Behind the Curve

My son informed me the other week that he'd finished Baldur's Gate 3.

Considering that after that first week's worth of excessive playing my time in BG3 had shrunk to practically nothing for a month, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'm not into rushing into new content when an MMO expansion hits, but that initial week's worth playing BG3 gave me enough dopamine hits that I could understand the urge to keep playing.* When I realized I was eschewing work to play BG3, I had to dial it back for my own sanity. (And to keep my job, but that kind of goes without saying.)

My son didn't have those issues, since he was able to fit in most of BG3 before his current semester of grad school started, and more power to him for that. 

I'm not going to lie and say I was totally fine with all this; I felt a pang of jealousy at how he cruised through the game while I'm plodding along. It's not as if I'm savoring the game, either; at times it feels like when I was speed leveling that Draenei Shaman when TBC Classic came out: I'm constantly plotting my next move and trying to figure out how to progress further through the story.**

Yes, my MMO playing is at exactly the opposite inflection point from where I am playing a single player RPG. You could say that I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 like other people play World of Warcraft, and you'd not be wrong. 

***

It's the equivalent of reading a really exciting novel: the pages fly by and you want to get on to the next part just to see what happens. 

I get that, I really do, but I think that I need to be reminded of that from time to time that people who blitz through content aren't doing it "just to get it over with", but genuinely like the content so much that they're constantly turning that next page to find out what happens. 

I guess I get cynical about things when, like in TBC Classic, everybody was supposed to follow a playbook to get themselves raid ready as soon as possible. I thought it was only my guild that did that, because a few people I met out in Outland while leveling had completely different (and better) experiences with their guilds in terms of pacing and prepping for raids. However, on further reflection those better experiences had more to do with helping their own leveling Shamans to get leveled and not abandoning them to their fate when the Dark Portal opened. Those guilds, while more helpful to their Shamanistic (and Blood Knight) brethren, still had goals to achieve and raids to prep for; they were just a tad nicer about it, that's all. There were quite a few guilds raiding Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon while I was somewhere out in Terokkar Forest***, plodding away. 

A blast from the past, from June 18, 2021. If I were in
the "sweaty" raid, I'd have only a little over
two weeks to get to L70 and through the attunement
gauntlet. Our raid team was the one with the
"casual" reputation that I despised and started
raiding in the last week of July, 2021.

If I were in those guilds, I'd not have been abandoned, true, but I'd have also been pushed into the regimen all of those other guilds were doing. 

So why am I okay with it when I'm playing a video game such as Baldur's Gate 3?

***

As is typically the case, I believe it has to do with agency.

Typically, the way to get me to do something is to let me figure it out on my own and I'll likely end up doing what needs to be done. If I'm forced into doing something by some external force, then I'm going to drag my feet and refuse. Think of it of how people approach taxes: everybody in the US has to file their income tax by April 15th, and a lot of people will procrastinate until the last possible moment to do their taxes. I know people who do that on principle, complaining about their tax rates and whatnot, but I am one of those who simply don't like being told to do their taxes, especially if I'm given some sanctimonious bullshit like what I got as a kid when being told to eat my dinner "because it's good for you."

From Calvin and Hobbes.

Likewise, at work if I'm told I have to do something, I'm probably going to be one of the last people to actually get it finished. I would not do well in a highly regimented environment, such as the military. 

Hawkeye is my spirit animal.
From Imgflip (and M*A*S*H).

From that perspective, you can see why I clashed with progression raiding in an MMO format. When I joined the progression raid team, I did so willingly and pushed myself to get up to speed both gear wise and add-on wise. There weren't requirements for how exactly I went about getting my toon(s) ready for progression raiding; just that I get myself ready. And yes, I willingly went to SixtyUpgrades, Wowhead, and Icy Veins to see where my gaps were. It wasn't a directly communicated expectation, but rather something I did on my own to become a member of the raid team. 

