Talk to the Invisible Hand

It's a fairly well known item that I disagreed with the direction Blizzard took with the storyline in WoW, post Wrath of the Lich King. I need not rehash them here, but I should clarify one item: while I disagreed with the storyline --and the soap opera style transformation of some NPCs, such as Tyrande and Jaina-- that doesn't preclude whether I like the art style behind their look. So when I say I dislike the storyline that led to the destruction of Theramore --and the radicalization of Jaina*-- that doesn't mean that I dislike Jaina's current art design. 

Putting it another way, I hated the story that got her there, but I appreciate Jaina's art look much better than her original bare midriff look.**

From this original model...

To this. All pics from Wowhead.
On that first model, if she were
one of my kids I'd be tickling her.
It's waaay too easy of a target for
me to not be tickling my daughters.

The artwork is fine and all, but what gets me annoyed is this:

From the Blizzard Gear
store. Actually quite impressive.

Oh, not the statue itself, because I think it looks nice, and to be fair the Sylvanas statue looks good too:

Again, very well done.

But what annoys me is the price tag for these statues: $399 US each. (Plus Tax and Shipping.)

Even with the current 30% off coupon (which ended yesterday), each of those statues would be $279.30 US. 

What. A. Bargain. 

My ass.

Who has that sort of money lying around for this? It's not an action figure, it's a collectors item. But I have a hard time shelling out that sort of money for these "premium statues", whether they're 18" (~46 cm) tall or not. Don't get me wrong, they look nice enough that I'd not mind having one, but I expected the price point to be around $50 US or something, not 8x that. 

I guess I'm not "whale" enough for Blizz. 

***

In a way, this covers a lot of the excess in the video game (and gamer) industry.

If you're an executive or marketer in the gaming industry, you don't need to cater to everybody. You only need to cater to enough Whales to keep yourself afloat. Or just utilize the strategy that Torulf Jernström promotes:

Warning: watching this might piss you off.

But the thing is, this sort of targeting of a very specific subset of player is legal, but it sure doesn't feel ethical. It's preying upon people's weaknesses to make money. And because you're targeting a very specific subset of people, you're also inadvertantly locking everybody else out. Oh, sure, you can claim that "hey, anybody can buy those loot boxes" or "anybody can buy that statue", but the reality is most people won't waltz on in and spend money like that. They have budgets and other things that override their desire for what you're selling.

This is targeting the people with poor willpower.  

To the game industry, it's just normal behavior. But it shouldn't be. This isn't me complaining that a statue costs too much, because I'd have a hard time pulling the trigger at $50 (budgets, you know). This is more along the lines of that I'm tired that the industry is constantly making themselves look like asshats when they know that this looks bad. I'm tired of people hand waving that if it makes money, it must be okay. That somehow the invisible hand of the market will provide ethics in addition to profits.

But here's the thing: markets don't care about ethics. People do. And if you want ethics, people have to provide it.

I guess what I'm saying in so many many words is that the video game industry needs to clean up its act. From mistreatment of employees to poor pay to whale hunting to an overall lack of ethical behavior, the industry has a lot to clean up. And for every "not my problem" or "I just wanna play games" or "shut up, you SJW!", you're encouraging the poor behavior. If you were treated like this in a face to face encounter, you'd be upset. So why are you fine with it when the person in your face is hidden behind a screen?

(But for the record, I'd still like one of those statues. Not very fond of the Thrall one, tho. His clothing is too busy for my mind. And where's Tyrande, Baine, or Malfurion?)

 

*To be completely honest, I'd bet money that the entire questline/storyline was done simply to provide an excuse to "radicalize" Jaina. It wasn't needed, and it definitely was not consistent with the storyline. And a radicalized Jaina wouldn't have pulled back from the brink, either, just because Thrall and her dragon boyfriend asked her to. Radicalized is radicalized, and Blizz' story team should have completed the story that way it's turned out in real life over centuries (and turned her into a Vlad the Impaler type seeking vengeance), or they should have done something else entirely.

Likewise, the "let's destroy Teldrassil" storyline served only to make the Horde the Baddies of BfA and to radicalize Tyrande herself. I don't really care for the "real" explanation that came later, because that's only so much handwaving. And like Theramore, it was only a cutscene showpiece rather than a natural progression of the personalities of the people involved. 

 **There's a post here that I have to finish, about how Cardwyn's personality is based on a merging of both of my daughters' personalities, but they've both surprised me lately by their clothing/fashion choices. This will cause me to re-evaluate Card's own approach to fashion, because if I merely imposed my own fashion choices on Card, it wouldn't just feel right. Card's her own personality, and I am definitely not a woman, so I don't have a woman's approach to fashion. That's where the girls come in.

A Bit of Catharsis

Vidyala posted one last time on Manalicious, remembering Rades. 

And We Walked Out Once More Beneath The Stars

Please go and take a look. And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go outside for a bit longer.

Oh, and there's now a new page for From Draenor With Love. It's not all restored, but it's getting closer.

Something that Adele Dazeem* Would Sing About

I have been learning, slowly, to let go of the death grip that WoW Classic had on me the past 2+ years.

When I was unguilded, it was much easier to just relax and log in whenever I felt like it. Even when I was a part of Retail Orphans there were no organized guild activities, so there was no reason to try to login every day and do something. I could relax when I needed, and push myself when I wanted to. 

Next time, USE MORE FIBER!!

 

My first forays into regular raiding, in Molten Core, had a low level of commitment --one on Tuesday evening and one on Friday night-- so if I wanted to I could spend the rest of the week doing other things without any worries at all.

 

The epitome of "not worrying":
Dancing atop the Deathforge.

All that changed a year ago, when after a couple of months of persistent hounding/recruiting** I finally relented and joined a progression raid team. 

At that time, I really didn't have a lot of outside commitments --a pandemic and only one kid still at home will do that-- so raiding filled my late night activities after my wife went to bed.*** But I couldn't just leave it be, and like any other addict --low grade or not-- my in-game commitments continued to climb as 2020 turned into 2021.

When you've got two Warlocks in
raid, you bet there's gonna be some
boom-boom going on.

And now, I'm part of a Raid Leadership team, reviewing boss strategies and condensing them into something easily understood. Or getting pings about joining the guild --each time I have to explain that I don't have the authority to throw out guild invites, as I'm not an officer-- or reaching out to people when my Spidey-sense goes off and I think that things aren't okay with someone.****

"Show off!!" said the water
walking Shaman.

 

It's very easy for WoW --or any MMO, really-- to slip into being a job, where you have to login and have to do things. And me, being the responsible person I am, did just that. To be fair, it's a better job than most people's "regular" jobs.

Oh, for pete's sake, it's not that
bad. Will you just clean the
damn toilet this time?

But it also means work when you're supposed to be enjoying yourself.

***

The week I took my son back to college, I quit playing WoW early because I was going to have to leave at 7:30 AM EST. And by the time I returned from my adventure to NW Pennsylvania I was wiped out and went to bed early. The day after, I got back to work and by the time I'd caught up with an extra day's worth of work I just looked at WoW and said "Nah, not today." 

And I must admit those three days without WoW Classic were... glorious. 

Nothing to do, nobody to help out, and I was happy to just not be around.

I woke up early, got on Friday morning, and saw nobody was on, so.....

Nice to just get that finished without any "why didn't you turn it in back in Classic?" questions from people.*****

I saw what happened those three days, and I felt recharged, so I decided I'd take a few days off again this week. And you know what? It felt even better. I was back to where I was before I filled up all my days with raids, where I could goof off and enjoy myself without constantly having to get sweaty all the time.

Such as dancing with the glitched
succubi in Heroic Arcatraz.

Have I mentioned before that I'm so happy that I have a main whose dance is NOT The Macarena?

*Remember this? John Travolta at the Oscars back in 2014 had a massive brain fart while introducing Idina Menzel prior to her singing Let It Go from Frozen, calling her Adele Dazeem instead. Like the pro she is, she shook off any distraction the massive screw up gave her and belted Let It Go out of the park.

