Existential Musings

I have found it amazing how external events kick me in the ass.

Last night, I just wasn't feeling like I wanted to just keep doing much, MMO-wise. Not for that evening, but in general. If there's one thing that seems to be a constant in my MMO career, it's that change will always happen. Unfortunately, the negative change outweighs the positive change, and that wears on me after a while.

So while I was busy just going through the motions and in general feeling down, the news came across about the invasion of Ukraine. 

And that was a shock to the system.

Oh, I knew it was coming --pretty much everybody did, if they were paying attention-- but knowing it was coming doesn't make hearing that it is actually starting any easier.

Mindless grinding did little to take
my mind off of things.

 

After I tried processing the news for a while, I just turned off my PC and lay down in the dark, staring up at the ceiling. 

***

A large part of my problem with the news is that my kids are now of military serving age. It's one thing if the situation was bad enough that the military had to draft "Old Man Redbeard" in his 40s and 50s, but my kids are an entirely different thing. It may have been an extremely unlikely scenario,  but late at night is not when safe, rational scenarios play over and over in your head.* 

About the only good thing that the news did was to get me to stop feeling sorry for myself. Even then, doubts always creep in because that's what they do.

I don't have the answers to my irrational fears or my existential dread of whether I was a good dad, or that I spent too much time playing video games and not enough time with my kids. Or whether it was all worth it.**

***

Morning dawned after a somewhat sleepless night, and I found no comfort in the cold, gray day. The news out of Kyiv isn't good, and both my work and personal problems didn't magically evaporate. But for now, there's not much to do except just keep on plugging away. Because I guess that's what we do.

*Among the other irrational scenarios: Is my blood glucose crashing? Is my heart about to give up? Is my blood pressure skyrocketing? Am I getting fired tomorrow? Am I just faking everyone and not doing as well as I seem in my medical recovery? Is [insert drug name here] right for me? Before you laugh about the last one, I never paid attention to all of those drug commercials until I became a walking billboard for them. Now, I see a random commercial and say "Yep, I'm taking that."

**"What was all worth it?" "Hell if I know; that what can be as large or small as my mind wants it to be."

Side Benefits

Having done some occasional stuff on Cardwyn the past week or so, I will say this: my lack of interest in questing in most L60 zones back in Vanilla Classic has provided me with a great opportunity in TBC Classic.

Shush. This particular quest wasn't around
in Vanilla Classic.

 

All of those quests that I never did --the Wintersaber Grind, the Rockfury Bracer quests, the EPL quests, etc.-- are still there for the taking, and they all count as XP. On most days, I'll get on early in the day when nobody else is around and knock out the Wintersaber quests, reducing them to the equivalent of a pair of dailies. Between the two quests that I have right now, and the drop rate being just low enough, I can complete them both and get 5% of a level's worth of XP out of spending about 15-30 minutes of time. Since I'm in no particular hurry, that'll get me a level in less than a month. Considering she's L63 now, this is faster than I expected.

And when I get bored of doing those quests, There's zones in Silithus with L61 Twilight's Hammer enemies to beat on.

Once I get to L66 or so, I'll hike on over to the area surrounding Karazhan to see how Cardwyn will fare against the L68-L69 enemies there.

Every once in a while I get a whisper from some random toon, asking me if I'm grinding for the Wintersaber mount, and I say "Yes." And they go away. 

Since nobody else is out there, and it seems everyone and their grandmother is working on Netherwing mount grinds, I can just relax in peace.

The Uncomfortable Nature of Messy Reality

There is a questline at Hellfire Peninsula in TBC Classic that I dislike.

Of all the quests in TBC Classic, this is the one that I actively avoid. 

No, not because it raises questions about temptation and consequences, or the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or even an obnoxious number of Kill Ten Rats, but because it reminds me too much of real life. I would wish that it was about our better angels, but it isn't, and because of that I have a hard time dealing with the questline.

***

If you're like me, you've seen about all of the original Star Trek episodes over the years. And if you're also like me, you've probably also read the short stories that James Blish made of the original episodes, because you simply couldn't get enough of the stories. While there are some episodes that hit you right in the gut, such as City on the Edge of Forever or Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, the episode A Private Little War has resonated in my psyche over the years. 

Yes, some tropes were pretty stereotypical,
but the Original Series did make you think.
From memory-alpha.fandom.com.

