Forever in... well... you know****

A week or two ago, I was asked when I was going to get an alt to Outland. My response was that if I was going to get another toon to Outland, it was likely going to be a Horde toon. I'm not exactly sure why the people who asked were so surprised*, as I've not exactly been shy about Neve and Quintalan's existence. Maybe people just figured that I'd stay Alliance all the way or something.

But here I am, with Neve at L28, shuttling back and forth from between Ashenvale and Hillsbrad Foothills, and having a blast along the way.

One thing I have noticed, however, is that some of the Mage specific gear is similar to the Mage gear that Cardwyn accumulated, while other gear pieces are very different.

This particular robe, the Manaweave Robe, is familiar to any Alliance Mage who wore robes early in their career as part of Mage quests:

Don't get any funny ideas, Vor'el.

As you can tell, the Sindorei version of the Mage questline is quite similar to the Human one in that you get a Manaweave Robe, but the Forsaken version yields something quite different:

This is called the 'Lesser Spellfire Robe'.
I don't see anything "lesser" about them.

Does that robe look a bit familiar? Does knowing that the robe came from a Forsaken help? Well, for those who remember the Arathi Basin in-game map....

Theoretically, that's Jaina on the left.
No idea who the Forsaken on the right is,
but apparently Forsaken have a
real 'zombie rack' about them.

Yeah, that looks a helluva lot like the Forsaken Mage's robe.

And yes, I will grant anybody who noticed that yes, the Lesser Spellfire Robe looks a lot sexier than the Manaweave Robe.

Or even sexier than this "Social/RP" robe that drops in Silverpine Forest, the Dalaran Wizard's Robe:

Hmm... I think I need to get
Card over to Silverpine Forest.
Except that the Dalaran Wizards there
are all Green. Hmmm Neutral AH we go.....

But you know what? There's a quest around L27/L28 that has Neve shuttled over to Orgrimmar and talking to a Troll Mage there. I presumed that Neve was about to get the wand quest --after all, it was around that level that Cardwyn got her wand quest-- but it was a "go collect water from Xavian and we'll make a robe for you" quest. I figured that wasn't going to be too hard (it wasn't), and I ended up with this Nether-lace Robe:

Yes, Neve was in the Barrens
when I took that screenshot.
I miss Barrens Chat.

Oh yes, it's another sexy yet functional robe.

I think I see a trend here....

***

The ironic thing about this is that Neve has begun acquiring all of these RP-style robes as my opinions concerning these robes have begun changing. It's not that I've suddenly become a "cool dad" or "horndog dad" or something, but more that my kids' attitudes toward clothing has changed, and I've been dragged along for the ride.

For the longest time, the girls have worn t-shirts and jeans, and if they ever experimented with clothing it was out of my view. As Cardwyn's personality is a mix of my daughters', that kept Card's clothing choices kind of, well, blah. Function over form, I suppose. 

But they grew up, went away to college, and then when they came home for break, I started seeing items like this in the laundry:

Or a mesh version, but
this will do. From tobi.com.

Or crop tops, that would go like, well, this:

It's not like tobi.com is going
to see a sudden uptick in purchases,
but you get the idea.

Or underwear or bras that definitely did not fit the "functional" end of the spectrum. 

If the girls thought they were going to faze me much, they underestimated me. I just kind of shrugged and dealt with it. I mean, I went through a"fashion revolution" when I was at university, which was amusing because right after I graduated the "grunge look" came into style, and my entire flannel wardrobe from 1989 would have suddenly been hip were it not replaced by stuff that my female friends had pilfered from their brothers' and boyfriends' wardrobes.**

But still, I never walked around with the male equivalent of sexy shorts/underwear.....

From buzzfeed.com.

so your mileage may vary.

As you can see, the girls grew up and began to follow their own identity and make their own fashion choices. Which leads me back to Cardwyn.

It's one thing for me to say that Card's personality is a mix of the girls', but it's quite another to actually let that personality change over time. After all, Card was pretty sheltered growing up on a farm in Eastern Elwynn, and her parents had incentives to not attract attention to themselves either. But as time has gone on, she's been exposed to more and different cultures and ways of thinking. She's become an adult and has developed her own tastes. So while she still has a societal (and fashion) grounding in how she grew up, she's definitely expanded her horizons a bit. So.... while there are times when Card seems unrecognizable to me, such as wearing the Crystal Webbed Robe without a shirt underneath, I have to realize that my own children have moved on from their own starting points. What may look overly flirty and flaunt their assets in a way I'd never conceive of my wife doing***, it is only natural to them. 

And the same is with Cardwyn (or Neve or Az). Although to be fair, Az has always had a more open take on fashion and what is "acceptable" than Card ever has. And Neve... Well, she's not nothing to lose. She's confident, snarky, and glib in a way that the original Neve never was, but that's also a reflection of how my playing MMOs have changed in the 11+ years since I started her. Mage wise, Neve is very much the Yang to Cardwyn's Ying. Maybe there's a story there, how they met, because if Card ever made it to Outland, the possibility was there that two Mages of a different faction would join the same Outland faction (Scryers).

