D&D is 50 years old this year, and because of that anniversary it has now been given a status like that of other pop cultural icons: on the cover of US stamps.
The official US Postal Service announcement included stamp series honoring legendary basketball coach John Wooden, photographer Ansel Adams, and the classic summertime pastime of carnivals in Carnival Nights.
Before you ask, no, I'm not going up there on Thursday just to get the stamps; I can get them at our local post office without much of a big deal. (We're going on Sunday, however!)
What does amuse me is just how much the anti-D&D crowd is likely to explode when they discover that the Post Office is peddling SATANIC MATERIALS!!! I'd better prepare myself in the event my mom has a coronary when she goes to the post office.
Yes, I've been on that kick again, where comparing RPGs and MMOs between "back in the day" to "right now". And yes, I know I could just login to WoW Classic Era and compare it to Retail WoW, but this is much funnier.
Be warned that some of these are pretty damn large and you'll need to either download them or something to see them all...
Such as this one from Dorkly.
Again, from Dorkly. I really miss Dorkly's glory days.
From Nerfnow. It's the bane of all classic MMOs: they're basically solved games, and have been for the past decade or more.
I wish I could look that well adjusted. From FowlLanguageComics.com.
While you'd never guess it if you met me in person, I'm quite enamored of cosplayers of all stripes.
There's the professional cosplayers --those who are paid to cosplay, from the so-called "booth babe" gig to those who cosplay at a con to mingle with the crowd*-- and there's the various levels of amateur cosplayers. The amateurs range from raw newbies to those who work on their cosplay with a level of professionalism that rivals those of the actual pros.
Svetlana and Benni, the people behind Kamui Cosplay. They not only create and wear cosplay for events, they also publish digital (and print-on-demand) books on creating your own cosplay. Full disclosure: I own one of their books. From KamuiCosplay.com.
Svetlana in Druid Tier 9 gear from World of Warcraft. From KamuiCosplay.com.
And I know that some of them will get mightily offended when I lump them in with the cosplay crowd, there's also the historical costume people --ranging from SCAdians** to historical re-enactors of various stripes-- who research and create their own clothing with varying degrees of faithfulness to historical accuracy.
Union Civil War reenactors at the "A Step Back in Time" event at the Sharon Woods Heritage Village Museum. From Cincy Magazine.
To me, I consider all of this part of cosplay. Your research, design, and engineering (whether by needle and thread or actual machine shop equipment) for the outfit you're working on is going to be just as rigorous as you want it to be. Having seen a lot of the cosplay YouTube videos --such as those from Mineralblu or Justin Cosplay-- there's no real difference in quality between the various groups.
Part of my interest is because I enjoy working on and creating things***, but also there's an undeniable amount of beauty in cosplay.
Screencap of Dokomi 2024 in Dusseldorf, Germany, video by Mineralblu. One nice thing Mineralblu does is put the names and social media for the cosplayers in the video without having to switch on closed captions, so they get full credit.
Another part is understanding the how behind the cosplay designs that elude my oh-so-not-with-it brain.
I mean, I can comprehend using 3D printers for a variety of purposes, and foam sheets from the hardware store (such as this from Home Depot) to make armor and whatnot:
From Flooring Inc's website. The website I linked to is an entire entry point into how to use foam for armor and shields. I kid you not.
Yes, I also understand the power of needle and thread, whether by hand or by sewing machine. I've described sewing machines before as power tools for cloth, which makes it sound more like something that belongs in a garage shop than in the corner of a bedroom.
Or in storage in the basement. Yes, that's my machine, built in the late 1970s. And holy crap is it heavy.
I also understand the ability of makeup or a wig in the hands of an expert to transform someone.****
While I was peripherally aware of other things out there to assist a cosplayer, I have been still quite surprised at the extent of what's available. Such as contact lenses for the eyes:
Apparently this movement got a boost from Kim Kardashian of all people, which is likely a big reason why I never heard about it before. The pic is from boob tape brand Skines.
When a magazine known for household tips and tricks such as Real Simple runs an article about how to use boob tape, you know this entire thing has gone mainstream. All my brain can think of is that removing the tape must really hurt like hell, but the various forms of boob tape is safe for use on the body, so hopefully it doesn't hurt like when you're waxing your body.
Steve Carell from The Forty Year Old Virgin. Supposedly he was never told about how this would feel before the shot, and this was his real reaction.
There's an entire cottage industry surrounding items for cosplayers, whether intentional or not. Companies that you'd never expect to have anything to do with cosplayers, such a Flooring Inc. mentioned above, have web pages on how to shape their products for cosplay gear. It all spends, I guess, and if cosplayers are going to shell out money for your company's stuff, the easiest thing in the world to do is to encourage those sales.