**I personally prefer "being hounded", but I know that they officially said I was "recruited". Or convinced. Whatever.

***I've always been a night owl, whereas she's a morning person. I'm still not sure how we ended up together.

****Okay, I do that all the time anyway, but my reaching out now carries more weight because of that leadership role, I suppose. 

*****Because there was no need for me to turn it in. Somebody always had an Ony head around, so I didn't need to do it myself.

EtA: Corrected the comment numbering.

Rades Would Have been Proud

"So this is the end," Tanis said. "good has triumphed."

"Good? Triumph?" Fizban repeated, turning to stare at the half-elf shrewdly. "Not so, Half-Elven. The balance is restored. The evil dragons will not be banished. They remain here, as do the good dragons. Once again, the pendulum swings freely." 

"All this suffering, just for that?" Laurana asked, coming to stand beside Tanis. "Why shouldn't good win, drive the darkness away forever?"

"Haven't you learned anything, young lady?" Fizban scolded, shaking a bony finger at her. "There was a time when good held sway. Do you know when that was? Right before the Cataclysm!"

"Yes"--he continued, seeing their astonishment-- "the Kingpriest of Ishtar was a good man. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't, because both of you have seen what goodness like that can do. You've seen it in the elves, the ancient embodiment of good! It breeds intolerance, rigidity, a belief that because I am right, those who don't believe as I do are wrong.

"We gods saw the danger this complacency was bringing upon the world. We saw that much good was being destroyed, simply because it wasn't understood. And we saw the Queen of Darkness, lying in wait, biding her time; for this could not last, of course. The overweighted scales must tip and fall, and then she would return. Darkness would descend upon the world very fast. 

"And so --the Cataclysm. We grieved for the innocent. We grieved for the guilty. But the world had to be prepared, or the darkness that fell might never have been lifted."

-from Dragons of Spring Dawning, by Margaret Weis and Terry Hickman.

 

Perusing old entries at Rades' Orcish Army Knife blog was a trip down memory lane. The Fabulor posts alone were worth it, but in the middle of the myriad posts I found one of Rades' personal annoyances: his belief that the Naaru ought to be evil. His suppositions were in place back in 2012, long before the Warlords of Draenor or Legion expansions, so his beliefs predate any of the rigidity exhibited by Y'rel and the Prime Naaru. 

But what got me to thinking was a post by Bellular Gaming last week about speculations for what might be the next WoW Retail expac. 

 

Michael Bell speculates about how the rigidity and intolerance reflected in the alternate universe Draenei and Naaru, coupled with the same form of intolerance from Turalyon, could result in the Light being the Big Bad of the next expac, one that Michael calls Lightbearer. 

Imagine, if you will, the sort of rigidity the breeds a purging of the ranks of the Alliance of all traditions not directly affiliated with the Light: Shamans, Druids, Mages, Warlocks. Or an Alliance that embraces such intolerance and implements it in an overthrow of House Wrynn in Stormwind and support of the Scarlets, which then turns its collective eye upon the Horde and those parts of the Alliance that support tolerance.

Rades would have been so proud about that sort of plotting. 

A Star Shines on the Hour of our Meeting

The other night I got a ping on Facebook Messenger from an old friend.

Around the same time PC was starting up, another blog about pugging instances to L80 began posting. The blog, Pugging Pally, soon showed up on my radar via the late blogs Righteous Orbs and The Pink Pigtail Inn, and over the course of several months the owner of the blog, Vidyala, and I became friends. Over the years, she completed her Pugging Pally experiment and went on to create a new blog, Manalicious, featuring her Mage, Millya. She also wrote the Mage column for WoW Insider for a few years, but she is probably most well remembered in the WoW/Blogger community for the webcomic she began with another friend and blogger, Rades: From Draenor With Love.*

From Draenor was one of those webcomics that really sunk its hooks into you and never let you go. I, of course, knew both Rades (from Orcish Army Knife) and Vidyala, so I had a personal reason to keep up with the webcomic, but it was nice to see that they'd developed a following over the years FDWL was active. Rades and Vid had a defined story with an ending in mind, and they stuck to their guns. It's been a few years since FDWL ended, and the website is no longer active was hacked and taken offline, which greatly saddens me, but even though both Rades and Vid had largely moved on from their blogging activities by then it was always a great reminder of how things were in the mid to late 2010s. 

So when Vid pinged me and asked if we could talk, I stopped what I was doing and waited for her phone call.

***

The moment I said hello, I knew something was wrong.

"Is everything okay?" I remember asking.

"No, it's not," Vidyala replied, her voice breaking. "Red, Rades died."

"What?" I asked, stunned. "Oh no! What happened?" 

"We're not sure yet." Vid paused for a moment to collect herself, and then told me how they discovered him.** She then apologized about crying and being a mess, which I assured her was no problem at all. If I hadn't been so stunned about the turn of events, I'd have been crying too.

***

Even now, a couple of days later, I'm still having trouble processing this. 

I kept myself busy at work, and doing some research on some bosses for the upcoming Phase 2 raids, but I kept returning to the phone call, and my helplessness at being unable to do anything. Rades lived on the other side of the continent, and Vid lived a Province away from him, and there was no way I could simply drop everything and go out there.

I wanted to tell the world about this immediately, but Vid requested that I keep quiet so that she could reach out to people and inform them separately. She didn't want people to find out about something like this via a post or a Tweet. "Okay," I replied. "Sounds good. I'll wait a few days."

As it turns out, she pinged me last night to let me know that she'd gone ahead and Tweeted about it, so I could publish my post.

But the problem is that I don't know how to say what I want to say. I've started this post about a half dozen times and I lose my way each time. 

***

Rades was smart, funny, and also very very shy. Vid related a story to me about the time the two of them first met face to face, and how she asked what is favorite food was so that they could go grab something to eat. Rades kind of hemmed and hawed about it, finally saying something along the lines of "Steak.... and potatoes... I guess...." When I told the story to my oldest, she laughed and said that Rades sounds "exactly like my brother!"

And if you'd read any of his numerous posts about Azeroth, you'd see the humor within. From his Fabulor posts to his Onion-style news reports, Rades enjoyed poking fun at the absurd in Azeroth. 

From Fabulor's Love Fool Guide,
found on www.orcisharmyknife.com.

 

What I will remember Rades the most for, however, are the times he participated in NaNoWriMo. He could have just as easily written a complete work of fiction, but Rades put his own spin on the concept twice by writing a series of fictional letters, entitled Letters from Northrend (2010) and  Letters from a Shattered World (2011). Getting inside the head of a ton of WoW NPCs and publishing them as separate correspondence was both classic Rades and an impressive feat by itself. 

I was always in awe of his writing talent; he could pump out posts with such regularity and high quality that I wished I knew what his secret was. Knowing Rades, though, he'd probably shrug and say that he just wrote what he felt like writing.

With his talent for storytelling and plotting, it was no surprise that I found out that he played D&D. He must have been a helluva person to game with; could you imagine him as your DM? You'd always have to be on your toes and have an encyclopedic knowledge of the storyline, because Rades was always thinking about 4-5 steps ahead of everyone else.

***

As sad as I am that Rades has left us, I'm sadder still for those whose lives he touched and won't be able to see him again. We were friends via our mutual love of WoW and blogging, but we weren't close. I wish there were words I could convey to comfort those, such as Vidyala, whom he meant so much to. When Vid told me that her best friend was dead, it tore me up inside. I may have lost family to Covid, but nothing like this. 

Remembering Rades is a good thing, but being respectful of those who want to just shut down for a while is important, too. Give them space and time to grieve, but be ready to be there for when they need you. 

I miss you, Rades. I miss your humor, your love of words, and your love of gaming. Even more than that, I miss you because of what you meant to so many other people. I have no idea if you ever realized just how much you meant to us.

To those of us still here, maybe the best way to honor Rades is to reach out to someone to let them know how much they matter. Be there for them for a while. Listen to them, and give them a hug, virtual or not.

