The Curse of Player Choice

With a title like that, oh yeah, I went there.

If anything, I'm a fan of player choice. You want to allow your players to do things not on rails, so they can come up with creative solutions and basically feel like they have some control over the direction their avatars can go. Even if that control is an illusion, it's often best to feed that illusion rather than tear away player agency from the beginning. 

Some games, such as sandboxes, are perfect for providing player choice. 

I finally ventured a Minecraft day's travel away
from my original base(s) and... built another home that's 
a lot like the first couple. Big, blocky, and with
plenty of lights so a baddie can't spawn in the shade.

Although ironically enough the first (or in the case of the Minecraft house above) the third house ends up looking similar no matter which game you play...

My first house in Conan Exiles, and as you can tell
I had been steadily upgrading it along the way.

My similar attempts at architecture aside, the games allow for a large breadth of creativity. If there's a single "best" way of doing things, I haven't found it yet. At least in the single player version of these games I don't have to worry about opposing players making my life a living hell, so gives me some free time to expand my horizons. While dodging enemies, that is.

***

In MMOs, however, creativity and player agency are frequently not quite so free and available. Since I've never played the game, I'm not going to explore EVE Online here.* If EVE players want to discuss player agency in their game in the comments I'm happy to read them, but it would be foolish of me to opine on something I have no direct experience with.** I'll instead talk about the various MMOs that I have played, which are mostly WoW clones. 

A lot of WoW clones have the outward appearance of player choice --instances to run, raids to do, PvP, quests, achievements, explorations, pet battles, etc.-- but only rarely do they actually have an impact on the game world itself. At best you can change your in-game housing, but outside of that the most you can play around with is your clothing and your titles.

And mounts. Can't forget those.

If that's a brontosaurus, does that mean that Goldshire
is actually Bedrock and I'm in The Flintstones?

Still, you're not going to see player created forts in Redridge, for example, that could be assaulted and destroyed by a Horde guild. You can't create little hidey-holes in the middle of nowhere so that you have a safe place to spend the night. And if phasing doesn't exist, everything eventually respawns in-game.***

This is done for several reasons, but the most obvious one to me is that if players are able to shape the game world in a WoW-clone MMO, the early adopters will have an incredible advantage over anybody who comes after. Think of all the people in ArcheAge who got the prime real estate when the game first released, and people who tried the game a few months later never had a shot to get any housing in a lot of the "older" servers. It's bad enough that progression raiders who don't rush rush rush to the end in WoW (or purchase the top tier expansion to get Early Access) will be far behind their fellows in game, so having the ability to affect the game world would enable those hardcore players to carve out swaths of the game world only for themselves.

I'm pretty sure that WoW would never have lasted very long if all the hardcore players tried to be assholes to the rest of the player base by effectively putting up giant "KEEP OUT!" signs everywhere.

Yes, I'm old enough to have watched the
Little Rascals/Our Gang serials on television.
From Redbubble (and The Little Rascals).

***

Given the lack of ability to directly affect the game world, the WoW clones I've played have had to rely upon other things to provide that illusion of player choice. Instead of buildings in the game world, providing the players with various activities plugs that gap suffices. It's only when you eschew those activities and strike out in the direction of finding your own fun that you realize that you can be somewhat limited in what you can do. 

Sure, you can only be limited by your imagination, but if you want structure to that imagination, you're likely going to rely upon third party addons, such as those used in the original Hardcore WoW modes or Role-Playing assistants. This is one of those situations where the third party addons don't help you raid better, but they enhance what you can do in the game. They're tools, just like those that help you organize your bags and bank space, but it does certainly seem that Blizz' focus on addon reduction in Retail WoW has left these type of addons alone and intact for the time being. 

Some people, such as YouTuber Nixxiom, have advocated for Micro-Blizzard to incorporate Role Playing addons into the base game's toolset in the same fashion that there are now official Hardcore servers in Classic WoW. There are likely other addons that people could use to expand their capabilities to shape the game world to their liking, but I honestly kind of like leaving this aspect to MMOs to the players themselves. By preventing the players from being their own worst enemy by shaping the game world to their liking, MMO developers at least give their games a fighting chance at survival. 

*And to be honest, you could put Star Wars Galaxies here as well. Calling Njessi. Njessi, white courtesy phone, please.

