(This is a rare occasion, where I inserted a jump break to keep this post from overwhelming the main page of the blog. Just wanted to warn you ahead of time.)
One of the things on my bucket list for WoW Classic was to experience the class quests as they were originally intended: to provide a unique flavor to each class. I realized that some classes had it better than others, such as the Priest and Hunter class quests being superior to the Rogue class quests*, but I was fine with that. I just wanted to see how things were before Cataclysm destroyed all of the unique little quirks that made the Old World so good.
I realize that the Mage quests don't have the same level of interest of some of these other class quests, but the biggest challenge is trying to do them at level on an underpowered Mage for the zone you're in, heading into the swamps beyond Theramore and Brackenwall Village searching for Tabetha's Hut**. That challenge makes the exploration portion of the game shine, but as in just about every other aspect of pre-Cataclysm WoW addons take out all of the guesswork and fun in a search in the unknown. If you do it as Blizz intended, a lot of these quests are more challenging than they seem in a meta created and addon filled (aka Questie) environment.***
"...says the person who DIDN'T get struck by lightning..."
Another metagame issue that impacts whether people do the class quests is "Are the class quest rewards any good?"
Yes, even I use seventyupgrades.com (and its predecessor, sixtyupgrades.com) to determine if my rewards are decent or not for the quest I finished. But the difference in my usage versus others' is that I don't plan my questing based on upgrades; I just quest, and if it works out that I can get an upgrade, great. If not, I'm not gonna bitch that I should have done some other quest that yielded a better item.
The class quests I just do, because they're class quests. They represent a big part of why I play WoW Classic and not Retail: I want the flavor of Azeroth without it being beaten into me by a system designed to get me to Endgame as quickly as possible. The class quests are --by their nature-- unique and not a part of a zone story or anything of that sort. I choose to do these quests for the same reasons why I play the way I play, even though it costs me time to do so****, because I'm not doing any Endgame more complex than Kara right now. And probably won't for the conceivable future unless a friend's Saturday Night SSC runs start up.*****
***
Okay, with that as the prologue, you probably know where this is going.
Instead of a Blizzcon for making announcements, Blizzard is going to have a presentation on April 19th 2022 to cover the future of the Warcraft franchise.
The post covered Classic Season of Mastery, TBC Classic, and Retail, so I presume that we'll see presentations on all three iterations of WoW.
This is my completely uninformed speculation as to what will be presented:
Season of Mastery will conclude and there will be another WoW Classic reboot.
TBC Classic will conclude by December 2022 and will be replaced by Wrath Classic in time for Christmas 2022.
A TBC Classic reboot --akin to Season of Mastery-- will be presented.
A new Retail expansion, set for release in Q1 2023, will be revealed.
There will be a boosting service for Wrath Classic in the same vein as the Deluxe Edition for TBC Classic.
It's entirely feasible that Wrath Classic and Retail might switch positions in the timeline, but that's my feel at the moment. It's also possible that the Retail expac is released in Q3 2022 instead of Q4 2022 or Q1 2023, but given the silence out of Blizzard I kind of doubt it.
Despite the hue and cry over the Deluxe Edition for TBC Classic, enough people bought it that Blizz is definitely bringing it back for Wrath Classic. Yes, that means that bots will swarm all over Utgarde Keep, The Nexus, and Ajol-Nerub, because that's what they do.
I also expect Wrath Classic to follow in the same vein as TBC Classic and drop earlier in the launch event than expected, meaning that a mini-version of the Left Overs --featuring Death Knights-- is going to experience what we experienced. That being said, starting in the mid L50s makes the leveling experience much easier, so probably not as much of a mental meat grinder as what was experienced last Summer.
(Was it really just last Summer? Yeah, yeah it was. Sheesh, my TBC progression raid experience didn't even last a full calendar year.)
So sit down, prop your feet up, and reach for that bowl of popcorn on April 19th. (Y'all can have that; I'll just have a salad, thank you.) Maybe we should create a Blizzard Bingo to see just how many Blizzard buzzwords are covered in the presentation.
