Entering the No-Judgement Zone

(Apologies to Planet Fitness for co-opting their slogan.)

 

Here's a question that I've been wondering about lately:

Can you even play Retail these days without an external guide?

Or maybe a better question is whether you can play either Retail or the current iteration of Classic without external guides, but the Retail version of the question came out when I began contemplating what it would take to begin playing again before Dragonflight.

I'm still on the fence about it, especially given the experience this YouTuber had picking up the game.

"With that being said, I plan to talk about my adventures through the story as the narrative is very important to me in video games such as World of Warcraft. I'd expect the story itself would keep a hold on me, but what I found out while playing through Shadowlands and BfA was something I can personally compare to was jumping in the middle of new playing film which is on its fifth sequel."

And I thought, "Uh oh."

Apparently he had the extremely bad luck to choose the three class/race combos that don't start in Exile's Reach, but that's on Blizzard for making those decisions. If you want a new player to start in Exile's Reach, don't give an out for a few class/race options. That's a huge mistake.

The Blizzard Forums thread about WoW and casual players where I found the YouTube video shown above began with this YouTube video being posted,

and reading through set of forum comments that was enough to make me wonder whether it was worth it to try to catch up in Retail at all. I mean, Shintar was able to pick up Retail fairly easily after having been away even longer than I have, and she is enjoying the game as a casual player, but she also wasn't fazed by all of the systems that had sprung up since, well, Cataclysm. (Mists doesn't count, since I'd kind of mailed it in on PvE content --and especially group content-- at that point.) She also has the advantage of being a long time raider and officer in a raiding guild on SWTOR, so she's far more used to picking up the complex end of MMOs than I am.

Which is when I realized that I'd need to do a ton of out-of-game reading to try to figure everything out.

Hence the question.

***

I suppose that the question itself is a bit of a bait and switch, since I'm about 95% confident that the answer is "no".

As I mentioned in a comment on one of Kamalia's recent posts, I was helping my questing buddy make the transition from Enchanting to Tailoring and so I hit Wowhead to see if my memory was correct in where the best places to farm Silk and Mageweave were. That was when it hit me: I already had done this for Neve (and Cardwyn before her) by memory and educated guesses, confirmed by Wowhead, just a month or two ago. I've also been playing Classic since launch --and then the pre-Cata Retail back in the day-- so why should I feel the need to look it up?

But I did anyway, approaching the question like I do most other research topics.

That experience does beg the question I asked in the comment: why should we feel the need to do this in the first place? Have we been conditioned to look at guides for the meta on various things in MMOs so much that we never realize that we're basically utilizing unofficial third party documentation as manuals?

And how on earth did we let game companies get away with letting their fans write the manuals for their games without the game companies paying them?

After all, that's what Wowhead and Icy Veins and other websites are: the game manuals and reference manuals for WoW. The meta that I beat on quite frequently is basically the "how to do it" manual for WoW.*

***

I'm old enough to have PC video games in storage that not only came with a real manual, but a manual filled with historical details, such as the Lawrence Holland developed video games from LucasArts. 

Those manuals were more like a textbook, complete with references, and developers spent a ton of time working on them.

And for popular games, there were also the third party "how to do it" manuals, like this: 

I have a copy around somewhere.
From eBay.

Given that --comparatively speaking-- the manual for Civ was pretty thin, having a guide along from people who loved the game** was a godsend. 

And I suppose these sort of manuals were the genesis of the current phenomenon of requiring a visit to Wowhead before you can do pretty much anything in game.

***

So I guess it's not a matter of these external guides being a requirement to play the game, because you can try to play without any guides at all, but if you want to do any form of decent group content you're pretty much going to have to follow said guides. 

And you thought peer pressure was merely part of your growing up. 

For example***, one of the most recent times I was in an instance on the Alliance side, our guild group was joined by an unguilded Warlock. More than once, one of the guildies commented on his rotation, wondering why the Lock was doing some of the things they were doing. 

