Meme Monday: Bosom Memes

Oh, it's not going to be that bad.

Honest.

I think.

Anyway, there have been some bosom-related memes in my pile that I really figured I ought to post. Rather than letting them out via Miscellaneous Mems, I figured it's easier this way.

From Pinterest.

I've had this one for so long I honestly don't know
where it came from.

From Dalmuin's Deviant Art page.

To be honest, I'm fine with the Blood Elf aesthetic,
since they're proportional. From Noxychu via Wowhead.

Umm... I think this distraction attempt won't
work with.. uh... with... What were we talking about again?
From Imgur.

I can honestly say I've never seen a shirt similar
to this out in the wild, but I'm also certain I'm not
part of the generation this t-shirt is marketed toward.
From... Uh... I actually don't remember from where.
Redbubble, maybe?

#Blaugust2025

"I Guess You Like Killing Dragons"

This is something that periodically pops up when I play MMOs, and I have to wonder whether it's unique to me or more of a general reaction.

When I'm in a PvE group environment, such as a max level dungeon, instance, or raid, the question of  "What are you here for?" will occasionally pop up. In raids, that is an inevitable part of handling loot, especially in the "old style" of not having personal loot as found in Retail WoW, as no matter what method used people will want to obtain loot.  In other cases, people are merely being social and asking a pretty general question as an ice breaker. 

There's even a good chance that people have some quests they want to finish, such as the numerous quests that take a person back and forth to Blackrock Depths, or they want to help someone with a special questline, such as the WoW Classic Era Paladin or Warlock mount quests. 

But I'll use as an example an Onyxia raid from last year that I got talked into going by a couple of people in my WoW Classic Era friend group. This Ony run came after their guild's weekly Blackwing Lair raid, and for those people not familiar with the Onyxia raid, it consists of a couple of trash mobs and the dragon, Onyxia, herself. It's a fairly quick raid if it's done well. But this particular time, they had barely 20 people there out of a maximum of 40, and that as definitely pushing the envelope as far as how few people you can take into Ony and complete the raid. 

So I figured why not and asked for an invite. 

After joining the raid, I joined their Discord for coordination purposes and the Raid Lead sent me a link to a website for their Soft Reserve system, Softres.it. I didn't really need to look at the list of items to know that Onyxia doesn't drop a lot of loot for Mages. For the most part she drops one piece of Tier 2 gear (the Helm), and the only other items of interest would be the 18 slot bag and (of course) the Head of Onyxia, which you can turn in for an okay reward for Mages but you do get to have your name announced as everyone in your capital city gets the "Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer" buff. 

I just gave a brief glance at the options there and decided to pass on reserving any loot.

This didn't go unnoticed.

Before first pull the raid leader said they were one short on people reserving, and after a short pause, there was a "Cardwyn, you're not reserving anything?"

"No, I'm good," I replied via chat. 

"You're sure?"

"Yep."

"I guess Cardwyn likes killing dragons," someone quipped.

I'd begun typing a response, basically saying that the helm I was wearing (a turban, actually) from Upper Blackrock Spire is better than the Tier 2 Helm, but.. saying that was simply taking too long and they were ready to go, so I let it slide.

There's a reason why I turned off
the Show Helm option in MMOs.

But I'm sure that more than one person looked at my gear, which was a mix of Blue and Green gear, with the only Purple pieces on it being the hand crafted Robe of the Archmage and the ring I got from having an Exalted reputation with the Stormpikes in Alterac Valley, and said "WTF?"

That's the thing, really: the raids with actual upgrades for me --in the lower WoW Classic Era raids, anyway-- are in the other raids: Molten Core (MC), Blackwing Lair (BWL), and Zul'Gurub (ZG). To be honest, I'd be better off running ZG a few times to get some basic raid pieces and then go to BWL, but I'm sure people jump right in to BWL without a thought once they hit max level and get attuned to the place.

***

The concept of someone joining a raid or other group content when they don't need anything, gear-wise, seems to be such a foreign thing that it flummoxes people.

I was once kicked from an instance run of fellow raid members back in Vanilla Classic WoW because I was in there for fun and not a guildie. One moment I was in the group and the next I was kicked, being told in Discord* that since I was in the instance for fun and not a guildie they were going to give my spot to a guildie who needed the instance run. If I were given the option I would have stepped aside, since everybody involved was on the same raid team, but being booted without giving me a chance kind of stuck in my craw.

For a long time I felt that the person leading that instance run was trying in a not-so-subtle way to try to push me into joining the guild that I raided with, and I resented the passive-aggressive manner in which he was trying to accomplish his goals.** As time has gone on, however, I now realize that this was just a symptom of the encroaching hardcore direction that both the guild and raid leads were heading, and one that I became increasingly at odds with.

