our raid endpoint. In between, we learned that yes, we were ready for this raid, and yes, we are going to die a lot.
I did not win the Turkey Award, much to my surprise. I finished 4th. Ahead of me were three of my fellow Mages, with 17, 15, and 15 deaths each.
Sure, I had to spend almost all of my gold to repair, but it was worth it.
We are going to get better, and we'll figure this out. During my time raiding in AQ40, that's been a staple of this raid team: we wipe, we get back up, we figure things out, and we improve.
We've got this.
*From Dennis Miller's "The Off-White Album", circa 1987. Back in the 80s and 90s, comic Dennis Miller was well known for his encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, and put it to use in his stand-up. This line comes from his commentary about how you live your life following the traffic rules, but in a cruel irony they let your funeral procession run the red lights on the way to the cemetery. "Hey, I'm dead but I'm early!"
**Trust Judas Priest to come up with a piece of music appropriate for the occasion.
I'll have other posts on the last couple of days later, but in the time (currently 1:20 before first pull) before our first try at Naxx I wanted to point out this little post on Wowhead Classic:
The reason why I'm pointing this out is that Redditor Marmotzero is also the co-GM of Valhalla (Myzrael-US) and the Raid Leader for the progression raid team. Yes, it's our beloved Lojze*, who keeps the raid going in a smooth and practiced hand. (And if he finds this post, I'd like for him to explain the origin of the "beer pack", which is the tradition of him drinking a beer (his choice) if we complete a tough pull without any deaths.)
And I should mention that the Wowhead article itself does have one glaring error, that Atiesh was not crafted prior to the fight, but the guild in question had all of the components assembled so they could craft Atiesh right after the kill. (See Lojze's comment in the comments section.)
And for those curious about the original Reddit post, here it is.
So let's have a good first run, and maybe we'll see that beer pack tonight!
*Who is also the guy who finally convinced me to join as the sixth Mage in their AQ40 runs on Labor Day.
And no, I don't believe this is the end point either.
I tried to put a background together, but Blogger just did not like the dimensions of my uploaded graphics, so I've got to come up with something that works.
But yes, after 2012 (roughly) I'm starting to make major changes to the blog design.
Back when black was edgy, the blog looked roughly current. But now, in the Age of Covid, it just looks like a funeral. And I've been to enough funerals this year.
So this is what I've got so far.
It's.... okay. Serviceable, brighter than before, and something I can work with for the time being while I clean stuff up. I've never been able to get a GIF that I liked for the title graphic because it costs money to buy a product that allows me longer frame times, so I'm going to have to pick something out of my screenshots and run with it.
And, truth be told, I need to clean up the sheer size of the sidebars and make it a bit more PC friendly rather than it looking like a MySpace page.
But hey, the black is gone, and that's fine with me.
I don't often write about failpugs these days for two reasons: I've found them pretty rare in WoW Classic, and a lot of the runs I go on these days are with friends online.*
That doesn't mean those failpugs don't exist, however.
I was reminded of that in AQ20 last night. It was a sponsored run by said guild, and I attend regularly because I want to see these runs --Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraq-- to succeed. And for them to succeed, they need a core of people that the raid leader can depend upon to show up week in and week out. Plus, I really like the raid leader's work ethic and how she runs the raid, and this is my way of showing support.
I've done over 15 or so AQ20 runs, so I know the ebb and flow of these raids fairly well. I've even been both a runner and a clicker for Ossirian**, so you know I've been around a bit. We get about roughly half pugs in the AQ20 run, although about 4 or so puggers are regulars, so the number of "true" puggers number about 6.
Last night, that included a tank pugger from one of the top guilds on the server.
I realize that other people's experience may vary, but in my case I've frequently had good experiences with this particular guild, so my first impression was pretty good. And the first few boss events went well too. But by the time we got done with Buru, I began to notice some troubling signs.
Even though this tank was technically the off tank, he'd kind of muscled his way into the main tanking role. Consequently he marked up Buru's eggs the way he wanted it rather than how the raid leader wanted it. After we cleared the two slimes that tend to wander back to Buru's area, the raid leader found the markings and rearranged them. No extra commentary other than "huh, someone already marked these".
I should have realized this was the opening salvo, but I figured it was a basic faux pas.
After Buru, the road to Moam has Obsidian Destroyers and packs of bugs. The strat is simple: burn down the Destroyers --and let the 305 level miners harvest the mining nodes that drop-- and AOE the bugs (standing in the middle so the bugs don't attack people at distance).
Simple, right?
Well, the pug tank decided to do some chain pulls --because we weren't pulling fast enough, I guess?-- with both bugs and Destroyers in the same pull. Of course, that upset the strategy a bit with some of us AOE-ing and others single targeting the Destroyer. For me, the biggest deal was to AOE the bugs because we weren't stacked in the middle, so to avoid their knockback we needed to eliminate them first. The melee could focus on the Destroyer, but of course with that additional time spent in AOE it meant the Destroyer came closer to getting a full mana bar that it ordinarily would. Still, we managed just fine.
Moam came and went without much incident, and the Anubisaths weren't that much of an issue either, except the tank did do some chain pulls without letting the healers breathe.