The urge to build, to construct, to create is deep inside my bones.
Among the stories that my mom uses to embarrass me with* is the one that when I was about six, my great uncle came over to help my dad with some of the chairs around the house. There were two chairs that could spin around and then rock back and forth. My dad and my great uncle were going to try to lock down the chairs so that they didn't rock, because we'd had a few "incidents" with my brother and me wreaking havoc with those chairs.
They looked a bit like this, only one was red and the other was blue.
While my brother quickly got bored and wandered off, I stuck around, watching, while they tried and failed to figure out how to prevent the chairs from rocking back and forth. After a while, I spoke up and suggested that they bolt the two plates together by drilling holes in the plates and using bolts to tighten and hold the plates together. My dad and my great uncle looked at each other for a moment and went "Ohh....." Within about 45 minutes they had both chairs locked down properly.
A year or so later I was given for my birthday two items: a bonsai kit and a Handy Andy junior handyman set. The former had some seeds that turned out to be dead already --I planted and watered them according to the instructions, so I know-- and the latter had a real screwdriver, a hammer, a plane**, two saws*** and just enough wood and nails to build a toolbox to hold everything.
Perusing the internet for a while yielded this. Although it has a triangle and only one saw, this model also had its own metal box.
I had to wait a week --a sheer eternity to a little kid-- before my dad had the time to help me build the toolbox. Once that was built, I wandered around the house for days, looking for things to build. Sadly, there wasn't anything to work on, and my parents weren't interested in suggesting things for me to build (something about me hurting myself), and my toolset eventually sat in a corner of the garage, gathering dust. I couldn't afford to buy any wood without assistance, because my parents seemed to think that we lived in 1957 instead of 1977 and would only give my brother and I a quarter per week for our chores****
Pleas for a chemistry set yielded a big fat "no", but I did get one of those 175-in-1 electronic sets from Radio Shack for Christmas a year later. Alas that my parents did not like the beep sounds it made when I built the circuits in the instruction book and took the batteries away from the set, again rendering the damn thing useless.
This was the story of my childhood: I'd get something to foster my urge to build things, get partway along, and then my parents would step in and neuter the project before I could finish it. I think this is the origin story of my vast amount of incomplete projects lying around the house, because I was trained to expect to get hamstrung or sidetracked by my interests.
That being said, by the time I graduated college I began to build a few things using my own money, such as a bookcase I designed to hold mass market paperbacks. The entirety of my F&SF book collection was in mass market paperbacks, so I knew exactly what I needed and built the thing from scratch.
Here's the proof. It's still in my basement, 30 years later.
My interest in building things isn't limited to woodworking, as I'd posted in the past about my attempts to repair/recap an old Sony AM/FM radio, but I've also been called upon to perform emergency sewing for school projects. Such as the one time I made a dalmatian outfit for the youngest mini-Red to wear for her school play, or the time my son wanted to go as Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, for Halloween. If you know Classic Doctor Who, you know that means the scarf. Since I didn't (and still don't) know how to knit, I bought a ton of cheap felt and stitched it together using a sewing machine, using the lengths found on doctorwhoscarf.com as a guide.*****
Among my other hobbies/projects are my on again, off again affair with homebrewing, building/repairing stuff around the house (including putting a replacement roof on the back porch after Hurricane Ike hit back in 2008), stereo speaker building, and gardening.
Living proof that I can actually complete a project. And they actually sound good, too!
But one thing that has always caught my eye but I never followed through on was garb/cosplay creation.
***
If you've ever been to a Renaissance Fair you've seen people --some performers, some just fair goers-- dressed in costume. To someone outside of the community it appears to be just that, a costume. But to someone involved --or someone from the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)-- that's known as garb. I've known SCAdians who rummage through various patterns at a Ren Faire, looking for that one pattern that would complete their formal outfit. Or people who take great pains to study costume and clothing from the Middle Ages to get something exactly historically correct.