Thank you, Rades. Life isn't the same without you, but I'm glad we met and got to know each other. 

Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo.

*Vid told me the website had been hacked, and she and a friend are working on restoring it.

**Which will remain private.

The Blind Leading the Blind

(When I posted this, a half an hour later Blizz posted that Phase 2 will launch on September 15th. And they confirmed that there will be new Fresh WoW Classic servers. I'd have preferred the end of September, but I'll live with mid-September.)

 

When TBC Classic launched, I found it anything but fun.

I and the other leveling Shamans were kicked to the curb, as if we didn't exist, while everybody else rushed in. We were expected to get leveled and then attuned to Karazhan pretty much on our own, even though everybody else was working together. I had the (slightly) easier job of having my Gruul/Mags raids start at the end of July, but some of the other leveling Shamans had a much harder job of getting leveled, attuned, and geared in time for the first week of July, and I did not envy the work ahead for them. It was only at the very end of the journey did people suddenly become interested in our progress, because they quickly discovered that a lack of Shamans and Healers were a huge problem for raid teams.

All of this is old news to anybody who has read the blog over that time. 

But now, looking back on the two months from pre-patch up through mid-July, I don't think anybody --myself included-- knew just how dark of a place I found myself in. 

Well, my oldest noticed. 

She'd battled depression before, and from about early June onward she started checking in on me daily to make sure I was doing okay. While I assured her I was going to be fine, and I was just grumpy about the whole thing, she wasn't buying it at all. It's kind of strange, now that I look back on it, that I can tell when she was satisfied that I'd pulled through because she stopped checking in on me so much about mid-July.

Even then, I chalked my feeling down more to something akin to a mid-life crisis than anything else.

***

When I was mired in the middle of this, the only thing that kept me going was the sense of duty toward the commitment I'd made. The days were a blur: wake up, get into work, work for a bit, level a bit during lunch, work some more, then after work it was a 2-3 hour nap + dinner, then leveling until I reached my 3 levels per day (to get to L60). After I reached Outland, it was questing and leveling until I couldn't keep my eyes open. Each day, I probably got only 3-4 hours a sleep, including the nap. That amount of sleep was a blessing, because my dreams were filled with shadowy, nameless people berating me for being so slow and being such a detriment to the team, whether it was work or WoW or whatever else I found myself doing in dreamland. 

It didn't help that I was being slammed at work, and I could easily have worked 10 extra hours per week if I chose to just to maintain what my workload was at the time.*

***

If I knew what was good for me, I should have just quit.

Some people did; they simply just stopped logging in and vanished without a trace.** And you know what pissed me off even more? Two of them were 2/3 of the Mages slotted for our Monday raid. Not the Core Four Mages from Naxx, but the other two that rounded our team to six.

You know, the ones I gave up my spot as Cardwyn for so they could have a spot in raid. 

If you thought that made me a bit angry, you underestimated my fury. By a factor of 10.

At the same time, I knew I wasn't going back to Cardwyn. That their vanishing without a trace in a weird sort of way stiffened my resolve to NOT bring Card to Outland, weeks before I thought of trying to level her in the Old World.*** I wasn't going to quit on Briganaa, not after having gone through everything to get her there. And I sure as hell wasn't going to level another toon to L70 just because I wanted my favorite Alliance Mage in raid.

But what their quitting did do was break me out of my depression. 

***

Much to my surprise, it wasn't the Karazhan raids or even when we finally went to take on Gruul and Mags that got me started on a way out, but that others quit instead of me. Here were these people who had everything they wanted: a toon already at L60, a guaranteed spot in a raid, and they even got to raid on the toon they wanted. And they couldn't do it. 

Was it a perverse sort of satisfaction that got me moving again? Maaaybe? But I think it was, even more than that, the recognition from leadership that there were problems with how things went down, given the number of people who quit. And when people ask me about it, I am not shy about saying that I wouldn't wish that leveling experience on anybody. 

***

Why talk about this now? Why not just keep quiet about it, or wait until much later?

Part of it is because Kaylriene wrote this post in which I saw myself.

But even more than that, because I've logged into the Myz Discord recently and see people --invariably from the top guilds-- bitching that Phase 2 isn't out yet.

Or this snapshot, taken from
the WoW forums.
Courtesy of the Myz Discord.

 

That "everybody already has all their gear from the raids".

That they're all ready to go, and Blizz is taking too long to get problems with the raids in the Test Realm fixed. 

Basically, it's "I'm bored!" but posted in a Discord server.

For that attitude, I have two words:

FUCK YOU

No, not everybody has "all the gear from their raids".

No, not everybody who has been "trying at all" hasn't been nearly full BiS for a month.

No, not everybody is attuned to Phase 2 raids.

No, not everybody has been clearing all the raids since Week 2.

No, not everybody plays 6+ hours of WoW a night. 

I look at this attitude and see the seeds of the attitude that saw me sink into that FOMO led depression, that empty feeling that tells you that "you'll never escape from my clutches and amount to anything, so why try?"

It's not my effing problem that you rushed ahead, finished so damn early, and are now stuck twiddling your thumbs wondering what to do. You chose this. Nobody told you that you had to rush ahead and do all the things as if your ass was on fire. For every person whining that Blizz isn't releasing things on the schedule that you want, there's guilds out there, slogging away, just trying to progress in Karazhan or Gruul/Mags. 

Every week that Blizz works on bugs and doesn't drop Phase 2 means that there's an extra week for everybody that had felt so far behind. That people who can't afford the time investment to farm and do stuff 4+ hours a night every night won't feel even farther behind. Blizz put all those rep grinds and attunements there for a reason, and forcing yourself through them early is just setting yourself up to not have much to do for the next year and a half.

And for pete's sake, if you're whining about the release of Phase 2 and in the next breath you're complaining that the Political Correctness Police are after Blizzard, then you obviously don't know what "personal responsibility" means, do you? You can't seriously be talking about personal responsibility when Blizz changes McCree's name in Overwatch and then demand that Blizz release Phase 2 because you're bored since you rushed ahead and did all the things over a month ago, right?

***

Sigh.

That was a load off my chest.

So in the end... Yes, Shintar, you were right to worry about me, and it was probably worse than you thought it was. I just couldn't see it. But thanks for caring.

 

 

*Narrator: "He didn't."

**And in at least two cases, replacements vanished as well. I was flabbergasted at that, as one of them had actually server transferred to join our raid team, and the first thing they did when they got here was... to join a Karazhan pug from another guild, forgetting about our own Kara raids a few days later. I will say that none of the leveling Shamans quit, however. If anybody could have not been blamed for dropping out, it was The Leftovers, but we all made it through the gauntlet.

***Yeah, the old "and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" routine. In case anyone ever questions whether that sort of reaction in the face of obvious misfortune is possible, I'm here to say "Yeah, it's realistic."

EtA: Fixed grammar in the first couple of sentences. And a missing half sentence; not sure where it went.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

You want some motivation on blogging?

Well....

From diy-despair.com.

And that's that.

Oh, you want one more? Here ya go....

Tiamat has all grown up.

A Messy, Sloppy Situation

Kayrliene has an interesting post about Retail WoW's problems and strengths, entitled Strong Core, Weak Fluff - The Real Weakness of Modern World of Warcraft. His contention is that while the core gameplay (and he deliberately sidestepped the story here) is and remains strong, it's the borrowed systems --the Azerite/Covenant quests from two recent expacs, for example-- that are Modern WoW's weak point.

I found the article interesting and was about to comment when I realized that my focus, on the story, had pretty much been written off by Blizzard as a lost cause.

If World of Warcraft were an IT organization, assuming the 3 year depreciation cycle, my resources would have been depreciated 4 years ago and taken off the books. My basic assumption, that Blizzard learned the wrong lessons from Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and went in a story direction that turned WoW's story into a soap opera among the faction leads, has already been discounted by Blizzard based on their lack of interest in returning the faction leads to a more remote viewpoint and centering the story --as it were-- on us.