***

Now, about Briganaa...

She's kind of a tough nut to crack. 

Before anybody says "hey, she's your toon, dress her as you see fit!" I recognize that I'm probably agonizing over nothing. But for me, I want Brig's personality to be distinct from my other toons. 

At one point, while Brig was leveling in the mid-L60s, she was wearing some leg gear that I could only describe as Daisy Dukes. They were so short that I wondered why on earth Blizz still had her tail coming out a hole cut in the back of the shorts. Wouldn't it be easier, I reasoned, if Blizz just converted it to a skirt and not worried about the tail hole?

When I showed the (lack of) clothing to my questing buddy, she quipped, "So how does it feel?" We'd already had some amusement with the fact that Brig --as a Draenei-- was so tall that Humans were barely at an eyeball level to her breasts. But this felt different.

"I don't know," I replied. I don't really know what Brig would think about it.

"How come?"

"I think that's because I don't know what Draenei --in general-- would think about [those shorts]. Brig has her own personality, but I don't really know what that is yet."

And I still don't. 

I've seen enough Draenei NPCs interacting that I know they're not of a monolithic hive mind or something, but they've also been under siege for so long that sort of creeps into your head and affects everything you see. And, I must admit, I've seen some of the NPCs out in the field act occasionally flirty or sexy, but I know enough that they also have a sort of Pollyanna-ish attitude about them. You know, the sort of thing where if Brig ever came to the farm and greeted Card and her family with a "Good health, long life!!" Card would turn to the closest person to her and say "Is she for real?" And that presence, combined with that dance of theirs, and you'd be left wondering if the Draenei even understand what sort of vibes they appear to give off to the other races.

Those are the sort of contradictions that I have to work through before I can truly understand Brig better.

Because of that, fashion and Brig are kind of a black box right now. But one thing is certain, if you go to the Naga camp west of SSC and north of the Horde base, you'll see the female Naga wearing some sort of oversized leather dress. I took one look at that and thought "THIS. This is the sort of thing that Brig would wear when she wasn't fighting: low key, stylish, and practical." That Briganaa is both a Skinner and Leather Worker would make it a perfect fit for her as well. 

When you ask if you can have one, they
get all mad at you. Believe me, I've tried.

***

Oh, one last thing. This is something I've been working on for a while, and I don't know when the entire thing will see the light of day, so I figured why not and post a little bit.

As is usually the case, this is a work in progress, so it still needs editing and blah blah blah.  To set the scene, this is when Cardwyn finally reached Stormwind and is about to deliver her mother's warning to SI:7. The message is hidden, strapped to her arm and covered by the sleeve of her robes.

I picked up my pace and walked through the unmarked door.

Inside, desks were laid out in an orderly fashion with mounds of paperwork atop each, while people of all Alliance races read, marked up, and set aside one sheet of paper after another. If I didn't know any better, it looked to all the world like some large mercantile operation, organizing trading from far away locales such as Auberdine and Everlook. Portraits decorated the walls, with the occasional landscape mixed in for added flavor. Two adjoining rooms contained more desks and people, although there were primarily physical items atop each desk. On more than one desk I recognized vials similar to the ones the nameless Kaldorei used, and made a mental note to keep my distance.

I approached the desk closest to the door where a man sat, writing away. Judging by the paper he kept referencing, he was translating something.

"If you're looking for the Mage Quarter," he said in a bored tone without looking up, "you made a wrong turn. Go back through over the canal and head west, not east."

"I'm in the right place, sir," I replied. "I'm to deliver a message to the Vintner from Alice Gray."

He stopped writing, the hand with the pen hovering over the parchment. "And I'm to believe you about this?"

Mom had prepped me for this possibility. "Day or night," I recited, "rain or shine, Alice Gray always delivers the harvest to the Vintner."

All activity in the room came to a screeching halt.

I could feel eyes on me; only a fool wouldn't feel them now, but I kept my focus on the man before me. He carefully set his pen aside and looked up.

And promptly fell over in his chair.

"Light!" he exclaimed as he picked himself off the ground. "How is..."

I heard the main door close quietly behind me. If Mom were wrong, my day was about to get a lot worse. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an auburn haired woman whisper something to a coworker and run up the stairs in the rear.

The man managed to recover his wits in record time. "Well, if you've a message for the Vintner, then let's have it," he said after brushing off his clothing.

"I'm to deliver it personally, sir," I replied, certain that the man could hear my heart pounding in my chest.

The man cleared his throat. "Yes, well then. You see, the Vintner is a busy man, and if you intend to deliver it personally, you might have to wait a while."

"I can wait." If he thought I'd risk Mom's wrath by not following her instructions to the letter, he was in for a surprise.

