What Happens When Mages Ponder

You'd think that I would know enough about Mages in Classic (and TBC Classic), but every so often something pops up that catches me by surprise.

Like how I was helping my questing buddy's Mage run through Sunken Temple --I was on Linna-- when one of the pulls went a little haywire. We managed to kill off the pack, and then my questing buddy mentioned that "I didn't know you could Ice Block and break a sheep."*

I paused a second. "I had no idea either."

Honest.

Most of the time I'm sheeped in Alterac Valley my Ice Block is on cooldown, and when it isn't I'm likely about to die anyway so I'd rather not waste it. And in instances where you can get sheeped, such as Sunken Temple and Zul'Farrak, Ice Block may be available (if you pick up the talent in the Frost tree) but it's typically not what you're thinking of when you get sheeped. Especially with a 5 minute CD and the potential to get sheeped multiple times in one pull.

And to be fair, Cardwyn 1.0 has been Fire Spec for almost two years, so I'd kind of forgotten that Ice Block for all specs was a change made in TBC Classic. I'd probably have continued in blissful ignorance --courtesy of the leveling grind Card went through-- until sometime in Wrath Classic.

***

While that's one example of me learning new tricks, there is one surprising part of TBC Classic where I, uh, by accident kind of broke the game.

Okay, maybe it's by design, but it was waaaay too much fun to not do it.

If you're a Mage in TBC Classic you're familiar with the Spellsteal Level 70 spell. For the uninitiated, Spellsteal allows a Mage to steal a buff that is currently on an enemy and use it for yourself. This is the how a Mage can perform Mage Tank duties during the High King Maulgar fight: the Mage uses Spellsteal to take the Spell Shield buff from Krosh Firehand, rendering him vulnerable to spells, and the Mage (mostly) invulnerable to the same. In my case, I've used Spellsteal from time to time with Neve in Alterac Valley, stealing heals and other assorted buffs from enemies, often to their displeasure (and Neve's inevitable death).

The other day, I had gotten it into my head to farm some Runecloth on Cardwyn 1.0 to replenish my depleted supply, and since I could also use some extra Winterfall Firewater as a cheap melee DPS buff I figured I'd head out to Winterfall Village in Winterspring. The Winterfall Firbolgs drop both items, and Winterspring is typically empty anyway, so why not?

Now, anybody who knows anything about WoW probably perked up their ears when I mentioned Winterfall Firewater. It has two effects: you get +35 to your Attack Power for 20 minutes, and you get a bit of an increase in size for the duration while it is active. I used to use it with Azshandra all the time until one fateful Blackrock Depths run where I was heading to the entrance of the instance and I jumped down from the outer walkway within Blackrock Mountain onto the ledge below, which serves to break my fall at about the halfway point in the drop so I don't plummet to my death. Well, that was the idea, but Az had consumed some Winterfall Firewater and had correspondingly grown large enough that she couldn't fit properly on the ledge, and so she bounced off of it and died in the lava below. 

My groupmates had a good round of laughter at my expense. 

"Helluva way to find out if your butt is too big, Az!"

I still use Firewater from time to time on Card when I'm goofing around, even though she doesn't need it at all**, just because she can then almost look a Draenei in the eye. But I did use it on Briganaa and Linnawyn when they were out in the field, because it's a cheap buff and I acquired a ton of them when I was working on the Wintersaber mount grind. 

But my supplies were running low, so I headed out to Winterspring.

While I was obliterating Firbolg for fun and profit, I took a note of something:

Hmm....

The buff that you see there is the Winterfall Firewater buff on the Firbolg. All of the Winterfall Firbolg have it, so at first I didn't notice anything. But do you notice the highlight around the buff? That means the buff was a candidate for Spellstealing.

When I was last farming up here, Card was L66, and that buff wasn't highlighted. After all, Spellsteal is only learned at L70.

But that got me to thinking.

So I used Spellsteal and yes, I noted the slight size increase and I got a 2 minute version of Winterfall Firewater with a boost to the buff itself:

Instead of 35 AP like the regular
version, this one was 70 AP.

Convinced this was a cheap way to amuse myself, I attacked another Winterfall Firbolg and used Spellsteal there.

And much to my surprise the little bump in height happened again.

Sure enough, there were now two Winterfall Firewater buffs active:

I checked, and the buffs did actually stack in Attack Power as well. So I wondered if this was like the little "cheat" to the system in Karazhan, where a Mage using Spellsteal and a tank keeping one of the Ethereals with their stackable caster buff could get up to 10 stacks of said buff and absolutely obliterate Netherspite.***

Well, it wasn't exactly the same, as the Spellsteals for Winterfall Firewater were separate buffs, but...

I drank one of the Winterfall Firewater potions Card had on her (after one of the buffs had fallen off) and....

Now this is interesting.

I went out and killed a few more Firbolgs, stealing their buff, and each time Card grew a little more. It didn't seem like she was that large...

But when I ported to Theramore as my questing buddy needed a hand with something, I was greeted by this:

This is with four stacks.

I sent that screencap to my questing buddy, who said "She's huge!"

I mean, I've had multiple buffs before, with Heroism + Firewater + Alterac Valley Belinda buff, but this was something entirely different.

Just exactly how many stacks could I do at once? 

Mana would become an issue, as would killing the Firbolg I pulled. But I figured "why not" and at my earliest opportunity I went back to Winterfall Village and got to work.

