Okay, now that the Town Hall is Over...

Blizzconline 2021 has come and gone, and for a change I paid attention to it.

Being able to watch the livestream for free does help (a lot).

In the past, you could pay to watch the livestream --or you could even pay to watch the activities on DirecTV (honest!)-- but even then, I'd only read the commentary from WoW Insider/Blizzard Watch or from my fellow bloggers. So when the "Do you not have phones?" comment blew up, I wasn't around to watch it live.

So yeah, I was a bit concerned about how this remote oriented con would work out, and whether the con would skew more toward one of Nintendo's quarterly updates, or something straddling an authentic in person con experience.

For the record, I was fine with either, as long as Blizz didn't a) shoot themselves in the foot with another "do you not have phones?" comment, b) shoot themselves in the foot with another "tough gamer moment" comment, or c) shoot themselves in the foot by trying to bow and scrape to the Chinese market.

Basically, don't shoot yourself in the foot.

Oh, I get it about China and the CCP: it's the 2000 lb. elephant that will trample anyone who gets in their way. When they can make one of the richest people in China, Jack Ma, vanish, you know they don't mess around. 

And by comparison, Blizzard --and most other gaming companies-- are the tuna out there for the orcas to feed on. So if you want China's market, you have to play by China's rules. The last BlizzCon, and the events leading up to it, made that abundantly clear. 

This time around, however, a global pandemic took center stage and China receded into the background.*

***

I've been working from home for so long that I've forgotten that it takes some time for people to get used to it. So when Blizz people started talking about how they had to get used to conferencing and collaborating remotely, their issues simply did not compute for me. It was only about a minute or two in when I realized that "jeez, they've never done remote work before!" 

Once you get used to it dealing with work from home becomes second nature, and if you've a boss that is flexible in your work habits then you can take time out to be the kids' taxi or make it to a game and then come home and get more work done.** But using collaborative tools like Teams or WebEx can take some time to get used to, and a graphic designer ready setup in the home is probably a whole other level of complexity that I never had to deal with.

These were the sorts of challenges that Blizz confronted, but it seems that they've gotten used to it.*** I suspect that the transition took longer than Blizz' management expected, particularly in terms of work output, but on the flip side they now have a workforce that isn't tied down to Southern California property values. I'm not exactly sure if they'll take advantage of that, but you never know.

***

Work from home foibles aside, I found the info sessions I watched informative but not overly so. I knew going in that the nature of the con meant that the extra time spent getting dynamic feedback from the crowd as well as the natural give and take wasn't going to be there, so that meant that the info sessions themselves were going to be shorter. That wasn't an indictment of the process, it's more of the way it is when you design a presentation: you have to give enough time for the crowd to react and respond before you can continue, and in a virtual environment you don't have that.

The part I was most interested in was BC Classic, and I wasn't disappointed. I felt that Holly spent extra time reminiscing about the old days in order to establish her bona fides, which given the nature of her coming from Everquest I felt it was necessary to pacify certain parts of the WoW community who still think of her as "the EQ person". Still, the info about items such as bosses, classes, and when you can roll a Draenei/Sindorei were spot on. Among those of us who were watching from the Myzrael-US Discord server, we were all in all very happy with the info provided. Could there have been more? Sure, but I suspect they're still aiming for a May release and don't want to get locked into that timeline if something shakes out in the beta.

The "You are not prepared!" was a wee bit dated, but as someone pointed out in our BWL run Saturday night, Illidan is NOT prepared for US.

***

Now, for an old time gamer like me, it was nice to see the repackaging of the old Blizz games, including The Lost Vikings. And the reworking of Diablo II. 

