Speaking of Endings

The elephant in the room finally materialized on Myzrael-US.

The top guild on the server, Variance, is planning on leaving for Atiesh-US on July 1st. 

Variance is not merely the top guild on Myz, but it is also one of the top guilds in all of TBC Classic. I've occasionally referred to the Myzrael progression raid scene as "Variance and then there's everybody else". Until they ran into Sunwell Plateau, they were able to down every single raid they came up against the first night. (It took two nights for them to finally finish the job on SWP.) Yes, that included Naxxramas and their full complement of bosses. 

They are that good.

What's more, there's likely about 200-300 raiding toons in Variance, so when they leave the Alliance raiding toon listings will take a 20-30% hit. 

***

What this means for the server is... Not good.

Well, if you're doing progression, anyway.

The problem about that is that progression is the straw that stirs the drink in TBC Classic*, and without a healthy amount of raiding toons, guilds will leave the server for greener pastures. This began in early TBC Classic when Imperium --the #2 guild on Myzrael-- left. Then the drip drip drip began.

Nox Terrorem (Horde) left.

Infernal hit the road.

Midnight Souls imploded and many people in that guild left the server.

Conquerors dissolved. 

Limelight moved on.

Anubis migrated off.

As did Carnage Asada. 

And there are a bunch of smaller guilds who have also migrated off, seeking their fortune elsewhere.

But losing Variance? That's something the server may not recover from.

***

There was a short but vigorous discussion about the server's fortunes in our guild's Discord, and the overall sentiment is that the guild ought to move sooner rather than later, because it certainly seems that if Myzrael as the #2 sized US-West PvE server is getting ready to implode, we shouldn't wait for the fallout to hit an unsustainable auction house or anything else.

One of the options? To move to Pagle-US, which is almost 100% Alliance. It is also gigantic with over 10000 raiding toons. The other potential option Atiesh-US, where Card 2.0 resides, has about 6000 Alliance raiding toons, but an 80:20 Alliance:Horde split.

I will be watching this with great interest, but given that the only raiding I'm doing is the Friday Karazhan raid, I might be seeing it's last days if the guild decides to migrate off of the server. After all, I haven't decided what to do, and I'm not deleting Card 2.0. I've invested too much time in her now.

Shintar, we haven't reached the "Blizzard destroyed my server" point yet, but right now their inaction on propping up the smaller PvE servers in the Classic environment speaks volumes.

*And WoW in general, but I digress.

Creating Wilderness When There Is None

One day, a couple of decades ago, I was working away at my job as a Software QA Engineer*, with the NPR interview program Fresh Air playing through my headset. 

The subject of Terry Gross' interview that day was Jon Krakauer**, the author of Into The Wild. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's about 22 year old recent college grad Chris McCandless, who grew disenchanted with his family and decided to basically take off on his own. He abandoned his car, gave his entire savings to charity, and even burned the cash in his wallet, and set off into the unknown. Eventually his body was found in the Alaskan wilderness, having starved to death. Jon originally wrote an article for Outside magazine about Chris, and later expanded it into the book we know of today.

After listening to the interview, I made a point of stopping by our local bookstore on the way back home and picking up a copy. After a week or so of staring at it, wondering whether I was ready to read it, I finally gave in and devoured the thing in a day. Today, you can find Into the Wild --and Jon's most well known book, Into Thin Air-- in summer reading lists for high schools and universities. When I last visited my local bookstore, Into The Wild was on the large "summer reading list" shelf, surrounded by more classic fare such as Dune and The Aeneid.

Into The Wild is a tragedy caused by hubris, but a fascinating one nevertheless. 

