The Past Casts a Long Shadow

I had the afternoon to myself*, so I did what I typically do on a Sunday when I have an itch to explore and the weather is lousy for hiking: I visited a bookstore.

After having finished The Chronicles of the Black Company, I was looking at replacing it in my "to be read" pile with another book, but I was more interested in chasing down a diabetic cookbook that I could use. I know how to break down existing recipes and eliminate sodium and carbs at least decently well these days, but it is also nice to occasionally find a cookbook where that groundwork has already been done for you, such as this one from America's Test Kitchen, the Consumer Reports of Cooking.**

The nice part about perusing a bookstore is that you never know what you're going to end up with when you walk in the door. Sure, you could stick to exactly what you're looking for --and when I've got things to do I will do just that-- but if I'm browsing all bets are off.

I know, I should check out Naomi's
His Majesty's Dragon, but I'm not a big
fan of alternate history. Although the premise,
a mashup of the Napoleonic Wars and
Dragons, does sound interesting.

At some point I found myself over at the magazine racks, perusing so-called "bookazines",

Like oh, say, THIS.
Although to be fair, I'm pretty
sure that Larry Elmore isn't gonna
lose any sleep on my interest in painting.

which seem to be books in the form of single issue magazines, when I found myself kind of crowded out by a family who didn't seem to notice me there. I mean, I'm not a small guy, and I was there at least a few minutes before they were, but I suddenly found myself crowded out by them. Rather than bitch about it, I just decided to relocate for 5 minutes or so and then come on back to finish my browsing.

When I did I found that the family had indeed moved about 10-15 feet away, but they were in the middle of a knock down drag out argument. Well, as much of one that could be had in a bookstore.***

"THAT is not a book!" 

"You want me to spend my hard earned dollars on THAT?"

"A book has paragraphs in it! Not THAT!"

"Are you really going to read THAT??!!"

Yes, those were the parents. 

I couldn't see what the book in question was, but it wouldn't have shocked me if the kid --my guess she would have been early teens, but you never know-- had found the graphic novel/comics section and pulled out something from there. 

Even then, I felt for her, because I lived that same argument 40 years ago. Many times.

***

The first time was back when I was in Second Grade, and my mom took my brother and I downtown and we stopped at a bookstore there. We were each allowed to get one book, and I chose a book on primary colors and my brother chose a book about cats. When my dad got home that evening, he saw the books and threw them away, saying they were "kiddie books" and "you're too old for books like these". 

Yes, there was drama, in no small part from my trying to explain to my mom and brother --who was bawling his eyes out-- that dad had said "kiddie books" and not "kitty books". 

Several years later, in the midst of some of the worst bullying I received in middle school, I buried myself in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. It was a way of coping, losing myself in the books and loving the narrative voice. Then one Sunday afternoon when I was sick and rereading The Fellowship of the Ring once again, my dad came in and told me that if I didn't stop reading those books and "read something else", he'd take them away.**** I believe the words "rot your brain" and "something for grownups" were in that tirade somewhere, but all I saw was red.

I fumed for several days, but eventually I moved on to Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara and I discovered David Eddings' The Belgariad, likely to my dad's chagrin. 

This was the book cover I knew
back in the day. From Goodreads.

***

But from my own experience I vowed I would not be that parent to my own kids.

When my oldest was in the middle of her "princess craze", when every book she ever read just absolutely had to have a princess in it or she wouldn't read it*****, I took her downtown and we perused the absolutely gigantic children's section of the downtown library. 

The Secret Garden, found in the secret
garden adjoining the Children's Section
of the Cincinnati Downtown Library.
From the Library's Flickr account.

We went through a lot of books, and I had absolutely no luck in getting her to try another book without a princess in it, until I stumbled upon this:

No, this is not the library's copy.

"Does it have a princess in it?" my oldest asked, curiously.

The fact she didn't reject it outright was a good sign, so I quickly flipped through the book and said "there's a noble lady in it, is that close enough?"

"Hmm... okay."

I rejoiced when her back was turned and we checked the book out (with a bunch of princess books, because you knew that was gonna happen). Later that night I read the book to her, and then she asked for it again the next night. And then for the next month she would get out her watercolors and scrap paper and "make a book" in the same style as Marguerite did.