"They could have learned to do this out in the field, where you do things differently than in group content," I posited. "When you're a Fire Mage in group content, you lead with different spells than when you're out questing where survival is more important."

"Maybe."

"You could provide some guidance," another guildie added. "If they joined the guild they could find out how things worked in group content."

"....Nah. Not worth the trouble."

Okay, maybe not all guilds have those sorts of discussions when running group content, but having seen how the sausage is made in both these sorts of runs --or in reviewing personnel to join a raiding team-- you can't unsee it. The lead team examines gear, raiding logs, and rotation before they make a decision to give someone a tryout. Sentiment and emotion aren't allowed into the review process when you're trying to stay on current content.

From the movie Invincible (2006).****

It can be soul crushing at times, and it frequently feels like the managing by spreadsheet crap which I rail about at work all the time.***** There's no room for hunches or for how well people fit into a group environment; if they don't follow the meta why should you take a chance on them?

***

I guess the answer to the overarcing question as to why we use these third party guides all the time is because of the age old problem of peer pressure. It may not be obvious to the uninitiated, especially if you've been steeped in the game for so long, but the pressure to conform if you want to do anything beyond solo content and some basic group content is a constant. The desire to not look like an idiot can be a big motivator to conform to what the guides tell you to do, especially if content in those guides are what the team/raid leaders for high end content are looking for. 

For a non-conformist, who zigs when everybody else zags******, that can be the death knell of interest in a game.

Does it mean that I'm going to set aside my interest in Retail? Not yet, but I'll admit that my interest is dimming somewhat when I realize just how much work I'd have to do just to get current with things. Because I'd like to do some group content, and realizing that I've just as much work ahead of me as if I were going progression raiding does not endear me that much to the process. Add to that I'm apparently supposed to do BfA content to get to Dragonflight isn't a favorite topic of mine, either.

From Blizzplanet's interview with
Jackie Wiley and Tina Wang.

*For all those posts in forums and elsewhere about how "casuals don't even know Wowhead exists", I call bullshit. If you play the game for any length of time and look at in game chat channels, you'll see people told to look at Wowhead, typically in a condescending fashion. Or if you have a question about the game and do a quick search, Wowhead inevitably comes up. It's not like other games --especially RPGs and MMOs-- don't have their Wowhead equivalents. So I'm not buying that crappy "casuals don't know" excuse. It's just that people who say that about casuals have their heads in the sand; people know about Wowhead, they just don't really care about slavishly following everything it suggests.

**And with an official imprimatur from Microprose, too.

***Again, paraphrasing. I don't have all the conversation written down, and I don't turn on recordings while on Discord.

****Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg) noted his name was spelled wrong in his locker after being granted a tryout as a walk-on with the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team. The equipment manager wasn't exactly concerned about that, given he believed Vince was going to be cut from the team in a week or two.

*****Part of the reason why this is bugging me so much is that I noted that --in pursuit of the meta-- the 2x/week raid team began putting one of their two Mages on the bench in favor of pulling in an extra Warlock, who used to be a Warrior but then changed to a Ret Pally before they had a Ret Pally join their team. So nothing personal, buddy, but we only need one Mage now and you're out of luck. Which drives me bananas, because I wanted so much to make sure that all of the Mage crew from Classic had a landing spot for TBC, and despite all that one of them is getting put on the bench for Sunwell. 

******Guilty as charged. I still haven't regularly done any of the dailies in TBC Classic aside from the occasional PvP daily, and for the dailies from places like Ogri'la, Terokk, and Quel'Danas, I haven't even picked up the seed quest for them. The easiest way to get me to NOT do something is to be loudly told by everybody in every single channel I'm in --guild, global, or whatever-- to DO YOUR DAILIES.

Because I Enjoy a Good Spanking

I guess I should feel grateful that I'm small potatoes --okay, more like the size of a single french fry-- in the MMO blogosphere.

After reading this post over on MassivelyOP and then Wilhelm Arcturus' rebuttal, I was certainly happy to not be in the crosshairs of the very vocal pro-LFG tool crowd. But then again, more than a few bloggers I follow have had commentary regarding the latest tempest in a teapot that is TBC Classic, so why bother posting about it this far after the announcement?