 

The story unfolds when Kirk visits a Stone Age era society he once studied years ago. The person he'd once confided while he was an undercover observer in has now become chieftain, and as the story continues it is discovered that the Klingons are arming the competing tribe with flintlock rifles. The chieftain's wife observed Kirk and McCoy using their phasers, and decides to steal Kirk's and use it to get one up on the competing tribe. Things do not go well, and the chieftain's wife is killed. In the end, an arms race ensues, with Kirk's friend asking for flintlock rifles of their own to match those that the Klingons had been providing. Or as Kirk puts it, "Serpents, serpents for the Garden of Eden."

Even the best of intentions can oft fall astray, and no matter how much one tries, sometimes you just can't win.

If my observation of that episode sounds somewhat familiar, then you too may have come across the storyline that begins with the quest entitled 'Sedai'. 

***

Sedai's questline begins with Sedai's Draenei brother being concerned about him, as he'd gone to the Maghar Orcs seeking peace and hadn't returned. You investigate and discover a dead Draenei near the paths leading to the Maghar encampment. He'd been struck and killed from behind.

Returning to the Temple of Telhamat with the bad news, one of the Broken who'd befriended Sedai decides an eye-for-an-eye is good enough for him, and he sends you into the Maghar encampment to slaughter the Orcs. When you return, Sedai's brother is horrified at what you'd done, insisting that "This is not our way!" He then sends you out with a device to see if you can find the truth of the matter. 

With the device, you are able to see what happened: Sedai had gone to the Orcs, and they'd rejected him and escorted him out of their encampment, telling him to not come back. The Maghar have naturally been suspicious of outsiders, especially since so many of their brethren had fallen under the sway of the Burning Legion. Sedai turns to leave, and witnesses that the Orcs have been jumped by Fel Orcs. Sedai looks like he's about to help defend the Maghar when he is cut down by a Fel Orc assassin from behind.

The true villain in all of this are the Fel Orcs, who turned the Draenei/Broken and the Maghar Orcs against each other, but the thing is, like as in A Private Little War, there's nothing you can do. The two sides are willing to believe the worst in each other, and that suspicion makes them both ripe for manipulation by Illidan's forces. 

And that's what I hate about this questline: you know and can see how easily manipulated the two sides are, but like in reality, there's nothing you can do about it. Most of us don't have a pulpit to try to get people to see the other side in reality, so all we can do is watch the unfolding nature of events and feel helpless to do anything.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and the first decade of adulthood was in the 90s, so I got to see this messy reality in spades, with The Troubles being my most obvious example of this problem. Everybody knew that the true villain in the conflict in Northern Ireland was the lack of trust in each side, which extremists on both ends used to keep the conflict going. It was only when enough people --the common people who were the victims in the undeclared war-- finally said "Enough!" that real progress was finally made. 

I can love and respect what Blizz did with that questline, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I hate how it reflects on our own reality, where people can't see beyond sharp divides of black and white to finally meet somewhere in the middle, and how it reflects on me as well. No amount of gear or gold or whatever can change my mind on this, because all it does is sadden me at who we are and what we have become.

EtA: Fixed the flow of the Star Trek portion.

Really? Again?

I wish I were making this up.

There's a new addon that is sweeping the WoW Classic community. From the same person who created Attune, there's now Dailies.

Yes, an addon to detect, share, track, order, and plan your daily/weekly quests. It will also, like Attune, allow you to share your info with others in your guild. About the only thing it doesn't seem to do is allow a guild leadership to track who is completing their dailies. You know, for being optimally ready for raiding.

From the Why This Addon from the CurseForge interface:

"Dailies are already a big part of TBC with Ogrila, the Skyguard, fishing, cooking, dungeons and heroics, and now the Netherwing rep. But very soon we'll also get the Shattered Sun Offensive with a ton of new dailies, and then ... Wrath of the Lich King (hopefully!) with again a ton of dailies and weeklies.

Very quickly your daily grind is going to become very convoluted and having a simple yet effective interface to take you through your selection will be very handy."

Oh yay.

I was already avoiding dailies as much as possible, and now I've got another reason to do so. Because it's now part of the meta for TBC Classic, and like most metas it ends up changing something optional into a requirement.

I was going to post about this video
sometime in the near future anyway,
but this kind of accelerated things.

Between Attune, Questie, and now Dailies (among others), these addons are turning a game into a job.

Unless you actually like doing this sort of job, that is.

