Fate and Circumstance

(The genesis of this story was provided by my questing buddy, who was inspired by the Wrath Classic Beta Test. She provided part of the story as well as the overall plot, and I filled in the rest and edited the overall story. As the two of us collaborated on the entire thing, she and I share the authors' credit for the tale.

I wanted to release this before the Wrath Classic pre-patch, but trying to fit in the last bit of editing while being knee deep in Blaugust 2022 wasn't exactly the smartest thing I've ever done. Still, it's finished, and here it is. 

Some final notes: This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Honest! Any characters created by Blizzard for WoW Classic, TBC Classic, and Wrath Classic remain their property. This work of fiction uses WoW Classic, TBC Classic, and Wrath Classic as the reference points, no other version of WoW. This was written by Redbeard of Parallel Context and Zargala-Myzrael, 2022.)

Fate and Circumstance
By Redbeard and Zargala

“Okay Lewys, once your mom uses the paddle to move the bread to the edge of the oven,” I instructed, nodding at Karyn who nudged a golden-brown loaf over, “then it’s your turn.”

My nephew Lewys stood atop a chair in the kitchen, knitted his brow in concentration, and whispered the short poem I gave him. We’d been practicing for this moment for a couple of weeks, and now all I could do was wait. I bit my lip as I stood behind him, watching helplessly as wisps of the arcane came to life and swirled around us. He finished, reached for the bread, and dropped it into the cloth covered basket beside him.

“I did it!” he shouted, jumping up and down on the chair. “It was just like you said, Aunt Cardwyn! Once I got done with the poem the bread was cool enough to move!”

“You sure did, kiddo,” I exhaled, grabbing him from behind and ruffling his hair. “It’s all in the patience and the poem. Do you think you can now help your mom and Grandmama out on baking day?”

“Yeah!” Lewys turned toward my brother’s wife and gave her a hug. “Mom, I did it! Woo!”

“Good job, Lewys!” Karyn smiled with relief as she set the paddle down and returned the hug. She then looked over at me with a question in her eyes.

“He certainly did it,” I echoed and nodded.

“Good,” Mom replied, tapping her foot. “Then the two of you can help us finish up faster.”

“Well,” I said, scraping my foot on the floor, “I don’t want to take away the job I just gave him.”

“Okay then, maybe you should go check to see if something needs doing, like turning the manure.”

“Mom!”

“Caaard!” she replied, a grin spreading across her face.

I sighed. No matter how old I got, I was always going to be her kid. “Okay, okay, I’ll go check it out. But Lewys,” I added, turning back to my nephew, “remember to whisper the poem after your mom moves the loaves over, okay? It’s all in the timing.”

“Got it, Aunt Cardwyn! You go turn that manure!”

“Uh… Right.” That kid was picking up all sorts of bad habits from Mom.

A Collection of Guild Names, Part Deux

I've been collecting more guild names that provided me amusement, so I'm ready to unleash a few more on unsuspecting readers.

What did you think it was gonna
taste like?

You know, if you have to put it
in your guild name, odds are...

Uh.... "Moistly"?

Meh. I kind of like the dead
servers over the Soyent Green
servers, myself.

"Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requim..."
::thwack::

Found the guild that
Shaquille O'Neal is a member of.

"Hello there!!"

I guess "Girls Gone Wild"
was taken...

Oh, the feels.

Hey, an Oingo Boingo fan!

David Hasselhoff and
Pam Anderson play Classic?
Who knew?

And here I am, merely
bad by accident....

An Our Gang fan club? Wow!

Here.... /hug

Sure.... Everybody's 
a critic....

#Blaugust2022

Swimming Against the Tide

It kind of goes without saying that I found this Josh Strife Hayes video interesting.

The entire point of his video, that you shouldn't make players go through a slog just to be able to play and do group content together, is a pretty sound one. And that entire slog, as found in Retail and Classic, is the reason why boosting exists.

Of course, boosting by various methods also becomes a problem --as Josh points out-- because you don't learn how to play your class, never mind your role, in group content. 