"Yes, of course." The man returned to his chair and picked up his pen.

Dad's training came back to me. Never take your eyes off of an enemy, he admonished during a particularly hard practice session. They will try to distract you to gain an advantage. Don't let them. Keep your focus on them at all times.

As I stood there, waiting, the man tried returning to his work without success. "Begging your pardon, ma'am," he said after several failed attempts at writing, "but can you please sit down? I have this work to finish before the end of the day."

"I'm comfortable standing," I replied, "but I'll step back."

"No need," another voice interrupted. "I'm here."

A man dressed in black came down the stairs and approached me, followed by the auburn haired woman. His own hair was a shade lighter auburn color, with a matching mustache and goatee. What struck me the most, however, were his eyes: the color of a sun drenched pond, they were focused on me with an intensity I'd seen before only from Mom.

The man at the desk scrambled to stand at attention. "Sir," he began. "There's a--"

"--message for me from Alice Gray," the man in black finished. "I'll take it from here, Jasper."

"Yes, sir," the man saluted and returned to his desk.

"And you, Young Mage," the man in black added, "please follow me."

 

I followed the man up the stairs while the woman fell in behind me. At the top of the steps we turned right and headed into a relatively unassuming room. There were a few paintings on the walls, a large map of Azeroth spread out on a table, and a desk with several chairs.

And one small green man.

If there was a way to stuff more teeth into one crazed grin, I don't think it'd been invented yet. He was shorter than a Dwarf, and far more intimidating than a Gnome. He had pointy ears that stuck out from his head, but unlike the long slender ears of the Elven kindreds his were stout and thick, like the difference between a skinning knife and a throwing one. His eyes dripped malice, yet when he saw me he let out a howling laugh. "Was that Jasper I heard down there, Boss?" he guffawed. "I'd have given a lot to see the look on his face when he got a load of her!"

"Jasper needs to work on being less excitable," the man replied, "although I suppose he can be excused this time."

He nodded to the woman behind me. "Thanks for the alert, Sloan."

"You're welcome, Sir," she replied and turned to me. "It's an honor to meet you, Young Mage."

"Same to you," I replied, wondering what she was talking about. I hadn't done anything noteworthy.

After Sloan shut the door, the man motioned me into a seat. "Well, Renzik," he asked the green man, "What do you think?"

"If it were up to me, Boss, I'd say that some people, such as Jasper, need to do a bit more facial recognition training. Oh, at first and even second glance she's a ringer, but close ain't gonna win ya some gold at the Mirage."

The man nodded, scratching his goatee. "I guess it was inevitable that you'd come here, Cardwyn Songshine," he said at last.

Somehow, I was not surprised he knew my name. "You're the Vintner, I presume?"

"Yes I am. I'm Mathias Shaw, and this is Renzik, my lieutenant."

I think I was supposed to be impressed, but in some weird way my lack of knowledge made me bolder than I ordinarily would have. "Then this is for you," I replied, using a flick of the wrist to dislodge the letter from the leather device hidden on my arm. The letter fell neatly into my hand and I held it out to Mathias.

Mathias took the letter and turned it over a few times. "Renzik," he finally said, "I'm going to need some privacy. This is a personal matter."

*My questing buddy wasn't, for example, when I mentioned it. She knew of my fondness for Neve and Q.

**A whole lot of American Eagle was going on in my wardrobe.

***Dear, if you're reading this, go for it. Go ahead and blow my mind, I'm ready. (I think.)

****Yes, I shamelessly stole from a Gap jeans commercial. The commercial features Neil Diamond wearing Gap jeans, goofing around on a green screen. Finally he says, "Forever in, well, you know..." referencing his song Forever in Blue Jeans.

EtA: Added the explanation for the title.

The Odd One Out -- The Forsaken

As you can probably guess by the title, Neve has left the security blanket of the Ghostlands and has struck out on her own. And in the case of "closer is better", that means Hillsbrad and Tarren Mill.

Along the way, she dropped in to say hello to ex-Queldorei and current leader of the Forsaken, Sylvanas Windrunner. She'd found the locket that belonged to Sylvanas, you see, and the Forsaken leader in the Ghostlands saw an opportunity to butter up Sylvanas as well as introduce the Banshee Queen to the Sindorei Mage who'd been doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the Ghostlands. Because all politics is local, I suppose.

And this exchange is why I felt that Blizz
missed a huge opportunity at the end of Wrath
to take Sylvanas in a different direction.

Poor Ambassador Sunsorrow is left to pick up the pieces from an --in retrospect-- "bad idea".

Still, compared to their Queen, let's say that the Forsaken don't exactly radiate goodness and light.

I used to think that the Forsaken had kind of a bad rap, with the behavior of the Apothecaries taking up most of the 'evil' in the room. Well, I finally got a chance to view Tarren Mill again these many years later, and while the Apothecaries are the worst of the bunch the Forsaken in general are firmly planted in the Evil end of the Good-Evil spectrum. 