And that was that.

***

So yeah, I saw the drama this afternoon and really did I feel for the kid. Yeah kid, I know what you're going through; just remember this afternoon --and what it felt like for you-- when you've got kids of your own.

*Work kept me fairly close to my home office, otherwise I'd have likely gone with my wife to see my youngest play in a concert this evening. As it was, she went on and is spending the night at her parents' house, using the concert as an excuse to check in on them as they're hitting 90.

**At least that's what I call them. Consumer Reports, please don't go knocking on my door for a cease and desist; it's a compliment of the highest order.

***I was once at the downtown library branch and someone, about 20 years my senior, came in looking for his kid who hadn't shown up when they were supposed to. He first demanded that the staff call for the kid over the intercom, and when the staff refused he then proceeded to start hollering her name at the top of his lungs: "TRACY!! GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!!" They tried to shush him up, but you can imagine how that went over, so he was grabbed by library security and a policeman on duty, and forced over into a corner. I couldn't tell if they put him in handcuffs, but I took that as my cue to leave the building.

****He couldn't throw them out because the books belonged to my mom.

*****This was before her interest in Harry Potter, by the way.

It's All Filler in the End

Given that for almost a decade I never bothered to update the header to Parallel Context, it feels a bit weird to have people comment whenever it changes.

To be honest, I'd really like to have a series of headers that are rotated through every time you access PC like what Rav has on her blog Ravalation*, but I also recognize that it's likely a Wordpress plugin that she's using. And Blogger gets less than minimal support from Google anyway, which drives me nuts because if there was even a little bit of support Blogger would be a fantastic platform. Of course, if Google actually did what they usually do they would have pulled the plug after a couple of years when they realized they weren't gonna make a quick buck on the platform, over a decade ago. 

So.... Yay that they're not paying attention to Blogger?

Without a plugin to use I've tried building a GIF that cycles through 3 or 4 screenshots, but if you want something resembling decent quality you have to pay for it. And really work your ass off to get over the learning curve (::cough:: Gimp ::cough::). Besides, I'm not dropping a ton of money on something like Photoshop just to make a few GIFs. 

This would have been one of the pics
I'd have used in that GIF or plug-in.
If nothing else, Guild Wars 2 has some
fantastic graphics. And yes, Mikath
is yet another redheaded bearded guy.

***

All that's past is prologue, I suppose.

I changed the header of Parallel Context this time around because I wanted to distance myself from Wrath Classic a bit. No, I'm not planning on dropping Wrath Classic, it's that I'd rather see something on the header that brings back fond memories rather than resentfulness. I had to learn that one the hard way by stubbornly sticking to my TBC Classic header cadence just because that was the current phase of the expansion. So this time, since I'm not planning on raiding anymore** I decided to plop in a graphic from a more pleasant memory, Blackwing Lair. Blizzard's Season of Mastery used that graphic when BWL was released, so while it's not from an actual raid the picture still brings back a memory of the time when our best Mage pulled threat on Chromaggus and wiped the raid. We collectively laughed our asses off when that happened, because no more than 5 minutes beforehand the tank had boasted that he wasn't gonna have any problems with threat on ol' Chromag, and one of the Mages proved him wrong in the blink of an eye.

It was also a time before TBC Classic, when the raid split up into two and both doubled down on the hardcore route. Compared to TBC and Wrath Classic, those WoW Classic raids were just, well, fun. 

Feels kind of weird seeing this graphic.
I tried using this as a background for a short
while but it was far too busy. This was even
before my (brief) raiding career.

***

One thing that I have found is that I still enjoy the Classic leveling dungeons far more than I have a right to. Kind of like how if you're in a group that isn't wearing a ton of heirloom gear*** you can't simply steamroll over the content, you have to work at it. Plus the background to a lot of these Classic dungeons are fantastic, such as the quest lead-ins to The Deadmines or exploring an entire freaking city in Blackrock Depths. Now that I've been around the block more than my share of times, I do find that some of these old leveling instances in MMOs to be the most fun for me, such as Mandalorian Raiders and Athiss in SWTOR, the Garth Agarwen and Great Barrow instance clusters in LOTRO, and The Sanctum of Burning Souls in Age of Conan.