For people like me and other people who felt WoW lost its way in Cataclysm and beyond, Blizzard created Classic and TBC Classic,* patting us on the head and telling us to "go play and let the big kids alone to enjoy Retail."

But the thing is, without us, WoW hasn't consistently maintained subs at 9 million or higher ever since Cataclysm released. Sure, there's the spike around Legion, but that was just a spike, not a consistently maintained number of subs. And to be honest, I would never base my entire product strategy on "getting a quick spike so we can claim 'we're back!'", because spikes are just that: volatility in the face of declining subscriptions. 

And that's the thing: Blizz hasn't released sub numbers in years because anybody can smooth out the spikes and see the downward spiral in front of them.

***

"Modern" WoW has become spiky in nature in part because of Blizzard's 'the game begins at endgame' philosophy, and in part because of Blizzard's emphasis on faction leaders and cutscenes to propel the story forward. The former ought to be obvious, because if the game begins at endgame, then people will rush to get to endgame, complete a raid or two, and then say "I'm bored" in Trade Chat and log until the next patch. That by itself is unsustainable, because you've conditioned your player base to only login when something new is there, rather than there's things to do all the time that aren't a waste of time.

Believe it or not, not everybody wants to run Mythic or Mythic Plus.

When the dev teams focus on Endgame processes alone and don't harness the other stuff --the 17 years of other content that is just sitting there, unused, because Blizzard couldn't find a consistent way to keep all that old content useful without upsetting their current Endgame focus-- then you're just conditioning your player base to simply ignore 90+% of everything every dev ever created.

And that's not a healthy ecosystem.

The latter might not be quite so obvious, since cutscenes and faction leader content seem to get the current player base juiced, but the emphasis on those two items and their manifestation in game** take away from what the game is really about: us.

Back in Wrath days, Anne Stickney --long before she joined Blizzard-- wrote in WoW Insider how WoW is the story of us. We are the ones who make Azeroth tick, and it is us and our deeds that make the game come alive. 

And now, looking from Wrath to Shadowlands, it seems that WoW is no longer the story of us, but of those NPCs instead. We're just lackeys who do their bidding. These NPCs drive the story, are the emphasis on the cutscenes, and given the way Warlords of Draenor, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands unfolded, were the damn reason these three expacs even existed. These three expacs started because of a faction leader's actions. And two of the three are the worst received expacs in WoW. Never forget that. 

When I was a youngster and back at college, in my History of Western Civilization (Up to 1789) class, one throw-away item from the Professor stuck with me all these years: the last English King to die in battle was.... Richard III. In 1485. Before Cristobal Colon's first voyage. A mere 33 years after Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. Over 500 years ago. 

So... Just how often have we seen faction/racial leader turnover in WoW and Warcraft? 

Very often. 

Roman Emperor type of often.*** Or barbarian tribe type of often.

Which is kind of nuts.

A WoW faction lead dying of old age, in bed, just hasn't happened yet in game. And what gets me the most is that if you're a faction lead or a huge NPC****, you're going to have a bodyguard around you large enough that it would take a brigade to cut through to kill you off. And even then, you're most likely to be captured for ransom and/or better terms in war.

But I digress.

***

From my perspective, the biggest thing that's ailing WoW the most is the thing that should give WoW such an unfair advantage over all other MMOs: the sheer size of the content. Blizzard has all this content, but instead the active game is only a very tiny sliver of the actual content itself, which is whatever the latest patch is. Blizzard is self-isolating, and it can't break out of this problem.

Timewalking, to be perfectly and bluntly honest, doesn't do shit. It only focuses on dungeons and raids of one particular expac for one particular point in time, and that's a temporary focus as well.

If you want to re-engage with older content, make it relevant.

Oh wait, that's right. Every single expac has their own separate borrowed system, whether it's Azerite for BfA or badges for T9/T10 sets in Wrath, and each one is totally worthless when the next expac drops. 

And with every couple of expacs, someone gets the idea to go mess up Dalaran again. 

Or blow up Theramore. 

Or destroy Teldrassil.

Or retake Stromgarde.

Or just in general destroy the Old World.

Kind of hard to go back and integrate old content when the content isn't even there, is it? When your oldest content in game is in the "original" Outland, because Vanilla WoW simply doesn't exist in Retail. You can't create a new toon and head out for Northshire Abbey and spend all your time in Vanilla.

Welp, I guess that kind of kills it. There's no going back, and Blizzard seems dead set on making sure that only a small sliver of the history of WoW is useful to its player base. It's kind of sad that the part in WoW's history where all the content was easily accessible to all players was at the end of Wrath. Cataclysm ushered in an era of rebuilding without a clear realization as to what the long term impact on the game would be. To that end, I'll harness a quote meant for those who were clamoring for Vanilla servers, but in a twist can now be used in hindsight on Cataclysm and later expacs, given Retail WoW's current state:

"You think you do, but you don't."

*And, to be totally honest, to try to get some money out of "official" servers from those who would otherwise be inclined to go play on private servers instead.

**And in the books, the short stories, the posters, etc.

***For every Trajan or Marcus Aurelius, there's a Commodus.

****Importance wise, not physically wise. Although I swear WoW's design showing important NPCs so much larger than anyone else drives me nuts. There is no way Jaina is going to play Center for the Washington Mystics of the WNBA, so stop making her and the other NPCs so physically large that they look absolutely silly.

Mighty Morphin' FOMO Fighters

You know that FOMO thing? How it was my persistent bugaboo while leveling Briganaa, but at the same time it afflicted people who were caught up in the big wave of people rushing to L70? Well, it's still there, lurking, while Phase 2 draws closer and closer. The thing is, for me what FOMO represents has morphed into something completely different than what it originally manifested as.

After all, I finally got myself attuned and have been raiding Kara and Gruul/Magtheridon, and the gear has been dropping.* I've also steadily progressed through the attunement process for SSC and The Eye, so I only need two more Heroic instances (and our weekly Magtheridon kill) and I'm finished. Slow and steady wins the race.

And, more importantly, I have not gotten on the "get all the alts to L70" or "get a spellcloth farm going" bandwagon that people have been jumping on. I've got Brig, and that's it. Sure, my options can be somewhat limited at times, but the fact that I don't have to worry about leveling an alt and getting them raid or BG ready means I don't have to deal with that aspect of the FOMO again. And when/if I get around to leveling an alt, it will be in such a relaxed state that I'm not going to worry about ever getting into a raid.

Instead, FOMO has morphed into the need to help everybody else on the raid team. 

We have several people on the raid team who are far behind on attunements, mainly due to recent recruitments or that their toon on Monday's raid is an alt, and they need help in getting their attunements done. And all of the raid leads have been trying to help out, making sure that instances are organized/run with an eye toward getting the raid team attuned.

And that means Brig has been running instances too. Not the ones she needs, but the ones that everybody else needs. And on days like Tuesday where I had to log early because of Wednesday's trip taking my son back to college, I felt really guilty having to do that. Yes, everybody knows that family comes first, but that doesn't mean I don't feel guilty about not being there. 

The same thing applies to one of the items I farm a lot, Fire Motes. I farm them to help my questing buddy keep herself in raid potions, and I also farm them to sell on the AH. Well, with the raid team helping to get the resistance gear the tanks need for Phase 2 by everybody tithing a set amount of gold (so that our resident AH wizard can get us the best deal on mats) that means any extra Fire Motes could potentially be snapped up off the AH by my raid team. Which I feel awfully guilty about, since I know what our AH wiz is up to, so instead I've just been donating the Primal Fire I've been accumulating instead. The quicker we get our Primal Fire knocked out, the quicker I can go back to making some gold off the AH.

In a way, my lack of desire to get an Epic Flying Mount means I can afford to not have to aggressively go after gold the way everybody else has, so I can relax a bit. I'm sitting around 3000 gold, which I can maintain by some instance runs and selling my excess Netherweave Cloth off. **

But there's always this guilt and nagging feeling like I should be doing more, and I have to constantly tell myself that if I tried to do more I'd burn myself out and that would be that.

