Zargala, my questing buddy's Warlock, has a simple guiding philosophy. I rather succinctly summed it up the other day with the quip "Why use a flyswatter when you can use a nuclear weapon?"
Every time I see a post in Trade Chat or Looking For Group Chat saying that "want DPS pumpers"*, I think of her. Her Classic Era version of Zargala is just about at L60 right now, but even in her mid-50s she was putting out enough DPS to give my L60 version of Cardwyn with a lot of the best pre-raid gear for a Mage a run for her money.
And given her background as a Druid tank, she knows just how much she can push as a Warlock before she drives group-mates nuts.
Having watched her operate, I've wondered whether I'd enjoy tanking myself. Or rather, whether learning the ins and outs of tanking would help my own DPS.
Then I realize that I get stressed out by healing and I think "Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope....."
So, in honor of MMO tanking, here's today's Meme Monday...
The next time I see a Druid tank... From Pinterest.
This is why I behave myself when I'm a DPS, especially a Rogue. Kudos to the creator for pulling out the NPC character Pained from the WoW Classic version of Theramore. From imgflip.
This could be a healer meme, could be a tank meme. So, killing two birds with one stone. From Reddit.
Back in the 1990s, NBA player Charles Barkley used to say that he wasn't a role model, he was just a basketball player. So when I saw this, I immediately thought of ol' Chuck. From Imgflip.
*That's 'pumpers', NOT 'plumpers'. The first time I misread it and said out loud "why the fuck are they specifically asking for overweight people?" Thankfully, none of the mini-Reds were in the vicinity to laugh at me for that one. For the record: 'pumpers' refers to people who are great at putting out high amounts of DPS. Sometimes they're just great at doing damage alone (my Questing Buddy), and sometimes when you get enough of the same class in a group they do better together (Fire Mages).
As I referenced here in this post back last August, there's a book out there called The Past is a Foreign Country that's actually on my To Be Read list --and that sucker is pretty huge, so it'll take a while to read-- that I'm looking forward to digging into.
I was thinking about that "foreign Language" part today when I was perusing some gamer blogs I don't frequent that much.
I'm quite familiar with the "language" of Classic WoW --the slang behind the game-- and to a lesser extent that of several other MMOs, but it was when I perused those sites/blogs that primarily focused on Retail WoW did I detect the so-called "lingual shift" that make the two groups entirely separate entities.
I was reminded of something a high school teacher once mentioned in class about the Romance languages: all of those languages derived from Latin* were once simply local dialects of Latin that grew apart over the centuries.
Despite the global reach of mass communication these days, there are times when you talk to someone from another English speaking country and you can't really follow what they're saying. There was a time this past Spring when I happened to have the television on a Saturday morning and there was a Scottish Premier League match on**, and while I was able to follow the play-by-play announcer, the color commentator... Well, at one point I turned to my wife and said "I have absolutely no idea what the hell he's saying."
It wasn't just the accent, since some Scottish accents are really thick --as my son discovered when he visited Edinburgh while he spent six months studying abroad at Lancaster University in England***-- but the slang he was using made absolutely no sense to me.
Or, as I've discovered courtesy of an Aussie friend --met via WoW Classic, naturally-- that there's an entire subculture completely foreign to other English speaking countries merely using the word 'cunt' in Australia.
After a certain point dialects become separate languages. While that might be harder in this day and age, it won't stop happening. And even within online communities, the siloing effect of social media makes it easier for groups to self-isolate, and by that isolation they develop their own terminology/slang that gradually becomes a dialect all its own.
***
Circling back to gaming, when I read Retail WoW blogs that discuss the nuts and bolts of the game, it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Kind of like this. Thanks, Cap. From Pinterest.
Some of it is not having played Retail WoW in a decade (and as far as PvE content goes, longer than that), and systems have grown and changed. Some it is also the slang surrounding the systems having mutated to the point where what you thought you knew in 2012 is completely out of step with 2024.
When you need a translation guide for returning players, you know that lingual shifts have occurred.