***
Things aren't always sunshine and roses, of course.
There's a reason why the slogan "cosplay is not consent" is a thing, and that's because some people can't keep their hands and their words to themselves.
I get that someone in their cosplay outfit can look damn hot --just watch a video or even looking at the small samples here and it becomes pretty obvious-- but a cosplayer looking hot or acting/posing in a sexy way doesn't give an onlooker license to act like an oversexed creeper.
Basic common courtesy can go a long way toward interacting with cosplayers, but also recognizing that there's an "in-character" and an "out-of-character" mode for them is highly important. Just like any actor who slips into character, they may act in a fashion they may definitely not feel internally. Sure, that Harley Quinn cosplayer gave you a grin and a wink while striking a pose, but that doesn't mean that they're giving you an okay to go and pursue them. Or grope them. Or berate them when they refuse your advances.
***
I could go on and on about details surrounding cosplay and historical re-creations --in another lifetime I would likely have been busily working away at Colonial Williamsburg in their archives or assisting in restorations rather than working in IT-- but I'm going to end this with a couple of videos on the creation process:
as hell), I went with an actual dress creation video.
*Some professional cosplayers get involved with con events, such as judging amateur cosplay contests or holding workshops on cosplay and the cosplay process.
**I've mentioned the Society for Creative Anachronism several times in the past; they were my initial exposure to amateur level historical costuming. Yes, I've visited Colonial Williamsburg, but I've always considered the re-enactors there to be purely professional in nature. The SCA was my first exposure to true amateurs who research and create their own period clothing. I met my first Civil War (or other) re-enactors only after my first (and only) SCA organizational meeting.
Why didn't I join the SCA? Well, that's a story all by itself, and one that won't fit here...
***When my primary care physician suggested I go on vacation to relax --yes, really-- I immediately thought of woodworking projects. Such as creating this outdoor end table using 2x4 and 2x6 pieces of wood:
****Okay, time for a short story.
Back when I was a junior in college, one Saturday night my friends and I stopped by the dorm of some girls we knew before everybody was to go out for the evening. Two of the girls were to join us later --they had some event to attend first-- and they were finishing up makeup in their common room when we walked in. For the most part, the girls didn't wear much in the way of makeup --after all, when you're up until 1 AM studying and then have to go to class at 8 AM the last thing you want to do is spend time doing makeup-- so when they came into view I was stunned by what I saw. Before, they were 20 year old friends of mine, but after...
If you've seen the transformation that Katy Perry makes when she puts on makeup, you get the idea.
Let's harken back to those halcyon days of yester er, 2021, when the Dark Portal opened and TBC Classic formally launched.
The optimal method of leveling in Outland --according to all the game guides-- was to spam dungeons in succession until you get to the level cap. My guild back then followed that strategy religiously, endlessly spamming dungeons to get to the cap*, and then... They stopped. They --and a lot of other players who followed the same strat-- simply burned out on running dungeons and refused to run them again.**
This strategy, one of endlessly spamming dungeons over and over, was repeated in Wrath Classic and in Season of Discovery's Phase 2 (Scarlet Monastery, anyone?) and was even picked up on by Nixxiom in his latest video as part of the reason why he stopped playing SoD:
One of my Classic Era friends hates hates HATES Gnomeregan, so she's right there with you, Nixxiom.
So, why bring this up? I mean, that community-wide scourge of min-maxing things to death is what led me to quit Season of Discovery too, but that's not why I'm posting.
I'm looking at Delves from Retail's soon to be released The War Within and am thinking that people will simply run Delves on repeat until they get to max level, and then switch to running dungeons and raids. That's assuming that they don't actually need to finish a main storyline to jump straight into endgame content. Maybe they do need to quest to get to endgame, but my belief is that people will skip everything to get to the end if you give them the opportunity to do so. The WoW community has shown in the past that enough players will do whatever it takes to "win" that they need to be protected from their worst impulses.
I don't need to rehash that TBC Classic experience that the leveling Shamans --myself included-- had upon reaching Outland: when we finally needed to enter some of these dungeons, we couldn't find anyone to run with us due to the burnout. At least with Delves you can run them solo, so you don't have to worry about your friends burning out on them and preventing you from getting your own runs completed.
It's just that I look at these new systems and think of all the ways that they could go wrong. Like death and taxes, the concept of developers underestimating a player base's lust for something --no matter what it is-- is almost a certainty.
*And then Heroics once those unlocked, because getting attuned to some of the raids required a lot of Heroic dungeon runs.