The link I provided above shows Faire goers as well as Faire staff (from the Ohio Renaissance Festival), and obviously not everything is historically accurate, but it certainly appears quite fun. For me, however, I've an urge to create garb and/or cosplay just because.
Oh, I wish. The T2 Paladin Cosplay from tamuicosplay.com. Svetlana and Benni work their collective asses off, and it's amazing what they can achieve.
But, and this is the sticking point, not for me personally. I know, given my build, I'd be more of a candidate for mimicking Falstaff or, say, Henry VIII, but I'd rather not do that.****** I would like to make stuff for someone else, however, time --and most importantly, money-- willing.
Thanks a LOT, Shakespeare. From the Mary Evans Picture Library, via fineartamerica.com.
I need practice with a myriad amount of skills, which is kind of a sticking point. Like, say, sewing. Or foam armor making. Or dying/painting. Or simply "not burning the house down".
But I look at the compositions that Kamalia puts together on her blog Kamalia et Alia, and can't help but wonder how I'd put together that sort of transmog into a real costume. Like her current one, which includes outfits entitled "Restless Dreams" and "Like, Totally, Not a Death Cultist, Okay?"
Just, wow. Kamalia, I bow to you.
I think I really need to brew some beer to take the edge off of this urge to create. Or maybe design an RPG setting. Or something, because I simply don't have the money or space to create new hobbies for myself.
(I bet when you saw this title that I was going to talk about Elden Ring or something, right? Well, if you want to read about an older person trying the game, go to Tobold's Blog to read about his attempts to play an action RPG that's as unforgiving as the Dark Souls/Elden Ring games as a person whose physical skills aren't what they used to be. Like him, or me.)
*There was one time, about a decade ago, when I was helping my parents out around the house with something and my mom wandered by and said "Oh, you were breastfed as a baby." I looked around, bewildered, saying "Where on earth did THAT come from?" My dad just sighed.
**My parents, in their quest to make sure I didn't kill myself by age 10, immediately took the sharp edge out of. Which, of course, rendered it useless.
***One was a coping saw and the other a "regular" saw, which they took away from me as well. Okay, they let me keep the frame of the coping saw but took away the blade portion, rendering that useless too.
****One of the reasons why I wasn't big on making the kids do any chores for money was because my time was worth so little to my parents that they simply gave us a pittance, even for 1977, to spend. I mean, I could play exactly one game of Pac-Man on that quarter allowance, which lasted up until high school for me in the mid 80s. And if I wanted to buy a paperback book, they ran $2.50 in the late 70s and then $2.95 in the early-mid 80s. (Plus tax, you know.) That'd take me 3+ months to get the money for a single book.
*****If you try to put in https, your AV program might complain about the site because it only has an http version available. Just a note.
******And while it's going to be a very long time before I lose enough weight
to get my health issues under control without drugs, if I did manage to
do that I'd actually consider wearing something.
Sorry about not writing sooner; I've been busier in Outland than I thought.
The Legion is still causing trouble in the peninsula staging area, but we've been pushing them back throughout the rest of this Light forsaken zone. Because of that, I've been sent onward to help with an expedition the Cenarion Circle has sent here to Outland.
"Knight Linnawyn reporting in, ma'am."
You remember Ysiel, don't you? She organized the Outriders based out of Cenarion Hold in Silithus. She's out here now, leading the Cenarion Expedition from their base in a wetlands area, and she has her hands full with Naga and some mysterious occurrences throughout the region.
In addition to the Draenei and Orcs in Outland, there are other races that seem to be the Draenei's cousins. There are the Broken, who are very close to the Draenei but have their contact to the Light severed, which withered them a bit. Honestly, I didn't know that a race that had a direct connection to the Light existed, and my friend Zarleigha described it as basically feeling the warmth of the Light on you at all times. To her, it's about as normal as walking, so losing it would be devastating to her. The Broken have learned to live without that connection, just like the rest of us, and some of the Broken have turned to listening to the elements as a substitute for that direct connection to the Light.