When I read the book, one thing kept coming back to haunt me: just how, in the age of maps and global knowledge of entire areas, did Chris McCandless get lost in the wilderness? Even in the 90s, before smart phones that were more powerful than the best PCs of the era, you had access to everything you needed to survive in the Alaskan wilderness: where you were and where to go. Chris wanted to go to a blank spot on the map, and without any of those left, he decided the best way to achieve his goal was to simply get rid of the map.***

***

I've thought a lot over the years about that decision Chris McCandless made to throw away the map, because it has a certain amount of appeal. While it is frequently construed to sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALALALA I CAN'T HEEEEAR YOU!!!!" if you want to test yourself without relying upon modern conveniences the cheapest way to do so is to remove those conveniences. How much of a challenge is the challenge if sensors and monitors tell you everything you need to know in the same way a GPS vest is worn by footballers these days? Certainly even with all of the advanced tech in the world there's still plenty of challenge, and in quite a few endeavors that challenge can still prove fatal.****

I suppose that is the same sort of impulse --and hubris-- that causes people to ignore instruction manuals when installing/building something, only with potentially far more disastrous results.

The thing that gnaws at me about Chris' throwing away the map is that I do that sort of thing in some of my own endeavors. 

When I was about 13 or so, my parents drove the family up to Indianapolis to visit the Children's Museum. (If you ever are in Indy, it is worth a visit.) 

If your kid (or you) likes dinosaurs...
From theculturetrip.com.

One of the exhibits there was about gears and levers, and among the interactive displays they had there were two differing gears with their teeth intertwined. The idea was to provide an example as to see which could move first: the smaller or the larger. If you know your mechanical engineering, or you've ever ridden a bike with multiple gears, you ought to know that the smaller gear has the advantage here. And yes, even back then, I knew that courtesy of 6th Grade science class. But when my father offered to compete against me, I chose the larger gear.

Why? Because I wanted the challenge to see if I could win through physical strength even though all the advantages were with my dad. 

Of course I lost, and as he began to point out why based on the display I said, "I already know that."

"Then you shouldn't have chosen the wrong gear," he snapped and walked away.

Yes, I was an arrogant adolescent teen, but how could I explain to my dad that I deliberately chose the larger gear because I wanted a physical challenge rather than the safe --and smart-- option? He was in absolutely no mood to hear about that, and to him I just proved my stupidity by choosing the wrong gear rather than using my mind to choose the correct one.

***

Compared to this stuff, the way I play video games is pretty much small potatoes. 

However, my approach to video games --and to a lesser extent boardgames and pencil and paper RPGs-- is to eschew the optimal or smart option and instead deliberately choose other options because... Well, just because.

Like, say, leveling Card via the Old World instead of going to Outland.

Okay, that's not a fair assessment, because that was a very specific challenge. But I'm thinking in terms of playing as a Frost Mage when Frost is considered the "inferior" Mage spec when compared to Fire and Arcane. Or ignoring the allure of all sorts of "required" addons and playing with as few addons and/or Weakauras as possible. After all, I didn't even install DBM at all in WoW Classic until my first foray into Zul'Gurub, and I learned to expect different boss mechanics the old fashioned way, by watching for visual and audible cues from the bosses themselves.

But by far, the biggest addon I refuse to use is the one that I think of first when I think of throwing away the map: Questie. 

I will admit that there is one thing I completely enjoy about Questie: that I can tell exactly when other people I'm grouped with are done with a quest. It allows me to make an informed decision as to whether I want to continue grinding toward my own quest completion or just go with the flow and follow the others and work on their completion at the expense of my own. 

Before you say it, I'll insert a frustrated reaction from my Questing Buddy to cover it for you. 

/sigh

I've had this conversation with people before, so don't bother. I really don't care about whether I complete quests when I'm grouped with someone: that's not why I'm grouped with them. If I do ask to group with someone so I can complete a quest, that's a different story, but when I'm just grouped with them to go "questing" or be social, I really don't care if I complete any quests.*****

The thing about addons like Questie is that it also defeats the purpose why I play video games. I don't play for the end, but for the journey. In a video game, throwing the map away by eschewing addons --or not looking at a map too hard when you can't turn that stuff off in game-- means I explore and take my cues off of what is presented to me. Sometimes it takes me a while to find what I'm looking for, but you can bet all the in game gold or credits you have that I'll remember where it is the next time I pass through. I'll look at road in LOTRO before you reach the Ford of Bruinen and go "Okay, this is where those trolls caught me at night; I'll have to go around right *here* to avoid them." Or, in TBC Classic, "This is where those Bog Lords have a bad habit of respawning quickly, so I'd better be ready for a rapid exit if that happens while I'm fighting these two out there now."