Catharsis, perhaps?

Indeed!
From Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

 

***

The automated LFD tool, when it was first released, was a godsend for people who --like me-- operated at off hours. Trying to find a dungeon group in the early morning or late at night was painful at best, and if you weren't on when your guildies were on, well... That kind of sucked. But with the tool, when you were on was suddenly no longer an issue.

Oh yeah, it still kind of was, given that the available pool of players shrank in off hours, but it was certainly better than just about nothing at all.

But like anything else, what you get out of the tool is a direct correlation to what people put into the tool. And if people are being asshats because the tool allows them to, well...

Garbage in, garbage out.

***

Perhaps it's better to step back and look at things from a larger point of view. Just what would the automated LFD tool solve in today's Classic community?

The tool as created in original Wrath was set among battleground groups* --a subset of servers in a region grouped together for random Battlegrounds-- and matched players to a selected instance, or a random instance, in either Normal or Heroic mode. Furthermore, players wouldn't have to use the meeting stones to be summoned to the location, the players would automatically be ported to the beginning of the inside of the instance itself. 

Convenience, we are it.

Regardless, the biggest problem the original LFD tool was meant to solve was getting players grouped and into instances painlessly, which most people took to mean avoiding the Trade Chat cesspool. And that's putting it politely, given that Trade Chat back then was a haven of racist and sexist material.

Think about that for a minute: WoW's Trade Chat back then, when Admins were far more numerous and attentive to players, was worse than LFG Chat in Classic is now.

Were there server balance issues? Yes, there were, but WoW was still in a growth/expansion mode, so the Battleground Groups evened things out a bit. It was only in a post-Cataclysm world, when the WoW population began to shrink, did server balance issues become a problem. I still remember how stunned I was when in 2014 I discovered that Ysera-US, one of the old WoW servers and where my Alliance toons resided on, had shrunk so far in population that it was a recommended landing spot for new players.

But before there were balance issues, grouping balance issues became a thing. As in, if you weren't a tank (or, to a lesser extent a healer) you were going to wait. A lot.

Yes, yes, I know, some things never change. 

But still, the tank problem from Cataclysm onward was severe enough that waiting for upwards of an hour or more as a DPS for a queue to pop could be maddening. And then if you ever thought about tanking so that you could avoid the wait, the abuse heaped on tanks --and to be fair, the tanks/healers would heap on DPS too-- could get pretty extreme.

I pretty much gave up on heroic instance runs in Cataclysm based on the crap slung around in normal instance runs, and by the time Mists dropped I found Battlegrounds preferable to running instances where everybody was expected to know everything and "lol L2P noob" was one of the nicer refrains I heard.

So why would we want to return to that?

***

I suppose that people in Classic who are in favor of a return of the automated LFG tool have forgotten what it was like to be learning the fights via said tool.

In my personal experience, zoning in and declaring that hey, I'm still learning this instance could be enough for at least one person to drop. Or that someone would initiate a "vote kick" against you. It might not be as bad as to have that happen all the time, but I'd say that about 1/3 of the time when I did that in Cataclysm --as a DPS-- I'd see someone attempt one of the two options. And that was for a normal instance, mind you, not a heroic. I have absolutely no idea how people behave in normals and heroics instances these days in Retail, now that mythic+ exists. I suspect that based on this thread, M+ and other instance runs are not a lovey dovey place at all. 

If everybody knows the fights and has at least a decent set of gear, then yeah, the tool can be useful for getting your badges and gearing up, but notice the "decent set of gear" part. Where to you go if you need gear to get to that "decent" level? It becomes a circular problem.

Yeah, like this.
From the Blizzard Forums.

And if your entry into running a normal instance --again, so you can learn the fights in a practical manner and get gear-- is toxic, why stick around? 

