Time for a Bit of Scrabble

If you ever wondered if you could just go off script and do your own thing in Retail WoW, yes you can.

However, it's not easy.

If you do what I did and deleted the Dragon expansion seed quest because I decided I was going to ignore what Blizzard threw at me and just go my own way...

Guess what happens when you log back in?

Note the lack of a "Close" button or an X in the top right corner.

Yep. You're forced into accepting the quest again. Even if you hit the Escape key, you get this:

I'm really starting to dislike the sound of his voice.

So you have to either accept the quest and then simply ignore it, or you are in a constant state of having to abandon the quest only to have it automatically reappear. Apparently this has been a thing for quite a while, judging by the Blizzard forums:

As of June 2, 2025, although this was posted in 2023.

The best I can do is accept the quest and then untrack it, and that's that. 

When you think about it, simply going off script appears to be an option that Retail WoW doesn't know how to handle. Player driven fun, such as what I described at the end of this post here, is something that Retail WoW isn't really built for. And I'll be honest, I doubt it's very much on Blizzard's mind at all.*

It certainly seems that there's a dual problem in Retail at this juncture with regards to unscripted play: the player base is simply not interested in that, and Blizzard takes the lead in providing things for players to do. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue here as to which came first, but it certainly seems that players are fine with following whatever tasks or events that Blizzard sets out. This puts the onus on Blizzard to provide "fun" for the players, rather than the players taking the initiative to work out fun for themselves. 

I get it: that pendulum toward player directed fun can swing so far that it could be a disaster. Just look at Fallout 76 and how Bethesda was so sure that players would come up with their own content that it simply fell flat on its face when that didn't happen. You need to provide some structure to a game world, and I think Bethesda finally realized much too late that they'd better get some NPCs and traditional quests in there right pronto. Still I wonder if the pendulum has swung so far toward doing whatever Blizzard hands out without questioning whether we, the players, could make up something better to do.

But judging by all the hoops I have to jump through to just go off in my own direction, I don't think Blizzard really wants me to do that either. It's almost as if people who decide to go investigate what's over the next hill are relegated to the Classic side of the fence, where all the malcontents who won't do as their told reside.**

***

As for Livona, I did take a flightpath through Kalimdor just to see another place that no longer exists in the current state of Retail:

Yeah, I think I'm going to not do any more recent expansions. I might be living in the past, but at least there's a damn World Tree here. I can guarantee that Cardwyn would have said "fuck it" years ago and given the middle finger to any starter quests, echoing a certain parody novel...

Just then a soft knocking came at the door.

"Dammit," muttered Frito, roused from his reveries. "Who's there?"

There was no reply save another, more insistent knock.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming," Frito went to the door and opened it.

There on the stoop were twenty-three lyre-strumming nymphs in gauzy pant-suits couched in a golden canoe borne on the cool mists of a hundred fire extinguishers and crewed by a dozen tipsy leprechauns uniformed in shimmering middy-blouses and fringed toreador pants. Facing Frito was a twelve-foot specter shrouded in red sateen, shod in bejeweled riding boots, and mounted on an obese, pale-blue unicorn. Around him fluttered winged frogs, miniature Valkyries, and an airborne caduceus. The tall figure offered Frito a six-fingered hand which held a curiously inscribed identification bracelet simply crawling with mysterious portents.

"I understand," said the stranger solemnly, "that you undertake quests."

Frito banged the door shut in the specter's surprised face, bolted, barred, and locked it, swallowing the key for good measure. Then he walked directly to his cozy fire and slumped in the chair. He began to muse upon the years of delicious boredom that lay ahead. Perhaps he would take up Scrabble.

--From Bored of the Rings by The Harvard Lampoon, page 149.

*I actually do know something about what's on Blizzard's mind, but I'm not allowed to divulge that information right now.

**That's not necessarily a surprise, as were it not for the malcontents there wouldn't be a WoW Classic in the first place. And to be perfectly blunt, if WoW Classic didn't exist, there wouldn't likely be a Dragonflight or War Within, because Retail WoW would have died when BfA and then Shadowlands' poor design and execution caused subscriptions to plummet. It was Classic WoW that kept Retail afloat during those days.