So.... I'm coping. Yeah, coping is a better word than managing at this point in time.

*In a relative sense. There's only been one piece of gear from our Gruul/Mags raid night that I considered rolling on, and it was only after the fact that I was kicking myself for letting someone else handle the Loot Master gig while I rolled on it. Most of the gear that would be considered best in slot (BiS) either come from Karazhan or are crafted. And yes, I've been slowly working on my Leatherworking; it's just not been a priority.

**Seriously, how can people still need Netherweave like they have? The stuff drops off of mobs and out in the field like crazy. I sell about 20 stacks a week, and they're easily replenished. On top of that, I still have about 30 stacks sitting in my mail as a reserve. If I were actively farming Netherweave, I could probably get about 100 stacks in a week.

Reflections

One thing about Blaugust --and other prompt type events-- is that if you've been around long enough you've pretty much answered all the questions. 

PC is --by far-- not the longest running MMO blog out there, but even in it's almost 12 years of existence I've answered enough "About Me" questions that I'm tempted to just share links to previous times I've answered those particular prompts. In lieu of regurgitating things, some bloggers turn to unique methods of answering these questions.

I give props to Kaylriene to providing a unique, photo driven way of answering the About Me prompt with his Getting to Know You Round 2, showing off his "work" area and all the cool things inside.* I don't have such a cool spot to game, because sitting at an old dining room table in what would in past years been a formal Dining Room** isn't exactly that cool to look at. (Who wants to look at bills and notes scribbled on paper, anyway?)

And believe me, I've seen cool gaming rooms, because my sister-in-law's husband has one in their basement:

This is one end of the room....

...and the other end, complete with
a booze collection. I was told not to take
a pic of the gaming table because "it's a mess."

At one point I was attempting to put in a gaming area in our basement --where my "office" used to be, but it ran into one inevitable part of life with three kids: we needed a place to stick their stuff as they grew up, and the gaming area became that place.

Therefore, we game as we always have: boardgames/RPGs are played at the kitchen table, console games on the television in the room next to the kitchen, and PC games on laptops (kids) or the desktop (me and my wife) in their rooms or my "office".

***

It's not as if my entire gaming history has changed much, either. 

My tolerance toward my kids' activities has been driven by my own parents' lack of the same. I don't need to rehash this, but my surviving parent --my mother-- still thinks to this day that D&D is Satanic. She told me once a few years ago that she was glad my kids "never got into that Satanic role playing stuff" like I did. I kept my mouth shut, because that wasn't a hill to die on, but I had a good laugh with the kids afterward. 

This tolerance extended into the kids' real life as well. I was never allowed to be in my room with the door closed until my Senior year of high school, and even then that was because I would be working on my two term papers for English class until late into the night. The tapping of the typewriter was too loud to leave the door open, and so my parents relented only so that they could get some sleep. 

When I came back home from my Freshman year of college, I hoped that I would be given the latitude and freedom I felt back there, but I discovered that I was wrong. 

Oh, so very wrong. 

I was still required to be home by 10 PM and in bed by 10:30. I was still expected to be at dinner at 6 PM, no matter what, although in the unlikely event I was on a date there was a bit of flexibility.*** I was also expected to go to Church in spite of my own creeping dislike for organized religion, which was fueled by a slow burning fury how the Evangelical Christian movement --exemplified by television evangelists-- stoked the Satanic Panic over my music and my gaming activities. All of that fueled my desire to be back at college, even during the Summer, no matter what it took. 

Even after I was married, my dad tried to exert some measure of control over me but soon discovered that I wasn't having any of it. I was my own person, a grown adult without any financial debts to him, and he no longer had any say in how I conducted my business.

When I had kids of my own, I swore I'd not repeat the same mistakes my parents made, and gave my kids more latitude than I ever had. That didn't mean that I let them do whatever all the time, because I did intervene when grades started slipping or there were other issues that required parental involvement, but I wanted to make sure they were given enough freedom to find their own way rather than be sheltered from the world. I didn't force them into playing sports or any other activities; I merely provided the opportunities in athletics, music, nature programs, or whatnot, and let them discover if it was something they wanted to do. I was the one who introduced them to gaming and geekery, and I gave them the freedom to explore both without judgement. 

Have I succeeded in my approach? I'm not sure, because I don't know what's going on in their heads, but I think they're on the right track.

***

I guess that's more of an "about them" rather than "about me", but I suppose they are a reflection of me to an extent, whether I like it or not. It'll be some decades before I discover if I really did the right thing, but here's hoping.

*His Getting to Know You Round 1 is also worth reading, but is much more depressing.

**I converted this to my --sorta-- home office because my wife gave me an ultimatum to move out of the basement. I used to have an office in our unfinished basement, but every winter I would come down with a severe case of bronchitis, and she finally got tired of me getting sick when the weather turned cold.

***When I graduated high school, I pretty much cut the cord from any real relationships from my classmates and those of the all girls Catholic high school next door. If you've ever been a non-conformist or a geek in a Catholic school environment that prized athletics more than anything else, you'd understand. Even those who I considered friends would attempt to use my friendship to get me to do things for them, as if friendship were a bargaining chip. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, given that most of my friends' dads were salesmen. (Cue Willie Loman references from Death of a Salesman.)

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!

Saturday night was a stroll down memory lane.

We returned to Naxxramas to get enough splinters for our third guildie to get her Atiesh.

When TBC Classic dropped on June 1st, she was sitting at exactly 20/40 splinters, and enough people in guild made a commitment to try to get her Atiesh completed that we knew that once things settled down enough* we were going back there.

I got Brig attuned --only got her to Honored with the Argent Dawn, but that's the breaks-- and away she went on Saturday Night.

From the way back machine to 1975 (in the US).

Only 22 started out initially, but we eventually ended up with 26 as some people from the old raid team trickled in. It was a bit rough on Anub'Rekhan at first, as we had only one Mage, but we cleaned things up and got through it. We didn't hit any bumps at all on Patchwerk and Loatheb --the tank was hardly taking any damage at all-- but we did wipe on Noth due to a lack of decursers. So... I hopped on Card and swapped toons for Noth just for the extra decursing boost.**

We made it through three wings --I saw Midnight Haze drop-- and we reached the end of the night after Razuvius in the Military Wing. And that was with 15 people short of a full 40 person raid.

If we managed to get a full 40 person raid together, we could conceivably blitz through the entire instance in one 4 hour raid block. 

***

How'd it feel?

Weird.

Not that I'm not familiar with Naxx, but that I was on a melee DPS toon. The things such as positioning suddenly become much more important when I'm on Brig, and I was called out by somebody saying "Are you asking to be killed?"

"Oh, that's just Brig. It's pretty much his thing."

I couldn't argue with the call out, but the toon in front of me wasn't hitting me at all, sooo.....

But outside of that, and that the positioning on Razuvius was that the melee DPS were LOSing their healers, and the solution was to attack from the side, risking a parry haste to make sure I was left alive. And to be fair, the melee DPS who didn't move all died, so....

But still, I guess I'll get used to it, being down in the trenches in a raid where I'd previously only seen from distance. I am not looking forward to K'T, however, because there will be interrupts that have to go out, and I never had to worry about them on Card.

I might even just show up on Card on some of these runs, because they will need people to decurse and whatnot. But we'll see. I'm not even sure how this is gonna work out given that everybody has to get attunements done for Phase 2.

 

 

*HA! In TBC Classic, it seems that Blizz doesn't want you to settle down, so there's people running to and fro trying to get their attunements done before Phase 2 drops. In fact, that was a direct cause of at least one person having to pass on going back to Naxx. And really, I can't blame them. If the guild wants to commit to Naxx, something will have to be given up.

**She was not the lowest leveled toon in the raid at that point; there was one L60 who made it too. At one point he exclaimed "I've got 600 xp so far in Naxx tonight!"