Freedom Redux and Other Musings

Last night, I went to bed early. A nice perk of listening to your body and saying "I'm tired as hell and I need some sleep," and no longer having the responsibility of helping to run a progression raid on Monday nights.

This morning, I had a message in my Discord about Karazhan.

One of the raid team's tanks wants to get a taste of raid leading, so I was contacted to see if I could let him have a chance of running a Friday Kara to get his feet wet.

I sat there for a few minutes, chewing on that, and said out loud, "Oh really?"

I'd been wondering whether I should simply leave that Friday Karazhan and just move on entirely, and here was a possibility of doing just that, wrapped up in a nice package and tied with a bow.

Of course, this request was likely a one off (or two off) scenario, but that didn't prevent me from suddenly getting very possessive of my little corner of Azeroth. And here I thought my only issue this week was making sure we had enough healers in place.

After musing over the possibilities, and admitting that I did kind of like having the Friday run to myself, I responded by saying sure, I'll let him try it out. I said I'd even reach out to him if he hasn't contacted me by Wednesday.

We'll see what happens, but that 'Happy Trails' screenshot I posted a few weeks ago may yet see a rerun. This time, for the guild and Discord channel.

***

Okay, let me address the elephant in the room: why the guild and Discord channel?

The answer for that is simple: the primary emphasis of this guild is progression raiding. Oh yes, I've read the guild charter, and there's a lot of fluff in there about friends and respect and whatnot, but what the charter says versus what actually goes on are two entirely different things.

Just like most of the progression raiding guilds, they follow the meta. There's a set of stuff to get, a set of talents to check off, a rotation to be perfected, etc. For Phase 3, that meant running Alterac Valley to get the Alliance trinket. Or Warsong Gulch for Honor/gear.* Or Shadow Resist drops. 

When I was contacted the week after I returned to work from the hospital and told that I was losing my job and would move on to a new contract, I immediately tuned out any talk of the meta. I think I knew at that moment, long before I posted here on the blog or in the raid lead meetings, that I was gone. I was not going to have to follow the meta, because I wasn't going to be in the raid much longer.

I didn't want to admit it to myself just yet, but deep down I knew.

And you know what I also knew? That 80% or more of the Discord discussions surround raiding: the raids themselves, raid tactics, raid strategy, theorycrafting for best DPS output, raid gear, leveling alts for raiding slots, running instances for rep/gear/whatever that points back to raids, ad infinitum. Strip that away, you have not much else. You login, and about half of the discussion in guild chat is about gear drops, raiding, specs, DPS/tanking (for raids and whatnot), grouping for instances (for gear/rep for raids) and not much else. 

All of that serves to remind me that I'm not raiding.

Constantly.

Right now, I have about 26 of 42 discussion channels permanently muted, so they don't exist to me at all. Of the 16 that remain, 7 are from my Monday raid team and one is a channel for raid leaders in general, which I have to remain in because I run Friday's Karazhan, the only Karazhan run the guild still does. One is the rarely used announcements channel, one is the channel for raid logs, one is the guild charter channel, and one is for raid guides. So really, I only look at 4 channels, and even then I still can't avoid raiding discussions. 

Not much of anything to look at, is it? 

The funny thing is, there was a survey toward the end of Classic --the same survey that led to me joining the Monday raid lead team-- and one of the key outcomes was that the guild focuses too much on raiding and there needs to be more opportunities for activities outside of raiding. 

Looking at it now, midway through TBC Classic, I'd say that having a single arena team doesn't really qualify for more activities outside of raiding, especially given the lack of interest in doing much of anything else. The occasional instance runs often feel more like charity cases than spur of the moment "let's run some stuff tonight", and that vibe really turns me off. I have tried to join some instance groups, but an Enhancement Shaman --much like a Rogue-- isn't people's first choice at DPS for 5 person runs. Plus, some people only want to take people who "need" something from an instance run as opposed to just "helping out" or "having fun". 

Even the Classic raids that we ought to just plow through failed to garner more than just 8-9 people's worth of interest. And yes, those are "raids" as well, so the irony is not lost on me. I had tried to generate interest in things such as a lowbie run through Ragefire Chasm --ala Wilhelm Arcturus' well documented lowbie run through Orgrimmar-- but there wasn't any real interest. 

So yeah, my interest in sticking around can be defined by one word --inertia-- and without the grounding provided by regular raiding there's no reason to stay outside of friendships. 