Meme Monday: Housing Memes

I was working outside this weekend when it hit me that I haven't done any player housing memes in a while (if ever).

Now, I'm sure that I've heard about player housing in MMOs recently...

Whoops. From WoW Insider (or Blizzard Watch).

Uh, not that player housing, but the other one...

The last time I saw people waxing poetic over
Blizz like this was, uh... ::checks list:: the most recent
expansion being released. I think I'll take a rain check
on that one, Preach. From Preach's YouTube Channel.

Still, I thought it'd be interesting to cover RPG and MMO housing for a change.

This is for my son, who still plays FFXIV.

And survival horror too. Minecraft counts as
survival horror in my book. From
Mematic and Cheezburger.

When I was in college, a campaign centered around
us having "liberated" a tavern from it's corrupt
owners, and people started figuring out how to
make it a profitable establishment. So...
it checks out. From Reddit.

Alas, you haven't seen my strongholds in SWTOR.
Now, where's Njessi when I need her?
From Reddit.

Okay, okay. Here's one for the upcoming
player housing in Retail. From Reddit.

Yes, I Do Actually Like Playing Them

While you might think that my Grumpy Old Man (tm) posts about World of Warcraft and other MMOs indicate I'm not having fun these days, I disagree.

I may not be having as much fun as I had while I was initially playing WoW back in 2009/2010, but to me it is... comfortable. I can laugh at MMOs now and not consider it 'srs bznss', but I can also enjoy myself while recognize it's limitations.

This is something that simply doesn't happen
in WoW since... Wrath, maybe?
From Know Your Meme and Justin Parks.

Yes, there are things that annoy me. I'm opinionated enough that I'll always find something to annoy me,* but finding and complaining about annoyances doesn't mean I think that a game is irredeemable. (Old Blanchy notwithstanding.)

One thing I have noticed the longer I've played video games in general is that I'm at my happiest when I'm playing my favorite parts of video games. For Classic WoW, it's in the leveling process and just hanging around various parts of Azeroth.** Sure, I also like running 5-person instances and a good match of Alterac Valley, but that's in smaller doses rather than repeat runs for a deeper goal. For example, last weekend was Alterac Valley weekend, so I got onto the Classic Era servers and ran Alterac Valley a handful of times, but that was it. I didn't have a need to do that more than just those half a dozen or so runs, so once I got that out of my system I was fine on not doing any others all weekend.

Or, in Retail, instead of grumping about Old Blanchy's demise, I decided to go exploring along the well-trod path from Stormwind to Theramore. The path is pretty traditional if you decide to not take a flight path straight to Menethil Harbor***:

• Tram Ride from Stormwind to Ironforge
• Run from Ironforge east through Dun Morogh
• Take the pass (either North or South) from Dun Morogh to Loch Modan. 
• Head north from Loch Modan into the pass down toward the Wetlands.
• run north and then east along the main road through the Wetlands to Menethil Harbor.
• Take a ship from the Harbor to Theramore.

Obviously, I chose running along the scenic route because it was an option. It gave me a chance to explore at a slow pace and enjoy the sights as I knew them in the pre-Cataclysm times.

Okay, that quest hub is new for Cataclysm...

I didn't see a soul along the way, but that was fine. 

To be fair, this is the fewest number of people
on a ship to Theramore that I've seen in quite a while.

What was even better was at the end:

Do I know you? You look familiar.

My lone toon that has reached max level in 2014 used to be able to fly through a Theramore that was devoid of NPCs and everybody else, because she never participated in the Destruction of Theramore event.**** It is nice to see that a brand new toon doesn't have a completely empty Theramore, but rather a Theramore that's as it was in Cataclysm. (And largely what it was like from the TBC Era.)

***

There's also a measure of comfort when visiting areas I have fond memories of.

I've been married for over 30 years, and I simply
can't comprehend why all these women would
accept hanging around and sharing Darmas like that.
Maybe it's transactional by nature, but...

The Vanilla SWTOR planets, particularly the low level ones, bring back most of my nostalgia for the game. The same goes for Vvardenfell and ESO:

I think the screencap is off a bit, as it looked much
more vibrant on the screen.