It was only when TBC Classic came along and raid/guild leadership began making exact demands on the gear and process of getting raid ready did I rebel. The concept of raiding went from only being concerned with the end result ("raid ready") to trying to dictate how it should be done, and those demands weren't limited to my guild. Almost all of the actively raiding guilds on Myzrael-US were guilty of making the same demands on their members starting in TBC Classic, and whether their demands were cloaked in a velvet glove or not, the demands were pretty much the same iron fist: do it or you're not on the raid team. The lone exception that I was aware of was one guild who basically told its members to go do whatever for a month when TBC Classic dropped, and they circled back after that month to see where the guild stood before getting ready to raid. 

***

Okay, that's just raiding. Still, there's nothing that says you can't do whatever you want in an MMO in general. 

At it's core, that's correct. The design of an MMO is to allow a player to do a variety of activities without saying "you must conform". You could make the argument that modern MMOs have a ton of alternate activities designed with this player choice in mind.

This old chestnut highlights the player choice
the modern MMO has versus good ol' Classic.
Can't even recall who first made this meme.

The thing is, MMOs are not merely the sum of systems: there's a social element to them as well, and that is how the problems creep in. 

In any social endeavor, certain niceties are expected if you want to fit in. Just like proper social etiquette in real life, there's an MMO version of social etiquette when interacting with people. The Wil Wheaton saying "Don't be a dick" is just the bare minimum for social interactions; beyond that MMO interactions are a bit more complex. If you want to do group content in an MMO --especially in today's age-- you're expected to have done the "correct" things to maximize your output. What that entails varies between guilds and groups, but there's a measure of commonality driven by the knowledge that in the "group finder" MMO environment players are interchangeable: if you don't have the right specs/gear/systems settings, you can be painlessly replaced by someone else. And in a pre-group finder MMO, be prepared to submit for inspection if you want in on some group content.

Developers have attempted to circumvent such social restrictions with new ideas --LFR raids being the most notable-- but that's a technical solution for what is inherently a people problem. And when I play any group content in an MMO, I feel the social pressure. I never used to, but once you've crossed the Rubicon and been on the progression side of things, the veil of obscurity has been ripped away and you now see things from the lens of those who are judging whether you're good enough to join their raid team.

The best way to find good candidates for your organization is to create what I call positive encounters. Actions speak louder than words, so you need to ensure that these potential new members have some actions by which they can judge you. When you need a specific class, get your best group runners together and advertise that you need said class in order to do an instance. Once you get them in your group, don't mention recruitment. Just run that instance and do your job well. If they do well, tell them you hope to group again and then part ways. If they aren't in an organization, you may subtly mention that you are looking for their class. Do this enought times with enough people, and word will get around that you're a solid outfit. You can't buy better publicity than that and it creates more opportunities for you to use the soft sell. 

--The Guild Leader's Companion by Adam "Ferrel" Trzonkowski, Page 41.

The irony is that I thought this way before I bought The Guild Leader's Companion, because I'd be on guild runs in an instance and guild chat during the run would have a lot of commentary on any pugger's technique, both good and bad, and what their prospects were as a potential member of the raid team. I never saw it myself until I formally joined the progression guild immediately before TBC Classic, and there were plenty of times I wished I had remained ignorant and just enjoyed a dungeon run or a raid.

***

I guess that's where the irony creeps in. A single player game, such as an RPG, doesn't have that sort of social pressure. There's nobody looking over your shoulder, judging your gameplay, dropping comments and/or hints about how you could have done better. Nobody is pulling you into a Discord chat about how you could up your DPS a bit more so you could overcome that last fight more quickly. Nobody is telling you what extra gear pieces you should farm for. Nobody is suggesting a link in Wowhead to go check out to improve your gameplay. In a single player game, the only person you have to please is yourself. 

And Garrus. You ought to please
Garrus too. From Tumblr.

Because of that, I can focus as much or little of my time on the metagame without any recriminations.****

I haven't gone and pulled up walkthroughs or YouTube videos or gone to other websites that would cause spoilers in BG3, but the plotting does remain. I know that there's an optimal way of doing things --that's a drawback to any game, really-- but I don't seek it out. Most importantly, I don't have people telling me (or others in a chat I'm not part of) that I'm not playing it right in one form or another.

To a certain extent ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

Now, about that Arcane Tower in BG 3...