And like I said what feels like a long time ago, you find out who your friends are.

***

The asymmetry between Horde and Alliance questlines in a Classic zone continues to breathe life into the game. While some quests are identical --the Wastewander Pirates quests in Tanaris are a good example-- others have distinct differences. Go to the Hinterlands, and you might be tasked with quests attacking the High Elves there (Horde), or ignoring them entirely (Alliance). Thousand Needles have very few quests for Alliance, but plenty for Horde. Given that Thousand Needles is two zones away from Horde territory, the disparity is still quite stark. Wetlands is a similar scenario, only favoring the Alliance instead. I realize that some of this disparity is due to the unfinished nature of parts of Kalimdor, but that's fine with me. The quirks behind this give a 'lived in' feel to the game, and instead of creating artificial balance between the factions the differences just simply are, which is rather nice.

***

Neve is closing in on L50, and still hasn't been to an instance yet. I ought to fix that, especially since some gear from Scarlet Monastery is still really really good for a Mage, even in her mid-upper L40s. However, I refuse to run through a boost, because that's not the point of playing her. If all I cared about was getting to Outland as fast as possible, I'd consider a boost, but giving up 20+ gold (for a new toon on a new faction/server) PLUS the drops in an instance is a mind bogglingly bad idea. There is no way I am that desperate to get to Outland. I am spacing out my leveling with her so that she never leaves that sweet spot of an XP boost, which really really helps out a lot. Trying to stay within that XP boost range keeps me from overdoing it, which is also good.

*I still get hives when I hear that name. Okay, not really, but deep down in my soul I shiver. Leveling Adelwulf back in Cataclysm via Battlegrounds meant being beat up on a ton in WSG, and I have absolutely no desire to get back into that place again.

Letters From Outland

Dear Cardwyn--

Hi, Sis! Greetings from another world! 

I'm not exactly sure if you can call Outlands another world, as (I've been told) this is what's left of the place after primal forces tore the world of Draenor apart. Given how vast Azeroth is, I find it hard to believe that anything could be powerful enough to destroy an entire world. Even the Scourge can't do more than just scratch the surface of the Plaguelands. 

I made it safely across the Dark Portal to find demons pressing our forces from the front. The stairs leading to the portal from the Outland side funnel the attacks toward the middle of our lines, so we don't have to spend as much time defending our flanks. Here, both the Horde and Alliance are defending our opening into Outland in much the same way as we fought at Ahn'Qiraq in what feels like ages ago. I ran into Keyrissa when I stopped by the field hospital set up to the side of the stairs, and she says to tell you hello.

If you can see it in the background, the
sheer size of the infernals here are mind boggling.

I checked in with the Nethergarde in command on the stairs, and he sent me to the Alliance base called Honor Hold.

To be honest, I'm surprised that the old Alliance forces have lasted this long, shut behind the Dark Portal, without going insane. They have all aged significantly over the years, and I can't decide how much of that was the stress of constant warfare versus the natural progression of time.

Anyway, when I landed I was accosted by Marshal Isildor before I could check in at the Keep, 

and he gave me a once over and said "You'll do, Sister."

I told him I wasn't his sister --and that you'd take exception to his attitude-- and he didn't like that very much. 

I reported in at the Keep, and I was stunned to see Danath Trollbane of Arathor standing before me. I was sure he was long dead, as did everybody else, but the Light works its miracles.

He was speaking with an Elf so I had to wait my turn, but if I heard right that Elf is Turalyon's and Alleria's son. Given how we used to play Rangers and Trolls as kids, it feels weird to have the son of the Ranger General of Quel'Thalas right here in front of me.

And don't tell him I said this, but I think he probably takes after his mother in looks. I mean, I've seen the statues at the entrance to Stormwind, and Turalyon looks like someone who was told to clean the latrine for mouthing off. (Not that you'd know anything about that....)

After I met with Lord Trollbane, he gave me orders to report out into the field once I got settled into my barracks. 

Ever since, I've been out and about in this foreign hellscape.

The Orcs here, known as Fel Orcs, are a lot like the Dragonmaw and Blackrock clans in that nobody --not even the Horde-- likes them. Oh, and they're red for some reason. Nobody knows why, but I get the feeling I'm going to get the job of finding out.

But the thing that I noticed the most is that there must be something in the water, because it seems like everyone around here is abnormally tall. It's as if they've all been drinking that Firewater you are fond of...