Which makes me wonder anew: who the hell thought that throwing the Forsaken in with the rest of the Horde was a good idea? 

Being largely misunderstood is one thing, and there's the occasional quest that stands out in that regard, but my distaste of the Forsaken isn't off the mark at all. The rest of the Horde --in varying ways-- espouse Honor first and foremost. But to the Forsaken, Honor is a weakness to be exploited. Well, everything another race loves is a weakness to be exploited. 

I mean, there's a reason why the iconic Horde Rogue is that of a Forsaken, and it's not a happy-go-lucky character ready to bust a few heads, drink some ale, and charm/bed people along the way.

Errol Flynn and Merry Men they ain't.*
From basementrejects.com.

The Forsaken delight in gloom and doom, killing the living and dancing on their graves. 

So why are Thrall, Cairne, and Vol'jin hanging out with these people?

I could make a better argument for splitting Humans into two separate groups, one for the Horde side (Jaina and Theramore), and one for the Alliance side (Stormwind), than just sticking a "non-human" race predisposed to kill everything alive on the Horde side. And if you want to even out the factions, just make gnomes a neutral party. As far as TBC goes, having the Sindorei join the faction the survivors of Lordaeron (Jaina's faction) were part of, in the Horde, makes more sense. To the Sindorei, Stormwind was "waaay down there", not part of the humans that originally formed an alliance with the Queldorei. In MMO terms, it's just like SWTOR's original factions: Humans, Zabraks, and Twileks could be part of either Republic or Sith Empire.

***

But nevertheless, the Forsaken are here, and I have to deal with them. So I'll hold my nose and survive throughout Hillsbrad, and then at earliest opportunity I'll leave the Forsaken and their Victor Von Frankenstein complexes behind.

Whatever.

*When I was a kid, cable television didn't exist for most of the country. So when I was sick, I was plopped out on the couch in the living room --away from my brother who got the bedroom to himself-- and watched local television. And for some reason, the Errol Flynn version of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) was always on. It's my generation's Princess Bride or A Christmas Story. So when I visit the Ohio Renaissance Festival, I'm always struck by the people who also loved that movie and cosplay as Merry Men or others of the Plantagenet era of England.

A Dozen Years In...

...and I'm still here.

In 2009, PC launched on September 29th with a post by my now absentee partner, Souldat/Deftig, entitled Kicking Things Off.

Little did I know that the "Hey, would you like to create a blog together?" would turn into 1000 posts (!) and ~462000 views? That sounds like a lot until you realize that you have to divide it by month, and then it becomes a slightly less impressive ~3200 views and almost 7 posts a month. Then, when you consider the "contribution" that bots play in those view numbers, and....

Bah. I'll still have a beer. Twelve years is twelve years.

In those early years, Souldat wanted us to promote the blog as a potential watering hole for WoW fans. I was on board with that idea except that, well, there wasn't a lot of content for us to promote. So we wrote. And wrote. 

And wrote.

We expanded to three contributors twice, but both didn't last very long. And I'm not very proud about being more vocal about one or two posts that one of the two wrote, either. But in the end, both moved on to other things, while Soul and I kept on going.

At about the point where I felt we were going to reach a critical mass in terms of eyeballs and commentary, our primary source of links, Righteous Orbs, closed up shop. Then The Pink Pigtail Inn. And WoW Insider stopped promoting blogs and blog posts. I guess we could have moved into using that newfangled Twitter to promote the blog, but I was never very fond of a platform where anything you say is right there in the public square to an extent that Usenet or blogging itself never was. And given my tendency to mouth off from time to time, I could get in some real trouble on Twitter. But despite the lack of direct promotion, we continued on.

Even Soul's declining contribution didn't stop me from just keeping with a (semi) regular schedule of posting 1-2 times a week.

By the time the WoW side of promotions was fading fast, I had already been experimenting with other MMOs, and I soon expanded my posts to include my adventures there. I also included pencil and paper gaming (such as D&D) and board games, aiming to broaden our gaming goals. 

***

While I still do pay lip service to our 'About Parallel Context', this blog has effectively become my own for over a half dozen years now. And until this past week, I haven't really acknowledged it. So this week there have been a few small changes here and there that allow me to bow to reality. 

Such as finally moving Soul to the "Past Contributors" section.

Or changing the title graphic to something a bit (?) more timely. I'll have to work on keeping that current, I guess.

I always wanted something like Rades did, with a gif of various scenes, but I'd have to pay for a gif builder, as I wanted a longer time between scenes than what the 'free' gif creators had. Or use a random pic selector, like what Ravanel Griffon did for Ravalation.* 

That aside, I'll continue to make some tweaks to the blog as I become more comfortable in acknowledging that I'm basically the only contributor left. So like the time I got an entire dorm room to myself my junior year of college, I'll put up a map of Middle-earth, my Dark Side of the Moon poster, and this one: 

My oldest has my poster now.