***

As a tool, the automated LFG tool does make the process of getting into an instance relatively painless. But the tool also operates as, well, an accelerant. It takes a potentially combustible situation and pours gasoline on everything, because it eliminates any sense of responsibility for your actions. 

I also believe that it is easier to overlook the problems with the LFG tool when you're in a guild. If you're in an active guild, you can get a group together, punch in the tool, and away you go. No fuss, no muss. Even if you need a single DPS, no big deal. You get in a lot quicker, you can do whatever while you're waiting, and it's a rather painless affair. 

If you pug, however.... That's when the problems begin. You have to prove yourself time and again,  and constant usage of the LFG tool is an accelerant on the process.** Make a mistake, and some people will judge you faster than middle school kids at lunch time. When it is soooo easy to just kick or leave instead of working through problems, you can bet that people will choose that option.

***

The automated LFG tool, if they were to implement it covering "Battleground server groups", would also mask other problems with the WoW Classic community, allowing them to fester without a long term resolution.

Such as server imbalance.

It needs to be said, but in the WoW Classic community the Battleground server groups are practically all the servers in a specific time zone. Which is great and all for the automated LFG tool, but when you transition to raiding.... Not so much. I've covered this before, but the reality is that the raiding scene on the smaller servers has been declining close to the point of no return, while a couple of gigantic servers are so huge because layering hides problems normally associated with them being too big: being unable to farm materials and the consequent inflation of auction house prices.

Spreading the server population out would help a LOT, because it would prevent the brain drain that is currently happening throughout TBC Classic and stretching back to the last few months of Vanilla Classic. It's one of those "it sounds great in theory" solutions that nobody seems to want to tackle head on, because it means that Blizz would have to confront one of their big cash cows: paid server transfers.

***

Do I know the answer to the automated LFG tool conundrum? 

No, but I do know that installing the solution implemented in Retail Wrath is a disaster in the making. 

What we know now about WoW as implemented in Classic, courtesy of 50 million walk through videos/podcasts/blogs/websites, would likely make people less tolerant of others, and that accelerant capability that the automated LFG tool has could be the spark that the community might not recover from.

Remembering the old definition about insanity as "performing the same actions over and over, and expecting a different result" is worth remembering right now.

Something different is called for here. Perhaps server merges, perhaps bans on toon creation/transfer to the giant servers, perhaps free transfers off of said giant servers or servers with huge faction imbalances, or even perhaps some combination of both, is worth trying. But what I do know is that simply going down the same old path and then expecting it'll all be fine is being incredibly naive.

*Thanks to Shintar for reminding me of this. I thought for the longest time that it was on individual servers, even though I did know it was among Battleground groups when it released; selective memory, I guess. I do know that with Mists and the coming of "don't-call-them-server-merges" the automated tool's reach did expand.

 

**Once, before I joined my current guild, I tagged along on an instance run of theirs. "I'm so glad we're all friends," one of the people in the run said, "because I absolutely hate pugging instances." I could understand the sentiment, but given that I got to know most of my in-game friends via pugs I felt somewhat slighted.

Letters from Outland, Part 4

Dear Sis--

I'm writing this while I'm taking a break from the fighting. It seems that the Burning Legion has a never ending supply of infernals to drop on both the Alliance and Horde fortifications in the poorly named Shadowmoon Valley, and both factions are hard pressed to keep the supply lines open.

Here at Wildhammer Hold, I can only dream of the hellscape that greeted me when I first crossed the Dark Portal and think "Ah, for the good old days." I'm sure the contingent at Honor Hold would disagree, but when the sky is on fire you tend to have a different outlook on life. 

A pleasant land this ain't.

Any other name would have likely been a better one than Shadowmoon Valley, which sounds closer to something near Astranaar than Outland, although I'm told by an Orc whom I knew back in our Argent Dawn days that the Valley takes its name from the Shadowmoon Clan, who led the Orcs straight into the Legion's lap all those years ago.

