One Little Add-on That Changed WoW Forever

I was speaking with Shintar* recently when she pointed out that I worry too much about gear.

/raises hand 

Yes, that's me. I'm guilty.

But in that moment I realized something. I began playing WoW during Wrath, and if there was one hallmark of Wrath --outside of the destruction that raiding in Wrath caused to many guilds-- it was the omnipresent Gear Score.

Does anybody else remember the Trade Chat entries for ICC pugs to be something like "LFR ICC 10-man. GS 5000+ pst"? That magical 5000 Gear Score became a barrier to people getting into ICC and other raids, because it boiled down your gear, your skill, and your class to a mere number that people could point to and determine your raid worthiness.  I seem to recall that 5000+ meant at least a full T9 set, and probably at least one or two T10 pieces, which really meant you were capable of grinding 5-man dailies over a period of a couple of months. 

Skill? No.

Talent Spec? No.

Knowledge of the fights? No.

But you've got that gear, man.....

Blizzard indirectly encouraged the GS domination by having their own internal method of determining your "fitness" for entering the ICC 5-man instances via the LFG tool. Once you got past a certain point, and I think it was around the 3000+ GS, you could get into the Frozen Halls instances. I remember quite clearly when The Forge of Souls popped up for me, and I promptly freaked out. I was kind of expecting something more tame, such as Ajol-Nerub, but nope. 

"WTF is this?" I remembered whispering Soul back then.

"It means that you've high enough gear score to get into the endgame instances," he replied. "Congrats!"

I wasn't that thrilled, as it was a whole new set of strats to learn, and I knew I was starting at the bottom once more.

And the flaws of LFG had already begun to rear their ugly head, as one of the players I'd ported in with promptly dropped group, and this was on an instance with endgame implications and gear designed to get you ICC ready.

That sort of behavior sticks with you, and you wonder what you did wrong.

***

I guess I'd completely buried those experiences in Wrath somewhere deep inside my psyche, but I can still see a direct correlation between those experiences pugging via LFG and my behavior today, both the good and the bad. Every time you'd get The Old Kingdom as an instance, there would be at least one person who would drop as they couldn't be bothered to deal with a "long" instance when all they wanted was their daily badges. And every time I saw that behavior, I'd resolve that I'd never be "that guy" who put themselves over the group. 

But it also does explain my obsession with making sure my gear is "good enough", because I was once on the receiving end of being judged purely based on what I carried with me into a fight, not how well I performed in the fight. 

It's kind of bizarre when you think about it, because this is simply the same "judging" behavior from middle school and high school, picked up and transferred wholesale into an MMO. But with numbers to back it up.

***

Maybe I ought to re-evaluate Wrath some day, without the rose colored glasses that I have for my first exposure to MMOs. I'm not so sure I'll like what I see, but I believe being honest with yourself is one way to take a critical eye toward the assumptions you make whenever you play.

But trying to make me stop worrying about gear? Well, that's a topic for another time.

*Owner of several blogs, most notably Going Commando (SWTOR Blog), Priest With a Cause (WoW Classic Blog), and Neverwinter Thoughts (Neverwinter Blog). And yes, I can trust her to get at the root of a problem. She knows me way too well.

Off Topic: Take This Seriously, People

I'm setting aside the theme of the blog for this post.

It's a post I'd rather not make, because I'm neither a health professional nor involved with government, but sometimes amplifying the message is what's needed.

Covid-19 is no joke, and take appropriate steps to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

***

I've had one member of my extended family die from C-19, and another is clinging to life while on oxygen.* My nephew had what we believe to be a severe case of it, but it happened back in March when the hospitals were refusing to consider the possibility of kids with severe cases, but he managed to recover. My immediate family had just recently emerged from quarantine as my wife and the oldest mini-Red both contracted the virus.** While the cases we had in our family were "mild", I'm here to tell you that it is not even close to "just a cold".

In the case of my wife, it would have been considered a normal summer cold, except for two unnerving things: the lethargy and the lack of taste/smell. This isn't your normal "I'm feeling sick, I'd rather not do much other than sleep" sort of lethargy. I mean, this is the sort of lethargy that says "I don't want to get out of bed to go to the bathroom" or "I don't want to do anything other than lie right here" or "I don't want to drink or eat at all". I'd never seen anything like it, and as soon as the lethargy crept into her bones I started hassling her to go get tested. You've heard numerous times about the lack of taste and/or smell, but it's been over two weeks since she was cleared by the county board of health to return to work and she still hasn't regained anything from those senses. It may take months, or who knows, it might even be permanent.