I realize that saying that you play for fun
can be wielded as some sort of  excuse for poor behavior,
but I've been on both sides of this argument and I can say
that the try-hards are worse. From Reddit.

Doing things for fun is just a statement that you enjoy what you're doing. It's not an excuse for not caring, or trying to validate bad behavior in group content. Unfortunately, however, "fun" has somehow gotten a bad reputation in gaming circles, which boggles my mind. 

This isn't work, after all.

If your gaming has morphed into work for you, or you begin to look down upon people who are there to enjoy themselves, maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you're doing. 

*It was a post raid instance run, so we were all in Discord.

**This person is the same person who pulled me aside after a Classic Naxxramas raid to tell me how to "improve" my DPS, despite he not being my class lead, nor a raid lead, nor playing a Mage for anything other than one of his many alts. This unsolicited advice annoyed the hell out of me, given that I knew what gear I needed to improve and I couldn't make the gear drop if the RNG Gods were not interested. Given that my class lead was really happy with my overall output, as he had his own trouble with getting gear, I valued his input far more than these "suggestions".

#Blaugust2025

What Goes Around

1982 was a bit of a seminal year for me.

The 1981-1982 school year was my 7th Grade. I was knee deep in puberty, I'd been playing D&D since the Fall of 1981, and I'd dove headfirst into reading Science Fiction and Fantasy beyond just Lord of the Rings. Movies from 1982 still rank among my favorites: Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Mad Max: The Road Warrior, Rocky 3, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.* I was a year away from discovering Metal, but the popular songs of 1982 are still lodged in my head all these years later.

Among some of the big hits of the year, such as I Love Rock and Roll** and Eye of the Tiger, was a song from a studio band called The Alan Parsons Project:

It got up to #3 on the charts in the US (higher than I thought it did, to be honest) but after that it kind of faded from view except for the fans of the band and their concept albums. I always liked the song, as I could tell it was a bit deeper lyrically than the average pop song of the era, but I never got the album to find out how it fit into the larger sonic picture. 

A couple of years later, the intro piece to Eye in the Sky, Sirius, began being used as the introduction music to the NBA's Chicago Bulls games. Sirius became synonymous with the Michael Jordan era of the Chicago Bulls, so that when they hear that synthesizer intro basketball fans immediately think of #23. 

I find it surprising that, decades later, people have rediscovered The Alan Parsons Project through reaction videos and, much to their surprise, that Alan Parsons is "that guy who wrote the Chicago Bulls Theme".

For some reason, the official channel never

put these two songs together as they ought.

It's been 43 years since this song came out, so I guess that it's time for newer generations to rediscover the music of the past, just like how my generation rediscovered the Big Bands of the 30s and 40s.

*Sorry, I don't like E.T. (more of a reaction to how popular it was than anything else) and I didn't really care for Tron. The Thing wasn't my type of movie so I never watched it, and I didn't really watch Blade Runner all the way through.  

**Yes, I know, the album was released in 1981, but the song was released in 1982, so it counts in my book. I could just as easily have chosen Rock the Casbah or Jack and Diane to fill in this spot, but some 8th Grade girls used to play I Love Rock and Roll ALL THE TIME during lunch and recess. Looking back on it, I'm still amazed the nuns let them get away with it.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

#Blaugust2025

Thirty Plus Years in the Making

I recently became reacquainted with an old friend of mine, Master of Orion. I don't mean the newest version out there, but this one:

From 1993 with love, although I'd bought my original
copy in 1995 or so at a used video game store.

Yeah, it runs on Steam via DOSBox, but you have to tweak the configuration settings a bit to get it to a decent size. Graphically speaking, it's still in ancient times, so setting the config file to Original means it's very small in modern monitors and Full Size means it's far too large for old resolutions. I set it to 1024x768, and it seemed to work well enough.

It's very raw in parts, especially with the diplomatic UI, but otherwise it is still an engaging game. If you're used only to modern 4X space games, such as Stellaris or Galactic Civilizations, MOO 1 is probably a bit plodding for you, but for me it hits all of those beats I loved in the genre. You don't have to have all the tension all the time to find a game engaging and fun.

It's still in the early to mid game here, but I've grabbed
all of the planets near me before the Silicoids could
get them first.

Still, there are quirks that highlight just how far gaming has come. For example, the Humans you see on screen are all male, while the Mrrshans (cat people) are mostly female. It does suffer from a bad starting point syndrome, but that's what you get when you start with a randomized galaxy. At least the games don't take that long --it only feels longer until you boost the speed in DOSBox by a bit-- so you can knock out a game in an afternoon.

I'm just glad that an old friend like this is not only still around, but able to run on modern equipment. 

#Blaugust2025

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