Vindicator Aluumen has told me he feels that Illidan will strike more directly against our fortifications in the coming days, but he also thinks that Illidan is caught between a rock and a hard place. As hard as the Legion is hitting us, they're also preparing to strike against Illidan himself. I guess with a name like 'The Betrayer', Illidan has a certain reputation to uphold, and he appears to have double crossed the Burning Legion too. 

Every time I turn around, the uglier
Illidan's troops get. At least they all die.

Even if we overcome the odds and hold our ground, we need to break both of our enemies before we have a chance to bring a measure of peace to Outland.

Hmm... Since I name dropped the title "Vindicator", I guess I should explain a few things about Draenei society that I've learned over my time spent here. The Draenei have their equivalent of the Knights --the Vindicators-- and the Priests --The Anchorites-- but they also have their version of military commanders, the Exarchs. These roles used to be allowed to specific genders only, such as that up until recently had been the case with the Night Elves and Tauren, but the need for bodies has broken down their rigid conservativism.* The fact that my friend Zarlie is an Anchorite is now by choice rather than by societal expectations. She informs me that her sister is yet another classification, a Farseer, who follow the ways of the elements akin to the Shamanism of the Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls.

I've also heard whispers about the Draenei Keepers of the Dead, the Auchenai, but only from the Lower City. While apparently they do exist, the great City of the Dead, Auchindoun, was destroyed in a disaster only a few years before I crossed the Dark Portal, and the Auchenai who survived have, well, gone a bit crazy. I don't know if it's the "everybody died and I can't handle it" sort of crazy or not, but what I've heard is that the Auchenai have been experimenting with things that you'd find more out of the Cult of the Damned than any Draenei organization.

Draenei may have a distinctive outlook on life, but they are by no means a monolithic race. The only thing that truly unites them is their hatred for the Burning Legion. Well, not hatred per se, but probably closer to disappointment. Apparently many of their brethren were tempted by the "gifts" offered by the Legion and chose to join the Legion instead of rejecting them, and those fallen Draenei are now commanders and leaders among the Legion's forces. 

Uh.... I was in the crate.
"Please don't look... Please don't look..."

Despite all that, I've grown to like them during my time here. I now know how you feel being the "shorty" of the household, as I've discovered that when you're surrounded by Draenei even the Kaldorei can appear small. The Draenei may at first glance seem overly pious and sanctimonious, but once you get to know them they open up quite a bit and are quite capable of incredibly bawdy behavior. Like the Elven kindreds, they have an unconscious grace and strength that can be quite stunning. 

I'm not entirely convinced they're so
uptight that they won't drink, but it's
worth a try sometime.

Either way, the Draenei have decided that the Alliance is their future, and so we have to learn to live with them. They have suffered under a certain amount of suspicion by our troops because people know their brethren from the Legion, but it's also intimidating to meet someone who is smarter, stronger, faster, and more graceful than you, who is also more sanctimonious than High Priestess Laurena. (Don't tell her I said that!)

Now that I've been on assignment here in Shadowmoon Valley, I can say that despite first impressions the place has not been totally abandoned by people. I know of a few scattered farms here and there, particularly on the northern edges of the Valley, where some Orcs refuse to leave and instead eke out a living. I've become rather fond of one Oronok who has a ranch high up away from roaming elementals; I can tell he took up ranching late in life as he still makes some basic mistakes, but I've learned not to pry too much. Like many Orcs, he has demons in his past that he'd just as soon forget, and if keeping a watchful eye on his helboars helps, I'm not one to tell him otherwise.

Angry elementals are everywhere. An organization of Shamans called the Earthen Ring has been trying to placate them without much success, and given the response from our leadership --which is mostly "get out of here, I'm busy"-- I can see why. I've been helping to get them some answers from the elementals, but not much has come of it so far. 

...except for the case of heartburn
I've got right now. Another Fire Lord?

Nonetheless, we've also had our run-ins with more of those avian types. Apparently one of them turned traitor, which is good for us, because their companions were going to try to summon forth what looks like an Old God straight into Outland. Given how much trouble they gave us at Ahn'Qiraq, I was more than happy to take on that assignment and destroy their summoning attempt.

