Little Did They Know

Back when I first began playing MMOs --okay, WoW-- back in 2009, most of my game time was spent playing in parallel with people. By that, I mean I was out in the game, doing whatever, while Soul and his wife were also online and playing, but we weren't necessarily doing the same thing. We may have been questing, but we weren't questing together. Or even in the same area.

My playing on the family PC also meant that I had to work around my wife and my kids' usage as well, so I moved in the direction of solo play at odd hours. 

This was my life when the mini-Reds
were in elementary school.
From yourtango.com.

Middle school sounded the death knell for early morning WoW, because the kids would have to get up at 6 AM to catch the bus and/or get dropped off at school*, and I wasn't getting up at 4 AM to play WoW. Okay, in 2020 I began staying up until 3 AM to finish raids, so I guess you could say that I came full circle, but still...

For me, playing MMOs began to mean "doing my own thing, whether on my own or grouped with strangers."

***

There's a certain amount of freedom to being on when nobody else that you know is. 

For example, if you're on a PvP server in WoW you can make a run for it through certain zones without worrying about whether some max level toon is going to come along and gank you.

Kind of like this, running as Horde
through Wetlands and Dun Morogh.
From tenor.com.

No matter how much you try to handwave it there's a significant amount of stress involved, and even in the off hours that's no guarantee that some toon won't come along and fuck you up just because. However, I discovered way back in 2009 that if you time that run from Arathi through to the Badlands just right, you won't see a soul on the road.

These past few weeks I've been channeling my younger self and have been spending more and more time on my alts, such as Linna 2.0 and Neve, getting them to max level and doing things that I used to do on Azshandra and Cardwyn in my pre-raid days: run Battlegrounds, quest, and queue for instances. 

I know the Wrath instances very well, having done them back in the day ad nauseum, so I'm comfortable queueing for those instances in what passes for an LFG system in Wrath Classic. I also made a point of doing that dungeon running when it's highly unlikely that I'll run into anybody I know from the franken guild on Atiesh-US; my status on the server as Deuce --messy and uncomfortable and all-- means that I try my hardest not to put myself out there where I could run into people I don't care to interact with. And that means leaving Deuce on the shelf when outside of raids while I get in touch with my past.

"Bolster my defenses! Hurry, curse you!"

I can imagine that you might be thinking "Hey, Atiesh-US is supposed to be a very large server. Why all the caution?" That's because I keep running into the same people while doing leveling dungeons on Atiesh. On Myzrael-US, which is a much smaller server, that's to be expected. But on Atiesh? Yeah, it's very much a thing.

Just like back in the day, when I ran dungeons at odd hours I kept seeing regulars in the automated LFD tool, despite being in a large battlegroup. 

***

This brings up yet another item that I discovered in TBC Classic and has seemingly carried over into Wrath Classic: people sprinted to max level and jumped straight into raiding, and once they --and their primary alts-- hit max level, dungeon running participation plummeted. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this development, and from conversations I've had with people in game it also seems that people are getting bored (or whatnot) and are unsubscribing and/or dropping from raid teams until the next phase hits.

If this sounds like a modern mentality of saying "I've done that already so I'll unsub until new content drops", yes it does. 

And with that revelation, I think I can now explain the sudden reappearance of the Joyous Journeys XP buff far sooner than people expected: to try to fight that yo-yo effect of people subbing and unsubbing.**

But I digress.

***

I've found a lot of relaxation and joy in just going with the flow and running some dungeons with people whom I've become acquainted with over the past few weeks. We're not guildies or anything, but we're people who know each others' abilities, and we reach out to each other if we've got a spot available. There's no pressure involved, and even if it doesn't work out as intended, we'll still have fun.

What Ingvar needs is some stylish gear,
that's all. I'm gonna miss these Brutal
Battlegear sets that our group was rocking.

The biggest part about these dungeon runs is that I truly do feel no pressure to perform. The expectations are different for me in these runs, because I know going in that I'm not going to have a lot of gear so I won't be rocking the charts or anything. And when a piece of blue gear drops that I can use, it's a bonus all around. 

I can hear my questing buddy already, saying that we want to just hang with you, not put any pressure or anything on you. The thing is, no matter what is said --and I'm sure it's meant by everybody I know who has told it to me-- I still put pressure on myself to perform. 

(There, I even put it in italics for emphasis.)

And no, once I've joined a raid team --or been a former member of a team-- I can't avoid the pressure. It's just part of me, because once unlocked it can't go back into Pandora's Box.

In these scenarios, however, nobody is trying to max out their gear and get those last BiS items before raiding. Nobody is trying to speed run their way through the instance, collect their daily badges, and log prior to the raid. If we get to the extra boss in time in the Culling of Stratholme Heroic dungeon, we get there. Otherwise, nobody sweats it out. 

The lack of defined purpose is key. Because we aren't there for a specifically defined metagame reason, these runs are enjoyable. That I am just an anonymous pugger from a leveling guild with hardly anybody left on the server (Neve) or a small friends guild in a large server (Linna 2.0), I can relax. The major raiding guilds all keep to themselves on Atiesh-US, and Myzrael-US is small enough that everybody has to band together to keep a pugging community alive. 