Oh, and BTW did I mention that we had at least 2 people who'd never been in AQ20 before? No? Well, neither did the tank, who expected everybody to follow his lead and ignore the raid leader's instructions.
Things came to a head against Ossirian, where the first wipe was caused because one of the runners was new to AQ20 and didn't understand that he was to click on the devices on the outer edge of the room, not closer to the middle. No worries, because it happens, but boy did the tank disapprove. He kind of blew up, saying the dude was an idiot and "let me do all the clicking." The second pull we proceeded to wipe because we didn't get the coordination down quite well enough, particularly because the tank expected to be able to do things his way rather than what was expected of him, and the guy started ripping on the main tank, the clicker, the raid leader, and "you don't know how to handle this boss, don't you!"
Well, enough was enough, and the raid leader kicked him from the raid and got the co-GM to kick him from the Discord. The co-GM joined the raid, and after he shook off his rust from not having tanked Ossirian in quite a while we got the boss down. The rest of the raid proceeded without incident.
***
At times like this, I am reminded of what I used to tell the (no longer) mini-Reds back when they were in elementary school: People will judge you by your actions, but if you are wearing clothing with a logo on it they will also judge that logo based on your behavior. Doesn't matter if it's a school or a sports team or even something you like (such as Star Wars): if you're wearing a hoodie with your school on it and you behave like an ass, people will judge that school based on your behavior. It's not fair, but that's how it goes.
From AZ Quotes. Doesn't have quite the zing as in the movie "Miracle". To spare people from seeing it again, go watch the trailer for the 2004 movie if you're interested. Bonus points for Disney using Blue Oyster Cult in the trailer.
I've seen this play out time and again in games and in real life.
If you act like a dick, everybody will associate your dickish behavior with whatever you're wearing or representing. And on the flip side, if you act well toward others people will remember that too.
Hell, Blizz has a version of that on loading screens: "Being polite while in a group with others will get you invited back!"
So why do some people continue to act like jerks?
Hell if I know. I try to always follow the Golden Rule***, so the concept of being a jerk is kind of foreign to me. And when it happens to me directly, I'm more shocked than anything else.
Like the time a week ago while I was farming herbs in Eastern Plaguelands, I stopped to pick up some herbs (want to say Dreamfoil but I'm not sure) and a nearby hound aggroed on me. While I was standing on the node killing the hound, another Alliance toon just rode up, took the herbs, and rode off.
I even said "REALLY?" out loud in game, but that guy didn't give two shits and just rode off to the next node. I knew the person wasn't a bot because I saw him talking in the LFG channel, and I was tempted to call him out there for being a ninja looter. But the reality is that he didn't ninja it at all, because he brazenly rode up and did it.
What gets me the most about that sort of behavior are the taunts if you do call them out, showing that they really don't care: "Oh, look at the baby who can't handle real life" was once response I saw to a person being called out in Trade chat. "Go back to Retail" is another common refrain when being asked to not be an ass in game.
***
I suppose you could say that this is a bit of an improvement from the old days, but when I'm referring to people being overtly racist and sexist in Trade Chat in Wrath, that's kind of a really low bar to jump over.
Still, there's only so much that I personally can do. And most of that is to behave the way I expect others to behave.
And for pete's sake, if you're in a pug or another guild's raid, remember that you're a freaking guest and behave accordingly. Just because you're from a "top guild" doesn't give you carte blanche to be an ass. And I'd hope that if you behaved like that in your own guild's raid/group that guild leadership would do something about that, because if they don't they're basically saying "we're a bunch of assholes and we don't care what you think". In Retail you can get away with that because of cross server grouping, but in Classic? You try that on a server you'll quickly find that you're ostracized.
At least I'd hope so.
Nevertheless, in the words of Bill and Ted:
From giphy.com.
*Yes, that includes the guild I raid with.
**Definitely prefer being the clicker, because if you end up with a Mage as a runner, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
***And no, it's not "he who has the gold makes the rules", even if that is true in real life.
I've been busy at work, but that's not the reason why I've not not posted over the intervening time. I guess the best way of putting it is that I've had trouble trying to articulate what's been going on in my gaming life since even before my post celebrating Shintar's guild's 9/9 AQ40 kill.
***
Part of it is easy: I need to help the oldest mini-Red replace her (literally) creaky laptop. The machine is an old AMD A-10 that struggles to do anything beyond the basics: MS Office 360, browsers, etc.* You could argue that is all a college student needs in a laptop, but come on. Let's be real about this. You're going to want to play games and handle more graphic and processor intensive tasks, and you're going to want a machine that won't be functionally obsolete within a couple of years. Which all points to a more modern chipset + an actual separate graphics card.
Plus you'll want a laptop whose hinges don't stress the casing so much that screw heads have been stripped off of the case. I've dug into my supply of spare screws and come up with a computer screw long enough to add a couple of washers to and then used that screw to hold the case together, but every couple of months that screw works itself loose, and it's just a matter of time before the case itself breaks. And is it worth repairing at that point? Not really; the laptop is 6 years old and driver support is becoming hard to get.
