We Want a Shrubbery

Although nobody is asking for my take on the Pandamonium limited event that Retail will be experiencing, I figured I'd drop in my two cents:

Pandamonium is a hedge by the WoW team.

It's not a shrubbery, it's a hedge!
From getyarn.io, but really from Monty Python.

What do I mean by that?

Well, it's pretty simple. The WoW Classic team is all in on Cataclysm Classic, but if it flops badly, there likely won't be a Mists of Pandaria Classic. 

Let's face it: Cataclysm Classic is as big of a risk as the original WoW Classic was in 2019. Blizzard wasn't entirely sure if people would show up to play an "official" Vanilla Classic server* back then, and by throwing out the "Original Trilogy" by moving all Wrath Classic servers to the now-current Azeroth (before phasing, I presume) there's no guarantee that enough players will show up and continue to play Cataclysm Classic to make a Mists Classic viable.

So, the easiest way to present the Mists expansion in a way that will guarantee people will go back and play the content is to create a limited time event with wildly accelerated leveling in Retail. Throw in a bunch of FOMO cosmetic items, and there you go.

There is a second reason for this Pandamonium event, and it is to drum up interest for a Mists Classic.** This is a taste of what Mists was like, since it is still set in the current Retail environment, so Blizzard is also hoping that Pandamonium will generate enough interest in Mists as an expansion to counter the pushback from the bean counters should Cata Classic flop.

And that's that. For those interested in the event, go have fun. Enjoy yourself, because that's why we play games, right?

*Hindsight is a real bitch here, because looking back it seemed obvious, but there was no guarantee that people who'd been playing on private servers would actually show up to play the "official" version, and there was also no guarantee that people like me would return just to play the pre-Cataclysm version of WoW. There's a very vocal part of the player base that looks down upon Classic and Classic players, and even those blowhards aside the fracturing of the player base was a big risk Blizzard took. 

**I don't think I need to go over my own opinion of Mists, so I'll save that for another time.)

Meme Monday: Survival Game Memes

Survival games have been a thing for quite a while now, from the now ancient Minecraft to the recently departed "Unannounced Blizzard Survival Game". 

Couldn't resist. From IFunny Brazil.

Judging from both my blog feed and my WoW friend group this type of video game is pretty popular too, more so than, say, Baldur's Gate 3.

So, in honor of games that make you feel like you're living the life by having a stick to beat back your enemies with, here's some memes about survival games.

Rimworld isn't technically a survivor game
per se, but this meme is what I think of when
I play it. From Know Your Meme.

I saw this and immediately thought
of Day-Z, which one of my friend group
has been playing for the past few months.
From imgflip.

Having played both Minecraft and Conan Exiles,
I can confirm this feeling of elation. Hell, surviving
long enough to not only make a basic tool but
actually go to sleep is amazing. From Imgflip.

And this is why I don't play these
games that much. From Reveslwas
via Memedroid.

And one bonus Survival game meme...

Yes, the ol' Reddit r/starterpack.
Via Know Your Meme.

A Drop in the Bucket

Something that frequently gets overlooked is that --relatively speaking-- non-mobile video games are still something that not a lot of people play. 

Sure, video games may make more money than movies and music do combined*, but when you look at sales of the games themselves, you realize that a lot of money globally comes from not that many people. 

I was curious about how many copies of Madden 2024 were sold, and I discovered that it was around 5 million or so. To put that in perspective, EA sold Madden 2024 to roughly the entire population of Alabama. That may seem like a lot, but when you remember the population of the US --the prime target of Madden, given it's American Football-- is 333 million, you realize that's kind of a drop in the bucket. And when you realize that the average viewership of CBS' comedy Young Sheldon is 8 million viewers, you get a better comparison between passive viewing and active playing. 

MMOs are even more of a niche market, given that the largest MMO out there, World of Warcraft, pulls in somewhere between 4 to 8 million or so subscribers** globally. Yes, only at best 0.1% of the world's population play WoW. 

So, when people talk about how WoW was a phenomenon, it's all relative. More than twice as many people bought the Spice Girls' Spice than the best numbers World of Warcraft posted in the last 8 years.

And we don't want to compare WoW to the number of people who have cable and/or satellite television subscriptions, do we?

***

So why bring this up?

I was reminded of this because I frequently interact with people at work and at other places who aren't gamers of any sort, and they have --at best-- only the vaguest idea about what might be going on in the gaming industry. They may know that game companies are making a ton of money because it improves their retirement accounts, but beyond that they are left in the dark.