I've also been known to roam the halls of Spacedock...

I frequently get lost in this place. What a fine example
of Starfleet training I am.

Or just chill in town, whether it be Darkshire...

Or Stormwind...

I consider all of these (lack of) activities to be "playing the game", even though I might not have a specific plan at the moment. You don't have to have a specific plan to play MMOs, so why not lean into it if that's what you feel like doing?

Besides, it keeps me from complaining about whatever people are hyped up about these days, so that's a good thing.

*Even among my favorite bands. I read an article yesterday out of BBC Music that had a list of what the author believed were the top Prog Rock albums released in 1975. Among them he put Rush's Caress of Steel. "Uh..." I stuttered, not believing what I was reading. I mean, there was a reason why Caress of Steel's tour was informally described by the band as "The Down the Tubes Tour". In my opinion, Caress was the worst Rush album they ever put out, and it's not really even close. 

**That holds true for me in SWTOR as well, as I prefer the "Vanilla SWTOR" leveling experience more than anything else in the game. I can't say the same for LOTRO or ESO as I've not played multiple toons in either MMO, but I can say that I enjoyed the story in each that I've completed so far.

***It is also apparently a thing in Retail that a new toon has access to all of the flight paths that other toons have --at least in the Old World-- and for probably 1/10 the cost. I was quite shocked when I first clicked on a Gryphon Master to see what was available and this popped up:

Holy crap.

****That has since been corrected, as in preparation for this post I went back to Theramore and discovered that Az could see NPCs and everybody else in Theramore as it was. I guess Blizz finally corrected that gap in their event design.

EtA: Corrected spelling.

Meme Monday: Summer Memes for 2025

In the US, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of Summer. Hence, a few Summer themed memes. (Not specifically vacation based this particular time. That may come later.)

Not true! I don't lean like that.
From Imgflip.

True, although I'd imagine they're extra
crispy on the inside. From Nerdworld
Apparel FB group.

10/10 would read again.
From Reader's Digest. Yes, THAT Reader's Digest.

And they absolutely looove me...
From Reader's Digest again. I feel kinda weird about
this, since Reader's Digest and "hip" haven't been a thing
since I've been alive.

I've been waiting a long time to use this one.
I found it waaaay down in my pile of memes.
Maybe I ought to look through old stuff just to
make sure I haven't used it... Eh, I'd rather not.
From Mematic.

You'd be at 60 now if...

...you just focused on one toon, I was told by some of my group the other week.

No kidding, I thought.

Yes, Taldanifal is inspired by same drug found
in Cialis. I wasn't thinking of that at the time; I was
just trying to come up with a name off of "Tald-" and
eventually I realized I was close to tadalafil. "Well,
if I'm going to get close to that name I might as well
go all the way," I thought to myself.
The listings are as of May 20, 2025.

Given that I'm leveling 8 toons at once, my actual leveling journey does seem like it'll take forever, especially now that I spend some evenings just fishing to clear my head a bit. 

My recent foray into Retail didn't exactly help my leveling speed either, but I think that little side event is over for little while.*

***

Look, I realize that they mean well, and they do want to play WoW with me, but I'm not going to change my pace for that. I was up front with them about what I was going to do on the Anniversary servers and why, and I would hope they respect that. And it's not like I'm going out of my way to avoid them, either; after all, I'm going slow enough that if they wanted to create a toon just to level with me at my pace, they could do that. They've got toons at max level right now --several of them have two L60s at this point-- so if they wanted to work on a third or fourth, they could.

"If I'd have leveled one toon to L60, I'd probably have stopped playing them once I got to max level," I finally replied to their suggestions that they could boost me or otherwise help me level more quickly. "This way I'm still engaged."

And that is the truth. Leveling, even in the dead zones of the low-mid L30s and low-mid L40s, keeps me interested in a relaxed way. Can it be maddeningly slow at times? Yes. Do I get distracted from the leveling process? Yes. Do I care that I'm not leveling quickly? Only a little. 

