The End of an Era

Most of this past week, I wasn't working.

Or at home, for that matter.

This week, we moved my oldest and her partner up to Milwaukee. 

Her partner had gotten a job up in Milwaukee, and so they both moved north of Chicago farther up along Lake Michigan.

My job was driving the U-Haul from Cincinnati --where we added some of my oldest's stuff-- up to Dayton, where we loaded her partner's boxes and whatnot.

This was early on in the loading process.

I was met up in Dayton* by my youngest, who was lugging up from Louisville an old kitchen table her boyfriend was unloading, and we put that in the truck as well. Then we went back home to Cincinnati, leaving the truck up north, to get some rest before the epic trip.

Early in the morning on Wednesday we drove up to Dayton, and I settled into my seat for the next several hours.

It's a Ford E-Series engine (something you'd
find on a Ford Econoline). It's not well known
for being a quiet engine, and the sign saying
"the floor will get warm" didn't endear me to the cabin. 

Having driven a U-Haul across town back home when I moved my son into his and his partner's apartment, I knew what awaited me: noise.

Sure, THAT U-Haul was a Dodge and this was a Ford, but it still was going to be a noisy ride. I did have one saving grace: I put on my earbuds and plugged into my smartphone, so if people tried to get a hold of me I could talk without fumbling for the phone. The earbuds cut out most of the noise, and I could listen to music and podcasts along the way.

Gentle, my ass.

We took off, and my oldest and her partner, her partner's sister, and the guinea pigs quickly pushed ahead. My wife and youngest were in our Honda CR-V and followed suit, and I lumbered along behind in the U-Haul. At least the U-Haul had air conditioning and automatic transmission, because it was not the most pleasant thing to drive. There was also no cruise control, so between the rough steering and constant need to put my foot on the accelerator, I had no opportunity to get distracted.

Okay, I wasn't driving a big rig, nor did I have

a CB radio, but it certainly felt like what I was

doing as I followed the semis heading west.

The trip west to Indianapolis, and then north to Chicago, reacquainted me with the Indianapolis highways in a way that the trip up I-74 to Gen Con never did.

THIS!!

As soon as we crossed the border from Ohio to Indiana on I-70, the roads almost literally went to shit.

I bounced along like I was driving a trampoline, and I was eternally grateful that I moved the container of cleaning materials from the top of a mountain of boxes to the floor, right next to the truck's sliding door. And what had to have been a cruel joke, all of these signs along I-70 kept proclaiming that Indiana was building "Next Gen Roads".

"How about making your roads CURRENT GEN instead of these pieces of shit!!!" I shouted more than once.

Nevertheless, I pressed on while listening to an episode about Elizabethan Spycraft from Professor Suzannah Lipscomb's Not Just The Tudors podcast. Yes, I am SUCH a nerd.

Somewhere before I reached Indianapolis itself, I discovered another truth about U-Haul trucks: they are thirsty bois.

Putting it on the truck doesn't make it true.

I filled up the gas tank before I reached Indy, and again before I reached I-94 up at the northern edge of Indiana. Holy crap was that tank gigantic, and even more than that was the hole in my wallet after each pit stop.

After that last pit stop --with a short break for lunch sandwiched in between at the exit for West Lafayette, the home of Purdue University-- I spent a miserable time driving through mid-afternoon traffic in Chicago.

There wasn't a point where I was at a standstill, but I crept along just slowly enough so that I couldn't take any pictures of the sights, such as the downtown skyline or a view of Lake Michigan. Or this building:

I was not expecting to see this in Chicago.
From LinkedIn.

I knew Steelseries is a Danish company, so when the Steelseries building in Chicago appeared in front of me, I was surprised. Again, I had to fight the truck the entire way through Chicago, so there was no moment where I could take a pic of the building itself.