When people find out I'm a gamer, I usually get a "Oh, like Madden?" question directed my way.*** 

If I respond with an "Actually, I play WoW," I get "those" looks. 

The "you're a weirdo" looks. The ones that I used to get when people found out I play Dungeons and Dragons.**** I have no idea what it'd be like if I said League of Legends or Fortnite --since I play neither of those-- but I'd imagine there'd be similar reactions. 

The irony is that people in my WoW friend group aren't all aware of the industry beyond WoW itself. When I mentioned Baldur's Gate 3, only one person in the chat said "Yeah, I play that too!" There were a couple "can't afford that right now" and a few "Huh? What game is that?" reactions.

Usually right about now someone will point out those profit numbers and how many people tend to watch the League championships. That's nice and all, but League still has a ways to go to match the viewership of the 2023 Major League Baseball World Series, and that World Series was the least watched Series in television history.

By comparison, 300 million people
worldwide watched Joe Frazier beat
Muhammad Ali in 1971.
From Sports Illustrated.

It's kind of strange how boxing doesn't have the cultural cachet that it used to have, but I honestly believe that the pursuit of profit and moving boxing from something you could see on television to a strictly pay-per-view environment hurt the long term health of the sport. If you don't have eyeballs watching your product, it'll fade from public consciousness.*****

So, video games are this financial juggernaut, but that's largely on the backs of mobile games and live service games, where you constantly feed money to the beast.

But the long term cultural impact? Well, that remains to be seen.

My perspective as a gamer is that gaming is having a large cultural impact, but that's because I'm inside the ecosystem. However, my work and life take me outside the ecosystem, and for that reason alone I remain skeptical. We may no longer be in a world where a single cultural event dominates over all others --such as the final episode of M*A*S*H or the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller-- but that doesn't mean that gaming is lost in the noise.

I think that we gamers just need to realize that we're not as culturally important as we think we are.

*As of 2022 via a Forbes article which I won't link to because it's behind a "stop using your adblocker" wall.

**Courtesy of the leaked graphic about WoW subscriptions.

***If they don't at first think that I go out to gambling casinos, that is.

****That's gotten better over the years, but you still have to read the room before you declare your full frontal nerdity to people.

*****And before somebody pipes up with the violence inherent in boxing, the popularity of MMA and UFC belies that. Those latter two can be easily found on television without pay-per-view.

Life as a Kindergarten Teacher, MMO Style

Several people in my friend group on WoW Classic Era have been leveling Mages lately, so they've prevailed upon me to help get them through some of the low to mid level instances. I may not run boosts for people for profit, but I can do this for friends. Since my gear is about as good as you can get without going into raids --more on that on another post-- I can solo up through about partway into Uldaman.* If the people I'm helping to run through instances are high enough level to actually be there due to quests, we ought to be able to handle all of Uldaman and most of Maraudon and Zul'Farrak.

Still, it's not a big deal and it does keep me in practice.

Inside Uldaman.

Did I mention that they were all Gnomes?

Oh yes, and the "herding cats" mentality runs strong in my friends, which led me to a revelation:

So what did I do? I took that and ran with it...

Having raised three kids, I know the drill.

My friends were only too happy to oblige:

*This is WoW Classic Era, mind you, and to reach the end in Uldaman you need at least three people in a group to start an event that opens up the last part of the dungeon. Still, I can do trash mobs and whatnot through most of the instance without dying.

EtA: Fixed a problem with one of the graphics.

That Day When a Dragon Ate the Sun

So. There was this event yesterday that might have been on the news...

Okay, it wasn't exactly like this, but you
get the idea. From the RuneQuest Starter Set
Book 2: Glorantha. Artwork is by Hazem Ameen,
found here on Artstation.

Given that Cincinnati is right on the edge of totality --if I drove about 15 minutes to the west I'd be in totality-- I decided to take the day off and enjoy the view.

I'd planned this well enough in advance that I'd bought a couple of packs of eclipse glasses and had distributed them to family and friends. We still had enough left over for my wife and myself, and I figured I'd use a third pair to try to get a photo via my smartphone. 

Wherever we ended up going to watch the eclipse, that is.

I wasn't exactly worried about where we'd end up, but my wife wanted things to go well, and so we ended up driving 50 miles north to Dayton. We left at 11:15 AM, with Totality set to reach the Dayton area at 3:09 PM. 

Traffic was expected to be heavy with people heading west on I-74 into Indiana and north on I-75 toward Dayton, and for midday I-75 certainly felt like Rush Hour traffic on the trek north.

Things began to clear out once we reached the Dayton city limits, and we got off the highway right by the University of Dayton*, thinking that maybe the UD Arena's parking lot might be available for eclipse watching.