When people asked me why I wasn't boosting my Shaman Briganaa via instances, I said that I needed to learn how to play a Shaman, and leveling one the old fashioned way allowed me to learn by doing. Now, with Wrath Classic imminent, I've decided to re-learn how to be a Paladin that way as well. The Paladin changes from TBC to Wrath are significant enough that trying to figure them out like I kinda sorta did with a boosted Linna isn't ideal for me. I kept fumbling around for a while until I finally figured it out, and even then I was reluctant to take Linna into instances because I didn't know how well I'd be handling things.*

Learning how to play your class is important, and MMOs do that in spades by peppering low level content with quests designed to teach. For example, the undead troll quests in The Ghostlands are a Blood Elf player's first opportunity to encounter the "don't stand in the bad" mechanic**. The Deadmines expose a player to mobs, adds, and even adds that come from behind after a boss kill, so you never really get a chance to just hang back for a moment or three. Ragefire Chasm exposes a player to a "good luck trying to find your way" dungeon that becomes more important in places such as Maraudon.***

The problem is... well... players in MMOs such as WoW have learned their lessons too well. The horse has left the barn, and players who are interested in the journey rather than the end aren't the focus of MMOs. I may agree with Josh that MMOs should focus on putting raids and dungeons in the hands of lower level players, but the player base doesn't seem to care. Or at least enough of them don't for developers to make it worth their while.

#Blaugust2022

*Even then, when I finally started going into instances I still got called out by someone saying "You should use Seal twisting as Ret!" My response to that little editorial comment was "If you get it exactly right, you get a boost to DPS. If you don't it's a waste of mana." Which is the truth. Unlike totem twisting for an Enhance Shaman, seal twisting in a Retribution Paladin is very much a thing for the highly skilled player only, and even Icy Veins' guides mention that it is an advanced tactic and difficult to pull off. After my retort the player shut up about seal twisting, but I could tell that he didn't like that I wasn't doing 'all the things' necessary to be the best. If you play MMOs long enough you can just tell; even though body language isn't a thing in MMOs, there are subtle cues.

**I did not pass that first test. Just sayin'.

***Alas that Blizz went away from dungeons that just sprawled out and were their own thing. There was a huge adventure behind places such as Maraudon, Blackrock Depths, and Blackrock Spire. A true city, such as Blackrock Depths, that could take well over an hour (sometimes close to 3 hours) to clear. It was players first and then canonized by Blizz that those dungeons were broken up into what they've become today. 

It Happens Every August

Our FF XIV player heads back to college* today.

He brings with him some Warhammer minis to paint and run stuff with --which he discovered was very cheap overseas when he spent six months in England studying abroad**-- some Starfinder splatbooks my sister-in-law's husband gave him to give to a friend of my son's, and a poster book of FF XIV art.

Yes, he's gonna have FF XIV art on his walls, right next to his flag of Bavaria and posters for other things.

Now that I've finished embarrassing him --he does read the blog-- I hope he has a great time his senior year.

And maybe I'll get off my ass and give FF XIV a try. It won't be my main --pretty sure Classic will still be that-- but it's something to look forward to. I actually created a Lancer on a server, courtesy of me having spent time reading Alfred Lord Tennyson's poetry*** recently, now I need to actually follow up with it. 

Catch you on the flip side, bud.

#Blaugust2022

*Literally a college: Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

**He discovered they were so cheap that he bought some minis and shipped them back home here in the States and they were still cheaper than buying them here.

***Why, you may ask? Tsk tsk...

Just One of Those Days

There are days when a meme just sums up what you're feeling....

Yeah, I had one of those days of
existential dread about how
Dragonflight would work out.
From memegenerator.net
via World of Warcraft Memes FB group.

#Blaugust2022

Of Course It Would be Armor

Some days I struggle finding things to write about. Other days I know what to write about but simply have no time to do so.

And then there are days like today, where I'm reading things in the morning and a topic --or two or three-- literally appear right before my eyes.

Okay, maybe not the best choice of words.
(From YouTube, That Works' channel.)

