Monday Memes: What I Do Warcraft Memes

I don't try to create these sorts of memes, not because I don't think I could create them, but because I'd have a hard time not relying upon "You think you do but you don't" for a lot of them.* 

Or jokes about Goldshire.

Or no-lifers.

Or... You get the idea.

But then you come across ones like this:

Hey, it's Mr. T! From Pinterest.

Or ones like this:

Sigh. I'm too old for the NES to be there.
If you had an Intellivision or Atari, however...
From Pinterest again.

Pretty sure my questing buddy would have
a few... opinions... about the "What I think
I do" part. Such as "Why isn't there a Gnome
Warlock there?" From frabz.com.

But probably the most telling one is this one:

That last one makes it final: this should 
have been named "What World of Warcraft
Players do on their Bank Alt".
From quickmeme.com.

*The irony is that in 2023, in Wrath Classic, there's a ton of people who actually do want some of the conveniences of Wrath (and the modern game) put back into that "Wrath Classic". You know, things such as the automatic dungeon finder. Or the Heroic Plus instances. So... maybe we shouldn't mock that line as much as we do.

A Story in a Loading Screen

While waiting for Stratholme* to load the other day I got to thinking about how the loading screens reflect the design principles in World of Warcraft. 

Not necessarily instances, since their loading screens are meant to evoke a locale for the instance, 

From Wowpedia because I was lazy this time.**

but the loading screens for places such as the Old World.

From Wikia because I had trouble finding
my own copy.

The Vanilla/Vanilla Classic loading screen for the Eastern Kingdoms is a good example of what I kept turning over in my head. It's plenty raw as far as graphics goes, but it's designed to evoke certain aspects of the various races whose starting zone is in the Eastern Kingdoms: Humans, Forsaken, Gnomes, and Dwarves. There's a Human Paladin, a Forsaken Rogue, a Dwarven Hunter, and a Gnome... Something? But hey, the Gnome is on a Mechanostrider, so at least there's that.

then The Burning Crusade expansion dropped, and with the arrival of Draenei and Blood Elves the loading screens changed:

From Wowwiki. Yes, lazy again.

The Human is now a Mage, the Forsaken is now a Priest (I think), the Blood Elf is the Paladin ("That's a Blood Knight!" --Quintalan), the Dwarf remains a Hunter, and the Gnome is... Maybe another Mage? I like to think she's a Warlock, since she's got my questing buddy's attitude all over her, but either way she's definitely a caster of some sort. Nevertheless, the look is more professional than Vanilla's version yet still evokes the essence of WoW: a game where you can drive the story by being who you want to be. 

Times come and go, and the ages pass. No, not a riff on The Wheel of Time --okay, maybe it is just a little-- and Wrath drops. This is the expac I started with, so this was what I was most familiar with when I started playing:

From Wowwiki. Again.

The Dwarf Priest gets some love here, along with the Blood Elf Mage ("About time!" --Neve), the "Small but Mighty!" Gnome Warrior, Forsaken Rogue (guessing here, because of the weapon hidden by the Mage), and the Human Warrior (because Paladins don't use daggers) Rogue. (Corrected by Shintar, but I was right about that not being a Paladin!) By looking at the graphics of the loading screen alone, WoW has grown up. It's no longer rough around the edges, and unlike previous expacs you don't get the impression that different artists created different toons on the loading screen and were then jumbled together into a mish-mash.###

WoW had a unified vision that people were moving toward.

Then Cataclysm dropped, and that vision became even more evident:

Wowwiki once more.

From that point onward, in late Fall of 2010, World of Warcraft's Old World featured the faction leaders based in each continent. 

If you ever needed evidence that the focus of the game --and the plots involved-- shifted from the players to the faction leaders, there it was in full color. Considering faction warfare was to be a primary focus in Cataclysm --and the associated media that Blizz released with Cataclysm-- it made sense, but the thing is, Blizzard kept this same loading screen through both Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria. It was only in Warlords of Draenor that we then received our final update to the loading screen:

What's with the lips?
Wowwiki again.

Okay, so what gives with the artwork? Oh, not the bottom four on the graphic, but Varian and Sylvanas in the upper left and right respectively. All of them have a cartoony feel to them compared to the more realistic look from Cata/Mists, but Varian and Sylvanas are pretty much over the top. And apparently this is how things have stayed in WoW, because I logged into Retail this morning on my L1 bank alt on Ysera-US and snagged this loading screen:

Uh... Isn't this out of date?

Isn't Varian dead? and Sylvanas replaced? And... Oh, nevermind. 