Okay, now it's time for some tunes:

 

And yes, I hit two birds with one stone by selecting Yes' Roundabout along with the Jojo's endings. There's a great interview that Rick Beato had of Yes' Jon Anderson, and one of the things Rick asked was Jon's opinion of the usage of Roundabout for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Jon loved the use of Roundabout in the anime, because it allowed a new generation to get to know Yes' music.

This version of Tank! is from a local con back in 2018. That sax band lead in front? The one with the red tie? He also played in Ohio Wesleyan University's Park Avenue Jazz Ensemble concerts.

 

 

And you can't have a set of tunes without dipping into David Arkenstone's vast catalog. My wife and I saw him live at a Winter Solstice concert back in the late 90s, and his band was simply amazing. Twenty years on, he still looks really good.

*Damn, I miss her blog posts. Rav, if you're reading this stop in and say hi.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

The After Hours Pick-Me-Up

Diana Prince: What is the matter with you??!!
Steve Trevor: This is no man's land, Diana! It means no man can cross it, alright? This battalion has been here for nearly a year and they've barely gained an inch. All right? Because on the other side there are a bunch of Germans pointing machine guns at every square inch of this place. This is not something you can cross. It's not possible.
Diana Prince: So... what? So we do nothing?
Steve Trevor: No, we are doing something! We are! We just... we can't save everyone in this war. This is not what we came here to do.
Diana Prince: No. But it's what I'm going to do.
--From: Wonder Woman (2017)

You know, things aren't all that bad.

Seriously.

We all get wrapped up in our problems and miss out when something actually good comes along. Or when someone turns a bad situation into a good one.

Such as what happened when a guild composed of some in-game friends began imploding.

My questing buddy had her Bear tank in that guild, and when she realized what was going on she sprang into action. 

I'm pretty sure that this is the look my
questing buddy had on her face that day.
(From: Wonder Woman)

She contacted two of her guildies and talked them into looking at our Monday raid team. In a case of pure serendipity, we had precisely the openings that they were looking for: Healer and Hunter. I was called upon to act as intermediary --because that's what friends who happen to be on Raid Lead Teams do-- and put the two of them in touch with our recruiter. Several conversations (and a week of raiding) later, and both are now official members of our Monday Raid Team.

***

Autumn may be a 'back to school' season here in the US, but it's also time for (American) Football. 

And because our team raids on Monday nights, the comparisons to Monday Night Football are pretty obvious. So, before each raid starts, I've taken to playing the intro for Monday Night Football. Mainly to just pump myself up a bit, since I'm not gonna play the theme where everybody can hear it.

And, if I'm in a slightly wackier state of mind, I play this Monday Night Football intro from 2004. You see, our local NFL team, the Bengals, were nicknamed the Bungles for their sheer ineptitude through the 1990s, and because of how poorly they played they were not on the roster for Monday Night Football for 12 years.* In honor of their return to the MNF lineup in 2004, the broadcaster ABC got comedic actor Leslie Nielsen to perform in the intro:

***

But I think that I've gotten too stressed out about how things are working out right now. There are plenty of friends who need a pick-me-up, and while commiserating isn't a bad thing per se --I do plenty of that already-- an actual pick-me-up isn't a bad thing.

So consider this post a virtual Happy Hour. I'll even buy the first round of drinks.

*It's known as The Lost Decade in Cincinnati sports. The Bengals sucked, our Major League Baseball team the Cincinnati Reds sucked, the University of Cincinnati had 'good' basketball teams but never when it mattered in the NCAA Tournament, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera....

The Insane and The Inane

If there's one thing about "improving" in MMOs --WoW included-- that annoys me more than anything else, it's the concept that everything has to be perfect for you to be any good. You have to have the right spec, the right enchants, the right gems, etc. if you want to be taken seriously.

This has reached its absurd conclusion in the botting "community" when accounts were created, boosted to L58 containing the exact same "optimized" spec and boosted gear, and then sent forward into a TBC instance (Slave Pens or Hellfire Ramparts). 

At times like this, my enthusiasm for having talent trees to play with plummets to just about zero. If you're expected to have the same theorycrafted set of talents, then why bother have talent trees at all? Which is why Blizz eventually blew them up entirely in Cataclysm. 

But to be fair, I'm not sure why they didn't blow up gems and enchanting as well. 

Back in Wrath, any Ret Paladin worth their salt would use Strength gems on all of their slots, no matter what bonus you were giving up. It was simply expected that you would do this, ignoring anything that Blizz came up with for gem slots. The same thing would happen with enchants: Hit Cap first, then Strength, then Attack Power, then other stuff. 

Well, this is also very much a thing in TBC Classic. 