Still, there is a third group that we have seen in Azeroth, the so called Lost Ones, who have descended to barely above barbarism. They're the people who give the Cenarions the most trouble.
I was scouting one of these Lost One groups south of the Expedition's base when I discovered that they'd captured a friend of Kitwynn's, Kayra Longmane. I swear, Kit seems to know everybody out here. I freed Kayra from the hut she'd been tossed into and we escaped north, but not without a few adventures.
The Light protects.
While scouting farther west of the Expedition's base, I came across a friend of yours, Watcher Leesa'Oh.
"You're Card's sister?" she replied. "Oh, I miss the time when she visited us in Darnassus!"
She and her lovable cat, Buddy, were studying a race native to the swamp that she calls the Sporelings, and how they interact with another race, the Bog Lords.
Things are not going well here. The Bog Lords have been entering the Sporelings' territory and have been eating the Sporelings. I couldn't sit idly by when a cry for help came from a nearby Sporeling, so I sprang into action.
Leesa'oh had discovered that a tribe of Ogres had moved into the northwestern part of the swamp and from there I scouted and discovered that they displaced the Bog Lords, who then took it out on the Sporelings.
"Who are you calling puny?"
We stole back some of their mushroom stores and proceeded to start a new feeding area for the Bog Lords south of the Ogres' territory.
Still, the presence of the Naga here is the real problem in the swamps. They seem to be draining the swamps, and Ysiel can't quite fathom why. She had me return to the Cenarion staging area west of Honor Hold to ask for help, but when I arrived I found the Circle's hands are still tied up with the Silithids and the Scourge. Unfortunately, the Expedition is on its own.
"Who we need," Ysiel told me, "is someone like your sister to help us put the puzzle together."
I told Ysiel that you're staying put at the moment, and she was stuck with me instead.
And don't you dare come out here yet, Sis. Mom told me in her last letter that you're still having flashbacks and nightmares from inside Naxxramas, and there is no way you're coming out here until you're properly healed. I'll take care of myself, and when I finally catch a short reprieve I'll be sure to come back home for a week's worth of leave.
Ysiel is going to send me to the Draenei city southeast of here, called Shattrath, to look for assistance with the Naga. I'm still getting used to seeing so many Draenei around, and I've heard rumors that a significant chunk of Blood Elves defected from Illidan and joined forces with the Draenei in the city. If that's true, it just might be our first big break out here. Southwest of here is a large encampment of these Mag'har Orcs, the ones that follow the Old Ways and refused the Burning Legion back in what feels like ancient history. Even though they distrust --at best-- anyone who isn't an Orc, I've heard that the Frostwolves have established some ties with the Mag'har. If the Frostwolf Clan can get them on our side, we've got a chance here. A real chance.
Be well, and send me more drawings that the kids have done! I save them in my pack to take out whenever I'm missing home. And you say that Trevor visited? You can't just leave me hanging like that! Are you two finally going to get together? I know you've got it bad for him, and having another Knight in the family is a good thing in my book. I expect details! Nothing is off limits!!
Your loving sister,
Linna
EtA: Corrected a caption; restoring it's original message.
There are times when it feels strange, knowing the future.
Sure, there are plenty of times where I play a game more than once, such as Baldur's Gate, and I know what will happen. And that doesn't bother me much, even though I know I'll end up making the same story selections in spite of plenty of incentive to do otherwise.*
Even playing WoW Classic and visiting places such as Theramore, knowing what happens to them in Retail, doesn't bother me too much because I just simply refuse to accept the Retail storyline from Cataclysm forward. I just look on that as a story in need of a massive reboot and retelling, because of poor decisions made by Blizzard to.... what? Look edgy? Provide drama? Give the faction leaders something to do? Make more money by placing the story in novel/comic form, and going off the rails by focusing solely on faction leadership?
Sorry, got sidetracked there.
But still, there are times when I read the in game story for someone such as Illidan, known to just about everyone else as The Betrayer, and think that he got a raw deal.