Events like that are why I play video games; the questing and raiding and instance running are all incidental to that. So why would I want to use something that minimizes my enjoyment and wonder to reach the end quicker? 

Now, I get that for a lot of people, the end IS the goal, so addons like Questie or Dailies or Attune make perfect sense. As a guildie put it --and I suspected that he said it to tweak me, since there were only three of us online at the time-- "Sure, doing dailies is boring and repetitive, but you never have an excuse to not have gold ever again." But for someone who revels in the challenge of the journey, forgoing these addons is akin to throwing away the map and proceeding onward into the wilderness. 

There's a whole world out there waiting.

Is that arrogant? Yeah, probably. 

Not very smart? Oh, definitely. 

Does it give me a sense of accomplishment in an era of FOMO and rushing to the end? Hell yes.

*Yes, that was the real title. Considering that I did just as much coding --albeit for the test harness and to integrate the testing designs properly-- as a regular developer, I certainly earned that "Engineer" moniker.

**Jon is probably more well known as the author of both Into Thin Air and Under the Banner of Heaven, but his entire catalogue is worth perusing. Here's the audio archive of the interview, which based on the date means I likely heard the interview on a Friday, which is when Fresh Air repeats previous interviews from that season. Why Friday? Because the air date was in January, and I started that job in February.

***Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. Hardcover edition, 1996. Pg. 174.

****Such as what happened in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, which details his account of the disaster on Mt. Everest in 1996. Jon was actually there at the time, climbing Everest as part of an Outside article about companies that will essentially escort you to the top of the mountain, when the weather disaster unfolded. In spite of all of the advanced tech of the time, 8 people died. More would have died were it not for the heroics of fellow climbers (including an IMAX team present for a separate assignment) and a Nepalese helicopter pilot who pushed his craft to the limit to reach crippled climbers and get them to safety. When Jon came through Cincinnati next year on a book tour for the release of Into Thin Air, his presentation was gut wrenching. Here's his interview with Terry Gross about it.

*****Last night my questing buddy was NOT having that. At all. So I had to complete at least a few quests with her and her husband while I was grouped with them, or she'd get that Mom voice out and boy, would I be in for it.

When the Game Betrays You

Okay, that title may sound melodramatic, but hear me out on this.

As everybody knows, WoW Classic and its descendants aren't exactly graphics heavy. As a salesperson at Microcenter snarkily put it, you could use a graphics card powered by a potato and some metal strips and run WoW Classic. Still, you can crank up the graphics and get a rather nice modern experience while running Classic. Everything is sharper, the woods and fields are denser/fuller, and even the obnoxious parts of the gear are, well, more obnoxious.

"Indeed." --Cardwyn

But there are times when the graphics make what is on the face of it a simple quest into something far more difficult.

I've explained this to in-game friends more than once, but it's better understood seeing it instead.

In the Nagrand zone of Outland there's a quest, called A Rare Bean, you're sent on to do something pretty disgusting: hunting through animal scat for undigested caracoli.* Now, on the face of it, the quest is simple: find animal scat that is conveniently located near to the quest giver, click on it, and get the caracoli. This is out in the plains, so it should be easy to find, right?

Well....

This is at max graphics setting.

One is right in front of me. Do you see it?

What? Kind of hard to find?

Okay, let's lower the graphics to the "Classic" setting:

There we go. Better?

Or, you could lower the graphics alllll the way down and get this instead:
 

Yep, it's right in front of me.

Now you see --or rather didn't at first-- what the problem is. 

The graphics look fantastic until you have to go hunting around on the ground for the scat and there's no little *sparkly stars* floating above where the scat is to find it easier. Then you have a couple of options: lower the graphics until you can easily find it, create a macro you spam while running around the fields to target the scat, or utilize and addon --such as Questie-- that makes the scat stand out. 