It wasn't.

So, we drove into downtown Dayton and had lunch at a favorite haunt of ours from when we attended 33+ years ago, The Spaghetti Warehouse. For those interested in whether I could find something that fit my diet requirements, yes I could. (I had a salad.)

A little after 1:00 PM, we set out to try to find a place to watch the eclipse.

We knew some spots, such as the National Museum of the US Air Force, were not a good idea. That place was expected to be a nuthouse. We also knew that the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum, about 45 minutes north of Dayton in Neil's birthplace of Wapakoneta, was supposed to be swamped. Other places on our radar, such as local parks and even Woodlawn Cemetery (immediately next to UD, where the Wright Brothers are buried) were holding watch parties and you had to pay some decent amount of money just to attend. There's a Native American archaeological site nearby, SunWatch Village, but their watch party required payment of $500**.

Again, not happening.

We quickly realized that most of the city and surrounding area had cancelled classes and businesses, so a lot of people were simply home for the day. So... we decided to check out the area around the Dayton Art Institute (the Dayton art museum) to see if there was a crowd there.

No, not our car. It's not visible.

There wasn't.

We parked on the street and walked over to the Masonic Hall next to the DAI, found a cherry tree to sit under, and pulled out some books to relax with while the eclipse began.

As the eclipse came closer, the telltale crescent shape began appearing on the shade through the tree...

The eclipse glasses I'd bought did the trick, so we could take a look as the Moon slowly ate the Sun. The only bad part was that the filter on the glasses did their job too well, and I couldn't get a photo from my smartphone because the phone couldn't resolve to a sharp image. I decided I wasn't going to bother and left the phone alone.

Daylight slowly dissipated until the moment of totality, then everything dipped immediately into twilight:

You'd think this was after 8:00 PM here on
the edge of downtown Dayton.
Yes, this was during Totality.

The eclipse glasses even protected against the Sun's corona, so I had to take them off to steal a glance of the eclipse itself. Just a second or two, but it was quite a sight. I could even see Venus nearby, but since I wasn't in a dark sky area I couldn't see any other stars.

I can see why earlier civilizations thought a total solar eclipse was a sign from the gods --or a portent of disaster, your choice-- because it's one of those things that your brain has trouble processing while it's happening. When you've seen the sun in one state all your life and then this occurs it gives you pause, even though you knew intellectually that this was expected.

Can confirm it looks like this. From
a Facebook post by the Cincinnati and
Hamilton County Public Library.

Although it felt that time stood still, it was over all too fast. Just like someone flicked switch, the daylight returned.

The sky was still a brilliant and rich blue.

Most everybody else who came to watch the eclipse left soon thereafter, but we hung around for an hour to let the traffic on the highway clear out a bit. 

Then what did we do?

We went to a bookstore, of course.

I sent this pic to my Questing Buddy,
who has read both of these books, as 
I was amused by the small print on the poster.

*Yes, our alma mater. Class of 1991, thankyouverymuch.

**And yes, it was fully booked.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

Meme Monday: How About More Miscellaneous Memes?

Yeah, I've got a lot of excess memes that I ought to unload, so no time like the present.

There's always one meme that screams "pick me" that I don't end up using...

Alas, poor Horshack...
From Welcome Back, Kotter, via MakeAGIF.com.

So these are from all over the internet that somehow just didn't make the cut on other Meme Mondays.

Obviously an IKEA spoof, but it came from a Discord
channel, so I don't know who actually created this.

That's.... a very 80s trap, I must say.
And yes, I'd probably roll a one on this one.
From Demotivational (I think).

I remember Sabrina from the 60s version
of The Archies, so I'm still kind of having
trouble squaring away this version of her.
From d20dndmemes.

Yes, this is me. I hang onto old weapons because they've
been well-loved.From Travis Hanson's
Life of the Party: Realities of an RPG'er.

Friday Musings: The Missing 90's

The 90s were, for me, kind of a lost decade.

I graduated from college, got married, and we began having children all during the 90s. I had a series of jobs, which included a stint as a Salesmaker at Radio Shack*, and only settled into a relatively stable position midway through the decade. We bought a house right at the time we became a family, and the last two years of the decade were spent learning both how to be both a father and a homeowner.

Because I was so preoccupied, I kind of missed out on a lot of touchstones for people who were in their 20s back then. While I kept my interest in Metal and Alternative, I developed an interest in Celtic, Folk, and Jazz, so I missed out on the major musical trends of the decade.** 

Alice In Chains' Dirt was released 32 years ago. Yikes.