Sith Inquisitors are the Warlocks
(aka Purple Mages) of the SWTOR universe.

Maybe I should stop being so narrow-minded and spice things up a bit with a greater variety of headers from a greater variety of games. And not just MMOs, either...

The inner cover of the old Moldvay
D&D Basic Set. Willingham's artwork still
holds up to this day.

*If you reload her blog you'll see the header pic changes each time. I'm jealous. (Oh, and yes, it's HTTP, not HTTPS. Rav is still around, but hasn't updated the blog in ages.)

**Maybe the occasional Vault of Archavon, because it's pretty simple to do.

***Until I finally reached max level for the first time back in 2009-2010, I used to complain about the unfair advantage that heirloom gear gives a player compared to those without heirloms. I mean, you not only have to be max level to buy them, but you have to have enough badges from running heroic group content at max level to afford them; you can't just walk in and buy them with gold. Then, when you get them, you have a built in advantage of having gear that "levels" in quality with you. Still, a couple of my toons do have heirloom gear because they do make it easier to forget about trying to scrounge for the best gear on several of your item slots while questing out in the field. And this is coming from someone who tends to forget about selecting talents on a talent tree for, oh, five levels' worth of talents at a time.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

Meme Monday: ::wink wink:: Memes

I know, I've used the title "Naughty Memes" before, but that was in reference to Naughty or Nice for Santa Claus for Christmas. And yes, I've done "Love Memes", but this is... ::wink wink::

Thanks for that, Agnes.
From knowyourmeme.com.

So...

We're all adults here, right? Or at least acquainted with horniness, whether we're teenagers, college kids, or older. I've been sitting on these for quite a while now, but since Easter just passed, and this would have been the time for ancient fertility rites and festivals, why not have a ::wink wink:: Meme Monday?

"I don't get it. Your names are Buzz and
Woo-- ...ohhhh..."
From memecenter.com.

For my wife this is very much a thing.
The first part, not the WoW part. Since
I had no sisters and I didn't date a lot
of girls, I have no idea how accurate this is,
but "getting the @#$%-ing bra off" is
a priority after work. Just sayin'.
From LyraFTW on Facebook.

Oh, the poor player. I would have
said that by accident.
From Munkythetroll.

Well, to be perfectly honest...
I mean, even I know that and I didn't
even watch Game of Thrones.
From Tumblr.

And two bonus ::wink wink:: memes...

Pretty much this. "We all make that
face during sex when we look like Shemp
when he needed cheese." --Dennis Miller
(back when he was good.)
From Kismetsgamerpublishing.

Boom.
From dndmemes Facebook group.

What on Earth is Red Reading This Time: The Chronicles of the Black Company

As I've mentioned more than once in this blog I'm not a fan of the grimdark direction Fantasy and Science Fiction has gone in the past couple of decades. My quotable quote on the emphasis on personal suffering by the protagonist and a high body count among the supporting cast has been "If I want that out of a story, I'll watch the news."

So why did I find The Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook so interesting?

The Chronicles contains the
first three books in the series.
Official pic is from Amazon because
I was lazy and didn't want to take a
pic of the book myself.

That I'll never know for sure, but I think some of it has to do with Glen Cook's writing style. He writes in a sparse style of prose that suggests a background in newspaper reporting, but from what I can tell he hasn't any training in that area. Glen's writing style does evoke a bit of Stephen King --who did have some experience as a newspaper reporter in his youth*-- and Fritz Leiber, whose Fafhrd and Gray Mouser short stories did influence him.**

Another reason why I guess I feel comfortable with these books is because of the very nature of the story itself. The Black Company is a mercenary company in a similar vein to the Free Companies of the Medieval and Renaissance eras; they are professional soldiers who accept a contract and follow it loyally, despite any misgivings they personally have. The Black Company is likely a bit more professional in stance and loyalty to a contract than historical Free Companies, but that professionalism is rooted in Glen Cook's own experience with the navy in the Vietnam war era. (Yes, Glen is a few years older than my mom.) I suppose you could also argue that his experience working at a General Motors assembly plant has an influence as well, where you do your job even if it's not the most mentally stimulating thing out there.