I discovered that 8 stacks was the practical limit given my constraints...

I could hit 9 stacks, but one would fall off just as soon as I put one on, so I just left it at 8 and ported into Stormwind.

"I look like a raid boss!" I said out loud, and then I tried to exit the Sanctum:

"I can't get out the damn door!" I cried.

So I had to wait for a few stacks to burn off and only then could I squeeze through.

"Who's the Archmage now, Malin?"

I should have checked what my Attack Power was, but just being able to game the system like this was awesome. No idea if this would work in Wrath Classic, but I've the screencaps to prove that it does in TBC Classic.

Totally worth it.

#Blaugust2022

*Or maybe it was a frog. Can't remember and I'm tired.

**It's a melee buff, not a caster buff.

***We tried this out one Friday night with a friend who'd just specced Fire for the first time --so she even wasn't aware of using Combustion or the Fire Mage rotation at all-- and she absolutely dominated us in the DPS meters.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

EtA: Corrected some more grammar.

Gen Con 2022: The Gamers Returned

I normally wouldn't have had a follow-up post like this, but Gen Con LLC released their post con press release, and the contents confirmed what my son and I thought was the case.

The gamers were back.

According to the press release, Gen Con attendance returned to pre-pandemic levels at over 50,000 attendees and over 15,000 ticket events. The Gen Con Online version had over 900 virtual games and events as well, so there seems to be a future for Gen Con Online. 

For us personally it certainly seemed that the crowds were just as busy as when we last attended on Sunday (around 2012), but the tweaks made to improve the flow of people throughout the con kept the traffic snarls low.

I do wonder just how much space the Exhibit Hall will expand into so that the traffic is kept to decent levels, given that there were tons of cafeteria style tables in a good 1/3 of the area beyond the Exhibit Hall itself. That was where I saw this poster:

Given that I typically play AD&D 1e
these days, I could use a refresher.

That area was pretty empty, but I think they might have been holding a Magic: the Gathering tournament there during the other three days of the con. 

For the curious, I did want to point out what the prices were for badges for this year's Gen Con:

Have I mentioned lately that
I love Snip and Sketch?

This does not include buying Event tickets, but as you can see a Sunday badge is incredibly cheap, which is why we tended to focus our Gen Con visit on Sundays. In fact, parking at the Stadium was almost as expensive ($30) as the cost of two Sunday badges. 

Still, the cost of attending Gen Con was very much worth it. I got to see the games in action that I'd not even be able to find on the shelves at my local game store, 

Point Salad! My questing buddy recommended
this as a present for my wife, so it's nice to
see it get some love.

and I got to talk to people there who were specialists in the games they were promoting. I mean, being able to talk to someone at the Atlas Games booth about Ars Magica and segueing into a game that he really liked, Feng Shui 2, was priceless:

Obviously he did a good job,
because this.

If you can imagine an RPG that plays like
a Jackie Chan movie or Big Trouble in
Little China, that's what Feng Shui 2 is like.

So unless you're not a fan of crowds, which is understandable, you ought to give Gen Con a try. Even this introvert found something to love.

#Blaugust2022

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

Gen Con 2022: It's Good to be Back

Guess who just got back today?

Them wild-eyed boys that had been away

Haven't changed, had much to say

But man, I still think them cats are crazy

--Thin Lizzy, The Boys are Back in Town

(I added a jump break because, well... There's a lot of photos from both my son and myself.)

If there's one truism about a trip to Gen Con, it's that I don't get a lot of sleep the night before.

Not because of excitement, although I was looking forward to going for the first time since 2013 (ish), but because of.... Whatever.

In this case, I'd set things up to get around 6 hours of sleep, which would have been perfectly fine for me, but I woke up after 4 hours, wide awake, and I couldn't do anything about it. And I just knew what it was going to mean in the end: I'd be tired on the drive back home, and I'd be hunting for a rest stop so I could zonk for 1/2 hour.

But still, I did try to rest, so that kind of helped.

All things considering, we got off to a pretty decent start, although we had a rabbit in our front yard right by the driver's side door that simply refused to move when I wanted to get in and leave.

"Come on, buddy," I told the rabbit, "you've gotta move. I have to go now."

After about 10-15 seconds of staring at me, the rabbit finally hopped a couple of times and let me in.

***

This year it was just my son and I, as my wife took a pass at being around crowds, my youngest had other commitments, and my oldest was going to get her SO back from Interlochen, where they were an instructor this Summer. Given that I was fully vaxxed and that Gen Con had a "mask on" policy the entire convention, I was reasonably confident that things would be fine. Still, I was a bit nervous when we got in line for having our vaccination status verified, 

but I need not have worried. We zipped right on through the (small) line and secured our verification tag.

In what became the theme of our Gen Con trip, we arrived at Will Call for our tickets and said "Well, the line doesn't seem to be too long." About 5-10 minutes later, we got through the line and got our badges. (You need your vaccination status verified before picking up your badge.) We turned around and....

The line stretched almost to the bend in the hall. 

"We got here at just the right time," my son observed.

Point Me in the General Direction of Bed

I have been to Gen Con today. I haz survived it.

More later.

But first, here's a preview:

It's a balloon version of Genevieve,
the mascot of Gen Con!