I realize this is the era of remastering games --see the upcoming Mass Effect Trilogy remaster as an example-- but if it is done well then it is a welcome benefit to gamers around the globe. The PC environment especially has changed so much over the years since ME or D2 were released that even without the graphical remaster the code would have likely required a rework to operate properly in the era of RTX 30 series video cards.**** The real kicker is whether the remaster is redone in such a way as to anger the fanbase (Warcraft 3), a reimagining of the game (Final Fantasy VII), or a a faithful but purely upgraded graphical version of the game (looks like D2 and ME for now). It does look like Blizz learned their lesson on Warcraft 3, but we'll see when the remastered D2 comes out.*****

One thing I do appreciate is that the Diablo IV development team is providing regular updates and details of the game's progress, so you know what's going on. Frequently this is too much of a black box --Schroedinger's Cat aside-- and you have no idea as to the details. But that the D4 team is spending the time to communicate with the fans as well as their thought process behind certain developments is a very very GOOD thing. I understand that some of the items the dev team are working on are going to be hidden --story, for one thing-- but understanding details of where they are in the process without throwing out dates is fantastic. The one thing I hate is when the suits announce a release date, because software development is not like building a widget, there will be major setbacks and reworkings that need to be addressed, and that's just your average Monday morning. Assigning a date and expecting a dev team to meet it is a potential disaster in the making, crunch notwithstanding.

***

So in the end, I enjoyed this Blizzconline. And yes, the RPG player in me enjoyed getting a chance to see Matt Mercer and the Critical Role crew in a Diablo esque game on Saturday. 

I am glad that the con went as well as it did, because I'd argue that a hybrid of the strictly in-person con and the online version is the way of the future. Hell, when Metallica came on my wife wandered over from watching the television and said "Hey, Metallica!" 

"Yeah," I replied. "They're playing for Blizzcon."

"Wait, this is live?"

"Well, at least it was done strictly for Blizzcon, but...."

"But that's so cool!!"

Now, if I can get her to watch the intro about how gamers were impacted by Blizz' games over the years, because that was an advertisement for not strictly Blizz' games, but gaming in general. That could have come straight outta GenCon and not missed a beat.

*But not totally gone from people's minds. Kind of like saying Beetlejuice three times and --voila!!-- Michael Keaton appears.

**Yes, I have been the kids' taxi for a long long time.

***I'm perfectly happy working from home. What I've discovered about working at the office is that I spend a lot of time socializing and a lot less time working, so when I need to get things done I don't go into the office. I know quite a few other people in my neck of the woods who think the same thing, and they're content to work from home too.

****I discovered that when I went to install LOTRO on my oldest's new laptop. It still looks for old DirectX 9.x, which you can't download anymore, and the failure to install was driving me crazy.

*****It just occurred to me that there's likely a certain amount of the Mass Effect fanbase that is going to buy the remastered version primarily because of the upgraded graphics in the sex scenes. Oh well.

Just One Request

Please please please.....

PLEASE!!!!

NO "DO YOU NOT HAVE PHONES?" MOMENTS.

 

'K?

 

When Turkeys Fly

I've mentioned before about our informal Turkey Award, handed out to the person with the most deaths in the progression raids.* And until the other week, I'd successfully avoided taking home that honorary turkey leg.

Well.... The other week that streak came to an end.

I died three times at the beginning of the raid in quick succession, to trash leading up to Patchwerk, and that set the tone for the rest of night. When you don't even get off a cast before an abomination takes you and 8 of your closest friends out, you know things aren't gonna go your way.

That was, ironically enough, the last time I both got Dire Maul Tribute buffs and the spellpower Flask for the raid. 

Obviously those deaths meant my DPS took a big hit --the flask notwithstanding-- but it also meant that I reassessed just what the hell I was doing chasing after all those buffs if I wasn't going to live long enough to make much use out of them. That first death was a fluke, as were the second and third deaths**, but I didn't treat them as one. It was then that I realized a pattern had been forming and I'd ignored it until then: when I got extra sweaty and tried picking up all the buffs, I became more aggressive. When I got the bare minimum number of buffs (Heart of Hakkar and Dragonslayer), I became more conservative. 

The reasoning ought to be obvious: the fewer the buffs, the more likely I wanted to hold onto them, and the less likely I was to charge in on a skitterer pack to try to get to the top of the meters. Likewise, the less likely I was do to something stupid during the Cultist/Acolyte trash pulls and bounce around out of healing range.

It's a simple thing, really: play conservative because you don't help the raid when you're eating dirt. At the same time, you have a conflicting motive to prove you belong, and the most obvious way of doing that is to improve your DPS. And that means buffs, enchants, flasks, etc. etc.