So I find that when I set aside my raiding life, placing it in a compartmentalized box, I've found my time spent being anonymous to be enjoyable.  

*The elementary school started at 8:30 AM, whereas the middle school began at 7:30. This was to accommodate the bus schedules. Like a lot of school districts in the US, ours had to deal with a lot of  voters who believed in the "lean and mean" style of school district financial management, so schools had to make do with as few busses as possible. That meant adjusting school start times to get the most out of as few busses as possible.

**And with Ulduar opening up on January 19th, Joyous Journeys' ending on the 16th seems very appropriate.

Meme Monday: Post Holiday Blues Memes

Once you make it through the running of the Holiday gauntlet, there's this stretch before Valentine's Day and then another long stretch before Spring arrives.

If you're in my part of the country, you're not going to see the sun very much during that time. It's just a fact of life that SAD creeps in for a significant chunk of the population. So... Here's some memes to cheer people up.

Uh... I tried my hand at tanking, so I can
appreciate this even more than before.
From Shaneplays.com.

Gnomes. Just... Gnomes.
From Shaneplays.com (again).

This hits a wee bit too close to home,
if you ask me.
From dnd_memes1.

If I'd have seen that on the road
at night time, I'd have likely 
had a heart attack.
From Reddit.

Alas, Pandora's Box Has Already Been Opened

There are times when I wonder whether the old adage about necessity being the mother of invention is actually a good thing.

After all, look at some of the designs behind monetization in video games, and I wonder just whose necessity is behind those creations. Surely not the players' necessity, and certainly not the developers' necessity either. I suppose you could argue that those designs were created for the necessity of the investors so that the companies could make larger profits off of video games, but is that good for the long term health of the industry?

Note that I said industry, not the companies. I'm absolutely certain that video game companies --particularly the AAA game companies-- are more profitable because of the monetization techniques that rely heavily on psychological manipulation. That, however, doesn't mean that the industry itself is healthy. 

If nothing else, you could argue that by creating addictive responses to the monetization techniques, the video game companies have figured out how to adapt the same tricks used in the illegal drug trade* for their own profits.

It just doesn't sound the same, and
it would probably work as well as the
original "Just Say No" campaign too.
Original photo from USA Today.

Given that Grand Theft Auto V exists, I'd imagine my comparison of the AAA video game companies to drug cartels isn't something that those companies really are concerned about. Additionally, the embrace of "gambling mechanics" by the video game industry may sound bad to most of us until you realize that gambling is a fact of life among sports leagues. Just look at how many teams in the Premier League are sponsored by gambling outlets, or the embrace of the NFL and other American sports leagues by formalized gambling, and you realize that the stigma of "gambling mechanics" is likely considered a good thing by many investors.

Photograph from this article by The Guardian.
By Shutterstock; Getty.

But you know what suffers? The games themselves.

In the same way that tobacco industry executives and insiders considered cigarettes to be "nicotine delivery devices", I have to wonder whether the AAA game companies consider their products --video games-- to be "microtransaction delivery devices". Certainly the games themselves have suffered a bit in terms of quality, as if the games themselves aren't the most important part of the development process.

To that end, Josh Strife Hayes created a video that touched a nerve with me:

Hayes' Box of Abusive Monetization Strategies --or Pandora's Box of Bad Design-- pretty much encapsulates all of the practices that people dislike about video games today. And, I suppose, just like the original Pandora's Box, you can't put those items back and lock them away now that they've made their way into game design.

A game developer can choose to not utilize them. Or a video game player can choose to not purchase games that contain the Box's contents.

Me, I tend to wait for everything that was going to be released is released, and then wait for it to go on sale via Steam, before I buy a game. Some games are perpetually updated, such as Paradox Games' offerings (Europa Universalis IV and Stellaris, to name two of them), and I just wait until there's something I find interesting and yes, dependent upon whether it goes on sale (and I've the spare money, which is frequently an iffy thing) before I purchase it.

Obviously this does not work so well with MMO subscription games, such as WoW Classic, but I tend to spend a lot more of my time watching and waiting on expansions before I decide whether or not to purchase them. Considering I'm not going to be doing anything that requires me to be on the bleeding edge of a new expansion, I can afford to wait.***

But I'm not a lot of people, and neither are a lot of people the whales who are targeted by a lot of contents of Pandora's Box of Bad Design.

What can save us in the long run? Ourselves. We have to resist the Bad Design practices, and play games that don't have them, if we want to effect change. If nothing else, just play those games because they're good games.

And for pete's sake, don't preorder games from companies that use the contents of Pandora's Box. That's giving those companies a blank check. Make them earn your money by making good games.

*Back when I was still into the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series --circa the late 90s-- there was a free paperback of the first part of The Eye of the World available to people at bookstores. "You know what this is?" a bookstore employee told me, holding a copy up. "This is your free sample of crack." 

**And to be fair, a lot of the Software as a Service or SaaS model itself falls under that header too.

***Since I'm really keeping my WoW account active for Wrath Classic (and to a lesser extent Classic Era), there's no worry about being on, say, a current raiding tier there. I don't have to pay extra for WoW Classic, which is perfectly fine with me.