Surrender, Briganaa!!

Mommy's alright, daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, ay, ay, ay
--Surrender by Cheap Trick*

 

The TBC Classic Phase 2 --which includes the Serpentshire Cavern and The Eye raids-- is in the WoW Classic PTR, which means that Phase 2 is right around the corner.

And while I've already expressed my opinion that it is far too soon to drop Phase 2 and that Blizzard is merely feeding the beast, the reality is that our raid team has to start getting ready for SSC and The Eye.

Which meant that I had to go and confront my resistance to running heroic dungeons.

I'm gonna get used to seeing that skull.

 

Part of work surrounding Phase 2 preparations involves resist gear sets for two of the tanks and one of the Warlocks. The tanks' resist gear comes from farming/buying materials and crafting the requisite set, but the majority of the Warlock's gear comes from items purchased by badges. 100 of them, to be precise.** With Phase 2 imminent, that means a lot of heroic dungeon runs in a (relatively) short amount of time. My Warlock friend took on the responsibility of the Warlock tanking gig, and I'm not about to abandon her when she needs people to help her get the badges she needs.

Therefore, I embraced the Heroic dungeon challenge to help her out.

The past four days I've run four heroic dungeons with her: two attempts at Arcatraz, and one attempt each at Slave Pens and Underbog. They're not exactly a representative sample, given that the first one is one of the hardest and the latter two are some of the easiest of the Heroic instances, but they're enough to have formed a few opinions on them.

• Most of the trash has an additional "trick" to them, and once you understand that they tend to go down fast.
  
  For example, in Arcatraz if you deal with the Arcatraz Sentinels, they have a little extra surprise for someone who is used to their Normal version: when they die, they emit an Arcane Explosion that will kill any nearby melee. Therefore, any melee --including the tank-- has to run out when the Sentinel's health is below 6%. If you have a location where you can hide out of line of sight, you're safe from the blast as well. In our first run, it took only one mass death from the melee for me to figure this out, but throughout the rest of the run the Rogue simply would not run away from the Sentinel and died every. single. time. That leads me to...
  
  
• Just because you know the trick doesn't mean that you won't wipe on the trash.
  
  This definitely applies to the Gargantuan Abyssals that you find in Arcatraz. With the Heroic version, there's a Fire Shield that it casts that if you're in melee you take some pretty substantial damage every few seconds. However, it also has that Meteor ability --just like that found in AQ20 and AQ40-- that you have to have everybody in the group stack so that you're not instantly killed. So the trick is to stand just outside of the range for the Fire Shield, but run into melee when the Meteor is cast. (Or have the tank run out to the stack.) The first Abyssal we tackled, it went down pretty quick with only one death (me). The second Abyssal, well.... It took us about 6-7 tries before we finally got it down, and even then it was a bit of luck.
  
  
• Sometimes the Normal version of the trash is bad enough.
  
  "Underbog... Calling Underbog.... White courtesy phone please...."
  
  If you knew that the Rays in the Underbog cast a Psychic Scream, and that a Tremor Totem is useless against them, then you knew this was coming. Yes, you can interrupt the cast. And yes, the fleeing in terror isn't typically that bad. However, when you've a pack of three of the Rays, unless you have exactly the right group composition you're going to have at least somebody running around like a chicken with their head cut off. And if they run the wrong way just long enough, you can aggro another trash mob.
  
  
• You can pug these, but nothing beats a group of friends/guildies. Especially if you're all in Discord.
  
  The first Arcatraz run, the Warlock and I pugged with a random Healer (can't remember), Tank (Warrior), and DPS (rogue). From the beginning, the tank behaved as if he were running a Normal version of Arcatraz, and then quickly discovered that wouldn't work. That first (optional) boss in Arcatraz, we simply could not bring it down. Eventually we moved on, but we ran into a wall with the room before the Abyssals, and that was that.
  
  The second Arcatraz run we had four friends/guildies together, and the exact same tank as the first try. The four of us were in Discord together, and we offered to have the tank join, but he refused. That would have probably shaved about 1/2 hour off of our run time, particularly when organizing strategy.
  
  The latter two runs, while admittedly on two of the easiest Heroics, were full guild/friend runs and everybody was in Discord. We could coordinate, discuss, and basically get the damn thing done. Throughout both runs everything ran smoothly, especially given that I'd never been in either Heroic and another person hadn't been to Underbog in TBC Classic at all until that moment. 

***

So.... What do I think?

I believe that if I'd gone into Heroics about 4 weeks ago, which was still behind all of the Meta followers but about the time I became attuned to all of the Heroics, I'd have gotten stomped. By comparison, Karazhan and Gruul's Lair are easier than the harder Heroics, and they yield better gear. Waiting a month and gathering some drops from the raids improved my survivability immensely. It did not make the instances a cakewalk, but it probably made the easier ones far less of a dirt eating competition. Heroic Arcatraz, on the other hand, was still very much a slave to knowing the trick on the enemy you faced. If you didn't know the trick, you couldn't simply outgear it at this time. Maybe after Phase 2 with Tier 5 gear you'll be able to, but not just yet. 

Something I do remain adamant about is that chain running these things is the quickest way to experiencing burnout in game. I've a friend in game that I do care a lot about, and I'm really concerned for her getting burned out on TBC Classic.*** She'd done the Meta on one of her toons, and afterward she'd thrown up her hands and hasn't been in an instance since, even though she knows she has to do so to get attuned for Phase 2. I just wish I could help her out, but I think the best thing for her is to not spend so much time in game, so she can get that break she needs before pushing forward.

What I do wish is that people understand that there's more than one way to play the game, and that we shouldn't rush to fit everyone into the same slot. These Heroics are very much a good alternative to endgame at this point in the expac, but forcing people into them to perform attunements for raids is, in my opinion, a mistake on Blizz' part. Unlike Wrath Era Heroics, these should not be a stepping stone to raiding but instead their own separate entity. 

But yeah, I could do Heroics as an alternative to raiding. After all, some of them certainly take long enough to complete.

*Okay, I'm putting the version from Live at Budokan here....

 

**That number comes from two of the warlocks on the raid team, and I don't see any reason to challenge that assertion.

***No, she doesn't know this blog exists. So if you're one of the people in game and are thinking it applies to you, I'm actually talking about someone else. But yeah, I am concerned about everybody I know getting burned out, too.

Another Year, Another "Why do I do this to myself?"

A year ago, I participated (kinda) in Blapril, which was the Blaugust blogging event moved to what we considered then to be the height of the pandemic. It seemed a good idea at the time, and my goal was to blog about every other day or so. I managed 18 posts, but I also went kind of bonkers trying to keep up with it. Therefore, when 2020's Blaugust went around, I took a hard pass.

Well, here we are in August 2021, and Blaugust is once again upon us.

(Don't worry about the link, Wilhelm. I don't have that many readers, and most of them overlap between the two of us.)

I kind of hemmed and hawed about it, because I've got other things on my mind*, but I decided I'm going to participate in an informal manner. There are things on my mind, and some fiction to finish and get cleaned up for posting, so why not?

I'm not going to formally sign up or anything, and if nothing else I'll invoke my Rogue nature and just follow along in the shadows. That allows me to not worry so much about the 'formal' topics for each week, and instead talk about what I want to talk about. 

Such as laptops.

***

I've been doing my "second" job of being the IT resource for the family the past week or so, which has entailed looking for a replacement laptop for my mom's Mac. She only wants a laptop for basic finances, but she wants a fully functioning machine, so why spend money on an iPad or even a Macbook when an inexpensive Windows 10 laptop will do?

But I do draw the line at inexpensive vs. flimsy. (I'm looking at you, HP and Dell.) I can't believe I'm saying this, but Acer laptops feel more solid and less flimsy than either HP's or Dell's basic offerings. Of course, the Acer I wanted wasn't in stock at Microcenter, so I had to fall back on another laptop option, which ended up being a Lenovo. So I got the job of purchasing the thing, bringing it over to my mom's house, and spending the evening configuring it. 