*Sort of. I still don't quite get people who took off for a week's worth of vacation when TBC Classic (and other WoW expacs) released, given that at least here in the US paid vacation isn't very copious to begin with, and if I told my wife I was going to burn a week's worth of my vacation time playing video games for upwards of 18 hours a day she'd have a conniption fit. If I were retired that'd be a different story, but I think I'd be expected to travel a lot, and I'm not as big on that these days either.

**For the record, yes, my character has been immersed in the other party members' backstories. Let's just say I was surprised at how easily certain relationships "progressed", which made me wonder if there was something I was missing out on in real life if fictional relationships moved at this sort of speed.

***The Terokkar Forest zone was exactly in the middle of the Outland leveling experience. So, while I was halfway through, I still had a ways to go.

****Unless you're streaming, I suppose, but I don't stream because I don't like having a peanut gallery watching my every move.

Meme Monday: Hunter Memes

Hunters, Rangers, Wardens --whatever you want to call them-- are a mainstay in Fantasy MMOs. They're characterized by an animal companion that attacks (or tanks) enemies while you stay back at distance and rain arrows/bullets on the baddies. 

That style of play has a lot of appeal to it, not the least of which is that a Hunter can solo a lot of enemies that other classes (::cough:: Mage or Paladin ::cough::) would have difficulty with. Of course, that Hunter mentality tends to create... Issues...

While raids may designate Hunters
as the puller, it helps to coordinate
with the Raid Leads. From ifunny.co.

So, without further ado, some Hunter memes for this March Monday:

Although there are a ton of pets to choose
from, Hunters in WoW tend to follow the
crowd. I've been told that Petopia is the go-to
for all things Hunter. From Imgflip.

"About those more mobs..."
From @skeletonbooty.

...this is what those extra mobs lead to.
From Pinterest (and likely Demotivational.)

Of course, Hunters do name their pets, and it can
sometimes get awkward. From Quickmeme.

Can't argue with that one. From Imgflip.

And one extra Hunter meme...

Because Hunters do have that reputation of
rolling on everything because "It's a
Hunter Weapon!" From imgflip again.

Random News and Notes for a Thursday

If you post coffee memes, beware: your readership will explode.

Given that there's literally hundreds of coffee memes out there, why on earth I got a sudden explosion in views on PC when I posted a few of my favorites is beyond me. It's not like they're that new, either, but oh well.

I'm not above using one of the ones that missed
the cut for a few extra pageviews. What I find
disturbing is how close the 'After' picture looks like
David Tennant. From Laugh Lore.

***

Under the header of 'video games getting a board game treatment', there's a beloved Bioware franchise that has a boardgame in the works:

This landed in my Inbox on Monday
from Modiphius.

Yes, Modiphius is going to publish Mass Effect: The Board Game, a cooperative and story-driven boardgame designed by Eric M. Lang and Calvin Wong Tze Loon for 1-4 players. It sounds interesting at first blush, and given how Modiphius tends to have high quality plastic pieces in their games, this ought to look pretty too. Here's the signup page for more info and to receive emails about the release of the game itself. Just make sure you fill out the correct info for US vs UK/Europe so you end up with the correct website.

***

You know, the Dracthyr race in Retail World of Warcraft has taken some lumps for it's decidedly un-dragonkin-like look.

From Wowpedia.

I was perusing some RPG sites the other day, and I came across some artwork from RuneQuest that made me go "hmmm..."

Look vaguely familiar?
Found on Glorantha Bestiary, Pages 36-37.
Verified with my copy. Also found here at Artstation.

These are Dragonewts, as drawn by Cory Trego-Erdner back in 2016-2017, for the RuneQuest Glorantha Bestiary. 

In RuneQuest, Dragonewts claim to be the oldest sentient species and are one of the races found in the main starting area in RuneQuest, Dragon Pass. Now admittedly there's only so much an artist can do with the basic dragon design, but the reason why I don't mind the look of the Dracthyr is that they do evoke a similar look as that found in RuneQuest. The lore is obviously very distinct, but given that nobody seems to bitch about the lore of Dracthyr so much as that they don't look "cool enough", that's my two cents on the matter.

***

Finally, I wanted to mention a long departed podcast that really sucked me into RPGs back in the day.

