A Bit of a Shakeup

Having a week off was good for the soul, and as a consequence I've decided to make a few changes in my current stable of toons for Operation Spread the Love.

Hoots was named after Hoots the Owl from the
children's television show Sesame Street. Here's
a link to a clip of Hoots with John Legend. I think
I ought to work on a backstory for a bit, just to make
Hoots' name a nickname due to her obsession with owls.
This listing was as of February 2, 2025.

I'd originally intended to get all of the toons to at least L30 before I would begin to put in some separation, but I've decided to leave two toons behind at L20: the Shaman and the Warrior.

The decision to leave the Shaman is kind of self-explanatory: there was just too much mental baggage dealing with a Shaman, even 3.5 years after TBC Classic. I'm still going to keep that Shaman around in case I want to revisit it sometime in the future, and I'll hold onto the name Briganaa as well, but I doubt I'll be leveling a Shaman anytime soon.

As for the Warrior, it was a struggle for me to actually want to play one. I'm used to having a full mana bar or energy bar to work with and have it gradually get depleted, but the Warrior plays in exactly the opposite manner: you have to build up rage before you can expend it on various abilities. I've frequently found myself struggling to get enough rage going for me to actually, you know, DO something interesting. And if I can't get that rage up, the Warrior doesn't really feel fun to play. 

Maybe it's a matter of not getting high enough in levels to make a Warrior fun, but to me it certainly doesn't check any of those "fun" boxes on my "things to do" checklist. Warriors may be extremely popular to play because they're so overpowered in Vanilla Classic's raid scene, but I wasn't ever planning on taking this toon into any group content. There's too much pressure to tank in that scenario, and I wasn't going to deal with that.

So going forward I'm focusing on 8 toons instead of 10. I don't expect my leveling to speed up very much, given that the leveling curve itself is flattening out significantly, and I'm also planning on leveling professions along the way. I've never really leveled Leatherworking as part of my actual leveling process itself, because Briganaa was my Leatherworker and I only began working on that after she got to L70. I simply couldn't focus on professions until after I got to max level for the raid. Same thing goes for Blacksmithing; I've leveled it typically after a toon got to max level (in both Retail and Classic), so any bonuses from making my own armor kind of went out the window.

Tailoring, on the other hand, I've done numerous times, so I know how to fit that into my leveling process and take advantage of inherent bonuses available to a cloth wearing profession. Leveling a profession along the way also has the advantage of slowing down my own leveling process, because I have to divert attention to collecting materials necessary to keep my gear up to date, in as much the same way that a Rogue will work on opening lockboxes to level their Lockpicking skill.

***

Okay, that's out of the way. How's everybody else doing?

Uh... Well... I think my Questing Buddy's raid issues got straightened out, because she's had a few weeks' worth of pleasant raiding in Molten Core. Now, her issue is getting a Healing weapon that she doesn't have to fight all the other healers for in raid, so she's set her sights on PvP gear by getting to a high enough PvP ranking. I can only shake my head, because if it's not one goal, it's another. In her defense, she is significantly younger than me (still technically under 40!) so I salute her drive and focus. Me, I couldn't do that anymore, but she apparently can. I think she's also been listening to the audiobook version of Onyx Storm, the new Rebecca Yarros book, which apparently has yet ANOTHER cliff hanger ending. I guess for my sanity's sake, I'm going to hold off reading the series until it's finished, something I learned the hard way by reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time back in the 90s.*

As for the rest of the gang, all except for two have a toon at max level. Of the two, one still raids regularly on the Classic Era servers (hence the reason why she doesn't have a max level toon) and the other is busy with other non-WoW things, so she doesn't have a lot of time to get on and play. 

Of the players in my friend group, I am the farthest behind, which suits me fine. I think they've finally given up trying to talk me into accepting boosts, but even if they haven't, having 8 toons means I can let them run me through a dungeon and then I can park that toon for a week or more while I level something else. 

***

For a Sid Meier's Civilization fan, I'm simply not interested in Civ VII that is coming out right now. I'm happy that Christopher Tin came back to compose more music for the soundtrack, but I play Civ IV almost every other day, and I really don't have any interest in moving on to something new at this time. What I have seen of Civ 7 is that it is a lot more tactical and wargamer-ish than previous installations of the game; fine for some people, but for a grand strategy type of game that Civ once was, it isn't for me. If I want more wargame in my Civ style game, there's Rome: Total War or Medieval: Total War 2 to whet my appetite.