In this timeline, Illidan's end comes as the final boss in Black Temple, and think of everything he gets screwed out of along the way:
A suitor for Tyrande, and loses out to his own brother (Malfurion).
A powerful (arguably the most powerful and influential) Highborne Mage, and loses the Well of Eternity due to the War of the Ancients.
Tries to play the Burning Legion by "going over" to their side and then sticking a metaphorical knife in their backs at a critical juncture in the War of the Ancients. As a result, is trusted by no one.
Creates a second Well of Eternity to restore the Well to its original glory, and is imprisoned.
Is sprung from prison by Tyrande and Malfurion to assist with the Burning Legion, is turned into a demon by the Skull of Gul'dan so he could defeat a dreadlord, and is banished by Malfurion.
Tries to play both sides once more by feigning allegiance to the Burning Legion, and is given the thankless task of defeating the Lich King. (He fails.)
Turns against the Legion on arriving in Outland, but in the end becomes yet another Overlord of Outland who ruins the damn place.
Getting screwed out of your love, your craft, your people, etc., will tend to make a person bitter. Since he tended to exercise bad judgement in service of a good cause, I frequently see him as an Azerothian version of Albrecht Dürer's Melancholia.
Been there, Melancolia. Oh, I've been there. From the Google Art Project via Wikipedia.
It's kind of ironic that, for decades, I've kind of identified with the personification of Melancolia as she broods over inspiration. Being in awe over people who have that creative spark and can seemingly summon it at will, it always helps to know that waiting for inspiration to strike is not merely a pastime of the rest of us, but also afflicts the gifted.
But I can see a character such as Illidan in this print, particularly when he is seen in the BC trailer, brooding over the Skull of Gul'dan in a Hamlet-esque way. His inspiration only led him so far, to making bad decisions that he has to reflect upon for the rest of his life.
Which is coming to an end at the conclusion of Phase 3.
***
On days like yesterday, when I stumbled across a post in Blizzard Watch about alternate Hearthstone skins that shine a window on what could have been in the Warcraft universe. Such as Illidan as a Sabertender, or Anduin as a heartthrob (or an SI:7 operative).
I think that Cardwyn could get behind the SI:7 Anduin. (From Blizzard Watch.)
But what attracted me most was seeing Festival Jaina. Not that it's interesting on its own merits, but that she's happy.
I could definitely see Jaina at my envisioning of the Goldshire Harvest Festival. Minus Cardwyn's 'Pig Incident' as an adolescent. (From Blizzard Watch.)
I can't recall when I've ever seen her happy before, and if there's someone who definitely fits the bill as a gloomy Eeyore-esque Mary Sue type, it's Jaina.
Uh... Let me explain that part.
She (and Thrall) are both Mary Sues (or is that Mary Sue and Marty Stu) in that they seem to be magically free of weaknesses, are über-powerful**, and they skate along in the Warcraft universe whereas just about everyone else seems to die off or be corrupted. And that's not even talking about Jaina having a blue dragon for a boyfriend. I guess you can tell that the two of them are the favorites of Blizzard simply because they take a licking and keep on ticking.
That doesn't mean that all is peaches and cream for Jaina, because Blizz has spent a lot of time trying to throw tons of emotional and physical tragedy in her direction. It's almost as if Blizz is trying to say "No, she's NOT a Mary Sue at all! See? She's constantly buffeted by tragedy! She can't help but dwell on her failures!"
This art, however? What I see in her face is someone who has cautiously let her guard down for a while. It's not relief, nor is it abandon, but more of an "yeah, I can do this for a while", with a bit of strain still on the cheeks and her smile.
She's freed from her shackles for a while.
***
Ironically enough, that freedom from shackles was something that Illidan was never able to achieve. I looked at Jaina's portrait and instead of just saying "Oh, nice" and moving on, I thought of Illidan instead.
And Johnny Cash.
I suppose I should have said Trent Reznor, since I was thinking of Johnny Cash's version of Hurt, but I honestly do prefer Cash's interpretation more than Reznor's Nine Inch Nails original.