I then turned my eye to her "other" laptop, the one that she does all of her other computer oriented stuff on, and... the thing crawled. I mean, really seriously crawled.

"Mom," I called to her, "you're going to need to replace this hard drive with an SSD."

"What's that?"

I groaned and spent a few minutes explaining the difference between an old style hard drive and an SSD.

"Okay," she replied. "How long will it take to replace?"

"I'll take this laptop home and get it done over the weekend."

So I did. I got a replacement SSD, the Samsung EVO 870, and installed it.

I thought that was that.

***

"Dad, my laptop is generating graphics errors."

Oh. Shit.

My son had come downstairs to inform me that his laptop, whose fan sounded like it was a jet engine chewing through ducks, had begun throwing graphics errors and crashing. Just what I didn't need.

I mean, I knew there was a likelihood that he was going to need a laptop before he went back to college, and I was moving in that direction, but I didn't need this just now.

So back to Microcenter we went.

The salesperson gave me a look and said "Didn't I just wait on you recently?" 

"Yep, for a laptop for my mom."

"Need another?"

"Yeah, for my son." Having spent the morning looking at options, I'd narrowed it down to an Asus based on its upgradability and spec sheet, but I wanted to actually see and feel the thing before we pulled the trigger.

So we pounded on the laptop for a bit, kicked the tires, that sort of thing, and then nodded and went ahead and bought it. I then got the job of configuring THAT one too, which wasn't too bad. It's now busy downloading FF XIV, which will be an all night affair. The only drawback is that the thing will need another m.2 drive added, as the primary drive is only 500 GB.

Oy.

***

After this week, I'm significantly poorer, but at least I have some happy (?) customers. Now, please, no more IT surprises.

 

 

*Including two kids to send to college, resist set creation for SSC to organize and farm badges for --"Hi, Zargala!!" ::wave::-- and spreadsheets to keep track of. And that's not counting all the documents at work I have to look over. But I'll be frank, the latter isn't that thrilling, while blogging is a lot more fun. And the former, well, I'm seriously invested in getting my friends' geared up for SSC.

Can It Be Done?

In the middle of all the Blizzard lawsuit controversy, the TBC Classic Fire Festival event is in full swing.

The Fire Festival was delayed by a month, mainly because TBC Classic dropped June 1st*, but since it showed up now I took advantage of it to play around with Card. 

She already had 4 bars' worth of XP from farming Felcloth --yes, Felcloth and Mooncloth still sell on the AH-- so when I saw a couple of quests registering an entire bar of XP, I decided I was going to have her do all the quests that she can in the Old World, just to see how much XP she could get.

This should give you an idea.

This has inspired me to do something with Card I'd never have considered even a week ago: to find out just how far I can level a toon in the Old World without having set foot in Outland. 

My first instinct is that as a practical matter, I could probably hit L64 or L65 given all of the quests remaining in max-level zones such as Silithus. However, the mobs in Silithus reach up to L58-L59, so it's conceivable with enough grinding I could possibly get Cardwyn to L68 by the time Wrath Classic drops, and she could just go straight to Northrend without having set foot in Outland at all.

Now that's a challenge I'd be interested in. 

Before anybody asks why, my response is "Why not? I have no desire to overdo it or get spellcloth factories going or raiding with a ton of toons. I want to just screw around in game rather than get caught up in the Meta, and this is just one way of doing that."

***

And given the news that Phase 2 is now in the Public Test Realm, the rumor that Phase 2 will drop in mid-August is starting to sound more and more likely.

Which gives me heartburn.

Maybe it's time someone finally told Blizz what's what:

Blizz, stop this rushing to get the Phases out. Just because the Top 5 guilds on each server have been clearing since Week One doesn't mean you have to feed the beast and encourage the Meta any further. There are still plenty of guilds out there that aren't even close to getting properly geared up, much less downing all of the Phase One bosses, and if you ratchet up the arms race I believe you're more likely to have people simply jump ship from Classic into something else rather than push harder. It is not the Classic Community's fault that Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands have proven to be duds, so artificially trying to keep subscriptions up by pumping out the content faster than necessary only serves to exacerbate the problems that exist in TBC Classic. 

And given the disproportionate rate healing gear has been dropping relative to everything else --it's pervasive enough on Myz-US that it's practically its own meme-- I doubt that most average raiding guilds will be truly ready for a Phase 2 release in mid-August. Oh, and let's talk about the elephant in the room: the mitigation gear needed for Phase 2. Auction House prices will spike once news of an impending Phase 2 drop is on the way, and guilds will be hard pressed to get ready in time.

Blizz, don't give me the BS that people don't have to start raiding SSC and The Eye when Phase 2 drops. You know as well as I that your player base is conditioned to jump after the latest and greatest, and pretending otherwise is being disingenuous (at least).

My concern, Blizz, is that if you push too hard, enough people will vote with their wallets and jump to another MMO instead of WoW Classic. And if a Top 5 guild moves on, so what? There are a lot fewer of them than there are the "filthy casuals", so maybe slowing things down a touch isn't necessarily a bad idea. And extra month or two between phases isn't a bad thing, as it allows the majority of the server population to see the content without feeling like they're missing out. 

Okay, Blizzard isn't going to read this blog; I'm quite aware of that. But perhaps it's cathartic to get my opinion out there, because I doubt that Blizz is going to listen to people anyway. If anything, they listen to only a few people, typically those that share their own viewpoint on the game. That makes a certain amount of sense, as a more casual player isn't going to write a "Dear Blizz" post, in spite of there being far more of them than the hardcore raiders. Oh well. It was worth a try.

***

I do have one piece of sad news to report: WoW YouTuber MadSeasonShow is leaving WoW behind. Yes, both Retail and Classic. 

His second last video, provided below, makes it plain it was made prior to the A-B lawsuit being filed by the State of California. He outlines why he is leaving, and provided an ending video that... well... hit kind of hard.

*That's the official reason, but I'd have honestly preferred to have gotten it over with back in June because the lure of easy gold would have thrown a monkey wrench into the Meta.

A Past That Never Was

Judge Drayton: See, I tried to make it... ALL... right. I tried to right ALL wrongs; reverse ALL of the injustices. I... I... I guess I was wrong, it's impossible.
Judge Harry T. Stone: Even a fool knows we can't reach out and touch the stars but that does not stop the wise man from trying.
Judge Drayton: I like that... Who said that?
Judge Harry T. Stone: You did. It was in a speech to the bar association.
--From Night Court, Season 3, Episode 13

I have started this post a couple of times. Each time I get partway through, and end up deleting it.

Words pretty much fail me when I consider the allegations brought against Activision-Blizzard.

Every time I look at the allegations, the angrier I get.

Every time I see the crap foisted on people such as Christie Golden, who were never part of any of this, the angrier I get.

And every time I read some comment about "it's no big deal" or "boys will be boys" or "it's all in the past", the angrier I get.

And in a weird state of suspended disbelief, all people are talking about in guild is the volume of gold you can make in the Fire Festival event in TBC Classic.*

I feel like I'm in some bizarro world bubble, where people are willfully ignoring the obvious, pretending it doesn't exist, because they don't want to rock the boat. Or let justice take its course. Or something. 

***

And here I am, playing WoW Classic too, because I know that if I unsubscribed it would be a useless gesture. I am just one person among millions, and I've already paid for my WoW time, so there won't be any reason other than symbolic to stop playing. I am not a tastemaker, a WoW celebrity, or even well known on the server I play on, so it would only be just for my purposes only if I unsubscribed.

And I can't even bring myself to unsubscribe just for myself, because other people are depending on me. 

But I feel like I have to be doing something. I mean, how can I look at my kids and think that I am setting a good example when I ought to be doing more than what I always have been doing?

Sigh.

These are the sort of questions that have been weighing on my mind lately. 