As I alluded to a couple of posts ago, my DPS was called into question and it was suggested that I go contact the person on the other raid team who is doing fantastic DPS. I wasn't able to get in touch with him, but I did go into the raid logs and discovered three things: he was totem twisting, he was using a different spec than me (he went with Enhance with a concentration in Resto whereas I went with a concentration in Elemental), and there was a significant gear differential.

Guess which one is the biggest reason why my DPS sucked?

Yes, lousy gear was the culprit.

How do I know this? I respecced into Enhance + Resto and began totem twisting, and my DPS actually went DOWN. Which makes perfect sense, given all the time I spent on throwing down totems versus actually hitting the enemies in Serpentshrine Cavern.  

But it still does drive me nuts, given that outside of some off-heal drops that all occurred very early in my Karazhan career, my Enhance Shaman drops have been few and far between.

"How's your gear?" someone asked me about 3 weeks ago.

"The usual." 

"What's the usual?"

"Still the same mix of blue and purple gear."

"Well, where do we need to go to get some gear for you?'

"Some drops from Gruul/Mags and Karazhan. I'm not gonna chain run Mana Tombs fifty times for one totem or Auchenai Crypts for an Off-hand."

"Oh."

***

I was thinking about all this when I started hearing rumblings about adding gems and enchanting your gear to get them up to snuff for SSC. 

I have blue gear, and I wasn't planning on doing more than adding some pretty cheap gems, and maybe pre TBC enchants, just to get some people to shut up. There's no reason for me to bust my ass to get high end gems and enchants for something that ought to be replaced. While lip service is paid to that, the sweaty push toward doing all the things perfectly continues.

And more people are leaving.

You know that Enhancement Shaman from the other raid team I was to talk to about his DPS? He burned out and quit. Two others on our raid team quit as well, citing real life issues. On the flip side, we have others on our one day raid team who want to leave for the two day raid team, because they believe that we won't see all the content with one day's worth of progression. 

To be frank, I'm amazed our raid team is still hanging in there, given all of the pressures on it.

***

The saddest part about all of this is because I'm privy to information I can't discuss with my friends/raiders, so I have to keep a lot of things that bother me to myself. And my wife doesn't understand, because she doesn't play MMOs. So I soldier on, just feeling grumpy. 

Except for this....

Or this....

Or even this...

It's those little things that I enjoy. I need to find more of them.

Time to Set the Lens Down

For someone who tends to write enough on the blog, I've been at a loss the past week or so to come up with much of anything to write about.

Oh sure, there was our first foray into Serpentshrine Cavern, my experiences watching my youngest mini-Red play in a marching band in front of 40,000+ people*, listening to my son's DJ shift at his local campus radio station**, or my occasional ode to Gen Con, which was held this past weekend.***

But after having written those blurbs here, I just have found no motivation to go into detail about them.

***

Yes, I saw this video by CarbotAnimations. Yes, it hit hard. 

The nostalgia that this video invoked could apply to just about any other video game, board game, or pencil and paper RPG that I've played over the years. It may take a while, but eventually everyone reaches some point of disillusionment with any game or activity. 

But. 

For me, it just reminded me once more of the old days, with Rades, Vidyala, Shintar, Kamalia, Syl, Lara, Linedin, Tam, Larisa, Ophelie, and all the rest. It reminded me that most of us have moved on, some have vanished completely, and others have passed away. 

On the flip side, it also reminded me of when the Grey Death Legion blew apart, and then the successor guild Schizophrenic Psychos did the same less than a year later. (You could say that the Schizophrenic Psychos lived up to their name.) Or how Is Up To No Good rebranded but still couldn't stop most of its membership from fading away through Mists.

So all was not good in the before times, and I should take pains to remember that.

***

Likewise, things are not always so depressing now, either.

Although I landed on Myzrael-US because of Ancient, I have built friendships there.**** Very few survived the first few months, when people came and went in a mad rush, but persistence does have its own reward.

And I won't lie: the friendships I currently have in TBC Classic are as intense as they were back in the Old Days. I'm older now, more of a WoW Dad than someone their age, but I'm fine with that. I get to hear how their families are doing, how they are doing, and it connects me to a wider world in this Pandemic Age. 

Or just being there for when they
go full "...Squirrel!!!" mode...

 

What's best about this current crop of friends is that I'm pretty sure they have no idea how much their friendship means to me.***** I don't play WoW for the bling; I play for the friendships. And if I'm doing it right, those friendships will last longer than the game itself. For those from the Old Days, some of those friendships have truly persisted, and I hope that these will too.

***

Perhaps nostalgia is just a weirdly specific lens in which we view the world, blocking out all of the complications and the reality of what the past was truly like. Nostalgia can be a starting point, but letting it be an ending point is committing a serious mistake, and it's a lesson I need to learn more and more.

***

As a bonus, have a poem written by Bob Salvatore and narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, about the most famous Drow in D&D, Drizzt Do'Urden:

*Oh, and there was an (American) football game as well. This was how the game ended. Yes, it was that exciting. (Or insane. Your choice.) When you thought the game was over....