My drive through Chicago was made more painful by the reality that I didn't want to deal with the toll roads. If I were driving my own car I'd have no issues paying the tolls, but I was driving a rental and I wasn't dealing with anything that might cause me to have to pay U-Haul some extra money. So... I ended up getting off of I-94 out of Chicago and onto US Route 41 until we reached the Wisconsin border. Once there, no tolls awaited us so we got back onto I-94 and away we went.

***

Even though Wisconsin and Ohio are both part of the Midwest, you knew you were in Wisconsin when the first billboard I saw was for a place called "On The Border", a "Gentlemen's Club" in Franklin, Wisconsin. 

"Wow," I said to myself. "You don't see that in Ohio."

Not that those clubs don't exist in Ohio, but that they had actual billboards for them on the highways. At worst you'd see the occasional billboard that says --and I kid you not-- "Love Stuff up ahead". I always imagined 'Love Stuff' being said with Isaac Hayes' low voice, which is something I simply can't imitate.

There's another thing that let me know that I was in Wisconsin:

Yes, they take their cheese seriously in Wisconsin.
Again, too busy to drive to take a pic.
From Wikipedia.

The Mars Cheese Castle is very much a thing --we visited it once when we were up for a friend's wedding back in 2004-- and given that my oldest loves cheese, she'll likely become a regular customer.

Milwaukee itself wasn't what I expected. Throw out any images in your head that were driven by old episodes of Laverne and Shirley --or even the knowledge that breweries such as Miller, Pabst, and Schlitz call Milwaukee home-- because they don't really fit the reality. The downtown skyline doesn't look as impressive as Chicago, Cincinnati, or Cleveland, but the layout is much nicer and cleaner, and there are tons of old buildings still around. The weather was in the upper 70s with a nice breeze blowing off of Lake Michigan, and people were out and about in both downtown and along the lake shore. Parks covered the shore, as well as marinas and a beach and the Milwaukee Art Museum, and joggers and families were enjoying the early evening.**

I took this photo of the Milwaukee Art Museum
after we dropped off the U-Haul. Yes, your
eyes don't deceive you, it looks like a yacht.

The apartment itself was in the upstairs of a renovated building that dated from 1913, less than a mile from Lake Michigan. The first floor contains shops while the upstairs floors all had been renovated into modern apartments. My oldest completely lucked out in how nice the entire neighborhood looked. Sure, there's the obligatory Starbucks, but there was also a small bookstore, several nice restaurants, some quirky shops, and even a small repertoire movie theater. Oh, and a hospital is about 1/2 mile away, so there's that as well.

Now, all I had to do was park the damn truck.

It took a while to find a spot, and I became very acquainted with the narrow roads and the beautifully maintained century old houses ringing the neighborhood, but I finally "created" one by parking in a "private parking only -- violators will be towed" spot behind the apartment and emptied the truck. Then a short trip back through downtown Milwaukee --which included the beautiful Historic Third Ward-- and to the U-Haul spot to drop the heap off, and that was that.

***

The guinea pigs did survive the trip, although the weren't so sure about the new place until the very end of our stay. By then, they were happily munching on treats and begging for more.

As for us, we grabbed some dinner at the end of the block at a local bar, and set out for home.

We originally intended to get through Chicago and then grab a hotel for the night, but after making it that far, we decided to rotate drivers and just push on to home. I won't bore you with the details, as it involved a lot of dozing along the way when I wasn't driving, but we made it back home at around 8 AM EST. My youngest and my wife grabbed showers and then slept, but I simply konked out. Several hours later, my youngest went back to Louisville, where she was working that evening assisting with the front ensemble for one of the local high schools' marching band, and we began our career as (semi) empty nesters. I say "semi" because our youngest is still in college and may yet come back home after graduation, but we'll see.

***

So now you know what I was up to this past week.

Since I was determined to basically keep a low profile, I wrote up a bunch of posts beforehand and scheduled them to post over the course of the week.