That certainly matches a description
I'm sure you're familiar with.

Good riddance.

One more thing. I realize that this will probably hurt Elsharin, but I've encountered many of her ex-brethren here in Shadowmoon Valley as well. The Sindorei who still follow Kael'Thas have a base here --originally they had two, but the Sindorei following the Na'aru took over one of them-- and I've had to kill more than my share of this Sunfury regiment. I've even had to go undercover for a while, and thank goodness that I got to know your teacher, or I'd never have been able to pull it off.

I actually look pretty good as a redhead
and wearing pointy ears. Don't ask
where the ears came from; I'm not proud of that.

It's all in the walk. And the attitude.

The more I've seen these Sunfury Elves in action, the more disgusted I am with them. Have they all been duped? Do they honestly feel that they are on the side of justice? Do they simply not care and just want power any way they can get it? If it's that last one, they're likely going to end up allying with someone who can claim they provide it, and I'm afraid I know who that is. 

Elves and Draenei. These two should have been allies from the start, but Illidan and the Legion --and truth be told, us Humans kind of messed up a bit too-- got in the way. I'm rambling at this point, so I ought to finish up and go to bed soon. I've a long patrol tomorrow that takes me near Illidan's stronghold, nicknamed The Black Temple.

Be well, and give everyone my love!

--Linna

*Again, Mistress Evelyn's grammar lessons came in handy!

EtA: Corrected a grammar issue.

Card--

If you are reading this, you saw my hidden message and guessed how to bring this out. 

I am being stalked. 

I don't have any proof of it yet, but I have this uneasy feeling that my movements are being closely watched, and someone is waiting to strike. It is not simply paranoia at work out here, although at first I thought it was the case, but I know that someone is after me for my knowledge.

A short time ago, I discovered something that could potentially tip the balance of this whole campaign in our favor, and I've been keeping this secret ever since. About a week or two later, I started noticing small things around, like evidence that my bags had been sifted through or that my gear wasn't put back exactly the same way I usually do, and as a test I deliberately moved something in my pack to another location, and when I returned from patrol I found that thing in not the same place. 

As of now, I can't go to my commander without divulging the secret I'm sworn to keep. If you don't hear from me after 2 months, something likely has happened. I don't think whomever is tailing me will kill me, as they likely want to get information out of me. But if you don't hear from me, I need you. This is more important than me or my life; when I took the Oaths to become a Knight, I swore to uphold certain things, and this is one of them. I need you to do two things. First, contact a Broken in Shadowmoon Valley named Olum and tell him "The Light provides." He will know what to do. The other thing is to contact Zarlie; she will have knowledge of where I have been, and if Olum can't be found you should be able to piece things together with what she knows.

I believe in you, Sis. You can do this. So give Naxxramas the middle finger and get out here. There's a job that needs finishing, and a Songshine's word is always good.

--Linna

Someone Picked at a Scab

I saw this video today about "what's going away when Wrath Classic drops"

And I was sufficiently annoyed at his flippant "if you're one of the 4 or 5 people on your server who doesn't have an Amani Warbear" that I felt it merited a response.

If you've got Hyjal / BT gear, then yes, Zul'Aman is "a pretty chill raid." Even if you're in SSC/TK gear, you should be fine. But if you're in a raid with primarily Phase 1 gear or quest greens + pre-BiS, ignore what WillE is saying. It's a raid that is highly dependent on gear checks and having the right composition --such as having a Priest to do periodic mass dispels on the raid during the Vol'jin fight-- that if you don't have those you're not going to finish the raid. 

And god forbid if your raid is caught in between about 6 other ZA raids --not to mention the other progression raids of other major guilds-- so most of the personnel for the critical slots (Tanks, Healers, the aforementioned Priest, Shamans) are already either locked or are busy. And those roles are ones that I have no desire to pug. I've been in enough pugs that I know that those roles are ones I want people I can trust with, and a random pug --assuming you can even put one together right now on the server-- isn't where you're gonna typically find them.