#Blaugust2022

Well... Look Who's Back

Wowitshard, the YouTuber who made many WoW Classic videos, is back. And in a timely piece, entitled "Server Transfer", he's kind of defined the experience:

 

#Blaugust2022

Passive Aggressive Commentary

When I was sending some mats to Cardwyn to craft, Linna came across this toon on Myzrael-US:

Gee, I have no idea what that guild is referencing...

That's one way to express your displeasure with the swift abandonment of Myzrael-US by the major Alliance raiding guilds. 

#blaugust2022

Taming the id

I've occasionally touched on this in the past, but one nice thing about blogging in this (electronically) written format is that it avoids what I call the "unrestrained id" found in other forms of social media.

This was on my mind when I was listening to the interviews in Josh Strife Hayes' YouTube video I posted about yesterday, particularly how streamers are basically caught in the moment when they comment on something that they're asked about while streaming. It also jogged my memory about a comment that Kaylriene made about Taliesin and Evitel, and how he was a fan of their YouTube videos until he saw some of their livestreams, and then.... Oh well.

A huge part of why I don't like being on Twitter* or livestreaming is that the immediacy of the apps means that there's no time for contemplation before committing to a comment. You see something, you open your mouth (or your keyboard/smart phone), and out it goes. The only restraint is that little voice in the back of your head saying "NO DON'T!!!!!" as you hit "send" or just let those words come out.

Even in a conference call at work there is a thing called a mute button, which comes in awfully handy when you're in a meeting and to save your blood pressure from skyrocketing you let loose with some invective. Not necessarily aimed at anyone, just blowing off steam, but...

"Bumpuses!!!"

And if you've ever actually missed that the mute button was off, and you say anything, it's one of the more embarrassing things that can happen to you.**

Still, the lack of filter beyond your own internal one can become a huge liability if you can't keep your mouth shut. And let's be honest: a lot of the appeal of watching a streamer isn't just what they're doing, but what they're saying. It's all unfiltered, and a livestream only tends to encourage that lack of filtration. 

***

Is it the shock value that people want to see, or something witty and clever? 

Reaction videos are just that --a reaction-- and people will watch them more than regular videos put out by the same person. Asmongold admitted as much in Josh's video, where he spends a lot of time putting together a "how to do X" video and it only gets a fraction of the views than a "TBC Classic is better than Shadowlands" video. It's a shame, really, but I guess people are coming for the drama and the affirmation that they're right (or the YouTuber is wrong).

Maybe I'm just an old fuddy duddy or something, but I fail to see why the immediacy is needed so much. In a world where your reputation --and online even more so-- is everything, why risk it in an emotional outburst? Why risk being rounded up and crapped on by an internet hit squad because you couldn't keep your mouth shut?

From where I sit, it's not worth it.

#Blaugust2022

*For the record, yes, I --as Parallel Context's Redbeard, not for me as, well, me-- do have a Twitter account. I never use it, as I only created it for a very specific reason (to DM someone), and it sits there, unused. So if you ever pinged me on a Tweet, I'd never see it.

**No, I did not curse. I asked my youngest if she needed a ride to something. Still, it was plenty embarrassing.

Being a Content Creator in a Niche Market

If you have a passing interest in MMO blogging --or in this case, vlogging-- you might have heard of Josh Strife Hayes. 

This guy. You can almost hear his
British accent from the screenshot.
(From pcgamer.com.)

The fact that he used to teach drama at school* does not shock me at all, as he has a camera presence that I can only wish I had. And compared to my "no accent" Midwestern accent**, Josh's has an authoritative sound that can make him instantly believable and effortlessly charming.

All that aside, Josh has spent some time putting together YouTube videos examining the MMO world --and, to a lesser extent, the gaming world in general-- and his videos are truly top notch both in quality and how he presents and defends his opinions. 

Well, he's done it again with a nearly 2 hour long tour de force about MMO content creators...

Josh went out and interviewed close to a dozen MMO content creators and got their responses on a variety of topics. Josh's point is that he as well as the other content creators he interviewed really want more MMO content creators out there, but he wants people to understand what they're getting into before they make that jump.

The interviews were edited for brevity, but the edited version still clocked in at almost 2 hours.

My immediate takeaway from the interviews is that I need to watch more of these creators. Holy crap are they articulate and thoughtful. And yes, I'm including Asmongold in this, because one thing that stands out to me about Asmongold's interview is that he put a lot of thought into his responses, proving inadvertently that the "Asmongold" seen on his channel is basically a "stage version" of himself. The real Asmongold isn't like his stage self --well, not totally so, anyway-- which kind of surprised me. I mean, I should have known that he has a stage version of himself, but for some reason I thought he was so open book that what you saw was what you got out of him.

If you've got the time, you should seriously give a listen to the YouTube video. It's not only a good watch, but it also gives you a glimpse of what it's like to be an MMO content creator in today's world.

And if you happen to find this post, Josh, thanks for all the effort! I truly appreciate all the work that you put in. 

#Blaugust2022

*I'm having issues finding independent verification, but I swear I heard it on one of his YouTube videos.

**That's because the Midwestern American accent is closest to "General American English", the sort of English you get out of newscasters and whatnot that doesn't really have an accent that you can place anywhere. Or, as my friends and I would put it, "The Accent that is no Accent". Only in the Midwest would you find an American accent so non-committal that it's, well, kind of boring.