**I know that shooting your mouth off is what the internet is for, but I'm not going to go there. This time. 

***Even phasing is limiting, as people who are on different phases will not be able to directly interact with each other in the phased zones. I rediscovered this back in Wrath Classic, and I really didn't like it.  It felt like I was being pushed into completing story beats just so that I'll be on the same part of the story as everyone else, and if you know me I really dislike being pushed into doing anything, whether it for social reasons or for work. (For the record, I still haven't completed the entire Wrathgate Event in Wrath Classic on any toon.)

#Blaugust2025

Accidental SWTOR

I was just reading some articles first thing in the morning before work when I stumbled across something odd.

From a Slate article about Chili's Restaurants of all things.

I did a double take and said to myself, "I can't possibly be reading that right. Just what are the odds that a brand name for tablets found at a chain restaurant are named the same as a planet in SWTOR?"

It was then that my brain caught up with me and I realized that I was thinking of Ziost, not Ziosk...

From Swtorista.

Ztill, it'z not everyday you zee zo many 'Z' wordz in a name, you know...

#Blaugust2025

When You're Too Meh for a Midlife Crisis

I sometimes wonder what my midlife crisis would look like. 

Yes, before you point out that I'm north of 50 so I technically should have had my midlife crisis a decade or more ago, I'm aware of that. But I also know I didn't really have a midlife crisis either, so...

Would it be a fast car, like this Mercedes I discovered at my son's apartment parking lot when we picked him and his partner up for Gen Con?

It was SO out of place compared to all of the
rest of the cars in the parking lot.
Fun Fact: I looked up the price online and it costs
close to what our current house cost back in 2002.

Nah. If I had my choice of car, it'd likely be something from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s, although I'd not say no to a mid-80s Ford Mustang or Pontiac Firebird.

These were made locally until mid-1987.

The thing is, that era of cars are in high demand from people my age (or a little older), so even the thought of buying one to try to fix it up is kind of cost prohibitive. 

The pricing bubble has also afflicted another hobby of mine, audio, because I'd like to have picked up an older 1970s era receiver, but again a ton of people my age have gone into that and driven up the prices.

Such as this Pioneer SX-780, made in 1980
(the manufacturing run was 1978-1980).
From Oleg's Vintage Audio.

Then again, my trusty old NAD T751 receiver could stand a cleaning and repair job, so maybe it's for the best to stick with the NAD and my Pioneer VSX-2000 that is still chugging away in the basement.

Or I could go the route of a friend of mine and start up an AD&D campaign of my own...

Such as module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
From eBay.

But I'm happy playing in his campaign at the moment. No sense in stealing his thunder.

Maybe I could just take that period of my life when I actually did progression raiding in Vanilla Classic and say THAT is my midlife crisis, and then we'll call it a day. That's probably the easiest answer. 

EtA: Corrected the NAD receiver model.

#Blaugust2025

Meme Monday: Back to School Memes for 2025

I can laugh at these, mainly because I'm long since past those days. My oldest is going back to university to pick up another degree, this time in Music Therapy. Luckily for her, all of her music credits and gen ed credits transferred over, so she only really has a couple of years' worth of psych classes and hands-on work, and then she'll have another Bachelor's degree. 

From sixpackmom.

From Imgflip.

From Knowyourmeme.

From Giphy and Seventeen Magazine.

From No Guilt Life.

#Blaugust2025

Another Link Gone

On Thursday, Jim Lovell passed away at the age of 97. And with him went a critical part of our connection to the Space Race of the 1960s.

People now remember Jim Lovell courtesy of Tom Hanks' portrayal of him in the movie Apollo 13, but he was already famous in the aeronautics and science community for his participation in Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and Apollo 8, the latter of which became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon. 

Jim was more than those NASA missions; he was a Navy pilot, a test pilot, and an Eagle Scout. 

From Tom Hanks' post on Instagram.

I think that Buzz Aldrin is one of the few remaining astronauts still alive from that era; when he passes a door will have truly shut.

Godspeed, Jim Lovell. You'll be missed.

#Blaugust2025

Catching Up With the Joneses*

I still remember the day we got our first color television. 

It wasn't all that long ago --okay, it was 44 years ago, so sue me-- but it was also long after most of my peers had a color television in their house.

We'd always had a television as long as I could remember, but they'd all been black and white. Given the lack of money my parents had, I understand the economics of the situation --black and white TVs were much cheaper than color televisions-- and I suspect my parents got a hand-me-down TV or two over the years. The television circuitry were vacuum tube based**, and looking back on it I wonder just what my parents were thinking when they left said TVs on rickety carts that looked like were going to collapse at any time. 