Okay, the point isn't that it's out of date, it's that Blizzard has provided us what their vision of the game is right here in front of us. I suppose you could say that in terms of focus the game has calcified, given that late Fall of 2014 was the last time the Old World loading screens were updated. Over 8 years ago. 

Say what you will about the old loading screens, but at least the promise of an open world to explore was there. And that promise was lost as the focus changed from an open world to a very specific story featuring, well, NOT YOU. Oh, you're there, of course, but you're at the beck and call of those truly featured in WoW. As much as they may call you the Champion in game, you're conveniently in the background when the real players come on stage.*** Maybe these loading screens are meant to inspire you, but give me generic races and classes in the Vanilla-BC-Wrath days. At least the inspiration then was "play a character like this" instead of "play someone in the service of these people".

*One of the things I've started doing under the header "making my own fun" has been to enter into places such as Stratholme on my L80 toons and do some creative farming. There's still plenty of demand for Runecloth these days, so I can always sell what I get, but for those toons that never got a T0 set in WoW Classic this is a chance for me to fill in that gap. That gear may not have been "Meta" or "BiS", but I truly liked the look of those sets. Now that I think about it, only Cardwyn 1.0 got the complete T0 set. Azshandra was close, but I think she's missing the shoulders or something.

**Did you know that you had to use a product such as Snip and Sketch to grab the loading screens? I discovered this when I began capturing them for posterity's sake and good ol' Print Screen wasn't working; all I kept getting were the areas hidden by the loading screen.

***As it has been since Burning Crusade. I saw the end of Sunwell Plateau back when my Horde guild did it back in late Wrath, and it was Velen and Liadrin who did almost all of the talking. 

###EtA: Thanks to Grimmtooth for pointing out that The Blood Elf Mage in Wrath's loading screen is done by Genzoman, which means that multiple artists' work were used on Wrath's Old World loading screens as well. It's just that those loading screens were a lot closer together in style than, say, the Vanilla loading screens. If you want to see more of Genzoman's artwork, you can find it here on DeviantArt. Just be aware that you have to have an account to see some of it, due to its adult nature.

Meme Monday: Love Memes

Oh, this could go in several different directions. I mean, just "RPG love meme" or "MMO love meme" alone brings up some rather adult results. But hey, let's live a little, shall we?

When couples play online.
My wife is not one of them, so
I have no reference point here.
Power-something's tumbler.

Uh... No reference here either.
From Stephen McGee.

Reading some of the r/ClassicWoW
posts on Reddit can give me a warped
sense of what's important.
From Memecenter.

And then there's the guy who
turns MMOs into Ladies' Night
at a disco.
From WoW Amino.

Bonus: Not technically an RPG or MMO Love Meme, but it popped up and I was amused:

Maybe someday. Then again, I saw my
wife play Breath of the Wild; it wasn't pretty
and she gave up despite a ton of help
and encouragement from the kids.
From Griffon Ramsey and Luke McKay.

Fumbling Around With Social Engineering

My old WoW Classic server, Myzrael-US, had rallied in population when Wrath Classic was released. It was to be expected, I suppose, given how people wanted to return to see the content. 

That bump in population apparently has not lasted.

On January 26, unknown to me, free server transfers opened up from two of the small West Coast servers, Myzrael and Azuresong, and to Old Blanchy.

Old Blanchy? The smallest of the three? REALLY?

Well, that is certainly no longer the case as some of the remaining Alliance guilds have moved off wholesale to Old Blanchy-US, and the population dropped to Low once more. 

I swear it was Medium a week ago...

My suspicion was piqued when I noticed that we'd dropped to Low, and a couple of people whom I'm BNet friends with moved their toons to Old Blanchy, which I thought was a strange location to move to. Back in Vanilla Classic and TBC Classic, Old Blanchy had a small server population, much smaller than Azuresong and Myzrael, but once Wrath Classic released the population swelled to where Myzrael-US was during Vanilla Classic. And while Azuresong-US has remained steady with about 1000-1500 raiding toons, Myzrael's Alliance population plummeted once more to where it's a majority Horde server.

The thing is, the Horde population on Old Blanchy is roughly the same as on Myzrael, so really, unless the Horde guilds on Myz start migrating over, there's no real incentive for me to move any of my toons over unless Blizzard announces Myzrael's server shutdown or something. 

And for the record, I'm not going to move toons from Myzrael-US to Atiesh-US, because while the Horde population there is twice the size of what it is on either Old Blanchy or Myzrael, it's still miniscule compared to the Alliance population on Atiesh. 

My Alliance toons on Myzrael? 