Now, when we go back to Milwaukee to visit, I ought to see about getting a six-pack of Schlitz just to say that I tried it. And for those who remember how Schlitz' owners pretty much destroyed the brand by trying to go cheap with the brewing process, the original recipe is back and is being made in small batches. 

*Technically speaking it was Huber Heights, a suburb just north of Dayton, but nobody outside of SW Ohio knows much of anything about Huber, so let's just say it's Dayton and leave it at that.

**Not to put a damper on this, but I'm sure that by winter this weather will be rather brutal.

EtA: I corrected some grammar and the missing link to Laverne and Shirley's theme song, which includes highlights from the show. In case you didn't notice, Laverne and Shirley worked at mythical "Shotz Brewery", a riff on Schlitz Brewery.

#Blaugust2024

RTS and Relaxation

I've played my share of RTS games such as Age of Empires and its descendants, and while some require more hands-on activity* than others, I've found that the RTS that focuses on civ and/or city/settlement building is the right sort of RTS for me.

Such as Madruga Works' games Dawn of Man and Planetbase.

Part of my first base in Planetbase. I need to
design better so that I don't have too
many chokepoints.

Dawn of Man is pretty much as it sounds: an RTS where you guide a settlement from the Paleolithic through the Iron Age. In addition to the traditional RTS problems with occasional baddies showing up to attack your settlement, there are issues with food, shelter, clothing, wild animals, and religion to contend with.

My little settlement is doing so well it now
has a satellite fort to the north.

Planetbase is actually older than Dawn of Man and it involves building a settlement on a remote planet. The difficulty can scale up if you unlock enough gameplay in your current difficulty level, but I don't think it's necessary to do that to enjoy the game.

I know the biggest downer that people have with both games is that the pacing may be so relaxed that you have to frequently speed up the game to keep moving forward. Yes, you can manually switch the game speed, and if you've got downtime of a season or so in Dawn of Man, for example, speeding up the game is a really good idea.

Another issue you have to manage that I forgot to mention is that of resources: mines can get played out and crops can contract diseases. People can become sick and die, and if they're a critical person (such as the only person who knows how to repair a robot in Planetbase, for example) that becomes a huge problem that could sink a settlement. Or, perhaps most insidious of all, is having too much of a good thing and have so many people come to join your settlement that your production and crops can't keep up.

Still, for those who --like me-- are happy with a relaxed pace to a game, both titles are worth pursuing. I'd pick them up when on sale --as always-- just to see if it's worth the purchase.

*And stress, especially when there's a zerg rush going on and you don't have quite enough defenses ready to handle it. 

#Blaugust2024

Thoughts on Leveling in WoW Part 2: What if we go off the rails a bit...?

Here's an interesting thought: what if Blizzard simply eliminated leveling entirely in Classic Plus and made everything skill based?

As in: if you do something --blacksmithing, fighting with a sword, casting spells, etc.-- your skill ranks go up. If you get high enough skill ranks, you can wield better gear, but that gear doesn't impact your abilities nearly as much as your own skill ranks do. The primary focus of the game is doing things so you get better at them. 

But here's the kicker: you can't get better at those things in instances or in PvP. You have to get better at your skills by doing quests out in the open world. Each quest is assigned a skill level --for example, the quest to kill Defias Pillagers in Westfall would be a skill rank of 30-- and if your weapon skill you're using to kill the Defias Pillagers is less than 30, it would be harder to accomplish because the Pillagers would have more weapon skill than you. But if you head back to beating on lesser enemies for a while to get your skill up, you'll find that those Pillagers are a lot easier since you are now equal to or higher than their own weapon skill. In one respect your skills are similar to class levels, but your skill ranks don't go up after completing a quest (you do get gear and/or gold for that). You go up in skill ranks by performing actions out in the world irrespective of whether you're doing the quests.

If you want gold or gear, do the quests. If you just want better skill, go beat on enemies out in the field.