But helping the raid also means getting your Frost Resist gear (Glacial Set, in my case), farming your Tubers for Loatheb, babysitting the bodies for spawning scarabs in Anub'Rekhan, and getting your teammates off the wall in Maexxna. None of which, I might add, are going to enhance your DPS.

***

After a lot of consideration, I decided to step back a bit from my buff pursuits until I could get my survivability back to an acceptable level. I'd still have liked to get flasks for the raid, but the current price of a Flask of Supreme Power is about 180 gold right now, and that's out of my price range.*** I could squeak by at 150 gold, but that was also when everybody and their grandmother wasn't farming Plaguebloom throughout Azeroth.

So, whether I liked it or not, I scaled back my buffing and played it conservatively.

And it worked.

I've not sniffed the top of the leaderboard for the Turkey Award until Monday night, and the only reason I was up there was that I had exactly one death before we started beating our collective heads on Four Horsemen. (We wiped seven times on Four Horsemen, leading to a second place total of eight deaths, shared with 5-6 other people.) And really, death levels outside of Four Horsemen being so low was quite an achievement from my perspective.

I know my DPS suffered as a consequence, but I was fine with that. I was contributing to the raid by being alive, and that was the important part. Now that I've started behaving better, I'm going to start slowing re-adding extra buffs to my pre-raid night routine.

Now if everybody could stop farming Plaguebloom for a for a while, that'd be great....

*We occasionally bring up the Turkey Award for Molten Core and Blackwing Lair raids, but the "formal" Turkey Award is handed out after the progression raids.

**The third in particular was bad because I'd just gotten rezzed up and was drinking when another abomination wandered into aggro range, surprising everybody. The a-bomb hit with an AOE which only dealt a decent amount of damage to everyone. Except me, who didn't have buffs and full health. Alas.

***Spending time and gold getting the Glacial set made sucked up two weeks' worth of farming, not to mention some of the enchants I started farming the mats for. When you run an Undead Set (courtesy of the Scourge Invasion event), a "normal" Fire Mage set, and you start to replace pieces as you get new gear, all those enchants aren't cheap. I can hear the other mages now, saying to not blow your gold on a Flask when you need the enchants, but when you need so much enchanting done (I honestly thought I'd have replaced almost all my gear by now with AQ level gear so I didn't bother enchants then), it's all a bit much.

Wandering in the Dark Wood at Night

Cast your eyes on the ocean.
Cast your soul to the sea.
When the dark night seems endless.
Please, remember me.

--Loreena McKennitt, "Dante's Prayer"*

 

 

Yesterday, I spoke with a friend with whom I'd not played MMOs for about a month. He left Classic after an incident** concerning several issues in raid, and he hasn't logged on since.

He had told me immediately before he left the game that the WoW Classic was becoming less and less fun, so I believe that the incident was simply the last straw before going cold turkey. He hadn't given up on MMOs themselves, just Classic, so I felt that the time away was doing him some good. I don't think that he's permanently given up on Classic, but we'll see.

It was a good conversation (via Discord messages), and I hope to continue it in the future. But it also got me to thinking about the constant churn that happens in both MMOs and real life.

 ***

Churn is to be expected. People move, change jobs, retire, or even pass away. We change over time too, and what we may have once tolerated or even encouraged is no longer accepted by us. 

My friend's departure from WoW Classic reminded me of others who have come into my (virtual) life and moved on. 

Like the friend who introduced me to the L60 5-mans and encouraged me to explore more of the game than I was content to stay with. Months before the Gates of AQ event, we were in Silithus questing, just kicking around on some quests that he had. At one point we stopped by the Gates, and he told me that he would be here when those gates opened. 

Less than 3 weeks later, he stopped logging in. He'd never joined Discord --he said his computer couldn't handle it and Classic at the same time-- so for all intents he simply vanished. 

Or the other friend I got to know while originally leveling Az; he and I ran several instances together, but eventually work started kicking his ass and he had to cut back on playing as he was constantly working the night shift. He eventually lost his spot in the raiding guild he was in due to lack of attendance, and the last time I spoke with him his wife happened to walk by and she --who he used to play with in Classic-- disparaged the whole MMO genre as a waste of time.