***
One thing I've noticed when I login to Season of Discovery or WoW Classic Era servers and simply hang around a capital city is that the questions people ask are answered more with, well, normal English rather than shorthand. That is less the case in Wrath Classic, and the few times I've ever logged into Retail the past year I've seen questions answered with shorthand that I would characterize as "gobbledygook"****. Admittedly, the RP community on the Season of Discovery server I'm on might have an impact there, but I've seen it on my "normal" Era server as well, so I think it's a tendency of people who play on these Era-type of servers to answer questions in plain English.*****
Of course, that doesn't stop the flame wars concerning whether the dungeon acronym "DM" means Dire Maul or Deadmines, but that's been going on in WoW since, well, forever.
Kind of ironic that the one thing that still brings the various versions of WoW together is an argument over what to call The Deadmines.
All about that context. From Know Your Meme.
Still, in the end, I do wonder whether the two communities have grown so far apart that they've become Balkanized, and that the slang/dialects used within the two communities is just a symptom of the overall problem.
*Thereby bursting the bubble of hormone-addled high school boys that these languages were the key to "romance".
**It was the March 5, 2023 match between St. Mirren and Celtic. Once the St. Mirren player Charles Dunne got a red card in the 39th minute... Boy, did Celtic kick St. Mirren's ass.
***He and a friend had gotten on a train heading north to Edinburgh and some announcements were read over an intercom by a Scot with an accent so thick that my son turned to his friend and gave the universal "I have absolutely no idea what was just said" shrug. There was also another time when he'd gotten on a train in Wales, where the announcements are made in both Welsh and English, and this particular time the announcer forgot to speak in English. "Well," my son quipped, "I guess we're going to find out if we're on the right train really soon."
****When they didn't get a response saying "google it" or "go to Wowhead", that is.
*****I might make a toon on a PvP server just to check. I certainly don't need the stress of being on PvP servers in general, not after my experience on Stormscale-US back in the day.
If there's one thing that irks me the most about RPGs and MMOs, it's that the power fantasy is kind of baked into the genres.
That's not to say that all I ever want to do is sit around at a virtual bar and get hit on by other players*, but rather that I want my RPG and MMO experience to be more than merely about getting more stuff.
Given how Wall Street acts these days, Gordon Gecko's pronouncement back in 1987 is positively quaint. From Wall Street.
To what is probably the largest number of players**, the whole point of playing an MMO is to get the gear that shows off what you've accomplished. Most third party material is focused on all aspects of accomplishing just that: get the right gear for the class with the right specs and the right talents using the right rotation to kill the boss for the loot. If it's not explicitly that, the other aspect the majority of players are interested in is killing those bosses at ever increasing difficulty to show off your physical skills.
Of course, the power fantasy is far more than the mere acquisition of loot and using said loot to defeat the bosses. It's also about having the game tell you how important or powerful you are.
Okay, it could also be "mortals", but...
***
Having been a participant in --and a watcher of-- sports and sporting events, there's a lot of overlap between the stardom inherent in competitive sports and the power fantasy in RPGs/MMOs.*** In both environments, the better you get the more you're lauded by people, and you accumulate more hangers-on who want to bask in your reflected glory. After a while, you pretty much expect this adulation as par for the course.
But what is frequently missed in the RPG/MMO power fantasy is what happens when your skills diminish over time. Or when you screw up and those adoring fans turn on you.
In an RPG/MMO, you know you're the hero, so even if there's a setback you know that in the end there's a redemption path for you. Just look at the old quest chain in WoW's Burning Crusade expansion where you inadvertently assist Teron Gorefiend's return to power. Of course, you end up meeting him as a raid boss in Black Temple (I think) so you "correct" your mistake there. No harm, no foul.
But in life, such redemption stories rarely happen. You screw up badly at work, you find yourself reassigned if you're lucky, and out of a job if not. If you drop that game winning pass, you're the idiot who couldn't catch a damn ball; no matter if you've done it since time immemorial.
And the boos come; both physical and virtual.
***
I guess I want more complexity to what RPGs and MMOs mean than just the power fantasy. "The line goes up" doesn't necessarily thrill me, when I'm at that point in my life when I counter with "yeah, but you can't take it with you". That's something I can't emphasize enough; when you're closer to the end of things than the beginning, you start looking around and thinking "just what am I going to do with all of this shit, anyway?" It's easy to want more things, but what the hell are you supposed to do with them when you've got them? Want even more things?