/shrug

I mean, I've got 2.0 versions on Atiesh already, so I'm not moving them there, and I wasn't planning on raiding with them on Myz anyway, so I'm not going to chase the population exodus there.

And I'll be honest: my experiences pugging on Myzrael vs Atiesh have been rather enlightening. 

On Myzrael, the pugging scene for Neve has been pretty low key. I get into an instance, whether it's Heroic or the new Heroic Plus, and I don't have any real issues with people getting frustrated or trying to go faster faster FASTER. Or people aren't being asshats when things don't go well.

On Atiesh, however... It seems that the puggers and instance runners there are all far more hardcore in outlook and who they select for their pugs: Gearscore has made it's return to World of Warcraft Classic in a big way. People demanding minimum Gearscore levels for instance runs or easy raids --such as Vault of Archavon-- are very much a thing on Atiesh-US, and I can only shake my head and sigh at this behavior.

All that's old is new again, I suppose.

***

In light of these developments, I'm planning on staying put on Myzrael for the time being, at least until I get a feel for where the Horde population is (or isn't) going. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if Myzrael-US folds, I'll likely take my toons to a server that I know isn't going away because it serves a unique player base: Bloodsail Buccaneers, the only PvE-RP server in North America. 

Hooray for the Roleplaying community!

Meme Monday: Groundhog Day Memes

I'm old enough to remember a time before the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day.

Okay, it was only 1993, but it's still a year older than my marriage.

Back in the Before Times, Groundhog Day was a kind of cute but meaningless holiday in the same vein as "National Cheesecake Day" (July 30th) or "National Bratwurst Day" (August 16)*.

Then that movie came along, and... Well... It's now a meme all on its own about reliving the same day over and over and over...

Being from Ohio, I kind of like this.
From Pinterest.

From imgflip.

From redbubble.

From keenanraynor.blogspot.com.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

*I was actually surprised that National Bratwurst Day wasn't every weekend during football tailgate season. Maybe that's because I live in the Midwest, but brats are a staple of tailgating here.

Meme Monday: Groundhog Memes

I'm old enough to remember a time before the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. 

Okay, it was only 1993, but it's still a year older than my marriage.

Back in the Before Times, Groundhog Day was a kind of cute but meaningless holiday in the same vein as "National Cheesecake Day" (July 30th) or "National Bratwurst Day" (August 16)*.

Then that movie came along, and... Well... It's now a meme all on its own about reliving the same day over and over and over...

Being from Ohio, I kind of like this.
From Pinterest.

From imgflip.

From Redbubble.

From keenanraynor.blogspot.com.

*I was actually surprised that National Bratwurst Day wasn't every weekend during football tailgate season. Maybe that's because I live in the Midwest, but brats are a staple of tailgating here.

In Case You Ever Wondered Whether Game Companies are Soulless Corporations...

...I give you the latest little brouhaha from Blizzard.

I give major props to Brian Birmingham, the now ex-Activision-Blizzard manager, for his principled stand against the stacked ranking corporate policy at A-B, but as soon as I read the words "stacked ranking" I knew he was swimming against the tide.

For the life of me, I have no idea why executive corporate management loves stacked ranking among those other "corporate trends" --I'm looking at you, open office floor designs*-- but that it was popularized by GE's Jack Welch says a lot. 

I've been in the work force full time since 1991, and yes, I've encountered stacked ranking before. Numerous times. And its basic principle, that teams should be shoehorned into a bell curve and that the bottom 10% are poor performers, is something I despise. There is very little nuance to the stacked ranking system, where the best performer on a crappy team is given a higher ranking than an average to poor performer on a fantastic team. The stacked ranking system also encourages cutthroat behavior among peers, which includes such items as coworkers sabotaging projects to make their own work look better. Again, I've seen such behavior in the past among coworkers. The focus isn't on putting out good work, but playing the system to maximum advantage. 

From AD&D Dungeon Masters
Guide (1e), Page 111.

So yeah, I have a history with stacked ranking. 

And if you're playing politics with the system, you're not spending time putting out a good product. And in the case of Blizzard, you're not developing bug free, well designed games.

*I'm incredibly grateful I work from home, because if I had to work at the office, it would have been in an open office design. Even in a post-pandemic world, corporations still love the open office design for some strange ungodly reason. I work in IT Security, so by nature I tend to have sensitive material up on screen a lot of the time. If you're thinking "Hey, wait a minute, if it's up on screen and you're in an open office, anybody can walk by and see that!" then you'd be absolutely correct. Without any privacy whatsoever, there's little ability to securely handle sensitive data. I didn't say there's no ability, because you still can, but proper handling of sensitive data out in the open also involves additional cost, and cost is the antithesis of corporate life.