It looked a bit like this, although this TV cart
is a lot sturdier than ours was. From AtariAge.

I'm not sure when Mom and Dad decided to finally buy a color television set, but the day they did it was memorable for me because it was the day that the episode of The Incredible Hulk called Prometheus Part I aired. I remember that because when Dad was setting up the television that was the show he was using to check the color settings, and it's not every day that David Banner is there next to a big ol' meteor.

From hulk.fandom.wiki.

It feels very odd now, looking back at television sets from back then, and comparing it to the sort of television that we have in our houses now:

No, it's not our house. Do you know how hard
it is to find a "generic" looking house with a modern
television inside? So many of them look like
homes for people much wealthier than myself.
From Tom's Guide review for the Sony Bravia 3.

It's been 45 years for me from that first color television set to today, and it feels like I'm looking at a Sopwith Camel versus a Lockheed-Martin F-22. There are times when I wonder just what the next 45 years will bring, but I also wonder what will happen to us in the next 45 years. Okay, I'll likely have kicked the bucket, but I meant we as a species. If people tell you they know what will result from our impending singularity, they're likely incorrect. I don't think anybody really knows what will happen, and pretending they do is like putting lipstick on a pig. People may tell you what they want to happen, for good or ill, but that ain't worth crap. There's already speculation about what our current level of generative AI is (or isn't), but it isn't what I'd consider AI to be. It's just a better form of search with the "side benefit" of AI lying to us. 

Oh, I'm sorry, it's "hallucinating", which is a fancy way of saying you're making shit up because it might be what we want. So in that respect, generative AI is as good as the average politician. But let's hope that generative AI is at least as useful as that old color television set, whose analog reception was relevant up until 2009.

*Ironically enough, we did have a neighbor in our old neighborhood --prior to our move in 1976 to my parents' current home-- with a last name of Jones. Sometimes you can't make this stuff up.

**When I was little, I used to warm my hands on cold days in winter by putting them over the vents in the back of the set by bringing a chair over and standing on top of it to reach the back of the TV. If you've ever been in the vicinity of a vacuum tube radio or television, you know that they get pretty warm over time. 

#Blaugust2025

Giddyup

It's amazing how quickly you can rocket forward once you gain access to the Scarlet Monastery instances.

Yeah, I need to work on getting Cardwyn 
a Robe of Power. It should take me an evening
to accumulate the materials.
This is the status as of August 7, 2025.

Yes, I've gotten five toons to L40, and four of the five have mounts. My Questing Buddy was looking at the materials her guild would need for AQ40, and she figured that they'd need about 400 Nightfin for their use. To help her out, we worked out an arrangement where I'd fish for 20 stacks of 20 Nightfin, and she'd pay me 10 gold per stack. Right now, Nightfin is going for about 16-20 gold per stack, so I cut her a discount --she didn't know this until now, assuming she reads this post-- and provided her with all of the fish over the course of 3-4 weeks. However, I didn't take into account all of the training I'd have to do on 5 toons once I hit L40, so I had less gold at the end than I thought.

But that's not a big deal, since I've been fishing the past few nights to get my gold supply back up. 

I'm thinking that I'm going to stick with these 5 toons going forward, and if I get the chance I'll work on the Shadow Priest along the way. Once these toons start reaching 60 I'll double back and tinker with the rest, assuming there's time before the TBC pre-patch. 

I've discovered that I really enjoy more classes than strictly the Mage and Rogue, which surprised me a lot. I think that the lack of complexity in Vanilla Classic works in my favor, as I'm able to relax and enjoy things without stressing out so much or requiring the soon-to-appear single button attack in Retail WoW. 

So, I ain't dead in the water yet. 

Oh yeah, I suppose I ought to mention the elephant in the room: the WoW Classic Anniversary Servers allow a player to enable Dual Specification once they hit L40. That sounds great in theory, but I really don't have any desire to configure Dual Spec for any of my toons anytime soon. The DPS toons --Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Hunter-- don't really need it, and the Paladin I intend to keep as Retribution anyway. Plus, to me it's a gold sink right now, so I'd rather save my gold for training which is infinitely more useful. 

Onward and upward, I suppose...

#Blaugust2025