The kernel of this post came from a comment I made on this post by Bhagpuss, wondering about why so many Asian MMOs and RPGs have women/girls in frilly skirts/dresses. in the mini discussion that followed, Bhagpuss pointed out that it's pretty much a trope among Asian video games akin to chainmail bikinis among Western MMOs/RPGs, and why should I be taking it seriously anyway*?

I never miss a chance to bring out the old chestnut from Collegehumor, but my mind immediately went from the ubiquitous chainmail bikini to its cousin, boob plate.

This looks better than my copy.
From amazon.com.

Precisely ten days later, the princess, with Durnik once again in tow, returned to Delban's workshop. The mail shirt the craftsman had fashioned was so light that it could have almost have been described as delicate. The helmet, hammered from thin steel, was surmounted with a white plume and was encircled with a gold crown. The greaves, which were to protect the legs, fit to perfection. There was even an embossed shield rimmed with brass and a light sword with an ornate hilt and scabbard.

Ce'Nedra, however, was staring disapprovingly at the breastplate Delban had made for her. It would quite obviously fit--too well. "Didn't you forget something?" she asked him.

He picked up the breastplate up with his big hands and examined it. "It's all there," he told her. "Front, back, all the straps to hook them together. What else did you want?"

"Isn't it a trifle--understated?" she suggested delicately.

"It's made to fit," he replied. "The understatement isn't my fault."

"I want it a little more--" She made a sort of curving gesture with her hands.

"What for?"

"Never mind what for. Just do it."

"What do you plan to put in it?"

"That's my business. Just do it the way I told you to."

He tossed a heavy hammer down on his anvil. "Do it yourself," he told her bluntly.

"Durnik," Ce'Nedra appealed to the smith.

"Oh, no, princess," Durnik refused. "I don't touch another man's tools. It just isn't done."

--From Castle of Wizardry, by David Eddings, pg. 315.

Trying to make sense of boob plate armor --outside of the simple aesthetics of the matter, which are to emphasize a woman's chest-- you kind of have to go into the historical record. Oh, not that a lot of women fought in wars in ancient history, but what armor was supposed to represent. After all, in ancient history, we have this sort of breastplate too:

This bronze cuirass dates
from the 4th Century BCE.
From The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
there's even an audio description!

So it's not that unusual to see ancient breastplates made in (male) heroic proportions. But of course, that's not the reason why in F&SF art you find the boob plate: something something something sexy.

I'm not one to deny that it can make a woman look sexy, because I'd be foolish to say otherwise. As opposed to the chainmail bikini, at least it's on the "protective armor" side of the spectrum, but not as far on the spectrum as armor meant to be protective from the start yet also accommodate a woman's build**, such as this modern piece:

This is Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the US Army
surgeon general (in 2013), trying on the new
tactical vest specifically designed for the
female physique. From an army.mil article.

As you can see, not sexy, but damn impressive and practical.

***

But just how protective is boob plate anyway? 

While the intent from an artistic standpoint*** is to emphasize that the person is a) a woman and b) sexiness, as a practical matter does it protect the wearer? Or is it, as some have asserted, worse than wearing no armor at all?

I think of the assertion as a bit of a straw man, because boob plate that covers the abdomen --and along with other pieces the arms, legs, and head-- are obviously better than no armor at all. The question isn't that, but whether creating artificially enhanced metal boobs actually weaken the armor in the breast area and provide a false sense of security.

Well...

Let's just say that you can go down the rabbit hole on this subject and spend a lot of time on research.****

Okay, let's get started here.

There's historical precedent --as I demonstrated above-- for male attributes to make it into armor. I'd forgotten about the codpiece (I know, get thee to a Renaissance Festival) but I'd also forgotten that in Medieval times a small waist among men was considered ideal, and guess what made it into Medieval armor? Yes, the small waist. 

So if more women did fight in Medieval times than the historical record shows, odds would have been good that armor would have been made to emphasize certain aspects of female anatomy. 

Now, about boob plate...