Even the demons are much bigger than found in Azeroth:

And there are new varieties, too. Like this one, that seems like something out of a teenage boy's fever dreams:

But you know the old saying about the bigger they are...

Some things never do change. Such as the line for the latrine...

Or some of the goofy armor pieces that they hand out here. They may be better pieces than what I had back in the Plaguelands, but there's no way that I'm not getting an axe in the gut along the way.

What good is the armor if anybody can tickle you while you're wearing it? I may need you to ask your friend Keren* to come over here and complain to the smiths about this.

But one thing does still stand out: the power of friendship. I was tasked with seeking revenge on some Fel Orcs --the red ones-- for ensorcelling an Honor Hold officer, and after surveying the field I realized I was in over my head. But a new friend of mine, one of these Draenei you've no doubt heard about, volunteered to support me. Were it not for her, I'd have likely not made it back alive.

Light! How they knew my name is beyond me.
I might need  your skills to investigate this.

She has a sister of her own out here in Outland, but she hasn't seen her in a while. We'll have to seek her out once we get out of this peninsula.

I do believe that it is best for you right now to stay home and heal some more, because I'm sure that this place would rip the scabs off of your mental scars. I've heard that other parts of Outland are much more beautiful than this place, and I hope to finally get out of here to seek them out soon.

Tell the rest of the family hello for me, and that yes, I am taking care of myself out here. I hear that my nieces and nephew are getting pretty big now! You'll have to tell me more about their adventures in your next letter. Light willing, I'll receive a short leave of absence so I can come back home to visit. Maybe I'll drag my friend, Zarleigha, along with me. She's not been to Elwynn, and my description of home and the fishing pond intrigues her.

Be well!

--Linna

*Yes, that's her in-game name. And yes, she's used to those sorts of jokes.

EtA: Fixed a grammatical glitch in the first paragraph.

EtA: Fixed multiple "but" sentences right after each other. Yeah yeah yeah, ::giggle:: ::giggle:: ::giggle::... He wrote "but" a lot....

"Great Caesar's Ghost!"*

I swear I didn't even notice it at first.

I was on a couple of different toons the other night, talking with my questing buddy. She knows how to find me and has a standing invitation to ping me whenever, so when I was on and was just putzing around she pinged me and we chatted for a bit.

When I have nowhere to go and nothing to do, I tend to just roam around wherever. In this case, I was avoiding my guilded toons --Briganaa and Cardwyn-- so I was just cruising around on Neve, then Az, and then Linna. You know, hopping from flight point to flight point, riding around to nowhere, just chatting away without much of a concern of any mobs aggroing on me. Well, I was on Linna, just flying around and then landing and chatting, when I landed at Nethergarde Keep. I summoned up her warhorse and cavorted around the Keep for a bit, then around the outside of the Keep. While I was typing a reply, a flash of light caught my eye: the lightning that's near the Dark Portal. I sat there, captivated by it for a moment, and I got a sudden feeling.

The time is now.

So I rode south...

"Welcome to the nightmare. Indeed."

Dismounted...

Paused a moment...

And ran across...

"Well," I told my questing buddy, "I did a thing."

"What did you do?" she asked.

I sent her this pic via Discord in reply.....

"SQUEEEEEE!!!!"

"Bring on the clown gear," I replied, tongue planted firmly in cheek. 

Truth be told, I have no idea what'll happen, as it's been ages since I played a Paladin in any sort of serious fashion. I never got that far with Linna here in Classic --she was my boosted character as a precaution in case the raid needed a Ret Pally-- and the last time I played any Paladin for any length of time would have to be Tomakan back in Cataclysm. Quintalan retired just before Cataclysm went live, after the pre-patch, and I stopped playing Balthan when Rades' Bloggers Guild faded away.**

But if nothing else, Linna can send letters back to Card while the latter recuperates from her time spent in Naxxramas.

Saints preserve us, because I'm sure I'm not ready for this. My gear is low-mid 50s Greens that you get from the boost, I don't remember the rotation much at all, and while my memories of Wrath Paladins were mostly positive, TBC/TBC Classic is an entirely different beast.

Oh well, here goes nothing.

*Yes, the tagline that Perry White of The Daily Planet used to say in the old 1950s Adventures of Superman television show. Those shows ended up on the afternoon cartoon/kids block on our local independent around my 4th or 5th Grade.

**For all I know, Balthan could still be the guild master.