Before "modern times" and the proliferation of podcasts in their current monetized form, Chuck Tinsley and Lonnie Ezell created the Dragons Landing Inn podcast back in 2005. They kept it going for about 126-130 episodes, and then Steve and Rob kind of picked up the mantle for a dozen episodes or so in a relatively unmoderated format until the podcast faded away. When I asked my brother-in-law what good RPG and gaming podcasts were out there, he said without hesitation "Dragons Landing Inn".

I've tried to find a better version
of their graphic to no avail.

With the tagline "Gaming Goodness", Chuck and Lonnie would espouse on RPGs, whatever the news was in RPG space, and eventually would broach RPG specific topics on running a campaign and having a rules set fit the type of campaign you wanted to play. Although the news is quite dated --it began in a time before D&D 4e and Pathfinder existed-- the old podcasts are still available via the Internet Archive at this link. I don't believe they're complete, as the original podcasts start at Episode 27, so you'll have to search the Internet Archive for individual episodes to complete the entire run of DLI.

I still have my old downloads of DLI on my desktop. I've dutifully backed up and transferred them over the almost two decades that they came out, and have no intention of ever deleting them. Given how podcasting has evolved as a format since DLI's heyday, it's refreshing to find a podcast in a raw, unmonetized state (and low bit-rate) still providing entertainment. 

EtA: Corrected grammar.

EtA: Corrected more grammar. Sheesh.

What is the Point of a Legendary Item if Everybody Has One?

Or rather, if the game assumes everybody has one?

Of course, that question is predicated on a lot of assumptions, such as "Why do people play the game?" and "What do the developers believe the players want?"

A college acquaintance had the LP and
insisted I listen to it (among other LPs of his.)
I'll admit I listened to part of it.

Although it wasn't a Legendary item in and of itself, my first experience with an item that "everybody" seemed to want actually predated MMOs and video games by years: the +5 Holy Avenger from AD&D.

Among players of 1e AD&D, the +5 Holy Avenger was the ultimate weapon in the hands of a Paladin, at the time one of the hardest classes to roll for --and play-- in AD&D. Sticking to the straight and narrow of Lawful Good --in TSR's original Deities and Demigods sourcebook, Galahad was considered a 20th Level Paladin and Lancelot a former Paladin and now merely a 20th Level Fighter-- meant that you couldn't really participate in anything resembling a heist adventure. Or really, depending on how strict your DM was, anything that involved stealth. You were very much the stereotypical Knight riding up to the cave mouth to challenge the Red Dragon inside.

The Paladin's quest* for a Holy Avenger, either the sword itself or something earth shaking enough to warrant the sword as a reward, was one of the high points of an AD&D campaign. The adventure Fedifensor in Dragon Magazine #67 --reproduced here on Wizards' website in PDF form**-- was notable in that it was one of the first published adventures featuring a Holy Avenger (Fedifensor) as well as the first adventure featuring Gith (Githyanki in this case) as the baddies who stumbled upon the sword in the Astral Plane.

The first page of the Fedifensor scenario
by Allen Rogers, from Dragon
Magazine #67 Page 37. (November 1982)

Still, despite the (supposed) rarity of a +5 Holy Avenger, it wasn't nearly as rare as the Artifact/Relic section in AD&D. Those were one-of-a-kind items that had boatloads of special powers but equally risky side-effects. The Hand and the Eye of Vecna --back in the day when Vecna was merely a powerful Lich who was supposedly dead-- were two artifacts whose first side effect upon grafting them to your body was to turn you immediately Neutral Evil. And the problems only got worse from there. Artifacts and Relics were nothing to be trifled with, even among mortals.*** By contrast, the Deck of Many Things was just a rare Miscellaneous Magic item, not a Relic of considerable power by itself that merited an entire D&D supplement.

Having the ultimate item in an RPG adventure has persisted through the years --what Witch or Wizard wouldn't want the Elder Wand, for example-- and so I suppose it's only natural to covet what is best. But if everybody has one, is it really something to covet versus just something to just acquire as part of the normal progression of things?

And what are game designers to do with game balance when accommodating an item of legendary power?