I'm not giving away any spoilers here when I say that the Black Company accept a contract that turns out to be held by the big stereotypical "evil empire" of this fantasy world. The members of the Company don't like it, but they honor their contract. I suppose you could call the series grimdark because of the nature of that internal conflict, but the Company's moral quandry is lessened quite a bit because the "rebels" they frequently fight against are little better than the "evil empire" itself. This isn't a matter of the rebels going down to the level of the Empire to survive, but rather the rebels are almost trying to outdo the Empire in morally reprehensible behavior. 

In this world, which evokes a lot of the Sword and Sorcery subgenre, the members of the Company are loyal to each other and to the contract, which keeps them together as a unit. 

I led him back to the fire and settled beside him. "What's the matter? What happened?" I glimpsed the Captain from the corner of my eye. One-Eye stood before him, drained by a heavy-duty dressing down.

"I don't know, Croaker." Goblin slumped, stared into the fire. "Suddenly everything was too much. This ambush tonight. Same old thing. There's always another province, always more Rebels. They breed like maggots in a cowpie. I'm getting older and older, and I haven't done anything to make a better world. In fact, if you backed off to look at it, we've all made it worse." He shook his head. "That isn't right. Not what I want to say. But I don't know how to say it any better."

"Must be an epidemic."

"What?"

"Nothing. Thinking out loud." Elmo. Myself. Goblin. A lot of the men, judging by their tenor lately. Something was wrong in the Black Company. I had suspicions, but wasn't ready to analyze. Too depressing.

             --From The Chronicles of the Black Company, Shadows Linger, by Glen Cook. pp 244-5

Yes, people do die in the books, but in a mercenary unit it's established up front as fact of life. There's no excessive body count for drama or gravitas, and the members of the Company basically try to keep themselves as far away from politics as possible. Well, that doesn't exactly happen, but they do try.

The protagonist in the story is Croaker --not his real name, but the one he enlisted with in the Company-- who is the Physician and Annalist of the Company. If you remember your Top Gun, everybody has their own "name" or handle within the group: One-Eye, Silent, Goblin, Elmo, Raven, Otto. I always wondered if that aspect of Top Gun was the most fake, but apparently that's not the case. At the same time, the names in The Black Company are more accurate than what you find in Top Gun because they're more ironic or snarky or referencing a screw up rather than the dramatic sounding Iceman or Maverick. After all, a physician named Croaker evokes black humor in spades. 

***

War is war. Fighting is fighting. And The Chronicles of the Black Company don't try to sugarcoat it. The first novel, The Black Company, starts so abruptly without much of a lead-in that you're thrown into the deep end of the pool before you realize what's happening. It took me about 40-50 pages before I kind of caught up with a background as to what I was reading, although people who have performed some military service or grew up in a military household will probably have an easier time of it than I did. The setting may be Sword and Sorcery, but the people evoke a more modern military viewpoint. Not necessarily the official modern military, where author Myke Cole described the modern US military as basically driven by rules, not gung ho fighting. 

Still, in spite of this trilogy being everything I ought to not like in a SF&F series, I did like it. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I guess in the right conditions I enjoy a Dark Fantasy series. Maybe it's because the story is never quite hopeless in scope, unlike some other grimdark stories. Or that Glen Cook doesn't take perverse delight in killing off characters that you cheer for. 

As you may have surmised, The Chronicles of the Black Company leans hard into the Military F&SF subgenre, and I've seen it noted more than once that Glen Cook's books have a cult following among the military. I can certainly see why, but one thing that I did note is that the first three books in the series don't hew toward a political standpoint that some other Military F&SF have (such as John Ringo's Into The Looking Glass or Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers). The focus of the story being on the Company itself and their reactions to the world help tremendously in that regard. Croaker himself is a likeable protagonist who tries to make sense of the bigger picture but recognizes that's of secondary importance when fulfilling your contract and staying alive are of primary importance.