If you want to gain skill ranks faster, kill enemies above your skill rank or perform actions that stretch your capabilities. People are used to that if they try to farm something in WoW (such as ore or herbs) and fail. If you only stick to killing enemies worse than you, you gain skill ranks more slowly or not at all. And if you're grouped up, the number of hits you make on an enemy determines your skill rank adjustment, so you can't join a group where one person pulls the entire dungeon, killing enemies so you get the XP.

That would eliminate the boosting process, because the only way you would be able to get better and yet not be the person doing the work would be to have someone take over your account and do it for you, which would not only be dangerous to your personal finances but likely a violation of your Terms of Service. 

However, that would also require compelling gameplay and story to drive people's interest in playing, and let's be fair, Blizzard has had its ups and downs as far as crafting a good story.

I'm probably overthinking this, because Blizz is never going to deviate from their tried and true methodology of levels and XP acquisition, because there are too many people who like it just the way it is. They may complain about it --okay, WoW players complain about everything-- but when push comes to shove they aren't giving it up one bit.

#Blaugust2024

Thoughts on Leveling in WoW Part 1: Forgotten Fun

The main reason why I enjoy WoW's Classic Era is that the leveling process is slow and steady.

Yes, it can be grindy, but the basic design of Vanilla WoW was that leveling was a good portion of the game, and the WoW community in general has moved on from that perspective to a primary focus on Endgame. If that weren't the case, in-game boosts and leveling guides and even externally paid level boosts* wouldn't exist. 

For all people like to claim that it's not the destination, it's the journey, we certainly see plenty of people ignoring that journey in their rush to get to the end.

Thank you, Prince Humperdinck.
From Imgflip and The Princess Bride.

But for me, the slow yet steady leveling pace of Classic Era takes all of the pressure off of me. I know where I'm going, but I already have been to the mountain, so I'm not worried about how quickly I get there.

And besides, I only know how to play two classes in Era --Mage and Rogue-- so I'd have to start from scratch to learn how to play a new class.** Nowhere better to start than in a game that has the journey as one of the key design pillars. 

***

I realize that even in Classic Era I'm in the minority, judging by the number of people who get boosted or advertise for boosts. The reality is that I can't make somebody like a leveling experience if they're predisposed to not enjoy it, and it is foolish to try. All I can do is point out that the pace of leveling in Classic Era is perfect for Classic Era. Accelerating it, as has been done in Season of Discovery, only served to push people to whatever the Endgame was at each phase of the seasonal release. Given that Classic Era doesn't have all that many things to do at Endgame, there's an increased risk of losing your players because "there's nothing to do!"

Still, I need to point out that the leveling environment in Classic Era just works. You get a few levels, you have to spend gold to train. Your gold is depleted, so you go craft or gather and sell on the market, go out and quest some more, and go up a few levels. Rinse and repeat.

There's only one major area where this breaks down, and it's the low L40s. Questing kind of dries up for a while because the quest chains out of Dustwallow Marsh and Azshara were left in an incomplete state, and the major instance to visit, Uldaman, has low L40s content only in the first half of the dungeon. Once you hit the mid-L40s, the rest of Uldaman becomes viable and Zul'Farrak and Maraudon open up. 

But I'm willing to give Blizzard a mulligan on that gap, because overall the game simply works.

Life is a journey too, and I'd hate to wake up one day at 80 years old, look around, and say, "What did I miss?"

*Whether to Blizzard or some nebulous third party.

**I did that in TBC Classic as an Enhancement Shaman, but only at a highly accelerated rate. Were it not for those low levels, however, I'd not know how to play Enhancement at all.

#Blaugust2024

A Returning of Sorts

Under the header of "Everything is Cyclical", people are returning to WoW Classic Era.

How do I know, you might ask?

Because we actually have Alterac Valley Battlegrounds being played when it isn't even AV Weekend.