I realize that I can go much faster if I want to, but my pace has taken on a life of its own. And really, seeing the max level routine devolve into raiding and obtaining gear/materials for raiding, I'm not interested in that runaround anymore. Yes, I'd like to run Battlegrounds, but I can wait. After all, I have Classic Era if I want to run BGs there.

***

I have been thinking more and more about what I'm going to do when TBC Classic arrives on the Anniversary servers. My current goal is simply to reach L60 on these toons when the TBC Classic pre-patch drops, but beyond that I wasn't exactly sure what to do. Having speed leveled in 2021 I'm not going to repeat that mistake, but beyond that I'm not sure. I've begun thinking about testing the waters with a couple of Blood Elves and a Draenei, but I could also just take a break until the Dark Portal opens. Beyond that, however, I don't know what I'm going to do. I originally wanted to down Kael'Thas in the Tempest Keep raid, but since my Questing Buddy and eventually the others joined a hardcore raid team that uses loot council, I find my interest in raiding in TBC Classic to be fading away. If I get to max level, what then? Just run Battlegrounds all the time? From my experience in 2021-2022, so many people chain ran instances to get to max level and then get attuned for raids that interest in running 5-man instances collapsed within a month of the Dark Portal's opening.** 

Will history repeat itself? If I'm honest, probably. Will people get burned out and quit with the pace being set so fast? Again, probably.

I think I might have to go my own way once more if the Anniversary version of TBC Classic unfolds the same way as 2021's version did, but we'll see. There's still about 6-8 months before the pre-patch drops.

*Old Blanchy's murder --even though I knew it was coming in the post-Cataclysm storyline-- killed my interest.

**Again, the WoW Community is their own worst enemy.

Meme Monday: More Gardening Memes

This past Thursday was the official planting date for my part of the Midwest, so I thought I'd honor this with some more gardening memes. These don't have any relation to gaming, but I figured why not?

This meme is the reason why I decided to do another
Meme Monday on gardening. From memegenerator.

We don't have a dog, but if we did I'm sure they'd
love to help out in our garden. From thefragrantgarden.

Yes, weed is legal in Ohio. From veggiegardener.

My sister-in-law does have rabbits, and I'm sure
they'd be doing this if she gave them half a chance.
From imgflip.

Yes, I snickered. From Boredpanda.

And finally, something for people from my
generation. Or maybe slightly older. From imgflip.

"You had Love in your hands, and you gave it up!"

I returned to Retail WoW's Elwynn Forest on Wednesday so I could say that I finished up a zone in Old New Azeroth. I picked up where I left off, in Eastern Elwynn, visiting the guards near the Lumber Mill.

Again, they condensed the running back and
forth into a bulletin board. The James Clark quest
was new to me, so since I hadn't run into it before
I decided to ignore it.

A lot of the denizens of the Lumber Mill are still there, from the Supervisor:

And the lumberjacks. Can't forget them.

To the Seamstress and her family:

Angelic glow not included.

That brought up one of the weird things that I had to get used to in Retail WoW. If I thought the changes Blizzard made in Wrath Classic made it easier to quest out in the field, the current state of Retail made those old Wrath changes look draconian by nature. If I had to click on something it was patently obvious by either the glow surrounding the NPC (as seen above) or item (seen below):

Having seen all three versions --the Retail glow, the Wrath sparklies, and the "absolutely nothing" Vanilla Classic-- I kind of prefer the Vanilla Classic version. If you're not in any particular hurry, hunting around and finding it on your own presents a certain sense of achievement once you succeed in finding what you were hunting for. The kicker here is the qualifier "If you're not in any particular hurry", as it seems that questing is something to be gotten through rather than enjoyed for what it is.

Or that people want the quick dopamine hit to keep on rolling. Whichever.

Somewhere in the forest surrounding the Lumber Mill, I dinged L10 and two things happened. First, my toon became eligible for that leveling buff (which I honestly forgot about), and second...

"I'm sorry, who are you and why are you calling
me a champion? And with those eyes, are you
on drugs or something?

I muted Wrathion's invitation, since my in-game character didn't know who the fuck he was, and even out of game I recalled him in Mists as a spoiled-rotten asshole. I have absolutely no desire to deal with him, and I'm not about to pretend 8-10 years' worth of in-game stuff went on just so I can be "current".