New Year, New Labor

Microsoft is now a company with a union.

Zenimax, which we gamers know more for Elder Scrolls Online and Bethesda in general, has had their QA testers vote to join the Communications Workers of America. Unlike certain other tech companies, Microsoft "officially" remained neutral on this vote. Since they decided to not oppose the union, I suppose one could take it as a tacit endorsement of unionization for the QA people, who are frequently among the lowest paid of the development staff.*

I honestly have no idea if this will change anything, but we'll see.

*Source: I worked in software QA for five years.

A Sobering Reality

I know that PC is a gaming blog --and no, not gambling "gaming"-- so items such as sports don't officially come under the "mission statement"* of Parallel Context. Still, I have talked about sports before on the blog, and referenced sports in comparison to video games. And I've mentioned more than a few times in the past about my complicated relationship with our local NFL team, the Cincinnati Bengals. I mean, I've seen hopes dashed and freak injuries and losses --oh, the losses that would make a Manchester City fan nod in remembrance of the "Typical City" times-- so I've been acquainted with bad stuff happening.

But never in my life have I seen something like what happened last night, live on television during the Buffalo Bills / Cincinnati Bengals game:

Other players were just starting to realize
Damar Hamlin had collapsed, but Bills
#30 Dane Jackson immediately recognized
the severity of the situation and began rushing
to his teammate's side.
From ESPN via NYBreaking.com.

The collapse happened after this tackle
of Bengals' #85 Tee Higgins.
From Fox5 Atlanta, likely originally from Getty.

Damar Hamlin made a tackle which for all the world seemed like something made hundreds of times each NFL season, got up, and then promptly collapsed onto the field. 

Trainers from both teams rushed to his side, cut off his uniform and chest pads, and began administering CPR and using defibrillators. After what has been reported to be upwards of 10 minutes, Hamlin's heart was restarted. 

From the Associated Press and Jeff Dean.
Via News4Jax.com.

He'd gone into cardiac arrest on the playing field.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer.

I've never seen CPR performed outside of training purposes on dummies --and yes, I was trained back in middle school in the ancient times but I never kept my certification up-- but I'm told by friends who were paramedics that CPR performed by medical professionals out in the real world is much more aggressive and violent than what you're used to seeing on television. To put it bluntly, a person's ribs are frequently broken on the first couple of pushes, but you keep going because you have to get a heart rhythm started. People are frequently not able to be resuscitated via CPR, but in situations where seconds count, it's the best option we have. 

Needless to say, watching this entire thing unfold in prime time was very sobering.

From Associated Press via Arizona Sports.
Photo by Emilee Chinn.

From Getty Images via Ball State Daily.
Photo by Dylan Buell.

The game was suspended, and the NFL announced just a little while ago that the game will not be resumed this week. I'd not be surprised that the game were simply declared a draw and teams given a tie or simply have the game not count.

For me, I was never happier for a raid night than last night. It gave me a chance to not think about what I saw, or the young man currently in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

*I don't actually have a "formal" mission statement --I've not gone corporate on you-- but it's not a bad idea to have a statement of purpose around. Revisiting that statement from time to time allows a person to refocus the blog as needed.

Meme Monday: New Year's Memes

Yes, I posted a quickie late last night after raiding, but that doesn't mean that I didn't forget about Meme Monday. I only forgot that the raid ran into Monday, that's all.

Without much ado, there's a ton of New Years' related memes out there. Here's but a few...

I think I actually did this in WoW
since I play on a West Coast server
and I reside in the Eastern time zone.
And that my wife already had gone to
bed a few hours before then.
From Reddit.

I'm with Doctor Evil on this one.
I don't even keep up with monthly
gaming goals because I never keep them.
From, well, you know what Austin Powers is, right?

Hey, at least there's sexy fun time involved.
From 9gag.

Ah, Life of the Party. You never
let me down.

A Quick Note

I don't like retrospective posts very much, especially reviewing how things went over the past year or so. After all, I don't set playing goals for a month, because I know I won't ever meet them, so reviewing what I've been up to in general seems a personal performance review that I know I'd fail.

And really, I get enough of those at work, so why bother with another performance review?*

Neve's Horde guild has all but collapsed,
as most of the active people changed servers
AND factions in one fell swoop. This
Utgarde Keep run felt like a trial run put on
by the top Horde guild on the server, as
I was the only non-member in the run.

About the only thing I will say is that I survived another year around the Sun, and despite its best intentions, my heart hasn't killed me yet.

Carry on, then.

*Apparently my ex-guild has now instituted weekly performance reviews of raider activity to see if they're up to the quality level expected of the 25 person raid teams. Oh, and not only those reviews, but raiders who do good parses will be given priority on gear, too, as a kick in the pants reminder that they do Loot Council on gear. Oh, and guess what? They began the Wrath expac with about 30-35 raiders vying for spots on each 25 person raid, so an excess of 10 players per raid team, and now they're having to recruit for raiders. I'm damn glad I'm not in the middle of that shitstorm.