***

MMOs have a particular problem with this design, because the persistence of the game world and the constant addition of new content mean that what is currently game breaking may be no better than a basic quest reward a few years later. Or, worse, due to game design, that game breaking item might actually be worse than a basic quest reward.

Yes, I'm bringing out the old Nerfnow.com
comic again for this post.

This was a particular problem in Vanilla Classic WoW, where it turns out that some quest rewards or dungeon gear drops were better for your class and spec than the raid specific "Tier" gear. For example, while the Mage's Tier 0 or Tier 1 set might look pretty, a variety of crafted gear and dungeon drops were better for Mages overall. This had its drawbacks, as the three piece Bloodvine set had no Stamina bonuses which meant a Mage or Warlock wearing it was extra squishy in a fight****, but there was no denying the superiority of the damage potential for that set.

However, there were two items that it seemed everybody coveted: the legendary items Thunderfury and Atiesh. 

This meme is so old hat that
you can now get it on a t-shirt.
Yes, really. From Redbubble.

Thunderfury looked awesome, but Atiesh, not so much. It looked like a sulphur ball set atop a cane unless you looked closely.

I was not impressed.
From Wowhead.

Still, there was the general perception that since the work involved to get either item was involved --and in the case of Atiesh it came in the Naxxramas raid, which very few raid teams back in the day completed-- only a few people ever got either item. Even in Classic WoW, guilds usually designated a few select people to be those to work on either questline. 

Between that scarcity and the potential for guild drama, both items were rarely found in WoW.

I'm not sure where things changed, but gradually the desire for an item of legendary rarity became normalized to the point where access to such legendary items became easier to obtain.

When I started playing WoW back in 2009, I became aware of legendary items as a "well, unless you raid and you're of the right class and status within a guild, you're not going to get one" sort of item. However, by the time I reached max level the "Fall of the Lich King" patch was released. Yes, everybody remembers the Icecrown Citadel raid, but I remember the decidedly unsexy Patch 3.3 name for two items: Shadowmourne and Quel'Delar.

That first item, Shadowmourne, is the two-handed legendary axe that people could obtain after completing quests in Icecrown Citadel. I can't speak of the scarcity of Shadowmourne, but one of the last things to do before completing the questline and obtaining Shadowmourne was to actually kill Arthas, the Lich King. Given that took a while for a lot of guilds, and I've mentioned numerous times how smashing your head against ICC for months on end ruined guilds (including mine), I can't imagine a lot of people obtained a Shadowmourne in original Wrath.

Quel'Delar, on the other hand, was more obtainable although still a bit of a rarity.

***

While not a legendary item per se, in order to obtain Quel'Delar you had to complete a questline once you obtained the ol' Battered Hilt, which was a rare drop in the Heroic ICC 5-person instances. 

Although the Wowhead entry for the Battered Hilt mentions a 1-2% drop rate, due to a bug in Patch 3.3 the initial drop rate was a bit higher, and a ton of Battered Hilts dropped before Blizz fixed the bug. I wasn't high enough, gear wise, to get into the instances where the Hilt dropped before the fix, so I had to wait for said Hilt to drop at the "proper" drop rate.

And wait. 

From Wowhead.

And wait.

After several months of only seeing exactly one Battered Hilt drop (and losing that roll), I finally got tired of waiting and scraped together the 5000 gold necessary to buy one off the Auction House. It took me a month of steady dungeon running and selling ore to do so; I was going to buy Epic Flying then, but... To me, the questline was very epic, and since my Paladin Quintalan was a Blood Elf it fit perfectly into my race's lore.

Yes, I'm pulling out this old screencap
from Eversong as proof.

***

Judging by how the game has progressed since December 2009, it seems that while Quel'Delar wasn't a legendary item in the same vein as Shadowmourne, Quel'Delar was enough of a success that it seems that Blizzard decided to move more in the direction of using the sword as a model for how to handle legendary items in WoW.

And with that has come a sense of entitlement from some MMO players that I find both confusing and off-putting.

If a legendary item is supposed to be rare and difficult to obtain, why does it seem that a lot of players expect to obtain one over the course of an expansion?

From this Reddit r/wow thread.