I haven't seen him in months, either.

There are other friends that moved to Retail to check it out --or in one case, return home as it were-- and they've spent by far most of their time in Retail. I see them online, and we occasionally chat, but we never get the chance to group up much any more.

***

And it hasn't been lost on me that my focus on progression raiding has meant that a lot of my time spent online has been focused on getting the mats/pots/whatever for prog raiding together. When I just want to run solo and not chat or anything else, I simply vanish online: I don't mark myself online on Discord, turn myself invisible in Battle.net, and unjoin myself from the raid guild chat channels. It's not perfect, of course, since anybody who has marked me as a friend in game will still see me, but its as good as it gets for silent running.

It is very effective, but almost too effective. More than once I've had a casual friend whisper me that they've not seen me in game for a while, and is there anything wrong. No, not wrong; not really. Just.... Well, just unable to do the things I want when I want to do them, I suppose. And that is very much on me.

That's part of the commitment to progression raiding, that you have to give up something in order to keep going at the forefront of raids. But I do miss other aspects of MMOs, such as 5-person instances, questing, leveling alts, and just socializing.

 

I recognize that the easiest solution to the socializing part is to just switch guilds. At the same time, while I've grown comfortable with the gang, I'm definitely not one of them. And swapping guilds will not change that. After my wife's friend's death --and a lot of soul searching-- I was pretty much ready to pull the trigger and go ahead and join the guild. But then some of them just had to make a very public attempt in Discord to cajol me into joining.

And if there's one way to get me to not do something, it's to lean on me to do that thing. 

I am very much a stoic Midwesterner, and I keep a large portion of myself private. I may be social and chatty --especially for an introvert-- but that is very much a superficial thing. I become emotional and open up with very very few people who have built up a level of trust in me. But I also have a very large contrarian streak in me. One of my previous bosses didn't understand me at first, and an ex-coworker stepped in to explain to her that "Red marches to his own drummer; he has a large amount of pride in doing things his way, and trying to force him into doing something simply won't work." Once she understood that, she changed her approach to managing me and we got along much better.

So, knowing that, you can understand why I saw that Guild push and said "Nope, screw that." You might not agree with it, but now you know where it came from.

***

So coming back to the original thoughts on this topic, the churn I've seen in MMOs is part normal, and part self-inflicted. Perhaps I can repair the self-inflicted part, but I also need to accept the "normal" part of the churn.

And for pete's sake stop trying to force me into doing things.

*The album Dante's Prayer is from, The Book of Secrets, is my favorite album of Loreena's. It's most well known for the surprise one hit wonder song, "The Mummer's Dance", and to be fair nobody --not even Loreena-- saw that one coming. However, the entire album is full of fantastic songs, from her putting the poem The Highwayman to song to the instrumental Marco Polo to Skellig to Dante's Prayer. This version shown below is from the memorial service for 100th commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in WW1 where many of her fellow Canadians perished.

 

**That incident I will not comment on; it is not my place to say, and as I've said before, I'm not a member of the guild I raid with.

Movement at the Speed of Plot

I entered The Deadmines last night for the first time in months.

With me were my oldest's Hunter, Tasarae, one of the Mage team on his Pally alt, and his daughter's Mage alt. I recruited a friend from Az's old Tuesday Molten Core runs, and she came along on her Bear tank alt.

All of us at level, and one of us setting foot inside for the first time.

We wiped three times --the last time trying to down Cookie after Van Cleef was dead-- and we pulled off a couple of fantastic recoveries after we had a couple of packs of ads on us.

All in all, it was amazing. I'd not had quite as much fun in a while.

***

Tasarae got to learn how Hunter pulls in an instance work, and I learned that I can tank --kinda sorta-- if I need to. My Bear friend had never been in Deadmines with a Bear before, and she was thoroughly enjoying how much fun it was to Bear tank things.* And in spite of me having a couple of levels on her, I simply could not pull aggro from her.