When I was out by myself, it was a no brainer: I just dealt with it as a side effect of having nicer graphics. However, when I was grouped up I quickly discovered that my friends thought I must have been going blind or crazy (or both) because HOW COULD I MISS THESE RIGHT OVER THERE??!!!

"AND WHY AREN'T YOU USING QUESTIE??" 

At that point I had to explain the graphics was too good and it hid the stuff. 

"Not on Questie!"

/sigh

I would much rather lower the graphics until I could see it rather than use an addon designed to get me through quests more quickly without trying to solve anything. Sure, A Rare Bean is supposed to be an easy quest, but when the graphics give you lemons, you make lemonade. Adjusting the graphics fixes the problem for this quest without sacrificing my entire philosophy of playing the game.

And now you know I'm not crazy.

This time.

*And if you thought hunting through scat for caracoli like a parent hunting for a penny that a kid swallowed is bad enough, you probably don't want to know what the Shaman does with those caracoli afterward.

Journey's End... And Beginning

Well, this happened:

If only the light would chase away
the gloom around here.

Yes, Cardwyn has reached L68, grinding her way there without having set foot in Outland.

I was planning on sitting on this until I could spring it on my questing buddy as a surprise, but the stinker had the Guild Roster Manager addon and so she already knew I hit L68 without me telling her.

(Have I mentioned before that I hate addons like that?) 

***

Before anybody brings up the obvious, yes, I spent the time after Cardwyn got her Frostsaber mount (a little bit into L66) until now grinding in the area outside of Karazhan. So yes, people who would be "yes but" about her grinding in a zone that had its mobs adjusted to an "Outland" type of level --from L60 to L69-L70-- making this moment possible, I will say this: I'd be here outside of Karazhan whether or not the mobs had their levels adjusted. Once you get up to L66, your opportunities for finding L60 mobs shrinks to very few locations: Silithus (Staghelm Point and Silithid caves), Winterspring (the Giant area in the south), and outside of Karazhan.

I did spend a few bars' worth of grinding in Silithus a couple of days when the crowd outside Kara began to grow when people dropped by to farm greens and Netherweave cloth*, and while yes, it can be done exclusively in Silithus and Winterspring, it would have taken about 2-3 times as long to level from L66 to L68.

That being said, while the "issues" I had training seem to have gotten fixed by the time Neve hit L64 --I was unable to train at all from L60 through L64 for some strange reason until the trainers suddenly allowed me to at L66-- I refused to update my talent tree at all. Therefore, my talents were exactly the same as they were at pre-patch at L60. That was a deliberate choice, because while I hoped I could utilize the mobs outside of Kara to level I wanted to compensate for that advantage by not utilizing other talents available to me. 

***

When I arrived outside of Karazhan at L66, I was uncertain whether I'd even have a chance at downing mobs 3-4 levels above my own. Much to my surprise, however, I was able to clear the mobs without dying once. There were plenty of times where the mobs resisted my attacks --oh boy, were there plenty of those-- but I was able to down all of them if I took my time and ate/drank after every other pull. 

I will also freely admit that if I tried to do this grind on just about any other toon, I'd likely have not been able to make it to L68. Part of that is due to the glass cannon nature of a Mage, but also the fact that I had a full T3 set at the end of Classic. The T3 set has been surprisingly good all the way to L68, and at this point I see no reason why I should replace it with anything BC related at all while we're counting down to Wrath.

***

A few other notes about the journey...

While I proved that this can be done --and one guildie mentioned to me that they'd never heard of anyone actually pulling this off-- this grind is not for everyone. 

All of those people who did quests at L60 for extra gold would have been severely hamstrung in trying to do this, because I got two levels worth of the grind completed because I did all of those L60 quests that I never bothered to do on Card. Another level came from completing Fire Festival quests, and three levels came from the Frostsaber grind. So... if you were a completionist --or gold/mount hungry-- and did all of that before TBC Classic dropped, well, good luck with that grind. 