Perhaps this thread by itself doesn't cover the sense of entitlement per se, but...

From this thread on r/wow.

I could keep going, but you get the idea.

***

Perhaps Blizzard is at fault for this sort of behavior, because a lot of their modus operandi in WoW's design is "Awesome players doing awesome things", and what isn't more awesome than having a legendary weapon?

Well, the funny thing is, if Blizzard designs its systems around teams having one or more legendary items, if you don't have one you suddenly feel like you're behind the curve.

This really just covers commentary around

this phenomenon, so you don't have to read it.

This isn't just a Retail WoW phenomenon, because Classic WoW is infested with it too. Just look at all the people who lusted after Thunderfury or Atiesh or Shadowmourne and went back to Classic WoW just to get that. Or their Scarab Lord title and associated mount.

From Reddit.
(And SpongeBob Squarepants.)

***

I guess the ultimate question is "Why should we care about motivations when playing an MMO?"

Well, ordinarily I'd be saying that it doesn't matter what others want to do, what you do matters, but when the game design focuses around certain game behaviors, it does matter.

Think about the Legion expansion and the Artifact Weapon:

Yep. Another blast from the past.

The concept of everybody getting an Artifact Weapon didn't appear out of nowhere. If you're going to be an awesome player doing awesome things, what better way to combat the (then) ultimate power in the WoW-verse than for everybody to have their own Ashbringer (or equivalent)? It was the desire for a Legendary item for everybody baked into an entire expansion. While that fed the desire for a legendary item, it also introduced the so-called Borrowed Power systems into Retail WoW, which had a huge impact on the game's enjoyment and understanding.

Good luck trying to explain Borrowed Power to a new player, for instance.

From Reddit.

So... What now?

Hell, I don't know. I'm just gonna do my own thing, but I worry about whether the player base in general --and Micro-Blizzard# in general-- aren't repeating old mistakes with each new expansion. Why would I think that?

Oh, no reason...

*Yes, Paladins would call them quests back then, denoting their outsized importance to the Paladin. Nowadays, people just call any task a "quest" of some sort, but back then a quest was very much in the realm of "rescue the maiden from the Evil Big Bad" sort of thing. No Kill Ten Rats here.

**I saved a copy locally on my PC just in case Wizards ever yanks the adventure, so I can upload it for future use.

***And yes, in the era of Elves living 4000 years, they were considered mortal.

****I was once in a Blackwing Lair Raid while wearing my Bloodvine set, and I kept dying during a specific set of trash pulls. A healer whispered an apology to me, saying that she'd keep throwing heals on me but I'd die before they landed. I told her I wasn't angry or anything because the Bloodvine set, while powerful for damage, meant I had absolutely no extra health to me at all. She was much relieved that I wasn't one of those asshole Mages who demanded that healers TRY HARDER for something out of their control.

#My inner Middle-schooler: "Micro-Blizzard... *snicker*"

EtA: Uploaded a larger version of the Nerfnow comic.

Meme Monday: Coffee Memes

While tea has it's afternoon slot, particularly within British culture, coffee is first and foremost a morning ritual. Bowing to our caffeine overlords is a rite of passage in both school and work*, so in honor of coffee's importance in American culture, here's a few coffee memes...

When people ask how are you feeling
in that meeting at 7 AM...
From sheideas.

Self-explanatory. From dump-a-day.

I also drink coffee on the weekend when
I have to get up early for some project.
From Voltage Coffee.

If a woman told me that, my curiosity would
know no bounds. Alas, my wife only drinks tea.
From Ruin My Week.

And one bonus meme:

I knew a guy my Freshman year of college
who drank coffee and took No-Doz to stay awake
studying for a test the next day. He looked a bit
like this the next morning. From Remote Tools.

*True story: when I was in high school, one of the people campaigning for Student Body President ran on the platform of having coffee introduced into the cafeteria. He was laughed at back then --it was the 80s, after all-- but now? In the era of a Starbucks on every corner, he'd likely win the election on a platform like that.

Things That Make You Go 'Hmmm...'