My Mage buddy healed us as best he could, and his daughter's Mage learned to enjoy sheeping things and blasting enemies with fire.

The instance itself, as my Mage team buddy said, was pretty much a perfect introductory instance. You learn the basics here and can take those lessons with you later on. 

I was teasing my oldest about how she was going to be gunning for our raid team's Hunter puller, and she gave me a look that said "oh HELL no". 

"But really," I said, "you're learning the same things that we use in Naxxramas today. That's why I don't like boosting so much, because this is how you learn to play your class."

"I'm still not raiding anytime soon," she replied.

***

The slow reveal of the extent of the weapon of mass destruction was not lost on my oldest. When we reached the final door and blasted our way in with a cannon, she said "Woah! Look at that!" 

She knew there was a boat ahead, as we'd been chatting about it in Discord, but she was stunned by the size of the thing. And the weapons.

And in that moment, the plot came full circle.

This was what the Defias were working toward, and what they intended to unleash upon Stormwind.

***

I suppose it comes as no surprise that in addition to my regular blogging I've been writing about Card's continuing adventures on the side, with an eye toward a climax in the Deadmines.** 

The questing in the Abbey, throughout Elwynn, and into Westfall all point a player toward a reveal as to why the Defias are the way they are, and even then there's plenty of plot points that a toon never knows about, even after the entry into the Deadmines is completed and the note found on Van Cleef's body points a player in the direction of who might be in league with the Defias within the Stormwind nobility. Hell, even once you get to L60 and defeat Onyxia you still don't know everything there is to know.

In that respect, I believe Blizz did a fantastic job of giving the player enough to go on, but not so much that they know everything. In reality, people don't know everything about what's going on --even if you think you do, you don't-- and so the Defias storyline reflects that. A player may find out everything Blizz has written on the subject (including the comics) but the player isn't privy to that information. And besides, you could make the argument that when what happens in WoW Classic contradicts the comics, I'd argue that WoW Classic should trump the comics in that regard. After all, the MMO is what we experience.

And the Defias' story is a cautionary tale as well, when your belief in your own correctness blinds you to everything else. In a way, it's a perfect tale for the past year or two.

Or, to borrow a few lines from what I've been working on...

"We still don't know who threw that rock," Mathias added. "That regicide remains our biggest unsolved case. But the Queen's murder not only crystallized the nobles against the Stonemasons Guild but turned the general populace against them as well. Tiffin was well liked, and unless you were here you'd never understand the jolt her death did to the city."

 

He stared at the floor for what felt like an eternity. "At the end of the riots, Edwin vowed revenge and left Stormwind with most of the Guild members. He hadn't been seen since, but I guess we now know what he's been up to."

I downed my water, wishing it was rum instead. "But why destroy everybody? That makes no sense."

 

"He believes that if you're not with him, you're against him," Mom replied. "That has always been a fault of Edwin's: he sees things only in terms of sharp divides. For him, and those like him, there is no morally gray area; it's only black and white. It's very easy for him to slip from feeling that he'd been wronged into the view that everybody else is an enemy. I look at Edwin and think that could have been me or your father, given the right circumstances." 

 

She looked over at Mathias, her eyes haunted. "It's.... hard for me to be here, Mat," she whispered. "I don't have the control I need any more, and it's taking all I have to not grab a pair of daggers and hunt for Edwin myself. He's earned a death warrant from me, but I know that once I start I won't be able to stop, and I can't risk that."

*Her main is a Warrior Tank, so she's familiar with how.... busy.... it is to be a Warrior tank.

**There's other stories floating around too, such as the Missing Diplomat questline. The Missing Diplomat questline is perfect for someone who has ties to the shadowy underworld, such as a certain protagonist whose family is connected to SI:7. It is also great in that it gets Card out of Stormwind and on the road toward Dustwallow Marsh, where she can begin the quest to assemble her own wand.

What was that about Old Dogs?

I tend to be, well, a bit hidebound in how I do certain things in MMOs.