I suppose that the entire tone, which is a breezy "oh, this is some box you can check off before Wrath drops but everybody will have this anyway", really ticked me off. 

Probably a good deal of it was because I'm not going to get the "Hand of A'dal" title because I never got a Kael'Thas kill in Phase 2. I never show my "Champion of the Na'aru" title anyway, and I'd certainly never bother showing a "Hand of A'dal" title if I got it, but the fact that I did get it would mean something to me. And here was yet another reminder that one of the few personal goals I had in this expac --to raid up until Illidan was downed in Black Temple-- was not going to get completed just kind of set me off.

***

I guess what drives my obsession about this is something I remembered back in original Wrath.

Remember the blog I Sheep Things/Oh My Kurenai? I certainly do. 

And I remember Rhii's steady stream of updates on her guild's attempts to kill Arthas in ICC before Cataclysm dropped.

But more than anything else, I remember her despair at her realization that her guild wasn't going to be able to do it, and her GM --of all people-- took off to run with another guild and down Arthas instead of trying to finish the job in their own guild. 

As I wasn't a raider at the time, I could only offer some sympathy to her plight, but I didn't really experience it firsthand. When I was a guest on the Twisted Nether Blogcast back in ancient history, there was some disbelief that it was a big deal to down Arthas by the end, with the hosts thinking it wasn't that hard by then because of the buffs and whatnot, and because I knew Rhii's struggles I disagreed. Now I have found myself in her exact same situation, knowing that one thing you wanted to get but you aren't going to get it, that hurts. It's not like a kick in the shins, because that is intense for a brief period of time and then fades, but it's closer to a long, slow burn, like when you've got acid reflux. Even when you think you've put it behind you, it's still lurking to spring out when you least expect it. 

Like now.

A Short Recommendation: Wildermyth

The other week I had a long conversation with Vidyala, the person I've described to my friends in Classic as "the person who taught me how to be a Mage".

It's kind of funny that when I mention she's a blogger, a webcomic artist, or a WoW Insider columnist that I get kind of a "Oh. That's nice." But when I say "She taught me how to Mage,"* that gets people's interest up. 

Go figure.

Regardless, we spent some time catching up and reminiscing about the old days, and bloggers that are long gone --Lara of Root and Branch, if you can read this, we miss you!!-- but she did mention a game that she and her husband Voss** have been playing lately: Wildermyth.

Vid described it a bit like Paper Mario, but there's a lot of RPG elements to it, and there's also a bit of procedural elements as well. The fact that she recommended the game so highly --and that there's a multiplayer aspect to it never hurt-- had me intrigued.

And oh look, it was on sale, with a price much much cheaper than any AAA game.

The main loading screen...

 

So I tried it out.

Okay, I've been playing for a little while.
When you first start playing,
no characters are seen.

There are a lot of nice small touches to the game, such as when you come back after having played before, and you want to continue your journey.

You feel like you're part of a story.
Or a comic.

There's two main screens to the game: the main map and the tactical map. What bridges the two are the stories told in game that lead from one map to another.

When you're first starting out,
there's a lot of unknown territory.

 

The main map provides you with a "where to go" aspect to it, but you also have to clear the area to make it safe from the prowling monsters. First you Scout, then you Patrol, then you can clear an area of an infestation. Once all that is done, you can build defenses as roving incursions of monsters in the main story will invade from time to time, so in order to buy yourself some time the defense will suffice.

The tactical map is where the fighting takes place, and yes, this is where the Paper Mario references surface.

Sorry, it's not what you might think.
Too much Lovecraft on the brain.

 

After a fight, if you level up....

Your capabilities are limited, and your party can't heal in combat, so be aware of that. Sometimes during an incursion you have to just let the monsters take an area/zone before you can stop them, because their initial strength is just too large.

***

That being said, Wildermyth thrives on its stories. 

There's a few steps between the second
and this pic, but it still makes for
fun stuff.

I'd be lying if I said that the stories didn't fascinate me.