The oldest mini-Red had more of what you'd call a chest cold if it weren't for the fact that her cough was a lot like pneumonia. She's had walking pneumonia before, and this was much more severe than that. She slept on the couch so as not to infect her sister --who stayed up in the room they share together-- and I kept close tabs on her at all times until the congestion and cough finally broke.

But the one thing that nobody ever tells you is that when Covid-19 enters your home, your paranoia ramps up considerably. 

You're always wondering if you sneeze or you cough "Is this it? Am I finally catching it?" Or every time you check on one of them you think "Is their temperature going to spike? Are they going to have trouble breathing? Will I have to call 9-1-1?" And, somewhere in the back of your mind, is always the gnawing fear that something even worse will happen and they'll be gone within a day.

As much as you like to think you can, you can't quite compartmentalize your fears and just carry on with work as usual. Maybe health professionals can, but I certainly can't. And I know this situation has affected my mental health in other ways; I'm a bit more abrupt with friends and co-workers, and I don't want to lean on "Covid-19 quarantine" as an excuse. 

It has also crept into my game playing, as I'm sure it contributed to my feelings playing WoW the past few weeks. But it's not something you can just come out and tell people, you know? "Nah, I'm not feeling like joining an Ony pug, gang, because I've got the blues from dealing with a household with Covid." 

At times like this, mindless farming in game has helped me to just simply stop thinking about things for a while. Like tonight, where I realized that Card hadn't reached max fishing, so I stood there on the docks in Tanaris, constantly casting, forgetting everything for a while, and even forgetting there was a chance I might even join a pug raid tonight.** Or later, I got on to farm Felcloth, and forgetting that I'd been fishing earlier, I was fighting Satyrs equipped with a fishing rod.

Basically stuff that I'd never have screwed up in-game before, I was messing up constantly.

***

I wish I could thwack every idiot out there --and yes, that does include extended family members-- who thinks this isn't a big deal. 

IT IS A BIG DEAL. AND WE ARE STILL LEARNING THINGS ABOUT THIS VIRUS IN REAL TIME WHILE WE'RE TRYING TO GET A VACCINE TOGETHER. AND WE STILL DON'T EVEN KNOW THE LONG TERM EFFECTS OF ALL THIS, SO CUT THIS IDIOTIC SHIT OUT!!!!

There.

And if there's anybody whom I play with who stumbles on this, I apologize for my moping around in game. Now you know a bit of the reason why.

*Due to his prior history he's only able to take oxygen via a mask, rather than a ventilator. The last I heard, which was the other day, he was doing slightly better. He's always been tough --a retired firefighter who had several bouts of cancer-- and he's giving the virus a run for it's money.

**The other two mini-Reds tested negative: one when he was tested as he arrived at university, and the other received a test because she works at a restaurant and could have potentially infected a lot of people otherwise. I showed no symptoms, and because of that it's pretty hard in my state to get tested. So I assumed I was asymptomatic and behaved accordingly.

***The raid happened, but no spots were available. Just as good, because to be honest because my mind simply wasn't in it. 

 

A Friday Scene

 

Upon Taking the Oaths

The compassion to pursue good, the will to uphold law, and the power to defeat evil—these are the three weapons of the paladin. Few have the purity and devotion that it takes to walk the paladin’s path, but those few are rewarded with the power to protect, to heal, and to smite. In a land of scheming wizards, unholy priests, bloodthirsty dragons, and infernal fiends, the paladin is the final hope that cannot be extinguished.
--From the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook v3.5, pp 42.

 

While I've been pondering Cardwyn's future, I've taken the time to, in her sister Linna's words, "Go bash a Defias."

I suppose it's not a big reveal that like Card*, Linna is short for Linnawyn. I was going to go strictly with "Linna" when I created her, but since it wasn't available her formal name will do.

And to be honest, Card likely thinks it incredibly funny to hear Linna's full name, as she only heard it on the farm when she and her older sister were in trouble.

"First Card and now you, Linna? Are you
sure that Mom and Dad are okay with this?"

Being a Paladin means that her path is going to be quite different than Card's. Paladins and Warriors have to slog through leveling, and Retribution Paladins --like I'm envisioning for Linna-- don't have the advantage of being good tanks that Warriors do. 

But hey, it's all about the journey, right?

Right now, Linna is whacking away at Defias, Murlocs, and Gnolls in Elwynn Forest, and I'm still working through a rotation.

Not Hogger, but still good for getting in
some good practice. Still have to get a two handed
weapon that does decent damage, tho.

But what really made me stop and wonder was the quest for learning how to rez people:

I was amused that the Dwarf called
his companion being daft for being brave.
After all, isn't that what Paladins are supposed to be?