When the Cash version was released, I was still in my early 30s, with three small kids, a wife who suffered from depression, neighbors who judged us by whether we went to the right schools or played the right sports or went to the right church***, and I didn't know how we were going to survive long term.
Cash's Hurt changed Reznor's young adult spiraling into addiction into an older person at the end of their life, watching things fade away. The lines "I wear my Crown of Thorns upon my liars chair" and "everyone I know goes away in the end" spoke to my existential angst at the time, and in some small way it helped me realize that I'm not the only one who struggles, who has guilt and regrets. I've returned to Hurt from time to time when I'm feeling low, just so I can rekindle that realization once more in a therapeutic fashion.
But a character such as Illidan doesn't have that catharsis. Heis our catharsis, if we only let him in. And I can't help but feel his tragedy when I'm roaming around in Outland, questing, although I should be thinking about other things. I know the future of this place, and it saddens me that I am unable to change it. Like how I know what is coming, Wrath of the Lich King, and I know that all of the excesses such as Gearscore and automated LFG will be there with it, and I'm powerless to stop it.
Questing, thinking, and listening are therapeutic, but only once we accept things that we cannot change.
*Such as in Stardew Valley, where I have soft spots for Penny and Leah.
**Without any real limits. Or at least it seems to be the case.
Well, now is as good a time as any to discuss this.
John's premise in the video is that anybody who has 'solved' an MMORPG and figured out the optimal path toward achieving the goals set out in said game is providing people with the 'metagame'. No, not the Facebook 'Meta', which is abjectly silly and just marketing speak for trying to bring as many disparate concepts/items/whatever under one roof*, but something quite different.
This is the roadmap of "how to level in TBC Classic properly", or the definitive boss strategy in raids. Or the optimal raid composition and/or class spec for raiding. Or how to get yourself attuned (or Attune-d (tm), couldn't resist) most efficiently. Or.... Well, you get the idea.
But to continue, Josh believes that the metagame or 'meta' is ruining MMORPGs because it eliminates player choice.
Yes, you read that right. And, once you hear him out, you'll likely agree with him.
The entire point of the meta is that it is the optimal way of doing something. And if that is the optimal solution presented to the gaming community, why would you do anything else BUT that? To do so is to cheat yourself of the best solution in a game.
I was reminded once again of the metagame after the Friday Karazhan run** when during the Discord chatting post-raid someone mentioned about getting rep for Cenarion Expedition. Another person chimed in with how you "ought to do it" by buying those Unidentified Plant Parts and turn those in, one after another, until you reach Honored. Then you can go questing and get the rep needed rather than running Steamvault multiple times. Considering that I just went out and quested on Linna, not really caring about rep, until I hit Honored and the Plant Parts left in my bag*** were useless. But I was more annoyed that I knew about the meta for Cenarion Expedition rep and I deliberately chose not to do it, and I was --unintentionally-- having my nose rubbed in a pile of dogshit because of my choice.
And that's the thing about the meta: it exists, and because it exists you are always reminded of it even when you aren't following it. Unless you turn off Discord or chats and eschew grouping in favor of solitary play. Even then, the knowledge that a meta exists in some form or another will haunt you, despite your protestations of innocence.
After all, even I end up on some WoW websites, trying to figure out the optimal builds and talent trees for my toons. Those published entries are as much a metagame as Attune or other attunement walkthroughs, and a not so secret reason why I haven't gone into any 5-person instances on Linna**** is because I messed up and took an extra level to finally get the talent for Blessing of Kings, and I didn't want to blow any extra gold on resetting my talent trees just to fix my screw up.
And then I thought, "Why the hell should I be apologizing for not having the 'right' build, anyway?"
My brain almost immediately responded with multiple instances in the past where I was in instances, learning, and being told that I suck and the rest of the people dropping group.
"Oh, right."
Then I thought about guild groups, and then I remembered that I was --rather politely-- told to 'get gud' by being 'counseled' on how to improve my DPS in SSC/The Eye and in Naxx.
***
Oh, you didn't know about that in Naxx?