I was commenting on Shintar's latest WoW Classic Season of Discovery post when her reply gave me some food for thought:

She's right; I haven't been talking very much about what I'm up to, game-wise. Especially compared to the first four or five years' worth of this blog --or even the first three years' worth of WoW Classic-- I've gone mostly silent on my actual video game activity.

Well, I can answer the question "What have I been up to?" pretty succinctly: not much.

Seriously.

This is my spot.

Ever since WoW Classic's Season of Discovery dropped, a lot of people have abandoned WoW Classic Era and jumped on the SoD bandwagon. The resulting emptiness in Classic Era, while not nearly as bad as it was when Burning Crusade Classic came out, is very noticeable. And it suits me just fine. 

I suppose I could level an alt or try to get into a raid or something, but I've found myself not really interested in doing that. Over the past few months one of my Classic Era friend group pulled me into a Molten Core raid, but that experience was soured by that raid's leadership giving a piece of tank gear my friend could have used to a spellcaster alt of one of the raid team's guildies, in explicit violation of the gear distribution rules.

Main Spec over Off-Spec my ass.

Several people in the friend group have joined other raids and raid teams, and some even go into AQ40 and Naxxramas (the last two raids of Classic Era), but I've just not been that interested in doing so. My Questing Buddy does want to join some raids, but her raiding requirement is in the evening on Pacific Time (US West Coast), which most raids in the server cluster don't do. There is one guild that does, however, and she briefly joined that guild only to discover she was unceremoniously benched to make way for another guildie to attend. No apologies or anything, just a "you're benched" from that guild's raid team right before the raid was to start. It'd be one thing if they said that she was being benched for another Hunter, but they instead brought an 8th (or something) Warrior instead to Zul'Gurub, a 20 person raid, where you want Hunters to do certain pulls or be damage soakers or whatnot.

So yeah, I'm not interested in any of that petty bullshit. 

With the dearth of people in Classic Era, it's also been difficult to get into any Alterac Valley Battlegrounds, as most of the Horde players are (you guessed it) in Season of Discovery.

I do help out my friends by running their low level alts through instances or questing, or if they need a body for a dungeon run, so there is that, I guess.

However, for the most part I just stand around in Darnassus, doing random buffs to people who run by, and providing portals to people who need it. 

***

What about Season of Discovery?

Well, I was happy to move at my own pace, and explore just for exploring, and I'd even created a Horde Mage just to play with my Questing Buddy who'd never played Horde before. I honestly had a good time watching Barrens Chat* and figuring out where all the quests were out there.** Hell, I even got into a Ragefire Chasm group or two, which I hadn't done on the Horde side since... 2010?

I got said Mage up to L22 or so before Season of Discovery's Phase 2 dropped, but my interest in SoD evaporated when Blizzard decided to provide all sorts of information about the upcoming Phase and then stuck Phase 2 in the Public Test Realm before release, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of, you know, discovering things. Some websites have at least paid lip service to the concept of letting people discover things on their own, but once Phase 2 dropped my YouTube Main Page was overwhelmed with "Here's Everything You Need to Do in SoD Phase 2" videos. 

When I did login after Phase 2 dropped, I found that Blizz had added a 50% XP buff to push people into the new content more quickly. I figured that in order to delete it I'd have to do what I did with that Joyous Journeys buff and talk to an innkeeper, but since Blizz couldn't stay with the actual theme of Season of Discovery and instead turned Phase 2 into a "normal" mini-expansion, I abandoned Season of Discovery.***

***

I've logged into other MMOs, such as Elder Scrolls Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic, but...

Let me put it this way: I've logged in, started a character (or logged into an existing one) and... I just kind of hung around, doing nothing. Just watching people run here and there. 

And then I log off.

Yes, I've played a bit of the original Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 3, but... I've reached a certain point in both games where I'm fine with where I'm at. I don't feel like pushing very hard, and I don't feel like starting over. In BG3 I know what I need to do to keep moving forward, but... that requires me bashing my head against a virtual wall for a while until I figure out how a clever way of solving a few quests. Despite a lot of temptation out there in the form of guides and whatnot, I want to figure the game out for myself, without any help. 

I'm not saying I don't believe you, but
I've played my share of CRPGs over the years,
and I've learned to never trust people who say that.
(No spoilers, thankyouverymuch...)