I'm not a big fan of "gaming" things for exploitative purposes. I don't mean illegal cheats/loopholes, but taking advantage of a weakness in game to obtain a lot of a certain item. Such as a Mage taking advantage of how mobs track to farm immature venom sacs, for example. I've seen the YouTube videos, and I get the how it is done, but I still grumble at the poor design of how aggroed mobs go after you that I have a hard time in game of actually taking advantage of the poor design. 

For the uninitiated, you can stand at a certain spot in LBRS, aggro a whole bunch of spiders, and right before they get to your toon you can jump up to a stone walkway beside you and that same mob turns around, runs allllll the way back and then gets up on the stone walkway to chase after you. Do this enough times while AOEing, and you can burn down the entire mob.

Yes, it's legal, but it still bothers me that these elite mobs --and spiders at that-- don't understand the basics of climbing a 3 foot wall.

Or the basics of doing single pulls in Maraudon. Again, not a fan of taking advantage of similar weaknesses in Mara to farm Mara.

***

Some other exploitative runs, such as Lasher runs in Dire Maul East, I just don't get. 

I've done Lasher runs before, and after I'm done I sit there and go "That's it? That's all the gold you get for this? That's all the useful herbs you get?" And I shake my head. I was expecting a ton of useful herbs, but all I ever got were a ton of Heart of the Wild, which any Auction House affictionado will tell you doesn't sell that much. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who loves Lasher runs, and he said "it's the grays you get that are worth it."

/sigh

By contrast, I farm herbs in Eastern Plaguelands and Western Plaguelands, and in most normal times I can get some stacks of Plaguebloom, Dreamfoil, and Mountain Silversage and make 90 gold every couple of hours' worth of farming. 

Well, that was before the Mountain Silversage market collapsed a month ago.

***

I look at some people in WoW who accumulate a lot of gold, and wonder just how cutthroat you have to be in order to amass that much gold. How sweaty do you need to be? It's not like there's such a thing as compound interest in MMOs*, so you have to actively go out and sell things in order to obtain gold. Whether it's your services (such as selling water, boosting**, or ports), mats, or finished items, you have to sell something if you want to keep up with the increasing demands of raiding and other activities. 

It wasn't until about 7-8 months ago that I became aware of the concept of the GDKP raid. The "G" in front of the more traditional DKP term means "Gold", as in people bid gold to win items in raids. To join this "raiding of the rich and well heeled" you have to have a certain minimum amount of gold, and the raid leads inspect you to determined if you've got enough gold to play. Which sounds more than a bit like Casino Royale, but in WoW. Just let that sink in a bit: there's raids out there only for those with enough gold to join in.

Still, it's not like I'm the only perpetually poor person in our raids. I know a Warrior who barely makes enough gold to repair his gear between raids.*** And apparently there are a lot of people in our raid who need enchants, which means needing the mats + gold as well. 

***

I realize that this sounds like whining, which is why I'm talking about it here rather than on Discord or in WoW. But I believe a lot of this due to my approach to playing the game. If I wanted to earn gold, I'd do it the Gevlon way, which would likely earn me gold but also have some of my in game friends disappointed in my greedy methods. And while I'd like to think that changing my approach to farming in WoW wouldn't change me, I'm not so foolish as to believe that. 

How we play is a reflection of ourselves. That doesn't mean that we don't learn or grow while playing a video game, but it does mean that how we approach the game, how we interact with people in a game, and the emphasis we place on in game activities are a window into our own psyches. People who say "I play to blow off steam" and then proceed to act like an asshole in game are showing to the world what they are really like without the constraints of society.****

***

Nevertheless, I have begun changing my approach to farming gold in WoW. 

Instead of farming for raw materials, I've instead begun to focus on the finished items. I used to dip my toe into the tailoring market, but my lack of sales there dissuaded me from that approach. But potions? That's something I can work with. I know way too intimately just how much potions cost for raiding, and now I'm taking that knowledge and applying it to Az's potion making. Potions such as Greater Firepower, Mageblood, and Greater Shadow Protection sell well on the Auction House, and I'm focusing on what I can sell based on what I can farm. Sure, the market will change, but if I can can do this, I'm sure I can change with it. I don't need to go crazy while farming, spending all of my spare hours just trying to get enough gold for the next Naxx run, but I do need to be mindful of the lure of gold.