**Until the Isle of Quel'Danas unlocked at the end of the expansion, revealing the Magister's Terrace dungeon, and they all spammed that endlessly for reputation and gear.
Because it's mid-July, I suppose, and I'm not sure anybody wants to see marching band memes right now. (Particularly those who started band camp this past weekend in the heat and humidity, standing at attention on an asphalt parking lot...)
In 2004 I was 35, so I already had those so-called adult responsibilities. From Gamerant.
You know, this is what happens when you play an MMO that encourages mass slaughter. From Imgflip.
Not to burst your bubble or anything, but I'm pretty sure the Dragon Queen would have a few thoughts on the matter... From Reddit. (Of COURSE it's from Reddit...)
The craziest people I know who I play RPGs or MMOs with are women. So yes, I can confirm this. From Pinterest.
The other day I was helping out my Questing Buddy with a run through Uldaman --that mid-L40s dungeon out in the Badlands that is actually the archaeological excavation of a titan city-- when I mentioned something amusing I saw when I got to the Ironforge Flight Point to head out.
"One of the people from [the guild I occasionally help out with Onyxia] was here at the Ironforge FP and they did a keyboard turn as I ran by on OG Card," I reported. "It was as if they saw my full Tier 3 set and said, 'Wait, isn't that the Mage who never reserves anything in Ony?"
"LOL"
I'm sure I got recognized, since that Mage Tier 3 set is pretty distinctive, and having it also means that I was raiding Naxxramas in Vanilla Classic long enough to actually get the full set. In a 40 person raid where you have --on average-- 5-6 Mages, 3 Warlocks, and 3-4 Priests vying for the same drops-- you're competing with over 1/4 of the raid to get 9 pieces of gear.
Too bad I didn't say out loud "I'm the EVIL twin!!" before I took the FP, but because my brain only thought of that now, oh well.
"Maybe they're waiting on the T6 set," my Questing Buddy added.
"They'll be waiting a long time for that," I replied. We both knew that the T6 set was released in Burning Crusade, and Classic Era is permanently set at Vanilla Classic.
After a short pause, I said, "I never got a T6 set. Or a T5 set, for that matter."
"Neither did I."
Our TBC raid team disbanded after only one try in Sunwell Plateau*, and since I was Loot Manager for our raid, I was also aware of her struggles to get gear in the two Tier 5 raids, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern.
"IIRC, Tier 5 wasn't that good for Enhancement Shamans," I mused. "Maybe two of the pieces were good, but overall Tier 4 gear was more desirable."
"I didn't even get Tier 4 gear at all," she replied, "since Fire Spec Warlocks used the Spellfire set."
"Ah, the Tailored set?"
"Yep."
That was the set that required a Tailor to make Spellcloth every couple of days. While it's one of those 'it sounds great in theory' concepts to spread out the gear acquisition process, what ended up happening in TBC Classic was that people would fanatically level alts just for the purpose of cranking out tons of Spellcloth for their gear. I knew one Mage who actually had FIVE toons making Spellcloth so they could get the gear needed for raiding.** (Yes, they also had a 'normal' full time job.) Somewhere in the back of my head I would have liked to get that set for Cardwyn or Neve, but I looked at how sweaty people were at working for that set, threw up in my mouth a little, and walked away.
The next day, we were killing pirates in Stranglethorn Vale when talk about TBC Classic came up again.
"I find it surprising, but I'm now kind of missing TBC Classic," I said. "It would be nice to go back and do things differently."
"What would you do differently?" my Questing Buddy asked.
"First thing is that I wouldn't switch to being an Enhancement Shaman," I replied with some heat.
She laughed.
"I'm a Mage, and while I love melee, I absolutely hated the totem-twisting rotation. If you were off by just a smidge everybody's DPS would tank. I know I'd lose my raid spot, but that'd be the case only on the hardcore guilds."
"Yeah, I'd do a lot of things differently," she added. "I loved Warlock Fire, and I hated giving that up to tank [Leotheras the Blind]."
"I don't miss raid leading." Being peripherally involved in guild leadership drama wasn't worth it, particularly the perception that we were the "casual" raid despite our once per week raid trying hard to keep up with the multi-day per week hardcore teams.
"I miss Jesup." Jes ran a lot of alt raids, and she was the one who originally created the Friday night Karazhan run before handing it off to me. She'd burned out on all those alt raids in TBC Classic, but she came back to run some in Wrath Classic.***
"How is she doing?" another of our friends asked.
"I haven't heard from her in months," I replied.