One thing that I did note is that there's a dearth of female characters in the story. Yes, I know, there's The Lady and the White Rose as well as a few others (sorry, spoilers there), but for the vast majority of the novels the fact they are women is almost incidental. The Black Company is pretty much an all-male outfit, but the very nature of The Lady and The White Rose is such that people in the world don't think of women as a weaker sex and that "fighting is man's work". 

The stories were written in the early to mid 80s, and yes it shows. I'm still surprised that I missed these stories when they first came out because there weren't nearly as many SF&F novels released back then as there are now, but I might have dismissed them when the back blurb begins with "Darkness wars with darkness as the hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must. They bury their doubts with their dead." But I also think it possible I missed these stories because I was busy reading the "classics" from an earlier era: Michael Moorcock's Elric and Corum stories, Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and the old Grand Masters of SF (Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlein). The F&SF of the 70s/80s that I did read were of the Epic Fantasy variety, such as Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara, Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga, David Eddings' The Belgariad, Dennis McKiernan's Iron Tower Trilogy, and Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords. 

Mea culpa on my part, because I think I'd have liked it back then.

Will I pick up the other books in the series? Probably not. I'm happy that the trilogy ended as it did. Sure, there are some loose ends, but I'm comfortable with it as it is. 

*Stephen King, On Writing, pp 55.

**I found this out when I began writing this post, and when I discovered that interview I linked to above I thought "Oh. Of COURSE. That makes sense." It's become more difficult to chase down copies of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books, which is a shame. They kind of stood somewhere off to the side in their own snarky little corner away from Tolkien's good and evil epic fantasy and Michael Moorcock's antihero counterpoint, although the stories were closer to Moorcock than Tolkien by far. 

EtA: Grammar corrections.

Meme Monday: Dungeon Master Memes

In honor of the D&D movie --which shocked me by actually being loved by both critics and movie goers*-- I figured I'd post a few memes honoring the (not so) humble DM.

The DM (or GM, your choice) is the leader at the table and facilitates the action. They also are the arbiter of what happens, and in the end their word goes. They also come up with adventures and keep people on track in a "herding cats" kind of way.

In our AD&D 1e campaign, I hope
we don't make the DM facepalm too much.
From Tumblr.

I've had DMs who think like this.
And people wonder where my paranoia
comes from.
From Tumblr and ifunny.co.

Ah, genial Bob Ross, whose Joy of Painting
was a secret love of millions of college
aged students back in the 80s.

I've never had a DM actually say "Whoops",
but this is the scenario I think of.
From allthingsdnd.

And one bonus meme for those of us who grew up with Mr. Rodgers:

From litrpgreads.

*Anybody who lived through the disaster that was the original D&D movie back in 2000 would be shocked as well. It was so bad that comparisons to the Star Wars Holiday Special are not totally unwarranted. Based on that movie I was mightily concerned about what would happen to The Fellowship of the Ring when it released a year later in 2001, but thankfully that turned out okay.

EtA: Just a note that my AV software flagged allthingsdnd.com as using a certificate not meant for that site.

A Day in the Life

You can tell that I'm a gamer from my YouTube home page. There's a ton of gamer related links, from video games to pencil and paper RPGs to board games, and in between you find some trailers, music, and some sports related suggestions. Anyhoo, a reaction video by Asmongold popped up entitled "Shadowlands Hurt WoW Forever" appeared, and I thought, "Yeah, you could make that argument. I wonder who he's reacting to?"

So I went and looked, and found he was reacting to a snippet from a Preach Gaming livestream:

I figured the smart move was to watch Preach's original (above), because I'd rather make my own impressions.*

Preach admits in the video clip that he's going to develop this into a full video post, which is something that I would very much like to see, because he's far more plugged into the WoW community these days than I ever was even back in the day.** But one focus he's been considering at this point in the video is what he calls A Day in the Life of various MMOs, as in what do you do when you login to, say, FFXIV, WoW, GW2, etc. for the day. I'd also like him to do that for WoW Classic, because I do wonder about how Wrath Classic compares with Retail in terms of what people do in a day in the life.