As Shad pointed out in this episode of Shadiversity, the complaint about boob plate funneling strikes into the sternum would have to also be applied to that small waist, where two separate metal plates intersected, which would have actually been more dangerous than boob plate made of a single piece of hardened steel. 

However, there's a big caveat: both areas would have been made of hardened steel, which is still pretty damned strong. So an attacker would attempt to hit areas where there wasn't any hardened steel instead. If an attacker were using a polearm --a pike or lance, for example-- then the "weak points" wouldn't matter, because the blunt force that such a big weapon would deliver would hit home whether or not it struck the boob plate.

(I know, kind of obvious in retrospect.)

Understanding the historical aesthetics behind armor is also important, and here's a relatively long video expounding on that from That Works:

Considering the sex appeal inherent in historical armor that we never see because we see the pieces through modern eyes, it is entirely feasible that in a Fantasy world where women fight and have power, they too would wear armor that demonstrates such power via sexuality. 

That's not to say that Fantasy armor as seen in art is, uh, realistic at all. And we're not talking codpiece level of snickering, but a whole other level of "you gotta be kidding me". Like so...

Yep, someone we'll be seeing a lot
of, starting next month. And don't
even think about calling her a barbarian.
But Neve certainly recognizes those Wanderer
Stitched Trousers. From Wowhead.

By comparison, some of my own toons are just fine the way they are. I've no problem seeing Shereleth like this:

Standing next to an honor guard at
Vivec City. The armor is actually
the Frostedge Bandit Disguise,
you get for a quest in the Dunmer
faction's starting area. I just liked it so
well that I've kept it all this time.

Or Briganaa:

The accents to the armor are designed
to draw the eye to the chest, which
is fine. It's a thing, and actually
more understated than a codpiece.

Or Linnawyn:

Even though it's more boob plate,
it's understatedly so. Don't
mess with the Knight of the Silver Hand.

But.... No...

Josh Strife Hayes described TERA as
feeling "like you've invaded a Victoria's Secret
Fashion Show and given everyone a giant
medieval weapon and one girl you've
given a massive SciFi laser cannon."

But I think this is the real reason why people bitch so much about boob plate:

Yep. From dailydot.

And they're not wrong. Give female toons the option of ridiculous boob plate/chainmail bikinis or boob plate on "normal" armor, and there's nary a complaint. It's the lack of options between the two that's the problem.

#Blaugust2022

*That "why I should take it seriously" is a topic for another time.

**This reminds me of big innovations that Cincinnati Children's Hospital and other children's hospitals around the country are making toward medical equipment that fit children's sizes. For the longest time, people simply thought they could make adult sized equipment small and that would fit children, but it turned out not to be the case. Hence, the ongoing research on the matter is hugely important. In fact, this research came in handy when the Cincinnati Zoo reached out to Cincinnati Children's to help in saving the life of Fiona, the hippo born six weeks premature, back in 2017. Be warned, you can spend a ton of time on YouTube watching Fiona's story. (I know from experience.)

***And yes, the male gaze. I'm not a dummy, you know.

****Okay, Rule #0 is that men forget that women's breasts don't behave like someone attached rubber balls to their chest. If nothing else, this is where having sisters --or mothers who aren't so freaking uptight that they don't even want to fart while being in the vicinity of their sons-- is a godsend. And yes, my mom was that uptight: the biggest laugh my (now) wife ever had was when one time we were some place and she happened to rip one, and I had a look of disbelief on my face. 

"What?" she asked.

"I didn't know women could fart," I replied.

"WHAT??!!"

"My mom never farted."

My wife practically collapsed on the floor laughing. "I can tell you that yes, women do fart, and yes, your mom did too," she replied while gasping for air. "She was just so anal retentive that she hid it all the time!"

EtA: Really? A "they're/there/their" error? Sheesh.

That's my secret: I'm always motivated

(Apologies to Bruce Banner for that modified quip.)

Something that nobody --and I do mean nobody-- has ever asked me in my years of writing is how I stay motivated.