***

What have I been doing?

Work, I guess.

I'm up to my eyeballs in work, and even though my hours are still roughly 40-ish hours per week, the timing of that work is impacting my down time. For example, I've had a meeting scheduled for very very early morning, and that same meeting has been delayed several times. The problem is not only that I have to go to bed very early to make this early morning call, the delays usually come in when I'm asleep, so I wake up for the meeting only to discover the meeting had been delayed. Again and again and again. So I've not been on much in the evenings because I've got to get to bed. 

While I wrote this post, I set up the
timer on my coffee machine because I don't
want to follow that 10th voice and sleep in.
From Grab Your Coffee Facebook group.

When I'm not doing work, I'm running to and fro for various family obligations and whatnot. I haven't had this many family obligations to go to since more than one of the kids were back in high school, and I can't really explain why. 

I would say that I need a vacation, but every time I think of taking a couple of days off from work, more stuff comes in --both personal and work-- that kind of have to get done. If I took time off from work, the extra work would still be there (and I'd already be behind in getting it done) and the personal stuff would have had to be finished while I was "on vacation".

While I'd like to say that I'm overworked, I'm not. My Questing Buddy's husband is really slammed at his job right now, which is why I don't complain about my work. I guess there's nothing really exciting me right now, and that is reflected in my lack of video game activity.

***

Okay, I do have to set one thing straight: even if I were busily playing video games, I'm not so sure I'd even bother to post about it anyway.

Remember how I've said (numerous times) that I'm a private person and don't open up much? Well, I've been in one of those moods over the past several months where I'm just not interested in opening up, period. Sure, there's the blog and all, but beyond that I'm just not into talking about my activities. I push myself to posting about such things because it feels like I ought to be at least a bit social, but I also know that posting about what I'm playing doesn't generate much interest compared to other topics.**** It's kind of funny how a blog is social media, but when I post about social things, those posts are very often the least read on the blog. 

So... If I'm not enjoying writing those posts, and people aren't reading them, why should I force myself to do it?

Good ol' Arsenio Hall. This was probably
what, 1987 or so? My freshman year roommate
and I used to watch his show and then turn
on Late Night With David Letterman. From imgflip.com.

I'll probably post about my goings on from time to time, but not nearly as much as I used to. I'd rather talk about other things than making the blog about me, honestly. 

*Except for one evening where some people decided to talk politics and the Middle East, and let's say it did not end well.

**In case you're wondering, by the time a Blood Elf character is finished with the two Blood Elf specific starting areas --Eversong Woods and The Ghostlands-- said character is about L20-L22 already and can pretty much skip The Barrens entirely. So the WoW Classic version of Neve never quested in The Barrens at all, but instead went straight to the next zones after them.

***I will give Blizz some kudos for banning GDKP raids/groups on Season of Discovery servers, which for the uninitiated are raids in which people bid for gear that drop off of bosses with in-game gold. And yes, the GDKP raids are the big reason why gold farmers and (technically illegal) gold selling goes on in WoW Classic servers. But if you ask me, I doubt Blizz will stick to their guns for very long. I mean, just look at how quickly they abandoned the "discovery" portion of Season of Discovery.

****My first post about my hospital stay notwithstanding.

Meme Monday: Min-Maxer Memes

I'd been considering a few other subjects for Meme Monday, but for some reason I kept running into memes concerning min-maxers. Of course, min-maxing isn't a recent phenomenon --just look at the strategy discussion surrounding chess, for example-- and even in real life people will use what is "best" to get a leg up on the competition. 

My decision to make this Meme Monday about min-maxing was solidified when an acquaintance asked in chat the other day what 'parsing' is. Yeah, about that...

This is why players will do all the things
in an MMO, even when they were put in the
game to provide something to do for everyone.
From ifunny.co.

Video games aren't the sole domain of
min-maxers. There's a ton of memes in
pencil-and-paper RPG about min-maxers too.
From Reddit's dndmemes.

Sometimes, you have to admire how some
min-maxers think outside the box.
From Reddit's dndmemes and Ghastfighter392.

And then there's me.
From imgflip.