I know what a sizeable number of people did for lot of TBC Classic, and that was three things: a) finish a bunch of daily quests for gold and/or reputation, b) run the Normal and Heroic dungeon daily quests for badges and/or gold, and c) raid if it was raid night and/or work on their attunement quest chains for raiding. Some leveled alts, but a lot of those finished leveling up by the time Phase 3 of 6 rolled around, because my experience leveling Linna and Neve later in the expac was that the leveling areas and leveling dungeons were devoid of non-max level toons.

***

But I do wonder what a typical day in the life of various MMOs does look like.

I read this with Paul McCartney's voice.
From @beatlesbeetwif and ifunny.co.

There isn't a singular "typical WoW player" in as much as there isn't a "typical GW2 player" or "FFXIV player", but I read enough blogs to get a feel for how much the Holy Trinity of Endgame --raids, (Mythic+) dungeons, and PvP-- dominates both Retail and Classic WoW. And I also know the joke about Endgame in FFXIV being "fashion" from my son, but I do wonder about what a typical day in the life is for a sizable portion of the player base of various MMOs. Alas that the only people with the actual source of truth to the matter are the game companies themselves, but I do commend Preach for wanting to try to find out. He has the visibility to make a go at it, whereas any attempt from my corner of the MMO-land would vanish into the ether.

Preach mentioned in the video that he believes that WoW needs to break out of its current Endgame grind by providing more "fun" things to do in WoW. And I do agree with him, but I suspect that most of the "fun" things that Blizz would eventually come up with involve daily quests, because Blizzard is a firm believer in providing a carrot on a stick*** (typically via daily quests) to encourage people to do those things. And if the MMO player base has proven one thing, it's that they have a knack of converting the optional into mandatory. So we'll see.

***

It's not that the question hasn't been raised before, because it has in the official Blizzard forums last year, but what makes Preach's thought experiment different is how the various MMOs compare to each other. It might be a bit of a fool's errand given the complexity of the major MMOs out there, but in my experience the various MMOs do have different player bases that have unique quirks. I'm fond of mentioning the band that plays on Fridays after work on the Gladden server in LOTRO, but my oldest reminded me that there is an actual group --The Brandywine Theater Company-- that puts on musicals in LOTRO. 

Seriously.

They've put on Phantom of the Opera and Wicked, and while I can't recall what their upcoming production is, you can bet that they'll attack it with gusto.

Obviously these are a bit of an outlier to the "average" player, but they provide an insight into the differences that LOTRO has from other MMOs. 

So I'd definitely be curious about the differences between the MMOs from an "average player" standpoint. 

Good luck with that, Preach.

*In parts of the video it sounds like Preach is chowing down on dinner --which if I tried to pull that the spirit of my dead father would materialize and rip me a new one-- but once I realized it was the equivalent of talking at a bar while noshing on some food I was fine with it. Just my own upbringing coming back to haunt me.

**If Mike Ybarra said "Who?" in response to my name like he allegedly did when he was told Preach was visiting the studio, I'd have no issues with it at all. I mean, at best I was a minnow in the WoW-verse. But Ybarra saying that about Preach, when Ybarra presented himself as "one of us" as a hardcore raider and given that Preach is fairly well known within WoW hardcore/streaming circles... Yeah, I'm not believing the Ybarra "one of us" act one bit. I can smell the bullshit from Anaheim all the way here in the Midwest.

***Not the Carrot on a Stick trinket, mind you...

EtA: Made some tweaks in about three sentences for clarity.

Comfort Food for the Gamer

No, I'm not talking about actual food or recipes inspired by games and SF&F franchises.

I mean in the same vein as what comfort food represents: something familiar and makes you feel like all's right with the world. Maybe for some people they have an actual meal that gives them that feeling (for a coworker, it's all about the Texas style brisket when they get back to Texas) or for others it's getting to play a favorite game (for my wife, it's getting her crossword puzzle done) or still others it's curling up with a favorite book (for my brother-in-law, it's his annual reading of The Lord of the Rings). No matter what it is, everybody has some sort of comfort food.

For me, there are certain games --or places within certain games-- that I return to when I want a helping of comfort food.

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" is how the old saying goes, but when life gives me lemons I give life the finger and go play Sid Meier's Civilization IV.

Well, Hatshepsut isn't too bad a leader
to start with. And at least the random
location gave me a river with some resources.
I've been in worse starting positions, for sure.