Probably that has something to do with the size of the reader base of this blog, which I'm pretty sure is around 30-ish regular readers, when you filter out the web crawlers, spambots, and the individual spikes due to someone linking a post back to PC. Sure, a lot of the articles may eventually reach about 100 hits, but that's a long, slow drip-drip-drip over the course of months.

We used to have more regular readers, back when the major WoW/MMO watering holes were active*, but you could tell almost instantly when a site went dark because we'd see a corresponding drop in traffic. In my experience, people didn't migrate from a central watering hole to a Feed Reader, they simply stopped reading. People didn't come here for WoW (or MMO) news, for that they'd go to Wowhead or WoW Insider/Blizzard Watch or Massively/Massively Overpowered.

I've said numerous times over the years that if you're looking for validation by having people read your blog, you're going to be disappointed. Once you make peace with the reality that blogging is a niche format and very few people break through into the greater consciousness by blogging in this day and age, you'll be fine.

***

So that does beg the question: why keep blogging? Why stay motivated?

Well, I'd be lying if I said that I don't get any gratification at all from PC. When I see the page views go up after I posted something, I get that good ol' dopamine rush of "Hey, somebody wants to read this!" It's similar to that initial high you get when you discover that someone you've developed feelings for actually reciprocates. It's somewhere between "YESSS!" and "How did I get so lucky?", but before those doubts of "Okay, this can't really be happening, can it?" creep into your head.

That first time that Tam from Righteous Orbs commented here on the blog, I was about over the moon with excitement. Or when WoW Insider linked to a series of posts I made, I had to be walking on air for an entire week.

Personal gratification notwithstanding, I have a confession to make: I've always wanted to be a writer, and blogging gives me that outlet.

I can turn my head from where I'm sitting right now and see this up on a bookshelf:

This wasn't the first book on Science Fiction and Fantasy that I'd read --Lord of the Rings and The Sword of Shannara had that beat by a few years-- but this was the first collection of short stories that I owned. I devoured the stories within and began hunting for more. When I realized that there were actual magazines that published F&SF short stories**, 

Some publications lasted only as long
as the driving force was alive, such as
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine.
Given how well MZB's reputation aged over
the years, it's probably for the best.
(From ebay.com.)

and that publishing three short stories would qualify someone membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America, I made it a goal to try to get published. 

I should add, this is despite my mother's obvious distaste for my dad's mother being a regular reader of Reader's Digest and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, as if both were inferior products. My mom loved the cozy type of Mystery novels***, and I guess between the two major mystery magazines her tastes would have run more toward Ellery Queen than Alfred Hichcock's, but I interpreted her dislike as a putdown of the short story format itself, which motivated me all the more to try to write better. 

***

Here I am, over 40 years later, and I'm still not a published author.

There was a time when I used to get
a copy of this from the library
on a regular basis, so I knew what
the submission requirements were
for all of the F&SF magazines.
(From amazon.com)

Writing fiction, especially short fiction, is harder than it looks. 

Okay, I should qualify this a bit. 

Writing fiction is easy; writing good fiction is hard; writing good fiction that is publishable is harder still.

If you want to find out how easy it is to write fiction, go check out the fanfic websites. (I'll wait.) A lot of SF&F fiction put out on the web isn't very good, and that has nothing to do with the nature of fanfic itself. I've wondered about why the writing isn't that good, but having gone back and read some of the novels and short stories I read as a kid, I think I can understand why: the quality of stories back in the "golden age" of SF&F overall wasn't really good.

Oh, don't get me wrong: I loved those stories, but the writing itself needed work. 

A lot of SF&F writing back then had, well, a ton of info dumps. The concepts of world building were such that in order to set the scene, authors basically spent pages setting up the world rather than simply letting the story fill in the gaps along the way. There was also such an emphasis on getting the science right that the quality of the writing suffered as a result. 

And the Mary Sue/Marty Stu protagonists. Hoo boy, there were a ton of them.

That's not to say that I don't like a heroic character, because I do, but some of the protagonists in the stories back then were so perfect that I have a hard time going back and rereading them.**** I like characters who do heroic things, not heroic characters doing, well, their thing.