EtA: Corrected a misspelling. 

All About that Approach

I remember when Rades spent several posts* showing how he does his screenshots, and I kept thinking that's a lot of work for just a few pixels.

Of course, I don't know beans about Photoshop --or the free competition, GIMP-- so that might have something to do with it. It's not that I didn't try to learn GIMP (free is free, after all), and I discovered pretty quickly I was in over my head. An old version of Paint Shop Pro for $5 proved pretty damn inadequate for doing much, so I fell back on my old standbys --Paint and MS Office-- whenever I need to tweak things graphically.

But here were a set of instructions on how to do things that look pretty damn good.

There's a catch, however. (There's always a catch.) It required me to actually learn Photoshop or GIMP to do some of the advanced techniques, and given the breadth of my hobbies learning GIMP instead of blogging was a hard pill to swallow. So I basically internalized some of the cheaper ideas, such as framing a shot, to improve my screenshot capability from the early days. 

That's a pretty big catch if you ask me.

Other ideas, such as using a second account to get some of those multi toon shots, were things that while sounded good I simply couldn't pull the trigger on. Yes, I know you can have a free account up to a certain level, but.... No. Too much temptation to use that second account as a full account. 

My screenshots did end up improving a bit over the long run, although I'll also admit that they tend toward the basic end of the spectrum. If you're looking for fantastic screenshots, you need to look elsewhere. Getting the concepts down, however, was a huge step forward. 

***

It's kind of like that with playing MMOs. Or blogging, for that matter.

There are going to be some items and techniques that will simply be out of reach unless you want to spend a lot of capital, whether it's time, money, in-game gold, or whatever, but you can do reasonably well enough with some basic principles and practice. 

Lots and lots of practice.

But you knew that, right? 

Just like in any other form of practice, however, there's a right way and a wrong way to practice. Sure, about half of practice is just showing up, but if you show up and start with bad habits, then that practice will go to waste. 

Back when I was a kid and I played basketball, a lot of practice was spent learning how to handle defense and offense. Our teams played a lot of zone defense, which requires you to know where to go when the ball is at various locations on the court. As I was a backup player who sat on the bench a lot, I could be inserted into either a guard position or a forward position, so I had to learn up to four different positions** while I was out there during practice. On some types of defense, such as a 2-3 defense, the two guard positions (and the two forward positions) were interchangeable, so it wasn't as hard as it sounded. But on a 1-3-1 trapping defense, only the wings (shown below) were interchangeable.

The basic 1-3-1 setup.
From this, a lot of coaches have
devised some truly esoteric defenses,
such as John Chaney of Temple with
his infamous matchup zone.
From basketballforcoaches.com.

To not only learn your position, but play it well enough with the rest of the team so that each person could depend on everybody else in a game, you had to practice.

And practice.

You don't have to practice like this to play an MMO for certain. I'm certainly not advocating for a starters/bench method that my old guild was pushing heavily toward, especially when you're a person likely to be sitting on the bench week in and week out, but it does help to work on figuring out what your rotation ought to be, based on what you value.

Such as with Linna. 

A Knight in her natural habitat.

When she's out in the field, her priorities are:

• Maximize mana efficiency.
• Keep your health topped off when you can
• Keep using Crusader Strike on cooldown

Maximizing mana efficiency can take many forms. Sometimes it's Judging Wisdom on an enemy and then using Seal of Wisdom once more, mainly to keep your mana pool as high as possible. Sure, you're losing damage while doing that, but on the flip side you have mana you can access for damage as well as your second priority, healing yourself.

Just as often, however, Linna will Judge Wisdom and then cast Seal of Command, Judging that on cooldown. That helps a lot with DPS, especially with higher powered mobs, at the cost of some of the mana pool. 

If you notice, I didn't put Consecrate into any of my priorities. That's because it's an AOE attack, and depending on the situation presented to you casting Consecrate can backfire big time. I'd say that about 6-7 times out of 10 it's perfectly fine to cast Consecrate before going into Crusader Strike, but when there's a wandering enemy out there, casting Consecrate can accidentally pull that enemy, especially if Linna moves away and brings the enemy she's fighting with her, leaving an empty Consecrate out there for anybody to stumble into. It's at points like these where situational awareness is highly critical.

Now, if we turn this whole thing around and stick Linna in a 5-person dungeon, her priorities change a bit:

• Before starting, make sure there's enough water for drinking and consumes for buffing.
• Watch your threat.
• Provide interrupts as needed.
• Judge Crusader on the primary target and then cast Seal of Command, Judging that on cooldown.
• Be ready to pick up adds and/or enemies if the tank goes down. 

In a dungeon, mana efficiency isn't a big deal. Paladins tend to be drinkers, and making sure you have enough water to drink between pulls is a thing. If we're talking about Quintalan, well, he does have the Blood Elf racial abilities of Mana Tap and Arcane Torrent to help out with the mana pool, but typically Q will hang onto Arcane Torrent for interrupting purposes rather than boosting Ye Old Mana. 

But outside of that, watching your threat as a DPS is THE thing to do. If you think you don't have to worry about that, trust me. You will. And you'll live to regret it otherwise.

Okay, all this aside, how does Linna (or Quintalan) work this all out? 

By practicing on mobs out in the field.