The problem is, the desire for more and more is baked into these games because that's what keeps people buying. The power fantasy is a psychological tool to purchase more.
But why can't there be, well, more to offer than just the power fantasy?
Well, Champion? What say you?
*In the right frame of mind, I'd be down for that. The thing is, I'm typically not in that frame of mind.
**If it's not the largest number, it tends to be the loudest voice in the community.
***Also in politics. There's a reason why narcissists flock to the political life.
****And for the record, that Bill Buckner forgave the fans who eviscerated him is far better than those fans deserved.
My wife worked on New Year's Day --that's the blessing (time and a half pay) and curse (you have to work on a holiday) of working retail-- so she went to bed early on New Year's Eve.
I, for some reason, stayed up past midnight to listen to the fireworks*, and I got on WoW Classic Era just to screw around a bit.
Not terribly much going on there.
So... before I retired for the night I got on WoW Season of Discovery.
Things were a wee bit different...
Who let the reindeer in?
Oh, right. Lava Lash is an RP server.**
And given that little fact, things got a bit rowdy...
Night Elves of both sexes were, uh, "dancing" on top of benches and kegs. And there was a gnome on one of the picnic tables, egging the male NEs on.
With free booze available, Card got drunk...
See that blur in the middle? That's her. Apparently I either didn't drink enough or you can't get so drunk in game to hurl.
Anyway, the fireworks went off at midnight and people were calling for an afterparty at Goldshire. That was when I decided that I didn't want to end up on the wrong side of some adult role playing and retired for the night.
*And a couple of kids in the neighborhood zipping around on ATVs up until New Year's as well. We have a hilly neighborhood, so frequently people can't see cars coming, but that never seems to deter these kids. There have been more than a few near misses with cars, especially when both cars and ATVs speed quite a bit through the neighborhood. I just shake my head and wonder when we're finally going to get the big wreck that our neighborhood has been spoiling for.
**I did check Orgrimmar just for curiosity's sake to see if the Horde was partying. After running there with a newly created toon, there was literally nothing going on. All the RPers were in Stormwind, I guess.
I thought about taking this Meme Monday off, but I decided against it. I mean, it's not that big a deal to put this together, and there's no shortage of memes to choose from.
From Shen Comix via Reddit.
Did you know that in 2024 there's a solar eclipse with totality crossing about a 15 minute drive from my house? Oh yeah, baby. From imgflip.
This was sports related as it came from sportskeeda, but I'm down for this.
And really, after the past several years, I'm kinda like this right now. From imgflip. Again.
I don't typically care that much about award shows.
There was a time when I did, back when I used to think of myself as a film connoisseur of sorts.
(Yes, I was a snobby asshole at times.)
It was one of those things where I felt that film had the capacity to provide art on a high level --okay, it does, actually-- and that I used to watch movies for cinematography as much as the plot or the acting.*
I also kept a close eye on the SF&F awards out of WorldCon and the SFWA Con, not to mention the World Fantasy Con, because I thought that raising the bar of what SF&F could be was the way to get those genres more accepted by society at large.
So, what changed? Why did I stop caring about awards? And why bring this up at all, anyway?
***
It took my employers for me to stop caring about awards.
Or rather, what my employers did with their own awards.
Back when I worked in a small materials lab, the owner of the place during the quarterly meeting would "distribute" some awards. Since he was the arbiter of the whole thing, these so-called awards (which meant nothing) were all based on his whims. However, once I moved onto larger corporations, I thought that the awards given out on an annual basis meant a lot more, because... Well, I'm not sure why I thought that, but I felt it was going to be less personality driven and more impartial.
That first year I attended the annual all hands meeting for the software company I joined in the mid-90s I had no real opinions on, because I was still new. The next year when I attended, however, I had opinions on who had worked their asses off and who "deserved" awards. Part of the joy of working on the QA side of things was that I was exposed to most of the development teams, so I knew who was loafing it when they made code changes and who was putting in heroic levels of effort. Surely, I thought, that the people who were given awards were those that truly earned them.