They're very well written, and while the procedural elements creep in, it is still great fun to enjoy a story that relies upon the visuals just as much as the written word. The devs behind Wildermyth do something very smart: they don't tell you everything. They tell you just enough to keep the story going, and let your imagination fuel the rest.

The game is highly addictive, and it's really worth some of your time to try out.

Thanks for recommending Wildermyth, Vid. I really appreciate it!

*Or that she was GM of one of the best "Strict 10s" raiding guilds back in the day. THAT usually works too.

**Not his real name, naturally, just his WoW toon's name.

Giddyap!

I typically don't flex, but....

On the outskirts of Deadwind Pass.

 

Cardwyn reached the end the long grind to Exalted for the Wintersaber Trainers yesterday.

Once she reached L66 --the reason for showing my UI instead of hiding it as usual-- the XP she obtained from the mobs for the Wintersaber Rep quests slowed to a trickle. With about 5k worth of reputation to go, there was no longer any reason to artificially slow down my rep grind. And to be fair, another guildie had started in on the rep grind with her own traditional single mindedness, and had about 9200 Rep to go last morning. Therefore, I decided to push it and finish Card's own grind around my lunchtime. 

Card's trustly old Alterac Ram has finally been put to pasture.

Oh, and I can report that with T3 gear, Cardwyn can hold her own as L66 against mobs that are L69 - L70 outside of Karazhan. She just happens to pull them from a pretty far distance, that's all. And that each kill nets her ~1340 XP.

Redbeard has a new grinding zone.

EtA: Corrected from XP to Rep. Oops.

It's About Time

You'd think that the sky was falling given the wailing and gnashing of teeth in some parts of the WoW-verse.

But no, it's the upcoming implementation of a Social Contract into Retail WoW with the upcoming 9.2.5 patch.

In case you're wondering, the Social Contract boils down to Wheaton's Law: Don't Be a Dick.

Or maybe the Golden Rule applies: Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Now, we're not talking about anything resembling a "no ganking" rule; after all, that's pretty much part and parcel with a PvP server's activities. We're talking about answering questions in chat rather than saying "Go to WoWHead noob lol", or if someone asks for help and you're available, go help out. Or if you're in an instance with people, play as a team rather than being an ass and doing things like Mage pulling. Things that are pretty basic as part of an unspoken social contract in our real lives. 

***

But for pete's sake, you'd think that Blizzard was asking people to be placed in shackles and shipped out to Siberia. 

For example, I can sling curses with the best of them, having learned how to cuss from my grandfather the WW2 vet.* But that doesn't mean that I should just let f-bombs fly whenever I feel like it online, because I'm in a public space and that behavior isn't always acceptable there. I'm not perfect, and I do let them fly from time to time --even when I'm around my mother, who most definitely does not approve-- but I do try to accommodate people.

It's not that hard.

But apparently the right to be an asshole is what most people are concerned about, as if that was the sole reason why a certain part of the player base plays MMOs. 

***

The real question that everyone likely has, what sort of enforcement this Social Contract will receive, is the one that nobody except Blizzard knows. Even Blizz probably doesn't know how that will shake out either, like whether it means Blizz will go harder against offensive player names or will more frequently intervene in Trade/LFG Chat, but one could hope that some of the more egregious crap out there would be thrown the ban hammer.  

But for every person loudly stating that they were now leaving the game because of this (relatively minor) attempt at enforcing some basic standards of decency, I have two words: good riddance. If abusing people got you off, then WoW doesn't need you. To be honest, society doesn't really need you, either. Go hang out in League or something, where people get away with that behavior without consequence.

*I also learned a lot of racist language from him too, which still saddens me to this day. My grandfather was a complex man, but he was also a huge racist. My parents tried their best to raise me without racism, but I recognize that I can always do better. Therefore, with the mini-Reds I made the decision to make sure they were better than me at being anti-racist (and other biases). I explained this to each of them as they reached adulthood, and I told them that I knew I wasn't as good as I should be, but I wanted to make sure the next generation was better still.