That's the beauty of an MMO: you can work on a rotation out in the field without causing any problems to anybody but yourself. And while you're out there, questing, gathering, or whatnot, you can work out the kinks in how to down an enemy as best as you can.

***

Okay, given that this is Blaugust, what about practicing writing?

Well, the best way to practice is to write. And write. And write.

Without listening to your inner critic.

If you're like me, you write something and then your brain goes "Wait, I think it'd look better if we said it another way. How about this...." and then you're stuck rewriting the same lines over and over again. Or your brain goes "This sucks. This whole post sucks. This story sucks. You need to start over. Do something better. Like, say, literary. You need more depression and angst, the literary types all like to wallow in people's depression. You know what, maybe you should stick to IT work." And then you can't write anything at all.

Which sucks.

What I've seen in books on how to write --both fiction and non-fiction, but especially fiction-- is to set a timer for about 10-15 minutes, and you just pour your fucking heart out on the (virtual) page. Don't worry about grammar, don't worry about whether it sounds "right", or any of that crap. Just write. Force your way through your inner critic, running it over with a 2 ton pickup truck. 

After those 10-15 minutes, take a break. Peruse your email or something. I have writer friends who are in a chat channel, the "War Room" they call it, and during that little bit of downtime they just chat amongst themselves. They're not allowed to critique things, to edit things, or anything of that sort. Editing is for later. Then they start up another 10-15 minute push when their downtime is over.

It's frankly quite amazing how well that works in terms of silencing your inner critic. 

***

Now, after having gone down the rabbit hole of basketball, which led me to watching videos breaking down St. Peters' amazing run in the NCAA Tournament --hey, any team that beats Kentucky I can get behind-- I really need to get back to focusing on some writing. 

How did this get here? Oh look, it's
Dayton beating Kansas at the buzzer last Fall...
(Photo from CBS Sports.)

After I bask in that moment of basketball glory for a bit.

/sigh
Okay, okay, I'm going...

#Blaugust2022

*Starting off with a guest post from Hugh of the late lamented MMO Melting Pot. And before you complain about where the pics are, remember: Rades passed away last year. I presume the pics vanished into thin air because of that.

**Nowadays, the guards are known as positions 1 and 2, the forwards are 3 and 4, and the center is 5. This way you can swap out guards and forwards as needed, so you could go small with a three guard lineup --1 through 3 are guards, with 4 and 5 as forwards-- or go tall with 1 as the guard, 2, 3, and 4 as forwards, and 5 as the center. If your team is in foul trouble or has injuries, you just have to wing it and adjust your personnel as you can. The beauty of basketball is being able to think on the fly and adjust to the situation on the court at all times, just like in a raid you have to be on your scramble game when shit goes sideways.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

There's Always a Starting Post

Well, August is upon us.

My younger two kids go back to college in a few weeks, Gen Con Indy 2022 is this week, and I presume the prepatch for Wrath Classic will pop into existence in a few weeks as well.

Oh, and there's this thing called Blaugust, hatched and promoted by Belghast of Tales of the Aggronaut.*

The overall idea is to get people blogging --and excited about blogging-- by having a friendly sort of competition throughout the month of August. You get awards for how many posts you make in a month, all the way up to a top award for a post a day. There's also a Discord involved to both promote Blaugust and provide encouragement and whatnot.

Back in 2020, at the height --or what we thought was the height-- of the pandemic, Belghast promoted Blapril, which I did participate in. (Sorta.) I got 18 posts in over a 30 day month, which wasn't too shabby, but I really felt burned out and grumpy by the end of it. My focus --and my goal-- was on getting more than 15 posts, and I succeeded, but the stress involved coupled with the pandemic proved to be a bit much for me.

So why am I writing about Blaugust now?

Because I'm an idiot with a short memory.

I swear, you're like my inner critic
come to life. Wait... Why are you wearing
that Necro-Knight's Garb? No, don't answer that.

***

Okay, it's not that bad, but I think that I'm going to make a play once more at Blaugust.

But.

I'm doing it on my terms.

And that means the moment I start getting stressed out about posting, it's over. Finit.

That's because I could effectively cheat and create a post per day with a single screenshot in it and schedule them to show up automatically on PC, and... voila!! I reached my goal.

It's technically not cheating if it's a post per day, especially if I have a single witticism along with the screenshot. 

But to me it would be, so I tend to just post as usual, just faster. A LOT faster.

That's where the stress comes in.

***

You'd figure that having been a blogger for almost 13 years the posts would come easier. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes real life intervenes, such as 2017 where my output noticeably dipped. That was the year my oldest graduated from high school, and my father died.

So yeah, stuff happened.

You also can get writer's block, which is where I'm at on Cardwyn's adventures after she arrived at Northshire Abbey to take up the life of a Mage. Oh, I've written plenty along the storyline that leads into the Deadmines and Van Cleef, but that initial burst of story after she arrives, well.... That's where I'm stuck. And I've been stuck there for.... geez.... over a year now. 

Hence the other quick stories here and there, and even the Letters From posts are a way to keep me writing fiction without staring at the screen, wondering how to write out that second Cardwyn story.

And it's important to just write something, which isn't exactly hard to do given how TBC Classic ended up for myself, my questing buddy, and even Shintar on her blog. Ironically enough, I've had to rein myself in a bit, so I don't post what I really think about how things went down and end up burning bridges. Which is always an important thing to note: blogging does carry inherent risks, as it's a public endeavor.** You have to be careful what you say, because eventually it will get thrown in your face. It's not a matter of if, but when.