But now that I think about it, a third thing happened when I reached L10 that was more annoying than either of the two things listed above:

See that? You can't get click on it and get rid of it. Blizzard really really WANTS you to make a specialization choice, and I really didn't feel like doing that. I mean, if I'm going to examine only a few zones, why make a choice? There's no real reason for it, and judging by what I've been playing already I ought to be fine in generic fashion. At least in Classic WoW, you can ignore talent trees as much as you want, and I certainly do just that for 3-4 levels at a time. 

The thing is, Blizzard makes you pissed off about it by letting it block your bags:

At that point my stubbornness really kicked in and I guess I should be glad my wife wasn't around because I used some pretty colorful language when I told Blizzard they could do with all of their pop-ups.*

While I was running through the Lumber Mill, I remembered that the Horse Breeder for Elwynn Forest was nearby, so I stopped and said hello. I was curious since I knew that it was always a big deal in Vanilla Classic to reach L40 and finally get your first mount (once you could afford it, of course). Additionally, I kept seeing a pop-up telling me some mount or so was added to my collection, so I wondered what that was up.

Those prices were off by a factor of 100
in Vanilla gold.

What the hell? How is it possible that I already have that mount known and in my collection if I never played this toon until this previous weekend? And those prices were so low that I thought that surely the horse market had collapsed or something.

Well, in true Vanilla fashion I eschewed the mounts in favor of running around everywhere, which meant it was time to go visit Western Elwynn and say hello to Hogger.

In Vanilla Classic, Hogger is an elite that unless you're the right class and get high enough in levels you're not going to solo him. There's also the issue of Hogger wandering around the area he spawns in, which frequently means he either jumps on you when you're not expecting him or he pulls adds from the gnoll encampments whenever he attacks you. It's a meme in Vanilla Classic that there's the occasional "Hogger Raid" where you get 40 L1-L5 toons together to fight Hogger. I've never participated in a Hogger Raid, but I do appreciate those who put them together.** 

Retail, however, has a different ending to the Hogger fight:

Yes, I let my opinion be known.

With Hogger dispatched, I headed out to Westfall, where I encountered what I knew and dreaded awaited me:

Again, I let my opinion be known. I'm almost 100% certain Blizzard did this to get us to care about what happened to the Furlbrows and their horse Old Blanchy, but all it did was make me mad enough to simply stop playing their game. The devs cared enough to give Old Blanchy a back story where you could find "Young Blanchy" outside the inn in the intro area for the Wrath Classic instance The Culling of Stratholme, and this is how it ended for the beloved old horse? And with dad jokes too?

This was obviously written with returning players in mind, since a new player will only see a murder mystery without any frame of reference. They won't know that the Furlbrow's deed, which is easily obtainable as a clickable item next to Hogger in Retail, is a drop in Classic that you might or might not get. About half of my Classic toons have the Furlbrow's deed quest completed, which is fine. I don't need it to enjoy Westfall and its storyline.

With that I went back to Stormwind and found a few more people in town than I did over the weekend. Not many, but a few. I did discover those Drac-whatevers that I thought were in-game toons were actually NPCs, so I kind of just shrugged and logged off.

I suppose I could have danced atop the fountain,
but The Macarena isn't that appealing to me.

And that's that, I suppose.

Is the game easier? Certainly.

Is the gameplay smoother? Absolutely.

Does the story work? Eh, maybe? If you're not invested in the story, yes. If you never saw what was there before, yes. If you never question as to why it effing took the Stormwind constabulary until the moment you defeated Hogger to show up when they could have captured him without any issues whatsoever before then, then sure it's fine. But if you are prone to questioning things and preferred the old NPCs the way things were, then yeah, it might not appeal to you. 

And let's be honest: if you're being called a hero when you've obviously not done that much in Azeroth, I guess being called Champion once you reach a certain level isn't that surprising. What is surprising is that people aren't calling you a god or something.

*It involved Blizzard and that place where the sun doesn't shine.

**That thing about "making your own fun" in the game again.

EtA: Corrected grammar.