With the impending release of Shadowlands, how is this going to work for retail going forward? Are people  suddenly going to pop into the Shadowlands when they die in game, and have to be pulled back into the "regular world" when they're rezzed? Or if you die in Shadowlands, where do you go? Oh well, I wasn't planning on checking that out anyway, but the mechanics of this alone would make my head hurt.

Regardless, I've been having more fun leveling Linna than I expected. I think that I'm so familiar with Elwynn Forest by now that I've just come to accept that she's gonna die at the hands of the murlocs, and that she has to pick and choose her battles when fighting packs. But I'm also not desperate to level her, either, so I've got plenty of time to work through rotations, learn how the Classic Paladin really plays, and go from there.

*Or Cardy, as some people call her on Myzrael-US. I would have never expected that nickname, but you know, it's pretty good. Far more people say "Card" than "Cardy", so when someone says "Cardy" I pretty much know who they are. The only times I really hear "Cardwyn" are when raid leaders do it, such as when they're calling out marks for sheeping in the Majordomo Executus fight in Molten Core.

Watch: Jasper Hour Classic on YouTube

Okay, after Monday's rant, I'm going to pivot* and promote a friend/acquaintance of mine** in WoW Classic.

Jasperin is a Pally Tank on Myzrael-US, and is probably one of the best Classic Pally Tanks I've ever seen. He frequently blows my mind with his skill in out tanking well geared Warriors, even though in raids he's frequently a Healer. And even when going balls to the wall on Cardwyn, I've never had issues pulling aggro from him. Yes, part of it is me being a good party member and waiting for Jasper to get a good grip on aggro before attacking, but even then on a lot of Pally tanks they'll still lose aggro. But not Jsaperin.

The guy is good.

And to match it, he's probably one of the nicest guys I've met on the server. Yes, I've been in Discord chat with him, and he's just as nice in Discord as he is in game. In fact, he reminds me of a guy I knew when I was much younger and at college; my friend back then was just as unflappable and upbeat as Jasperin. And like my friend, just about everybody on the server seems to know Jasperin.

Why am I talking Jasper up? Because he just started a YouTube channel to provide info about Pally Tanks, Boss Guides, and other assorted topics. Before you ask, no, his skills are in Pally Tanking, not video creation/editing, but he still provides a lot of data in his videos. One of his goals is to do a two Pally tank run of Zul'Gurub in Classic, just to prove it could be done. I've already volunteered to be part of his run if he wants me, but I think it likely that he'll want to do it as a run with his guild, Mystic Bond.***

Jasper Hour Classic

Now, after all of this, why am I promoting a YouTube channel when I implied yesterday I'm not too fond of them? Because Jasper puts in the work and figures things out. He has a grasp of the finer points of Pally tanking in Classic that a lot of people don't get and simply dismiss Pally tanks as --at best-- only good for instance running. And I'm not against YouTube channels as much as I am against the feedback loop that Blizz gets from using the PTR servers to overemphasize raids over everything else. 

Jasperin only has a few videos up so far, but he's intending to make more, and they're very much worth a view.

In addition to the channel link above, here's a link to his video about using two Pally tanks in Upper Blackrock Spire:

*Sorry about the obligatory Friends reference.

 

**Where is the border between when an acquaintance becomes a friend in a MMO? That's a question for another post, I suppose.

***Mystic Bond (or MB as known on the server) straddles the line between casual and progression raiding, but they lean hard on the progression end of things. Yes, they're that good. And to reference my post from several days ago, the guild's personality is of a light hearted yet serious bunch. If an MB guildie is in an instance pug or raid pug, you know you're getting both a quality person as well as a quality player.

Monday Rant: Why Do PTRs Exist?

Seriously.

I understand the desire of video game developers/publishers to let the players beta test your new content and save money, but PTRs have become so much a part of the development process that nobody has stopped to say "why are we doing this at all?"

After all, if the entire point of playing a game is to experience new material, why allow everybody the ability to cheat like this? Is it just so that the elite raid teams can get "practice time" in on the next raid, and then they can provide a strat for everybody else?

If that's the case, then the entire point of MMOs is simply "how quickly can you finish a raid". 

***

As you can tell, I dislike the concept of "open betas" and "PTRs" in the first place. They keep all players from experiencing content at once, and instead of everybody muddling through and trying to figure out how to handle new content, the sandbox is already there for people to try to figure it out beforehand. 