So I've moderated my output a bit this past year plus so as to not do something stupid.

***

If I am going to do Blaugust, shouldn't I be signing up for it?

No.

I mean, you have been reading PC for a while, haven't you?

I figured that if you have, you wouldn't even bother asking why I'm not signing up. For a guy who's been blogging for as long as I have, I'm a pretty private person. I don't wave a flag and toot my own horn, and I don't get on Twitter to promote PC at all. There are only a handful of people in Classic who knew that I was a blogger, and I'm pretty sure that most of them probably forgot in the 1-2 years since I mentioned it to them. 

So I'm not doing this to promote the blog. I'm not doing it for glory or something. I'm not doing it for the respect of my peers, because if I've not earned it by now Blaugust isn't going to change that one whit.

I'm doing it because.... Well, because it's something to do.

A challenge. 

Can I do Blaugust, post a lot, and not stress myself out? I know I'm not going to be around to post every day, so I'm not going to meet that goal, but posting every other day? Sure, I'd like to see if I can do that. 

So here's hoping that I won't get a week in and say "Okay, that's all for me, thanks."

Give it a rest, Card.

#Blaugust2022

*Yes, I would put his blog into the links, but for some reason Blogger refuses to find a feed to work with. So take any complaints up with Google.

**Unless you want to make the blog private, in which case, what's the point? I suppose you could write for writing's sake, but blogging is by design a public endeavor, even if bloggers rarely get a lot of traffic compared to TikTok, Twitter, Twitch, and other more "modern" social media apps.

EtA: Corrected a grammatical error.

Ending Those Joyous Journeys

If you're like me and try to avoid unnecessary buffs/boosts whenever possible*, the advent of the so-called "Joyous Journeys" 50% XP buff to TBC Classic probably has you a bit annoyed. Another annoyance is that you can't right-click on the buff itself to remove it whenever you want to, unlike most of the other buffs you acquire.

Well, I stumbled on the solution to this problem:

The Innkeepers.

You can select any Innkeeper you want, and guess what the options are:

I guess that player right next to Card is
into Iron Maiden.

Well well well...

Thank goodness.

You click on it, and at first it appears to do nothing. Until you hover over the Joyous Journeys buff....

Ah... Better.

You can go back and talk to the Innkeeper again and re-enable the buff:

And there it is.

I can also inform people that WoW does in fact remember to keep the buff set to 0% if you logout and log back in again, so you don't have to disable it every single time you relog.

*Not because of "hardmode" but because of the potential for outleveling zones/areas so quickly I never get the chance to properly finish an area before I shoot past the recommended level range. Well, there might be a bit of "hardmode" to it as well, and more than a bit of stubbornness involved.

Third Party Ponderables

Just how important are achievements to the Retail community?

It may not seem like big deal, but I wondered about it today because I was thinking about the "arms race" that Blizz found itself engaged with addons such as Deadly Boss Mods. According to far too many videos and blog posts I've come across over the past couple of years, the complexity of raids has amped up by Blizz in an attempt to counter DBM --and other third party addons-- providing a counter to the already existing boss mechanics. DBM provides alerts on certain mechanics, so Blizz makes them more complex, so DBM adjusts to compensate for the complex mechanics, and so on and so forth.

But I wondered about achievements for a pretty simple reason: Blizz has the ability to sense third party addons and if it detects them Blizz has the ability to encode a change to WoW to block Achievements based on the presence of said third party addons. 

Think of it this way: you push hard for a World First kill, and you finally GET IT, but Blizz denies you the Achievement because you were using addons.

Or certain types of addons that wait for certain flags and act on those flags.

Such as DBM.

***

I'd presume that the WoW Community would be a wee bit upset about that, but just how upset is something I have no insight on.

If WoW wanted to kill off addons, that's one way of achieving that goal without resorting to an official ban on addons, that's for sure. Of course, Blizz would have to dial back the boss mechanics if they wanted to give raids a fighting chance against them, but still...

Yeah, I think the "popping of the DBM bubble" like the Fed raising interest rates is probably an extreme solution to the problem, but I have no idea just how raids would function in a "no addons allowed" WoW environment. It obviously works in other MMOs, such as FF XIV and SWTOR, but WoW is an MMO built upon third party addons like DBM and ElvUI.

Discuss.

EtA: Changed some grammar.

A Necessary Distinction

Okay, let's be real for a minute here.

It's easy to look at my excitement at my last couple of posts and think that ol' Red here is all in on Wrath Classic. After all, I positively geeked out over the initial landing in Northrend from the Horde and Alliance side at Borean Tundra, and there's these that I did last night:

"Nice to see we're both on the same
page, Sir." --Quintalan

"Who the hell stuffed a ship
up there?" --Linna

And like an idiot I didn't realize there was a "Pets" tab in the character window --which is where the mounts live-- and I ended up submitting a ticket for "my Charger isn't in the spell window". 

Oops.

This is all well and good, and yes, I was excited for a return to Northrend. That hasn't changed.

But what also hasn't changed is my sense of dread about how Wrath Classic will end up in implementation.