Yes, I was able to hit L68 and technically will be able to go to Northrend when Wrath Classic drops**, but were it not for the mobs outside of Karazhan that'd probably be the upper limit Cardwyn could attain. The only mobs that are available for Card to grind right now for XP are those that are a minimum of L60, which makes the grind much much worse. Any zone you'd be considering grinding at would have at least half of the mobs not granting any XP at all, and I don't think you'd be able to get very far at all before Wrath Classic dropped. However, since the L69-L70 mobs outside of Karazhan exist, I ought to be able to grind Card all the way to L70 before the pre-patch for Wrath Classic.

***

This completes one of the three main goals I had for TBC Classic. At least this one was a goal I could achieve without the aid of others, which is why I was able to finish it. The other two, which were to get a full set of one of the T4/T5/T6 gear for Brig, and to finish Phase 2 for Brig with a Kael'Thas kill so I could get the achievement/title for doing so, are going to be unresolved at this point. Nobody does Gruul/Mags anymore, so my closest shot at a full Tier set (T4) isn't going to happen. And nobody does Tempest Keep either, so the closest I'll have gotten to a Kael'Thas kill was when we got him down to 10-15% the week before I had to stop raiding.*** Even if there was a TK run available, my gear is such that it would feel like a carry, and I positively HATE being carried. I wanted to earn those goals, not have them handed to me as a charity case. So no, if offered a chance to go at this point --even in a pug-- I would give a hard pass. And I don't care who knows my feelings on the matter.

I'll still be putzing around in TBC Classic at this point, but not because I have any real goals to achieve. Mainly just to play around, I suppose. While I tend to be a private player, I also tend to be social in the right setting. I'll just continue to seek those situations out and work from there.

*I've been surprised and pleased by just how much Netherweave drops outside Kara. Having watched my questing buddy level Tailoring more than once, and seeing just how much Netherweave she went through each time... Yeah, it's a good thing to know.

**The looks Card would probably get after disembarking at Boring Tundra while wearing her T3 gear would be worth it. If I were on an RP server, the "Hey, who's the fossil?" commentary would have been really amusing.

***My replacement was there at Tempest Keep the last week of January when the Monday raid finally downed Kael, but she had already been locked out of SSC so she couldn't go. Since I had moved myself to the Bench so that she could go to the raid, I filled in for her on the SSC portion of the raid. And the fact that we couldn't down Vashj with me there as opposed to her being there for TK is all you need to know about the difference in DPS she brought to the table.

EtA: Corrected grammar issues.

Now I Know How Jerry Renault Felt Like

The steady drumbeat is relentless.

Doesn't matter if I'm on a new toon or an old toon. Whether I'm on Myzrael or Atiesh or even on the Season of Mastery server I'm on.

You can't escape it.

"Do your dailies!" is the cry from people in a guild discord or an LFG chat. Or even randomly shouted in a zone.

"Complete the war effort!" is the slightly different --yet ultimately similar-- comment on Season of Mastery, which is in the Ahn'Qiraq War Effort mode.

"DO YOUR DAILIES!!!"

I feel like I'm in a Robert Cormier novel, The Chocolate War, where instead of refusing to sell chocolate for a 1970s era Catholic boys high school fundraiser I'm harassed about doing dailies so that more parts of the Quel'Danas zone are unlocked with more dailies to do.

If I ever wondered about how gated progression in Retail is like, this is likely it.

What Awaits Blizzard

I read with interest the experiences of Bethesda's disaster of a game, Fallout 76, in an article just published on Wednesday by Kotaku. While the article itself could have used better editing*, the basic premise remains the same: Bethesda refused to listen to the multi-player part of the studio, used crunch needlessly on QA and dev staff, refused to let the release date slide, utilized a game engine not built for what it was being used for, and relied upon snitches and bad management to deal with a project that chewed up and spit people out.

It sounds a LOT like what happened to Bioware with Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda, doesn't it?

But for me, the most interesting part of the article was how the QA and dev staff thought they were gonna be saved when Microsoft bought the game studio, and once they came onboard they were sadly mistaken.