Now that we're a few years away from the end of TBC Classic, I find that I've come around to agreeing with Shintar's desire to have a few TBC Era servers around. For all those worried about the player base being fractured, to Blizzard a sub is a sub is a sub, so if they keep you "in the family" in some fashion rather than having you unsubscribe to go play FFXIV or Elder Scrolls Online during content droughts, then Blizz has succeeded.
Preach talks about the "keeping it in the family"
concept here, so it's not just me who thinks that...
I know I'm not the only one who misses the concept of TBC Era servers, given the community driven "fresh" server push on PvP-RP Classic Era servers, as highlighted by WillE here:
Apparently Microsoft/Zenimax is pushing hard
to promote ESO's Gold Road expansion with all of these sponsorships...
He is right in that Vanilla Classic seems to be an evergreen thing, where there's continual interest in starting over every few years, but another part of it's appeal is that in an Era server you have all the freaking time in the world. You don't have to rush to the end and then start on the progression raiding treadmill because you know an expansion will be coming out in a few years. That's kind of why in LFG and Trade Chat there's an ongoing argument about why pay for a level boost when most of the Vanilla Classic experience is in the leveling itself.
With Cataclysm Classic in full swing, there is now no ability to see the Old World + Outland + Northrend as it was, so Blizzard is effectively creating a demand by simply going through the progression of World of Warcraft's expansions. While it's not their primary motivation for creating Cataclysm Classic, I'm sure that the WoW Classic team is aware of it. I'm also completely sure that Blizz has at least kept an eye on the private server community to see if there's an uptick in interest in TBC and Wrath Classic servers.
But we'll see. After my experience in TBC Classic, I never thought I'd be circling back to want to try it again, but here we are. Maybe it's a shot at redemption, or maybe it's a chance for me to finally get some closure from all of the shit that myself and the other leveling Shamans went through, but if I did go back it would be on my terms, not anybody else's.****
And that's a start.
*That's where you get the Tier 6 gear, along with Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.
**And to sell on the Auction House.
***I'd have loved to have run with her in those, but since she was doing them under the franken guild's name and some people I no longer respect participated, I refused to join. I'm not so desperate to raid that I was willing to overlook bad behavior, which judging by commentary in social media makes me feel like I'm some sort of unicorn.
****Even just writing that last paragraph gave me flashbacks to that insane month I spent and how miserable it was. Slaying that soul-sucking psychic vampire would be very much worth it. Now, where's my fucking wooden stake?
Word disseminated across the Classic community a couple of months back that a bunch of older servers were going away --my original home of Myzrael-US among them-- and there were free migrations off of those servers to other locales.
My Myzrael-US toons had already migrated to Old Blanchy well over a year ago, where they sat while I began playing Classic Era on the Mankrik Cluster, but I figured I ought to move them before the opportunity was removed.
The West Coast PvE destination for all of these toons was... Atiesh-US*, which has apparently been suffering from player loss as well. Since I already had a stable of toons on Atiesh-US, that wasn't much of an option. I'd have preferred to migrate my Old Blanchy toons to the RP-PvE server, Bloodsail Buccaneers-US, but that wasn't an option. So, I selected Pagle-US on the East Coast, and that was that.
Or so I thought.
Somewhere shortly after that migration, I began to wonder about the nascent Classic Era West Coast Cluster. After all, I'd saved a copy of the original Cardwyn on the Era version of Myzrael-US for posterity, and when the price dropped to $5 before the ability to save a toon on Era was lost forever I went ahead and saved my two bank toons and my Rogue, Azshandra, as well. These toons were sitting on a dead cluster when all the Era activity was on the East Coast Cluster, and I began to wonder if Blizz in their desire to get people to compress onto fewer Cataclysm Classic servers had also opened up free migrations in the Classic Era realms as well. I was absolutely not going to pay Microsoft to migrate the toons to the East Coast Cluster, but if it was free...
TL;DR: Migrations off of the West Coast were available for free.
The limitation is that you had to move your toon to Mankrik-US in Classic Era, but since I created my current Era toons on Pagle-US, that wasn't an issue.
So.... I now have two Cardwyns on the same Cluster.
One is Fire,
Ignore the kinda-sorta icy glow.
and the other is Ice.
I SAID, the other is Ice.
That's better.
I still prefer the utility of Frost, but I can't deny the sheer firepower of Fire. That OG Cardwyn is practically at full best in slot, gear-wise, that also means that she brings the pain from that angle as well. I'd like to get newbie Cardwyn up to a much better gear level, but since I'm not planning on switching her from being a Frost Mage there is a certain ceiling to her damage potential. And that's fine.
*That's the server where my franken guild moved to, and that's where Deuce (Cardwyn Mk. 2) resides.