Oh yes, I was given some unsolicited 'counseling' by a fellow guildie one evening --who didn't even run a Mage as anything other than a lasher farming alt-- on how to maximize my DPS. I was seething afterward, because I knew exactly where I needed to go but gear held me back, and here was someone who didn't even take part in our Mage Crew discussions trying to tell me what to do. I basically took the 'advice' and threw it in the trash, because I had my own roadmap and I knew that the rest of the Mage crew would back me up.
And now, having been on the other side of the raiding leadership, I know how this works: someone in raid leadership asked him to talk to me about it, rather than asking my class lead who was likely not involved at all. (And I have a really good feeling as to who it was who asked him, too.) Even though I didn't raid with him in TBC Classic (or that part of guild leadership), that experience soured me considerably on whether some random person might want to 'help' me by 'informing' me of the meta for whatever it is I'm doing.
So yeah, I don't need any guild groups in 5-person instances while I'm learning things, thankyouverymuch.
Even if I did want to group up in guild, guildies would soon learn about my toons outside of the auspices of the guild and start adding them to their friends list. The only person who knows Neve and Linna are attached to me is my questing buddy, and I prefer it that way. A few other people are aware that I boosted a Paladin in case Ret were needed, but that's all they know.
***
Regardless, Josh's 'solution' isn't one that I think would work. You'll have to watch the video to form your own opinion, but my belief is that the meta is here to stay, and it will pretty much rule the MMOs that already have been 'figured out' because of human nature.
If you ask someone what their goal is in playing an MMO such as WoW Classic, what is the answer?
How many say 'To win"?
How many say "To have fun"?
But the kicker is what does 'winning' and 'fun' mean to people?
If it means 'endgame', odds are very good that it also means utilizing the metagame to win the endgame. Even if 'having fun' means that people want to 'raid with friends', eventually raid leadership will have to come to some hard decisions about people who simply aren't doing a very good job but happen to be good friends. Who do you pick, the friendship or finishing a raid tier?*****
If it means 'winning PvP', it means following the PvP meta. After all, the PvP crowd is more intensely driven to winning and min/maxing their way to success than even progression raiders.
If it means doing anything other than that, then perhaps the meta doesn't matter that much. But to an MMORPG, where everything is geared around Endgame and PvP and raiding, the meta will still rule.
***
So....
Where does this leave me?
Probably trying my damnedest to keep my head down, run the Friday Kara until it simply isn't viable anymore, and just mind my own business. Eventually I'll get over this funk, and since I've got about 10 months or so until Wrath drops I've got plenty of time. I can console myself in that no matter what MMO I play, there will be a meta lurking out there, so it's not like I can change a game and free myself from the metagame. It's all about the community, and how overt --or backhanded-- they are in pushing people toward the metagame that matters.
And that last statement probably deserves a post of its own.
*There's another Josh Strife Hayes video on that, right here:
**You remember the person who was interested in learning to raid lead and was offered --without my knowledge-- a chance at running my Friday Kara run? He never followed through. I was going to contact him directly, but I was told to wait to see if he followed up with me. So far, he hasn't. Of course, he might contact me this week because that's just my luck. I post about it, and it happens.
***And a few mailed over by my questing buddy.
****Outside of 'Normal' runs for Hellfire Ramparts, Blood Furnace, etc. being very hard to find.
*****A couple of weeks ago, during the Friday Kara someone said in Discord that they missed raiding with me on Mondays. "Thanks," I replied, "but you at least have [raider's name] now, and she brings 300-400 more DPS than me." And nobody said a word about missing raiding with me after that. It's very easy to assuage your own guilt by saying platitudes, but the reality is that my replacement brings significantly more DPS than me. People can't deny the uncomfortable fact that when I replaced her for Vashj in SSC on my very last progression raid night we couldn't bring Vashj down. The next week, they nailed her on the second try. My questing buddy continues to insist that I'm missing the point and that people do miss me, but I believe I just simply said the quiet part out loud that nobody wanted to admit.
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."