It's a game I've been playing for over 15 years now, and it's the sort of game I can knock out anywhere from 2 to 5 hours depending on how the game plays out.* I can also get an early feel for whether my position is untenable or not --if I don't have access to Copper or Iron, for example-- and I'll just kill the game rather than die a slow death. 

But when I feel the need for gamer comfort food and I'm in an MMO type of mood, I return to the old standbys: create a new character and run through the areas I love best: the low to mid level zones.

Like, oh, this one:

Hel-lo, Ord Mantell.

For the record, the new on-screen map makes me look like I'm playing TERA** rather than SWTOR, so I'm grateful I can go into the Interface options and turn the damn thing off.

Or maybe start up a new toon in this game:

I'd never created a High Elf before, 
so I pulled out some of my Middle-earth
sourcebooks and started throwing names together.
I decided to not put umlauts over the last 'e'
like Tolkien would have; too messy to type.

There's something peaceful and pleasant about Ered Luin under starlight, just the way the Elves of Middle-earth like it. For all the quirks of LOTRO --such as trying to read those damn maps and the ability icons all looking the same-- the scenery, tone, and storyline are all highly evocative of Middle-earth.

And not to be outdone, I do have favorite places in WoW as well:

I always wondered what that Sentinel
was doing there.

I realize I'm in the minority, but I truly do love Teldrassil, Darkshore, and Ashenvale. They have that ancient Elven forest vibe down so much that you'd think you were in Lothlorien or something.  Yes, I do like Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Eversong Forest, The Ghostlands, and even the damn Barrens, but for pure atmospherics the Night Elf areas are dead on perfect. 

***

The more I go through some of these old original or vanilla areas on these MMOs, the more I enjoy them. You never get the impression that you're "the chosen one" or that you're there to save the world and/or galaxy --okay, the Jedi Knight story does somewhat sound that way-- but you're also not out there hobnobbing with all of the Powerful of the game world. Sure, you run into them from time to time, but it's not like they're saying "Champions! Meet me at the Town Hall! We need to take the fight to Mal'gannis!" At best they may offer counsel (Elrond, Gandalf, Satele Shan) or some quest direction (Aragorn), but nothing like what you find in later expacs in these MMOs. 

There's something comforting in the anonymity provided in these vanilla-esque zones. Even if you're on an active server, you're still not likely to run into many other players at all in these original zones because the latest and greatest zones are "where the action is". That is even the case in these megaservers in Wrath Classic, where most everybody has gotten multiple toons to max level and unless there's another 50% XP boost they're not likely to run another alt through the gauntlet. (I discovered this while waiting around for a Deadmines run in the past couple of weeks.) While those dungeon runs were active in the lead up to Wrath Classic launching, they're almost totally dead now. So, while you wait you go out into the world and quest. Or fish. Or level a gathering skill. Or explore. All of those sorts of things can be done on those three MMOs***, at your own pace without any concern for life, the universe, and everything. (Thank you, Douglas Adams.)

***

While these areas tend to be quiet and relatively empty, disruptions can show up when a high level toon rolls by and wipes an area clean of questing mobs. Perhaps they were going back and completing quests that were left behind, or perhaps they were farming for materials. Or maybe they did have a slightly cruel and/or trollish streak and did it just because. Whatever the reason, the effect was to basically throw off my cadence and I have to wait for respawns. If said high level toon zaps those, then I just abandon the area; arguing with idiots never ends well in my experience.

As a consequence, I've learned to do any low level questing on my high level toons when I know I'm not causing disruptions to people already there. On a (now) empty server like Myzrael that's not a big deal, because there have been times when I've literally been the only person in a zone for several zones in a row. But an "active" server, or a server where I'm new? Yeah, I'm sensitive to disruptions.

***

Okay, enough about me. Where do you go --or play-- when you just need a helping of comfort food?

*All about whether I've got a combat heavy game going. The combat heavy games are much longer than the ones where I simply out-develop the other civs.

**Minus the ridiculously sexy clothing (and the Elin), of course.

***Okay, so you can't fish in SWTOR, but you can do a lot of crafting and datacron hunting.