***

Despite everything, TBC Classic had one thing going for it: I really liked the story. Okay, I also liked the setting and the class changes and even the grind itself*, I'm not going to dissemble here. The story in TBC Classic, much like Vanilla's decentralized stories, had so many enjoyable parts that you can tell there was a lot of thought that went into how to make two erstwhile allies hate each other, and how to bring them together. (And no, I'm not talking about the Queldorei and Sindorei, either.)

I wouldn't have written those Letters from... posts if I hated the content.

What I hated about TBC Classic had nothing to do with the game itself, but rather how people decided the game should be played.

That's a huge distinction, but the most important one if we're to understand what happened to TBC Classic and my own enjoyment of it.

Remember this video?

It showed up on my "recommended" video list again for some reason, and I thought I might as well listen once more while I was leveling weapon skills for Cardwyn 1.0.**

You'd think that I wouldn't necessarily want to revisit this, because it would remind me of the past year or so, but I also think that it's important to understand why things became the way they did in TBC Classic. Just saying "people brought a Retail mentality to Classic" isn't enough, because there's plenty of room for misinterpretation.

The crux of the video --for me, anyway-- was when All-Trades Jack presented a flowchart on what it took to raid in Shadowlands, and how if he wanted to raid with his guild when the raids opened three weeks after the expac launched he had to follow an insane timeline expressed in the flowchart. 

"In order to raid with my guild, I first had to get to level cap in about five days. This was necessary so I could do end game dungeons and start grinding renown. I had to look up a class guide so I could pick out the best talents, the best covenant and find the best gear. I had to look up a legendary guide to help me identify the best legendary for Fire Mages and which dungeon or wing of Torghast I had to grind in order to obtain it. I had to look up a guide to tell me what my weekly checklist should be in order to make gold, stockpile anima, get soul ash, and farm consumables for myself and my guild. I had to look up guides to the Castle Nathria boss mechanics and make sure I was aware of what my role would be to counter them. I had to look up guides on my ability rotation as a Fire Mage and how to maximize DPS as a caster while constantly on the move in the raid. I had to download a list of add-ons that gave me a number of advantages that are necessary to perform at a raiding level...   ...All of this just to join my guild in our attempt to complete the entry-level difficulty for Castle Nathria. Just this preparation was a commitment, and you know what? Even after doing all of this I was still third from the bottom on the DPS meter. My guildies were much more dedicated and skilled than I was." 

--All-Trades Jack, "This Game Wasn't Meant For You | World of Warcraft vs. Casual Players"

Does that sound familiar? It tracks very closely with all of the attunements and gearing that everybody was blitzing through in TBC Classic just to get to raid Karazhan and Gruul/Mags. 

Okay, maybe not "everybody", but it was the meta, and a lot of people were following it religiously. Even when I was about in Outland on Briganaa and I'd run into someone needing help with a group quest, conversation inevitably turned to the pace of getting through everything in time to raid. Some guilds used the buddy system, where guildies were in groups of five so they could run instances and level together, other guilds used what Valhalla did and said "just group up! And ask for help and we'll get you help!"

Narrator: For the leveling Shamans, they became familiar with the term 'New phone; who dis?'

But far and away, the meta was what people followed, and they did so with a goal oriented mentality more typically of what you'd find out of recent college grads gunning for an office cubicle at a Fortune 500 company.

I was no different, and as I alluded to with my snarky comment above, being a leveling Shaman/Paladin*** meant you had a longer road to travel than anybody else. 

***

Let's not make any bones about it: was it fun?

“And yeah, players will still complain about anything that slows them down because players want to consume as quickly as possible, but complaining is just what MMO players do. Really, modern MMO players are so goal oriented that they never seem to consider what’s actually fun. Players just chase their goals and hope fun will follow as a consequence.”

–Neverknowsbest, from “How to save the MMO genre once and for all”

For some people, yes. Or at least they put on a happy face about it.

For others, including me, no. It was a grind that, once you got to the end of leveling, you began grinding again so you could get the attunements and then the gear necessary to raid. Once you began raiding, there was pressure to 'keep up with the Joneses' and raid as much as you could to clear all the content so you could do it all over again on the next phase of raiding. The feeling of doing something greater than yourself, of being a part of something big, and truly accomplishing something was lost in the constant race to get ready for the next raid.

As I've alluded to in the past, the Classic WoW team did nobody any favors by accelerating the timetable for TBC Classic and effectively forcing progression oriented guilds into a more pressure packed environment than they signed up for. Sure, a lot of progression teams wanted this --or they said they did-- but quite a few imploded under the pressure. And even more had to constantly plug holes in their raid team as people burned out and left. To use a sports analogy, there were those raiding teams that were like the University of Alabama's football team, who have their pick of the best players, and there's everybody else, who have to work hard to just stay afloat.

One of my fellow leveling Shamans that dropped out last November told me recently that TBC Classic was not what they envisioned it would be; she felt too much pressure to level and get things done than what she wanted, and she was enjoying life in Final Fantasy XIV far more than she did in TBC Classic. 

It was only when I began leveling Linna and Neve in Outland that I truly began to enjoy the expac itself, but it was far too late to prevent the entirety of TBC Classic from being tainted in my memory. It just goes to show that it wasn't the content itself that I disliked, it was how I was pressured into approaching the content.

I wanted to raid, and I was given the opportunity to raid lead as well, and I wanted to make the most of this opportunity. Was the price worth it?