I was in a run --I think it was Upper Blackrock Spire-- when one of the players commented that it is so much better now in Classic than in Vanilla because we all now know what to do; back then we were all muddling through trying to figure it out, but now we've the advantage of 15+ years of insight to know how to handle things. While I agree that it is nice to have detailed data to fall back on, I'm not convinced it is "better" now. We just know what we have to do, and all we're left with is just execution. There's no "hey, this isn't working, let's try this instead" or "WTF was THAT attack about?"

The thrill of discovery, and the knowledge sharing that happens following a "eureka!" moment is all lost. Now it's all about "Go look it up on the forums" or "Check out the YouTube video for how to run it".

Perhaps if dev staffs got back to not using PTR servers, MMOs might see a resurgence in that Vanilla excitement that nobody seems to be able to generate anymore, yet everybody complains about.

My Name is Nemo

To be a blogger in 2020 is to be anonymous.

To be an MMO blogger in 2020 is to simply not exist.

I'm talking about blogging in the traditional sense, of course, although the Influencer crowd would have you believe that Tumblr and YouTube channels --not to mention Instagram and TikTok-- are also blogging. While I don't doubt that the effort it takes to put together a good Influencer photoshoot can be pretty extensive and take up a ton of time, putting words on virtual paper in a blog is a pastime that has seen its heyday come and go. Those of us who continue to blog these days do it for the love (or compulsion) of writing, not to become internet famous.*

But just starting up a traditional blog in a TikTok world, and a gaming blog at that, is to be akin to shouting at the Void.

And if there was one way for me to participate in the online community and remain (relatively) unknown, this is it.

***

In case you're wondering, I'm actually happy about that. 

Back when blogs such as Righteous Orbs and The Pink Pigtail Inn were gathering places for one of the most popular video games on the market, getting into the blogroll was a bit of a big deal. It meant that Tam or Larisa actually read your blog and commented on it, which would give you a semi-official stamp of approval.** 

Even so, the biggest bump we ever got was from a couple of hundred hits per day to 3000, and that was when the old WOW Insider promoted a series I did concerning the Draenei and Sindorei, titled Two Sides of a Coin.

Nowadays, the blog watering holes are gone*** as people blogfaded, moved to other hobbies, or had real life intervene, and the MMO industry has shrunk considerably. Even the blogs that would bring in a lot of readers from outside the immediate WoW community, such as From Draenor With Love, have brought their stories to a satisfying ending.****

***

All of this isn't new, of course, but on the anniversary of WoW Classic just a few days ago I read all of these anniversary blog posts and I realized that throughout the entire year --with the lone exception of Ancient from Tome of the Ancient-- I didn't run into a single person in game who I used to play WoW with, blogger or no.

Obviously some of that is because quite a few of the current bloggers still playing Classic are overseas, and Blizz still won't let European players hang with North American ones, so there's that. But for others, real life dictates schedules and once you get settled on a server you tend to want to stay put. It's nothing like the blogger guilds of yesteryear.

As an experiment, I googled my co-mains and "Myzrael" just to see what would pop up, and my suspicions were confirmed when the first entries for each were this blog as well as Ancient's. In a WoW Armory era, there would have been tons of links for that before you'd see anything about blogs.

But given the lack of interest in MMO blogs in this day and age,***** the likelihood of someone trying to find info about a toon outside of the game are practically non-existent. Okay, not non-existent, but someone would have to have a real burning desire to try to find someone that way, despite knowing that there is no WoW Armory (and that Google doesn't search Discord servers/channels).

***

So I can blog to my heart's content and not worry about being recognized in game. Not that I ever really worried about that, but after the past year's worth of WoW Classic blogs I started to wonder if I was saying too much in some of my posts. (Like, you know, the last couple of posts.) But there's only so much sanitizing one person can do, so I'll just live with it.

After all, anonymity has its advantages.

 

 

 *Okay, some traditional bloggers can become internet famous, but the topics of those blogs are frequently topics that are about reading --such as the Romance genre-- or are sponsored by larger websites, such as the people who would in previous decades be known as columnists for newspapers or major magazines.

**I related the "OMG!!!! TAM COMMENTED ON OUR BLOG!!!!" story back when I was a guest on the Twisted Nether Blogcast back in 2012. And even then, I downplayed my real reaction by quite a bit.

***For a slice of nostalgia, The Pink Pigtail Inn still does exist at http://pinkpigtailinn.blogspot.com/. Alas, Righteous Orbs is long gone.

****I wonder what Vidyala would have thought about the storyline in BfA after having worked on FDWL all those years. I should ask her and see if she's interested in a guest column.

*****If you want to know about something in WoW Classic, you go to WoWHead or WoWpedia or.... you get the idea. Places, like the old Hots and Dots blog, that had full maps and descriptions of Vanilla instance content, are a thing of the past.