As was this version of the song Kilkelly, from the

album Music at Matt Molloy's.

Gaming kind of followed in its wake, with me becoming interested in Euro-style board games when they first began appearing here in the US in the mid-90s. 

We still have our copy of Settlers of Catan
that we purchased in 1996. It's certainly
seen better days, but it's been well loved.

Their appeal, promising short game times yet with just as much deep gameplay as longer titles such as Avalon Hill's Civilization and Games Workshop's Talisman drew me in. That my wife was also willing to play the games was a bonus, because she simply wasn't interested in RPGs.*** And to be honest, neither was I at the time.

***

It wasn't that I was over pencil and paper RPGs, it was more that I'd left my old game group behind when I graduated from college and I had no real group to replace it. RPGs no longer had the boom of the late 70s-early 80s --or even the "bad boy" image from the Satanic Panic-- to fuel interest in them. The game store I frequented had a bulletin board for game groups, but they were all (or mostly) out of the University of Cincinnati or Xavier University, comprised of college kids looking for groups. And I, being a grad in my 20s, wasn't really the target audience.

I'd largely moved on from D&D and spent a few years DMing a Middle-earth Role Playing campaign, but that fizzled out by the mid-90s. D&D itself was slowly being weighted down by the tons of settings that TSR was cranking out, and they'd even lost their position as the flagship RPG to some edgy upstart published by White Wolf named Vampire: the Masquerade. V:tM captured all of the vibes that had previously been AD&D's until the Columbine school shooting in 1999 brought goth subculture (including V:tM) under the harsh glare of the media spotlight. 

While AD&D 2e moved away from controversy,
even renaming Demons and Devils to something
tamer, Vampire: the Masquerade reveled in its
association with horror. This even rubbed off on
it's predecessor, Ars Magica, in it's 3rd Edition
incarnation. From Wikipedia.

So for me, pencil and paper RPGs were not really on my radar.

***

What about video games, you may ask?

Well, we puttered along with an old 486DX66 machine (originally a 386SX25 that I scrounged for replacement parts for incremental upgrades) that I kept running throughout most of the decade, but most of my games were used. There were a couple of used PC games stores around town, and for a few dollars I could own games that were 4-5 years old. Given that I'd fallen in love with GEnie and then USENET, I was fine that my games were aging relics of the early 90s while consoles such as Nintendo's N64 and the original Sony Playstation were running rings around my own PC. 

Ah, the original Master of Magic.
Not only was it a Fantasy version of the
Master of Orion gameplay found later in Age of
Wonders, but the artwork in the game manual
had a lot of BDSM in it. If my parents had
ever seen that manual, they would have had
a heart attack. From Wikipedia.

***

I guess it's only natural that I've become interested in games from the 90's, given that 1994 was 30 years ago and I feel there are huge gaps in my geek cultural knowledge that I need to fill. 

Why bother? After all, I'm only vaguely involved with pop culture these days; if the hottest artists of today (and no, not the Rolling Stones) were to pass me on the sidewalk, I'd have no idea who they were.**** 

I don't think that it's because I miss the culture of the 90's, but rather it's because I want to keep myself from sounding like my mom when she starts waxing about how much better things were in the 50s. The pull of myopia is strong, and I know that despite it being a pre-9/11 and pre-Vladimir Putin world, the 90's weren't all that. Although the 90s were supposedly an economic boom time in the US, we personally struggled to get by. I'm still not entirely sure how we managed to afford a house, much less three kids. There was also dealing with what felt like the perpetual disappointment of my parents, who expected better of their own children.

Maybe it's about putting some ghosts to rest. The 'what if' that can haunt you at night, wondering if the decisions you'd made 30 or 40 years ago were the right ones. I don't know if that's something you can ever be at peace about, and it's not like my own parents have ever confided in me about these sort of doubts, so I guess the best I can do is simply muddle through and hope for the best.

*Yes, that was the official name. Oh, I could write lots of posts about Rat Shack. I was fond of some parts of the job, especially when one of the local amateur radio enthusiasts or the electronics hobbyists came in, but far too many of my hours were spent dealing with people who didn't understand what a CD was or what a home computer was. Or they simply wanted the monthly free battery.

**To be fair, when I heard the boy bands at the end of the decade, I certainly didn't feel like I missed anything.

***I still blame her ex, the boyfriend before me, and a game group who introduced her to D&D immediately before that. I've made a couple of attempts to reintroduce her to the genre without success.

****I'm not sure what those celebrities would think of that, but I'd like to think that they'd at least be somewhat grateful that they don't have someone staring at them or otherwise bugging them.