What you see here are the number of Alterac Valley Battlegrounds in the mid-afternoon on a Monday. 

For six months or more, the number of AV Battlegrounds you'd see --no matter the time of day-- would be ZERO. Unless, of course, it's AV Weekend, where you get bonus honor for playing Alterac Valley on those days.

This past weekend was most definitely not AV Weekend, yet there were on average three or so AV battlegrounds happening concurrently. Even at 1 AM Server Time. It felt good to see that BG window pop within 15 minutes, whereas it had been simply not popping at all. 

I don't know the reason why people are coming back to play in Era once more (go ahead and post your wild speculations in the comments if you're inclined) but it is good to see them here. 

#Blaugust2024

Finding Inspiration in a Theme

I came across an interview of composer Christopher Tin on Polygon the other day, and it gave me a chance to ruminate on how great of an impact video game music has on my gaming experience. 

While I realize a lot of people my age are very fond of certain classic video game themes, such as that of Super Mario Brothers, I was a bit too old for the original NES and Super NES. So, Mario and The Legend of Zelda never really resonated with me. 

I suppose you could say that I was of the Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man era, where the music was limited to a 4-5 second ditty at the beginning of the game:

As well as the intermission themes:

Still, you get the idea. Things were a bit minimalist back then, and not because the creators didn't want to add music, it's just there were limitations to the technology (and the associated cost).

Well, and that for a lot of arcade video games found at the check lane area of grocery and discount stores the sound was actually turned off*, so unless you went to an actual arcade you may not have heard the music at all. 

My first real encounter with a video game's soundtrack beyond a short little ditty was that theme for Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

This is the version I was familiar with, for

the Commodore 64.

It's not a very deep theme by any stretch of the imagination, but when my college roommate began playing the game for the first time, the sound was a revelation. 

You could draw a straight line from an Ultima IV through games such as Wing Commander and X-Wing, through Diablo and Baldur's Gate, up through Civ IV's Baba Yetu to today's games. There's always something in there to draw inspiration from, and while some people play video games with the soundtrack muted, the music is well worth a listen.

***

I guess that it was inevitable, but all the above was prelude to the announcement that the (now) venerable Battle Bards podcast has ended. Eleven years is a long time for a podcast's run, and Syp, Syl, and Steff gave us years of great video game music. I know it was only Syp and Syl for the past few years, but I'll always think of the three of them when I think of Battle Bards.

My personal favorite of their podcasts was very early in their podcast career: their interview with Chance Thomas, the composer of LOTRO's Riders of Rohan Soundtrack. Were it not for that interview, I'd not have gotten up the nerve to contact Mr. Thomas and see how I could purchase the score to Theme for Rohan, as it seemed to me that it could be adapted to a high school orchestra.**

I'm amazed how young Taylor Davis looks

in this video. I guess we've all gotten older in

the 12 years since this video first aired.

I wish the Bards luck in their future endeavors, and I'll miss their voices.

Now to listen so some more music...

*I don't know if my experience was the same as others, but there were always complaints about the noise from arcade video games, so the sound was frequently turned down/switched off at the request of the store owners.

**Mr. Thomas did confirm that the piece could be adapted for high school (or even middle school).

#Blaugust2024

Meme Monday: Aging Memes

As I've gotten older, I tend to have... aftereffects... when I perform physical labor.

Working on the deck has reacquainted me with an aching back and arms, and ripping out the invasive honeysuckle that were crowding out our shrubs gave me sore shoulders that lasted a week. 

So, I turn this week to aging in a gaming context.

I owned an MMO mouse for a little over a year
before it broke and I went back to a simpler one.
I found that a trusty basic style works better for me.
From Reddit.

Just remember to bring the Tylenol
and the heating pad for afterward.
From Pinterest.

Sure... And I like Civ IV too...
From Facebook's RPG Lovers group
(and FF XII memes).

I can identify with both panels now.
From X. No, not Xavier University,
but that other thing.