From where I stand now, no.

I have derived more enjoyment from exploring Outland and leveling alts than I did on my main. Withdrawal pangs aside, I have gotten more enjoyment out of not raiding than raiding. This includes the Friday Karazhan runs, which would frequently give me heartburn while I made sure we had enough tanks and healers before raid time itself. It was a very rare occasion indeed where I didn't have to get on the guild's LFG channel and ask for people to join the raid.

***

This brings me to Wrath Classic.

I have enjoyed the Beta so far for two reasons: I am under absolutely no pressure to level quickly, and there aren't that many people out in the Beta, either.

My questing buddy mentioned the lack of raiding when she told me how much she was enjoying the Beta, because for her she'd been in "raid mode" for over a year. When you take that burden away, you can simply start to breathe again and enjoy things that you used to just rush through because it was a roadblock to the next item on the checklist.

Among the many topics my questing buddy and I chatted about the last time the two of us were out in the Beta together, we discussed the choke points for leveling. Having had her second toon out there leveling in Borean Tundra, she pointed out the various areas where there were going to be choke points, such as killing those mini bosses scattered throughout the zone. Typically those are at the end of a three or four quest cycle, and if there isn't a crowd it's no big deal. But imagining what it is going to be like on release day on these megaservers, it's going to be an absolute nuthouse. There's going to be a lot of frustration trying to down these mini bosses and keep pace with leveling.

Or, as I suggested, people are just going to make a beeline straight into Utgarde Keep and just level exclusively through instances up to L80 and then quest for gold making purposes.

Because a critical mass of players consume content like locusts.

For me, however, if I keep my mains on Myzrael I'll be able to avoid the crush of people trying to get to L80. My questing buddy will be able to farm for herbs without dealing with the constant camping and bot activity on the megaservers. 

Additionally, not being in the franken guild that is the merged guild means I won't have to read about how fast people are blitzing through content, seeing the cliques ignoring each other and remaining in their own silos, and people pushing hard to be raiding as quickly as possible.

I will be attempting to hold onto that sense of wonder that I had when I first took the time to look around in Northrend without rushing from quest to quest, and simply say "Wow. This is amazing."

And Atheren, if and when Myz is shuttered --or maybe even before then-- I might move some of my toons your way. Bloodsail Buccaneers is the only RP PvE server in North America, and since it serves such a niche role, it's not likely to go away.

*Except the Nesingwary quests. I hate those, despite that they're great if you're a Skinner and need leather for leveling Leatherworking.

**Or the OG Cardwyn. Not sure which one I prefer.

***Or leveling a new toon with a different class entirely.

EtA: Fixed some grammar.

And On The Other Side

It's a safe bet to claim that Cardwyn is the toon I love the most, and doubtless due in no small part to my attempts at writing fiction, but of my old toons, it's pretty much a tie between Neve and Quintalan.

Since that's the case, I created Neve on the Wrath Classic Beta because I'm more familiar with a Mage than a Paladin at the moment.*

I accidentally selected a more auburn hair color for Neve than brown, but I'll handwave it off to being out in that Outland sun all the time.

Of course you can't tell what her
hair color is with that helm on. /sigh

Since I knew the drill on creating a Beta version of Cardwyn, I opened up talent trees and filled in all the Frost tree that I could. Then, I set about filling in my bar and...

"Where are my portals/teleports?" I blurted out loud.

Blizz kind of missed them when they created a Beta L70 for Neve. Card may have only been missing the ports for The Exodar, but Neve was missing ALL OF THEM.

So, my first hour in Wrath Classic Beta on the Horde side was spent shuttling back and forth to the various capital cities --plus Stonard and Shattrath-- and collecting the port/teleport spells.

Then it was back to Orgrimmar and onto a zeppelin bound for Northrend.

My first trip to Northrend back in original Wrath was not to Borean Tundra, but rather to Vengeance Landing, the Forsaken outpost on the other side of the continent. Why? Because Souldat, my erstwhile co-blogger, thought it was more interesting than Borean Tundra. So I flew in to Vengeance Landing, and tagged along with Soul and his wife while we quested. Although to be perfectly honest, I fell behind on questing as they were cruising along --Soul was about midway through the L70s at least, and his wife was a couple of levels higher than me-- and I just kind of made a mental note to go back on my own and make up for the quests I hadn't finished.**

Although it wasn't my first time into Northrend, when I did hop on Quintalan some days afterward and actually ride to Warsong Hold, it was obviously the far more dramatic entrance into Northrend. And it stuck with me all these years later.

So here was Neve's chance to have that big dramatic entrance, and she as a decorated Magistrix made the most of it.

She was originally stuck with a kodo
--a kodo!-- and I made a slight
detour and corrected that.

The foghorn sounding as the zeppelin
comes to a stop still gives me a thrill.

"Yeah, about that. Can I please
report to Saurfang instead?"

Walking through the Hold...

...because that's what is expected of a Magistrix.

"High Overlord, requesting permission to put
Young Hellscream in the corner for a time out."
"/sigh Request denied."
"Damn. How about a good spanking?"
"Really, Magistrix?"
"Sorry."

*I'm pretty sure that Linna is feeling a bit pissed by that observation.

**Now you know where my reticence toward "holding back" people I'm grouping with comes from. That ol' Midwestern "I'd rather not be a bother to people" thing.