Microsoft operated in a "hands-off" policy, mainly because they feared too much corporate interference would disrupt the "secret sauce" of the creative nature of game development.

“The impression that I got was that Microsoft would not make big changes unless they needed to,” one staffer told Kotaku. “Simply because they’re like: We hired you to be excellent. And if we touch you, it could be like a house of cards situation where you just fall apart [as creatives]. I don’t think health benefits are going to do that to anybody.”

Microsoft did not address a request for comment by the time of publication.

A former Bethesda employee told Kotaku, “[Xbox CEO Phil] Spencer’s word when picking up Bethesda [and ZeniMax] is largely that his preference is that studios be let to operate as they always have, let the talent be the talent.”

One source spoke cynically about Bethesda’s potential for changing from within: “It would be great if something like [Activision Blizzard worker advocacy group] A Better ABK existed for Bethesda, but everyone is terrified...because [Bethesda] HR is super cutthroat.” A current employee agreed it did not feel like Bethesda HR was actively interested in addressing “any real employee concerns.” Similar cynicism is reflected in the company’s Glassdoor reviews.
--From The Human Toll Of Fallout 76’s Disastrous Launch

My big takeaway from this is that if people thought that Microsoft would "right the ship" with Blizzard's handling of World of Warcraft or any of their other franchises, they are being naive.

There isn't going to be a big cultural shift at Activision/Blizzard, and there isn't going to be a sudden improvement in the quality of the work done on WoW. The stories aren't going to get better (or worse, I suppose), and the focus on WoW isn't going to change from raiding and Mythic+. And Diablo Immortal? It's not going to change from it's own insidious version of gambling mechanics.

Unless Blizzard itself wants it to change.

 

 

*Having blogged for almost 13 years has given me some appreciation for that part of the creative process. I mean, I read an old post I'd made and cringe at the grammatical errors I find, years later. And don't get me started on One Final Lesson; every time I go back and reread it I find new areas I could rewrite and improve the flow of the story.

A Short Run

Yesterday, I thought I'd login to Retail just to look around a bit.

I wasn't planning on doing much of anything, just wandering around Stormwind and Elwynn, just to see how things looked. There's been a lot of times in Classic when I'd drop into Goldshire as Cardwyn and wander around for a bit, soaking up the scenery and checking out the sights. After all, Darkmoon Faire is in Elwynn on Myzrael this week, so it just feels good to get a glimpse of some of what the Goldshire Harvest Festival might have looked like.

The toon I found was a lowbie Paladin that I'd created and really not done much with, so he was pretty much perfect for the area.* He was still in Stormwind, and as I logged in he was at what was my favorite spot, right under the tree where --in Classic, anyway-- it's right next to the Auction House.

So I ran down from Stormwind, eschewing the flight path, because... come on. Using the flight path to Goldshire from Stormwind is like watching one of our newish neighbors zip around the neighborhood on their golf cart; if you can't handle walking around the neighborhood, maybe you've got bigger problems.**

But as I approached Goldshire, I noticed that things were, well, off.

Let's see if you can spot the motorcycle,
the dinosaur, the celestial mounts, the
flying mounts, and the pack horse type
oversized riding mount. There was also
a spider-ish mount that skittered away
when I took the screenshot.

I just kind of looked around and thought, "Well, there goes my immersion."

All I could think of as I took it all in was this video:

More specifically, the 1:39 mark.

Well, at least it's not TERA.

*I think; with the level squish I'm never quite sure as I haven't internalized it yet.

**Last night while I was doing yard work, I saw one of the 20-something adult men popping wheelies on a mini-bike --and smoking like a chimney-- while the golf cart trailed behind with 4 40-ish women on it, all of whom (including the driver) with alcoholic drinks in their hand. You couldn't get much more stereotypically white trash if you'd tried; the only things missing were the cranked up Country music blaring from speakers and the occasional "yee haw!" out of them, not to mention having political bumper stickers on the golf cart.

EtA: Apparently I accidentally removed "this week" about Darkmoon Faire. Fixed.