**The wonders of live streaming.

***I'm pretty sure my wife and I are going next year. If the mini-Reds want to come, great, but it's not a requirement.

****Ancient, if you're reading this --and I know you are-- come visit again!!! We'll go fishing!!!

*****Okay, one does. /waves "Hi!!"

TBC Phase One -- A Postmortem

Ever have one of those days where you want to post, your mind is telling you that you've got to post something to work out what's going on in your head, but all you can do is stare at the screen without anything coming out?

Yeah, that's been me today.

 

And enjoying some Ghostlands quests
not done in over a decade.

***

Well, I guess I should get the obvious out of the way: TBC Classic Phase One finished today.

Come this time tomorrow, Phase Two will be up and running, and I presume that all the top guilds will be pushing hard into SSC and The Eye. The snark in me says that in a couple of weeks the top guilds will have both raids on farm, and the those guilds will be agitating for Blizz to accelerate the release of Phase Three.* 

I was chatting with a friend from another guild the other day, and when I mentioned that after this week's Monday raid we're going to be going into SSC/TK next week, she laughed and said that her guild hasn't even gotten into Gruul/Mags yet. And I know that hers isn't the only guild to do so. And from my perspective, that's fine. We're not required by some external judge to go hard on any of this to show that we're a "real" raiding team. This is something that people put on themselves.

***

So yes, I've been evaluating my experience in Phase One so I can get a feel for how I want to proceed in Phase Two. 

• Leveling in Phase One should have been a joy, but it wasn't.
  
  Over the past couple of months I've had quite a few people come up to me in game and tell me that they felt bad for myself and the rest of the leveling Shamans, and how we were left behind. But almost none of the people who confessed this ever said anything in game while it went on, either via whisper or out loud in Guild Chat. Individually they may have felt they were a pariah, but together they would have changed things. That none of them did tells me two things: that they were a slave to the Leveling Meta, and that they wanted to ease their guilt over what happened.
  
  While I appreciate their comments and/or apologies, I'm not letting anybody off the hook for that shit show. I know that my griping about the leveling already cost me one in-game "friend", who apparently decided that my grumblings were too toxic and she put me on a permanent ignore. Given that she was the one who said "oh" and then vanished when I told her I wasn't attuned to heroics yet, I'm not exactly crying a river over that.
  
  My experience leveling in Phase One need not be rehashed here, but as a result of leveling Brig to L70 I made a decision to not level another of my Alliance toons to L70 by conventional means. I don't give a rip about how "the experience is better now that the big rush is over". That there was a terrible experience in the first place is enough to sour me on the entire process. I've got 1.5 years to level Card via the Old World before Wrath Classic drops, so I'm in absolutely no hurry there. I was thinking of leveling Linna or Azshandra, but the more I think about it, the more I'm disinclined to do anything about them at all. I mean, I have a guild charter ready to go for Linna and my alts, but I have absolutely no motivation to go out and get the signatures.
  
  
• The opposite faction became a refuge.
  
  I rekindled my joy in my first toons, Quintalan and Neve, when I grew discouraged on the leveling process. Q is still at something along the lines of L5 or so, but Neve has been roaming here and there across the Ghostlands, reveling in all of the writing that shows the entire focus of the Sindorei on the Scourge (and to a lesser extent the Amani Trolls). When I told some Alliance die hards that Blood Elf players had absolutely no idea what is happening in Outland --questwise-- until they got there, they didn't believe me. But that's the honest truth.
  
  Think about how Blood Elves are presented in the Draenei starting zones: they are most definitely The Enemy. Ruthless, power hungry, and driven to exterminate the Draenei at all costs, they are almost completely an over the top villain. But none of that is presented at all on the Horde side. Hell, if you follow the Horde quests, you have no idea who or what Draenei even are until you get to Outland.
  
  So Neve can be blissfully ignorant while she romps through the low level Horde zones. And for me, not having to worry about anything at all and just play has been a huge stress relief.
  
  
• I raid to live, not live to raid. That puts me at odds with quite a few people.
  
  For me, boss kills aren't the point of raiding. Nor are the acquisition of loot and topping the meters.
  
  I raid for the companionship. For the laughter. For the goof ups. For unexpected things that become a tradition.
  
  Such as my stint as "Briganaa The Bookie."
  
  In Karazhan, it's well known that the Opera selected in the Opera Event is random. What began as a one-off discussion:
  
  "So, what do you think you'll get?"
  "I'll say Oz."
  "Want to bet on that?"
  
  evolved into a full betting scheme, complete with the Loot Master (me) as the bookie. Right after killing Maiden, the discussion starts.
  
  "Okay, time for the Opera betting. Who wants what?"
  
  If you place a bet, the entry is 10 gold. It's all placed into a pool** and then the total is divided among all the winners.
  