***

Ever since the news broke about the lawsuit, I have logged in and done what I usually have been doing these days: farm a bit, maybe do a few other things, and help out some of our last levelers get to where they need to be. My questing buddy has been doing other things, such as running heroics or targeting quests for specific gear she needs, so we haven't done any real questing in Shadowmoon Valley or Netherstorm. (I continue to honor my commitment there.) If someone asks for help on a quest in General, I go to help out. And there's the Monday raid night I'm Loot Master on, and we've now added a Friday Kara run which will go on until we get Gruul/Mags on farm so we can throw Kara back into Monday.

So... I don't do much. 

It gives me time to think about how the community should be better than what we are. In game are a pale reflection of our real society, molded and shaped by our shared experiences and the game rules. There will always be asshats and dickheads, but I guess the best thing to say is to not let them win. Not let them dictate how things should be done. Call them out when you encounter it. And to be proactive in reaching out to people beyond our limited friend groups, to let them know they aren't alone.

Maybe that's what I can do to respond to my sense of rage at how badly Activision Blizzard has failed as a corporate culture: to do the things they would not and did not do to their employees. But.... it just feels so inadequate a response to do the things I already have been doing.

I alone can't change things, but enough people acting together can. And setting a good example is paramount, because that is the one thing you have complete control over. You can pontificate all you want, but if you don't walk the walk, what's the point?

There are plenty of times I wish I had all the answers, and there are plenty more when I did know and wished I didn't. I'm not exactly sure which scenario this is.

*Card completed two intro quests and got a bar's worth of XP at L60. I could theoretically do this and level Card to at least L61 this way. Throw in some occasional farming into the mix, and I could probably get her to L63 or L64 without having to set foot in Outland at all.

The Wandering Eye

Unlike his big sister, my son plays Final Fantasy XIV these days. Part of the attraction is his love of the FF series, which he's played every iteration (as far as I know), and the other part is that all of his friends play FFXIV. I've walked by his room --door shut, naturally-- hearing him working out an instance with his friends, all the while smiling to myself. 

So when he mentioned to me that yeah, they've been seeing a big influx of WoW refugees lately, that intrigued me.

I'd bought the game during the Steam Summer Sale --there ya go, Syl!-- so it's been sitting there, waiting for me to download, but that interest in FFXIV far predates the current issues with WoW. As my son pointed out, I'd had it on my Steam Wishlist for several years now. So when I began to pay attention to all of the posts and videos about people leaving for FFXIV I felt simultaneously ahead and behind the curve.

But this particular video attracted my attention, because it was done by Jesse Cox, whom (along with WoWCrendor) at one time I'd linked to over in the links section of the blog.*

Yes, it really did attract my attention.
Be warned, it's 1/2 hour long.

I knew Retail was in trouble, but not to this extent. 

***

The thing is, I can see the origin story of a lot of Retail WoW's current problems in TBC Classic.

Just look at the endless grinding of dailies --normal and heroic instances-- for badges, for rep, to unlock said heroics, and to unlock the various attunements. Were it not for the retail inspired Meta of chain running instances, rushing to max level, and total grinding to get all the attunements and rep grinds done ASAP, I'd likely have never noticed the obvious connection between TBC and Shadowlands' rep grinds and gated content. The emphasis on spreading out and making people grind to get the mats to craft gear --particularly in Tailoring-- has created an environment where people would find grinding anything preferable to the crafting grind.** The grind and the speed of leveling has encouraged and/or required the leveling of alts so you can do all the things, and alts are still very much a huge part of Shadowlands today.

And I haven't even touched on the reputation of the player base either. 

Even some of Retail's narrative problems can be traced to TBC era WoW, as the WoW comics began publication during TBC, and their storyline directly contributed to the TBC storyline. That last part is critically important as Blizzard had published novels before, but until that point these non-video game publications hadn't become required reading to figure out what's going on in the current WoW story. This effectively offloaded a significant portion of the narrative, which meant that the WoW devs could spend more time working on what became the holy trinity of WoW: raids, dungeons, and PvP.***

***

Are other MMOs a panacea to the problems WoW has? That is a question I can't answer. I haven't played FFXIV (yet), and the single player centric nature of Elder Scrolls Online won't necessarily appeal to everybody. SWTOR continues to hang on with their niche audience, as does LOTRO, and the original storylines for both continue to impress me the longer time has gone on. There are other new MMOs on the horizon, most notably (for me) New World, and they will have their time to shine too.

But all good things do come to an end, and right now WoW is more vulnerable than at any other time in their past. I'd never count them out, but outside of deliberate scheduling tricks --something WoW has done in the past on a fairly frequent basis-- their well of goodwill is currently dry. They've got their endgame raids, dungeons, and PvP, but I don't think that's enough to keep a decent portion of the player base. Maybe that's the portion of the player base that the WoW leadership cares about, but that alone isn't enough to keep WoW viable for the long haul.

*I swear, Blogger, get yer act together and support more native controls for other Google applications. This isn't hard, people. If Wordpress can do it, surely one of the largest corporations on the planet can do it. And if they need programmers, I happen to know one who's pretty damn good at her job.

**Enter LFR in a later expac, after crafted gear became less important in Wrath and Cata. There were times in both expacs where I felt that I was the only one who even bothered with crafting gear in those two expacs, particularly with the introduction of Heirloom gear in Wrath. 

***I could add a fourth pillar to that trinity: the rush to max level. Sometimes I wonder why WoW devs even bother with the leveling process if the whole point is to just raid, run dungeons, or do PvP.

 

EtA: Corrected some grammar mistakes.

Uh Oh

I don't typically pay much attention to the Retail side of WoW, particularly after I grew tired of the post-Wrath emphasis on the faction leaders being both the driver of the action and the central figures in the expacs from Cataclysm onwards.*

However, when I asked a friend whom I knew played both Retail and Classic his opinion of the 9.1 update, Chains of Domination, he said "I've played Horde, and what they did with Sylvanas was nothing short of character assassination."**

That's when I knew something had gone down on Retail.

Then my YouTube feed showed vlog commentary from Bellular Clips about a PC Gamer article, and so I hopped on over to PC Gamer to find this:

Hoo boy.

This goes far beyond the normal complaints that you see from people about this or that part of the expac, but strikes at the heart of Blizzard's cash cow.

As Bellular pointed out in his clip on this article, this isn't a more niche site, but something the general public is more apt to see, which becomes harder to sweep under the rug or just dismiss it as trolling.

This sort of thing is also likely to perk up the ears of the institutional investors of Activision-Blizzard, causing them to wonder what is going wrong with the Blizzard side of the house.

And really, I believe this can be laid directly at the feet of J. Allen Brack and Ion Hazzikostas. Brack, because he's in charge overall, and Hazzikostas, because he's the one in charge of WoW. The snark in me says that when the person in charge of WoW is most well known for his participation in Elitist Jerks prior to being hired by Blizz, this is what you get when you let a theorycrafter and raid encounter designer without real narrative experience run the show. I'm certain you get a lot of nicely designed raids, but narrative is gonna suffer if you hand wave a lot of stuff (or offload it into books because.... it's not important or something? I guess we'll never know for sure.)

And, apparently, suffer it has.

*And that includes having a significant portion of the action tucked away in books and other media, not in-game. I personally like the authors that Blizz employs --I've encountered some of them in social media and I can speak rather highly about their likability and thoughtfulness-- but in the end Blizz' management drives the show and they just interpret the direction management wants to go. Just like in the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, the decision to kill off Chewbacca wasn't the decision of the author, but management.

**My opinion, which I expressed to my friend, was that Blizz had been doing that ever since Wrath. There were quests in game that showed her humanity behind the bravado, especially one memorable quest where you find a piece of jewelry given to her by one of her sisters. (It's a drop from a Scourge near Windrunner Spire, naturally.) However, Blizzard chose to ignore those overtones and instead sent Sylvanas down the path she's been on from Cata onwards.

EtA: Corrected an issue with the "*". The author, R.A. Salvatore, came up with the idea as he wasn't happy that he was going to have to kill off Chewie, so he created the death scene so that Chewie went out with a bang.