Anyway, that's where Redbeard's WoW Classic Anniversary is currently at.

*I never finished reading The Wheel of Time, as I threw up my hands and gave up on the series after A Crown of Swords. I bought The Path of Daggers, but when I sat down to read it, I just couldn't. I was tired of Robert Jordan never really moving the plot along and simply adding more and more complexity without getting anywhere. Apparently I wasn't the only RJ fan who jumped off the bandwagon during this time, but we were more than offset by an influx of new fans.

"It's Disney's Lawyers on Line 1..."

This email arrived tonight:

Yes, there's a bunch more after this part, but I didn't
screencap it.

Somewhere, I can hear John Ratzenberger's voice as The Underminer from The Incredibles: 

I'm just going to assume that Micro-Blizz intentionally named this Undermined just for that association. Well, that and The Underdark from D&D's Forgotten Realms setting.

All I can say is that I hope that Micro-Blizz vetted this properly with their lawyers, because Disney's own legal team is no slouch.

Meme Monday: Valentine's Day Memes for 2025

Yes, I know, Valentine's Day is on Friday, but I'd rather be early than late. Therefore, here's several Valentine's Day memes for gamers, both tabletop and video game variants.

The top right one cracked me up,
because our D&D group is in the middle
of the classic AD&D Drow modules.
From the Facebook D&DMemes Group.

Technically this is from Final Fantasy XIV,
but the "twink" moniker works for any MMO,
really. From Reddit.

Zug Zug!!!
From Dashiana's ArtStation website.
Seriously, go check out her artwork.

Given how often I watched my kids play
Breath of the Wild, I thought this highly
appropriate. From Reddit.

A Friday night? Probably just staying in. The weather
is predicted to be bad, and my wife will be returning
from a visit that evening, so likely not much going on.
From Reddit.

I thought this really cute.
From Memebase.

How About Enforcing the ToS?

Under the header of "that was unexpected", I found yet another Brandon Sanderson video (released yesterday) in my YouTube feed. This one, however, was more related to gaming.

If you want to skip the first half of the video/podcast where Brandon and Dan Wells discuss Magic: the Gathering (I don't play M:tG, so I can't comment here) and a sandwich food heist in Norway, the multiplayer video game portion begins here, at the 11:40 mark.

The TL;DR is that since there are adults/parents who no longer have the reaction skills, but they do have disposable income, is to provide a subscription service to pay for moderators to come in and monitor the chat/voice discussions to remove obnoxious behavior from the game or the lobbies.

When I first heard the word "pay" I thought "Oh crap, he's going to ask for whale-ish items in a cash shop," but then when Brandon fully described his idea I then thought "Oh, you mean like what we're paying Blizzard to (theoretically) do in World of Warcraft?"

I do have to wonder just how much it would cost to actually have real enforcement of Terms of Service of multiplayer games such as Marvel Rivals or League of Legends, not just lip service. Obviously too much, if you see all of the bad behavior in multiplayer games and MMOs that I've seen over the years, because I'm at the point where bad behavior is pretty much expected unless proven otherwise.*

Among other suggestions that Brandon and Dan floated were a "little brother/little sister" mode for multiplayer games (beyond the games that already have it) so that the little kids could play along too. I personally had no issues grouping up with either the mini-Reds or even my Questing Buddy's kids to just goof around, but if you're playing a game such as a Zelda title** and the wee set needs help, having that sort of mode would be a godsend to both the kid and the parent/older sibling. 

Or maybe the parent needs help on Elden Ring, having their teenaged kid zone in and help them out would be a decent solution rather than trying to use third party addons (or simply giving the controller to the teen) to bypass the game.

Anyway, I expected explicit "god mode" pay to win type of suggestions, but got something that should have been taken care of by a game's ToS. Anyway, it was interesting enough of a suggestion that I decided to post about it.

*Yes, I've been told via whispers in the past that they expected me to be an asshole of some sort when I joined a group event but the people whispering me were pleasantly surprised to be found wrong. And no, I don't understand why people would look at my toons or how I was acting and think that I was going to ruin their fun. 

**I almost said Elden Ring or Mass Effect, but I immediately shut that one down. Why on earth would you let a 5 year old play Elden Ring? Or the cutscenes in Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate 3?