  Pretty much harmless fun, but it's something to look forward to each Friday night.
  
  But this highlights the sort of thing that I personally enjoy about raiding. Don't get me wrong, boss kills --especially first time boss kills-- give you a rush of endorphins as you celebrate in the achievement. The thing is, however, that boss kills or getting phat loots or other things that drive the majority of progression raiders don't motivate me.
  
  I guess I look at gear progression as a treadmill, and if you're lucky you'll get what you want just in time to have to re-gear for the next raid. I went through all this before, except it wasn't in raiding, it was in Battlegrounds. By the time you got geared up enough for a BG tier, the next tier's worth of gear would drop. And I kind of got sick of it, which is part of the reason why I stopped playing Retail WoW back in Mists.
  
  Of course, my attitude toward gear is far more laissez-faire than just about the entire raiding team, hence the comment from a fellow guildie that "sometimes I'm too nice for my own good".
  
  And that has now gotten me in a bit of trouble, since my gear --along with the associated lack of enchants and accepting lower priced gems-- has now landed me in a hot spot. My (lack of) DPS has drawn some attention, and I'm supposed to talk with a fellow Shaman about bringing my DPS up. Well, given that the Shaman killing it on the meters has approximately 50-75% more Strength than me, having pretty much all the Phase One BiS for Enhancement Shamans that totem twist, yeah, I'm going to look pretty bad next to them. The percentage of damage between the two of us, courtesy of the raid logs, is very similar, but the raw DPS is the difference. And without those enchants and that gear, it's gonna remain the same.
  
  But the thing is, I wasn't gonna spend a ton of gold to get all these freaking enchants just to have them replaced in a couple of weeks. And if the replacement gear doesn't drop, then I'm stuck with my current mix of Blues and Purples. Oh yeah, the "crafted set" that is currently BiS in Phase One? Nope, I'm not busting my ass just to get it made. I got to L70 and got attuned to Karazhan, and once that was done that was the extent of my desire to go with the Meta. I'm not gonna chain run dungeons for gear, and I'm not gonna try to get every single BiS piece. This leads me to....
  
  
• I've now seen how the sausage is made, and I don't like it.
  
  I get that some hard decisions need to be made from time to time. But that doesn't mean that I have to like the process much.
  
  And what I've seen of the raid leadership process, I feel that something critical has been lost moving from BWL -> AQ40 -> Naxx -> TBC, and that the focus isn't so much on having fun but proving that we're "elite". That we belong with the Variance guilds of Myzrael-US.***
  
  Discord discussions are always on how to squeeze out the last bit out of the meters, or min-maxing your way to success, or add-ons/WeakAuras to maximize your abilities. There is far less of the original friendliness that attracted me to raiding with them, and more sweatiness.
  
  I've never bothered to say much of anything, because I did once back in late Naxx, and I discovered that I'm in the minority about the importance of sweatiness in guild. Thankfully our raid team has less sweatiness than the other one, but as time has gone on and people have left our raid team, some of the replacements have been among the sweatiest from the other raid team -- as alts. As a result, I've started seeing some of the sweat factor creeping into our raid.
  
  And along with the sweatiness comes elitism.****
  
  
• I needed to step back, and I have. But I still feel guilty about it.
  
  While I covered most of it in this post here, I still feel bad about not being there for people. I'm quite aware that things aren't all peaches and cream for my friends, and I really want to be there for them to help them out. That doesn't mean run instances or stuff per se, but mainly just be someone to listen to them, and a shoulder for them to cry on. To tell them that yes, they do matter. That sort of thing.
  
  And I feel bad when I can't be there for them, even though I know it's for my own good. I guess I'm stuck with that, so I'll have to deal with it as best I can.

***

A lot of this stuff is general in nature, and not limited to the actions within Phase One itself, but they certainly came to the forefront in TBC Classic. I think that, taken together, means I'm kind of back on the tightrope, wondering whether to resign and go back to being an independent, and not a raider at all.

I wish I had all the answers. But the best thing for me right now is whether I can manage my self-care, and keep myself from doing something I'd later regret.

*It goes without saying, but don't read the Blizzard Forums. I visited while I was catching up on the news that APES, the guild that had the World First Ragnaros kill in Classic and also the focus of this legendary video, was disbanding. Outside of the trolls, the people whining that content wasn't being released fast enough was disheartening.

**Or "kitty". I'm from the Midwest, and if you play Michigan Rummy or other games where you have a pool, it's always called a kitty. When I pulled that name on the Raid Lead, I could almost feel the side-eye she was giving me through Discord, until another raider spoke up and said yes, that is very much a thing.

***Nox Terrorem (Horde) and Imperium (Alliance) might disagree, but Variance is the top guild on Myzrael-US.

****And yes, this is a very specific comment. Even though people involved will never read this.

EtA: Added the bold typeface that I'd missed originally, and corrected a sentence and grammatical errors.

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.