Boy, was I wrong.
I discovered during that annual meeting I rarely agreed with the award recipients. In fact, about 2/3 of them came from a project that frequently broke the environment and was in such sad shape when we shipped our software that a separate Tiger Team was created to fix their buggy application.** When it worked it was great, but the critical issue was the "when it worked" part. But because it was a highly visible project, the lion's share of awards went to people who worked on that project.
As a result, over that next calendar year several people who I thought were more deserving of those awards left the company for greener pastures.
This cycle continued over the next few years, culminating in my team winning an award in my final year with the company, and both myself and my closest co-worker left within six months for other jobs.
I then made a quantum leap in company size to the job that directly lead to what I do today, but I discovered that pettiness and other associated bullshit for company created awards just got larger as well.
That provided me the realization that awards are like certifications: they're there to make people feel good, but have no bearing upon whether you can actually do the job or not.*** I mean, does anybody remember the controversy surrounding that the first Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance when it was given to Jethro Tull for Crest of a Knave?****
From the Heavy Metal masters themselves...
***
That's not to say that people won't try to use awards and award shows for their own political ends.
There was the incident at the Academy Awards back in 1973 where Sacheen Littlefeather went on stage to explain why Marlon Brando was rejecting his award.
And, of course, if you're familiar with SF&F, there was the Sad Puppies right wing campaign to take over the Hugo Awards from roughly 2013 through 2016. Given that the Hugo awards are popularly voted on by those with memberships to Worldcon (at the time it was something like $50) a voting bloc could buy a bunch of memberships and attempt to take over the awards in the same fashion that people in the past have voted on for All-Star teams for various sports.
Now we have the latest controversies surrounding The Game Awards.
It has also proved that The Game Awards' relevance as awards is pretty much corporate in nature.
When your awards show is more concerned about providing advertisements for upcoming video games rather than celebrating the games from the past year, it shows your awards show only cares about corporate sponsorship. That is reinforced by the desire to not rock the boat politically; you could make the argument that making any political statement at all is a losing proposition as people of all stripes play video games, and wading into political waters is likely to piss off a certain group of consumers. Of course, making no political statement at all is also making a political statement, so good luck with that.
In the end, The Game Awards is corporate driven and shouldn't impact your enjoyment of what games you like, because awards and award shows aren't made for you. Even popularity contests such as the Hugos or the American Music Awards (or the MAMAs, which is the K-Pop equivalent) can't tell you what you like, because you're you.
And you shouldn't expect your award shows to align with what you believe or advocate for, because the goal of awards and award shows are different than yours.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go play Crest of a Knave and ...And Justice For All, since I'm in the mood to hear both today. And yes, I do have both albums, thankyouverymuch.
*That was how I was introduced to Martin Scorsese, via film study class in high school. We had an assignment to break down the cinematography of a film --any film, our choice-- and I happened to catch After Hours on cable. I had no idea who the film's director was because I missed the first few minutes of the film, and the plot was so surreal that it was like a Terry Gilliam fever dream, but I absolutely loved the cinematography. I had to confess I didn't catch the director's name in my paper, but the teacher loved it anyway.
**It took them the better part of a year to stabilize things to where it was usable by our clients without crashing.
***True story: a person who literally just passed their UNIX Sysadmin certification exam came to me later in the day and asked me the following question about accessing the root user:
Him: When we su to root, what do we use?
Me: ::puzzled:: We use 'su -'.
Him: No, I mean that when other people switch to root, they use 'su -'. When we switch to root, we use....
Me: We use 'su -' too. The OS security software knows what access you have based on your group membership.
Him: ::wanders away and goes to another cubicle, where I could hear him asking the same question of someone else::
Me: ...
Before you ask, despite me being on the team for six months longer than he was, I hadn't gotten a chance to take the certification exam. And to this day, I never have.
****Even Ian Anderson used to make fun of that award, as reported to me by a college friend who went to see them in concert when Tull was touring in support of their Rock Island album.
*****That was sarcasm for those who might have missed that.