Because I internalized a lot of these stories in my youth, when I started trying to write my own fiction, it just didn't sound right. The flow wasn't there, and the info dumps didn't mesh well with how I wanted stories to proceed. The characters were either too good and perfect, or I'd swing too hard the other way and torture the characters for no good reason other than "the characters have to suffer or have angst" for it to be legitimately good fiction. And I'll be honest in that I hate that. As I've said many a time, if I want that out of a story, I'll watch the news.

"What about catharsis?" someone once asked me.

Thanks for saying so, Mr. Crews.
(From Brooklyn Nine Nine, meme from GetYarn)

"Catharsis is fine, so long as tragedies and black comedies aren't the only things you're consuming," I replied. "After a while, reading all that will merely get you depressed."

And when life is going shitty for you, or even just kind of shitty, reading tragedies --or their close cousins, the stories where tons of main and secondary characters die-- isn't exactly a big pick-me-up.

***

My writing foibles aside, when Souldat asked if I wanted to blog about WoW, I felt that at least here was my chance to actually write something and get it out there without any internal pressure to get published. I could just write, and by writing, improve my craft.

I'm grateful that over the decade plus I've been writing PC I haven't had people tell me that my writing sucks, or been critical of the overall quality of my work. And I'm doubly grateful for that because I've read some of my old stuff, and boy does it stink.

Truth.
(From youngwriterssociety.com.)

I have no idea what made me think I was "writing gooder" back then, because I wasn't. And I realize that a few years from now I'll look at these posts and groan to myself about how terrible they are. I mean, I do that already with One Final Lesson, and that's the only story of that length I've ever finished and released into the wild. 

But that's the thing that keeps me motivated: the knowledge that I'm improving with every post I write. It may not be obvious to me now, but it will show up some years later. 

It's something that keeps me posting, because even if I never get published I'll at least have a body of work I can look back on.

"Well yes, but not in the traditional sense...
Wait, are you in Eversong?"

"Oh. Well, it's nice of you to keep up
with your Instructor's relatives."

#Blaugust2022

*Blogs such as Righteous Orbs, MMO Melting Pot, The Pink Pigtail Inn, Orcish Army Knife, and when WoW Insider (now known as Blizzard Watch) used to have a weekly update of activity in the WoW Blogosphere. All of these are either defunct (Righteous Orbs and MMO Melting Pot), have bloggers fall away from blogging (PPI), pass away (Orcish Army Knife), or just shut down their regular articles highlighting bloggers (WoW Insider).

**And still publish, despite the decline in circulation among paper magazines. Venerable names such as Analog (launched as Astounding Science Fiction in 1930) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1949), and more recent fare (in a relative sense) of Asimov's Science Fiction (1977) still are kicking around. There are others out there as well, but I can always count on these three to be on the shelves at my local independent bookstore, right next to the two long running Mystery magazines Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (1941) and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (1956). 

***I remember one time my mom's mother, my wife, and I had a conversation about books. Grandma told me about a book she was reading, and that my mom was interested in what it was like. "Oh, you wouldn't like it," Grandma had told her, "because there's sex in it." The fact that my grandmother knew her own daughter was too much of a prude to enjoy a novel she obviously liked tickled me to no end. That was when I realized that my grandmother was far more comfortable with sex and modern society than her own daughters were.

****This is a problem even with current fiction. There was a novella in one of the magazines I have from the mid-2000s --I think it might have been Analog-- who had a protagonist that was smart, scientifically trained, witty, and athletic. I struggled to find any flaws in him at all. Ironically enough, I found a novelette in a 1986 Analog magazine, The Barbarian Princess by Vernor Vinge, that turned the Mary Sue concept on its head. 

I think I still have my copy
around somewhere, but this came
from abebooks.com.

Even though Tatja Grimm was definitely the Mary Sue type, that didn't mean she was perfect. And seen from another character's point of view, which is how the novelette is told, their own internal biases against the "barbarians" played heavily into making that an enjoyable story.

EtA: Corrected some grammar. As usual.