So I've been haunting laptop reviews online and casing the rows of machines at Microcenter.**
When your dreams start looking like this, you've been spending too much time doing research. From microcenter.com.
***
Visiting Microcenter that much hasn't helped me personally, because it has revived my desire to build a PC of my own so that my wife can use the "home" PC and not interrupt me whenever she wants to use it. Part of the reason why I game so late at night --US Eastern Time-- is because I don't have to worry about overlap whenever she wants to use the machine. With a new machine of my own, I won't have to worry about that so much. Additionally, her PC usage is very much limited to social media and browser activity --she games on our Nintendo Wii U-- so the current PC will be perfect for her for years to come.
But you know, there's this thing called a budget, and building a PC isn't part of it.
So I've been trying to beat that urge to build a PC back into the depths of my psyche from where it emerged.
***
That aside, gaming has been... Okay, I guess.
I mean, I hang around with friends, I raid a bit a lot, I run BGs a bit, and I run 5-man instances a bit. I even have managed to spend a little time on an alt or two.
Oh, and I farm a lot to keep up gold for pots for raids, and to allow myself time to think.
With Naxx coming, I've been realizing I need to start work on prepping for that. And with Card's current gearset, she is ideally equipped.... to start running AQ40.
I am not kidding.
With the exception of the cloak and belt, all of my gear is BWL or lower. I've come a long way, but I've also just about gotten to the point where the rest of the Mage team was when they started raiding AQ40 back in August. And I'm only starting to get some of the pieces enchanted, because I figured they'd get replaced so why waste gold enchanting something that's gonna get replaced soon? And with Naxx coming --and our AQ40 runs shutting down shortly-- there's just about no reason to get my hopes up about getting all the mats needed to get the T2.5 Enigma pieces together.***
So I'm looking at taking a Bloodvine set at the core into Naxx. And if you think that's gonna work out well I'd point you to the fact that Bloodvine does not have any Stamina on a single piece. There's a reason when I go to half T1/half T2 for AOE work that my health bar gains 500-1000 health. Once I started going back to that T1/T2 mix for a lot of the AQ40 fights, my survivability went up by a lot.
***
Beyond Naxx I know BC is looming, and with it 25-man raids. Which means that Mages aren't going to be as dominant --DPS wise-- due to changes in the classes, and that dropping down from 40 to 25 means that at least 2 Mages will likely be put on the bench.**** Or, if I'm lucky, a spot on a second raid team, with people's alts and whatnot. Either way, I realize that my time with this current raid configuration is going to be coming to an end in the Spring/early Summer.
And of course somebody just had to post this in the WoW server Discord channel yesterday:
From the Myzrael-US Discord channel. No idea who actually created this version.
As if I needed any reminders that friends of mine from Az's old MC group are struggling to clear content while others have gone back to Retail for the next 2-3 months (at least).
***
At times like this, listening to music is a salve. I can put on anything (in the case of Sunday morning, the Sunday Baroque program found on classical radio stations), begin farming, and just get lost in the music. It's not exactly meditation, but it works for me. Work, the pandemic, social upheaval, family concerns, gaming worries, personal issues#, repair work around the house/car(s), etc.: they all fall away to whatever I put on.
I've commented before on the zenlike nature of this sort of thing, but it doesn't work the same way for other people. Or even myself, for that matter, depending on the situation. Put the right music on before a raid or an instance, and I'll be inspired enough to want to run through a wall. (Well, Card running through a wall, but you get the idea.) But I'm not necessarily going to put on Black Sabbath when I want to chill, either. ##
I just wanted an excuse to post this
music video. After all these years,
this song can still inspire me.
Still, farming to music is a coping mechanism for the situation we've found ourselves in late November, 2020. Here's to hoping you have a coping mechanism as well.
*I've no idea how well it can handle MS Teams, but I'd bet that it struggles there too.
**Our Microcenter store is the second oldest one in the country. I remember when they had their "Buck a Meg" sale back in the early 90s, when you could get a hard drive for the price of a dollar for each megabyte of storage, and everybody at my job thought it was a steal of a deal.
***Have you seen the prices on the auction house for some of these idols? Zoinks.
****And if you think I'm going to be one of the 3-4 kept on the main team, you're in for a surprise. I've been pulling in at 6/6 fairly regularly, and other classes are catching up to me since they've been getting more gear drops.
#Including, I suspect, a mild case of depression. The hints have been there for years, but it's only in the past few months that it's become more obvious to me.
My long time blogger friend Shintar of Priest with a Cause posted this video yesterday, showing her guild's final attempt at taking out the last boss in AQ40, Viscidus:
Congrats to Shintar and the rest of the Order of the Holy Fork for the kill!!!
I did notice that unlike how our raid got rid of the poisons, I believe they were using Elixir of Poison Resistance instead of Immature Venom Sacs, but outside of that we used a similar strategy.
Shintar, did everybody have a stack of 20 to work with?
Oh, and it does look weird to see your bars, with all of the Hunter abilities instead of my Mage (or Rogue) abilities. And I think the Tranq Shot addon is awesome.