Now, let's just see if this old dog can internalize these new tricks.

*At least ones that I play, anyway.

**Another service I find distasteful. If you already know how to play your class that's one thing, but boosting to merely get to "where the game begins" misses the point. The leveling experience gives you the opportunity to learn to play a class, and you apply those lessons at endgame. Having to learn tanking at L60 when the only times you set foot in an instance were when you were being boosted is, well, a lost opportunity.

***Or so he claims. It's gone on long enough that its now a meme.

****Or maybe within societal constraints. After all, the past four years have been very educational in how people behave when they realize they can get away with anything.

Differing Touchstones

Last Fall I discovered just how out of touch I was with pop culture while waiting for a Molten Core run.

I can't remember the specifics of the conversation, but there was a comment made about surreal comedy, and I piped up and mentioned "Oh, like Andy Kaufman."

There was radio silence, and then a "who?"

"You know, Andy Kaufman, the guy who was the subject of the movie Man in the Moon."

"I don't really remember that movie."

"How about the REM song from the early 90s?"

"Card, you're not helping yourself any with that reference."

Well, shit.

 

For reference, here's the REM song.

Finally, another raider who was about my age spoke up. "Yeah, Andy Kaufman was in Taxi as Latka, and he did that routine where he challenged that pro wrestler to a fight."

"Yeah, he was kind of nuts to egg that guy who was twice his size on, just like his Elvis impersonations were so out there that you never forgot it."

At least I got the chance to make a semi-graceful exit.*

***

I was reminded of that generational disconnect once more while I was listening to a playlist on YouTube the other day. At one point the old Spinners song "Rubberband Man" came on, and I was bopping along. One of the mini-Reds happened by, and she said "Oh, that's the Guardians of the Galaxy song."

Not having seen anything past the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie --yeah, I'm a bit tired of superhero movies these days**-- I was surprised. "Really? The NBA used to play that song for highlights of players from the 70s and 80s, like Doctor J, Michael Jordan, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and the Big O."

At least the kids knew who the Big O (Oscar Robertson) is, because he played at the University of Cincinnati and then in the NBA for the Cincinnati Royals. I've told them the story several times about how my dad used to ride his bike to go see the Royals play at the old Cincinnati Gardens, and how Oscar was easily the best basketball player he ever saw.

The statue of The Big O outside of
UC's Fifth Third Arena. My photos turned out lousy,
so I borrowed this one put out by UC.

***

Why mention this? Well, because people --and gamers-- are a product of their generation. To the longtime MMO players who spent years in the old days of WoW (and now WoW Classic) have a completely different view of Azeroth than those who are new to the game.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard over the years that "XXX sucks!" Like my own personal bugaboo, Belsavis, in SWTOR. I can't stand that zone because it just keeps going on and on and on. Just when you think you're about to finish the planetary story, you go through a tunnel and reach yet another mini-area to explore and quest through.

Or the oldest mini-Red's personal dislike, Corellia. She has major issues finishing the final planet in the "vanilla" SWTOR zones because the warzone imagery depresses her so much. 

I was reminded of that disconnect when her baby Hunter, Tasarae, reached Darnassus for the first time. Of the Alliance cities, Darn has the reputation of being the most disliked. It's hard to get to, it's very spread out, and it's difficult to find anything without inquiring from the guards.

But when Tasarae walked through the open pathways with her new pet owl, she gushed about how beautiful Darnassus was. And when she arrived at Auberdine, the rugged shoreline and evergreen forests of Darkshore captivated her. 

It is the seeing of things with new eyes that energizes me. Just like when --very soon-- Tasarae will arrive at Westfall and head out on the questline that leads inevitably to the Deadmines and a confrontation with Edwin Van Cleef, the Stonemason whose thirst for justice led him down a dark path where everyone else was an enemy, and only he and his followers were in the right.

I'm looking forward to this. Tasarae doesn't know what's ahead for her, but I do. And I will once again be able to see this world through her, with new eyes.

 

 

*Thanks for covering my ass there, Zwak. 

**Not to mention all of the freaking gatekeeping by a subset of geekdom.