Vacation's Over

Well, after a week off, I bought 60 days of WoW game time from Microsoft.

That week away felt good, actually. After a good 48 hours of FOMO, I guess I detoxed enough that it wasn't a big issue any more.

Relaxing while killing things works in my book.
And yes, the guild advertisement and the commentary
amused me to no end.

Playing some other games for a while, such as SWTOR, LOTRO, Rome: Total War, and Stardew Valley were good for the soul as well. I didn't have to read about any raid drama, PvP issues, boosts, or any other shenanigans, so I simply got a chance to relax and do whatever.

Oh, and I read a bit too. 

Here's some proof of that.

But one thing I continued reading was this:

Nowadays, there are three levels:
Technician, General, and Extra.
This is the study manual for the Technician exam.

Yes, after 30+ years of being a shortwave radio listener, I'm studying for my amateur radio license. It's something to do, and to be honest I've forgotten more in the study guide than I care to admit. Until this past year I've never had any desire to get on the air, but some of the more recent natural disasters have gotten me to thinking that I can do some good in a small way by providing communications in this age of extreme climate-change driven weather. Plus, tinkering around with electronics is one of my hobbies. And it gives me an excuse to go about 60 miles north to the annual Dayton Hamvention, the largest amateur radio convention in the US. Whether I'll actually have a ham license before I visit is an open question, but you don't need one to attend anyway. I've gone several times over the past few decades, and I always find something interesting there.

Meme Monday: Taking a Break Memes

Well, as of today it's been a week since I let my WoW game time run out. So, I spent a couple of hours last night going through some old memes I saved about taking a break from WoW, and... 

Let's just say that some of them are a bit dated, and the memes to choose from were a bit sparse too.

I did mention the "dated" part, right?
This is right out of 2021 or so.
From Imgur and the Blizzard Forums.

For the record, this was NOT me.
From Memedroid.

I'm pretty sure that when I come back after this break
I'm gonna be rusty.  From Know Your Meme.

Okay, this wasn't about gaming per se, but about
how WoW players don't sleep (much). I can appreciate
this one, even though it's not about the "taking a break"
part directly. From Reddit.

Hello, Old Friends

One nice thing about this short break from WoW is that I got a chance to play my favorite class in SWTOR for a bit: The Smuggler.

Oh, I've played SWTOR off and on the past several years, but for some reason I've ended up creating force users instead of a Bounty Hunter or a Smuggler.* My first toon was a Smuggler, and here I am playing a Smuggler once again.

Ah, Coruscant. Don't ever change.
Same goes for the Migrant Merchants Guild.

If you stick with the type of Smuggler I tend to play --the Gunslinger-- it's a pretty standard build. And in keeping with modern MMOs, new abilities simply appear on my bar without me having to go train somewhere. It's a bit disconcerting, but it is what it is.

Having returned to the Republic side for the first time in a while, I can see the bugs and roughness out there that haven't really been cleaned up over the years --or in the case of the companion pathing, bugs added over the years-- but the visuals and the sound are still fantastic. The sound alone makes you feel like you're outside in a city where the skyscrapers create canyons, and there's just that urban sound that you hear when you're walking around a downtown area. The sound at Ord Mantell is also excellent, and really immerses you in the game. 

And those cutscenes. Can't forget the cutscenes.
This one starring Senator Kayl.

The more I've gone into leveling this Smuggler, the more I realize that there's issues where a new player would get confused, such as getting a Training and Skills quest only to find yourself on the Republic Fleet long before you're supposed to arrive there. At least I knew how to get back to Ord Mantell, but if I'd been a new player, I'd have been screwed. 

Oh, and as you can tell from my top screencap above, I turned off that new map overlay and went with the traditional minimap, just like how I turned Corso into the Tank he always was meant to be. 

It was kind of like seeing old friends again, such as talking to Pat-aK once more:

And Senator Whats-her-name.
Yes, I'm ready to be your Black Bisector, Pat-aK.

Even when I return to WoW Classic, I have to keep this player going. Not sure how, but I've developed a better tolerance for the pathing issue this time around, but we'll see how long I tolerate it. If I get to Balmorra, that'll be farther than I've gotten in a long time.

*Creating that one Smuggler for the screencaps of the intro quest a year or two ago for a post here doesn't count. I went back and played a Jedi Sentinel instead and got as far as Taris for I grew tired of the pathing issues.

EtA: Corrected Pat-ak's name.