Wait, What WAS Considered Beautiful in 2004?

Okay, I'll admit that I wasn't expecting to be writing this post when I sat down on Friday morning before work, but things happen.

Well, this happened:

I've been watching Angelika's videos for over a year now, and her focus on items such as clothing, art, style, and other things in MMOs and RPGs (mainly Elder Scrolls and WoW) are interesting to me. So, when she decided to focus on the standards of beauty in WoW (primarily WoW Classic), I was interested in her take on it. 

The biggest takeaway for me was how she viewed Vanilla WoW through the lens of what was considered attractive and stylish in 2004, which was when the game released. I'll be honest in that I couldn't tell you much of what was considered "in" at the time, because our youngest was a year old and overall the years 1998 - 2005 were a bit of a sleep deprived blur. 

Then, this morning, this dropped:

I haven't watched the trailer either (I haven't watched a Retail WoW trailer except for Dragonflight since Mists back in 2012), so I can't speak to it myself, but I found her critique very interesting in that Blizzard is basically "going generic" as far as the Blood Elf look. If you looked at Liadrin, you'd not know it was a Blood Elf from WoW. She just looks like an elf, not a Warcraft elf.

Of course, that's not enough, because apparently there's a big divide on the reaction to the trailer. People either adore or despise it, with not that many opinions in the "meh" middle. Which is pretty much standard for anything in Retail, but a lot of the hate is focused on Liadrin's look and how "masculine" she looks. The pictures I've seen of her simply don't look like her, masculine or not. Liadrin has a specific look to her that dates back to TBC, like Angelika pointed out, and Blizz moved away from that.

Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, but yes, the videos are worth a watch.

#Blaugust2025

That Was Annoying

As a matter of course, I don't have my video settings to automatically play. There have been plenty of times in the past when I've been doing some research or prepping for something and a video automatically plays on either my phone or my computer, disrupting everything and everyone. Of course, advertisements are the worst offenders, so I very rarely open YouTube on my phone because I won't pay for YouTube Premium and adblockers don't work on YouTube's mobile phone app. 

So, imagine my surprise when I got the Battle.net alert last evening on my phone that said something along the lines of "Adventure is Calling You Home", and before I basically swiped left and ignored it, I thought "You know what, I might as well see what ad they're sticking on people's phones first."

It was this:

I took this after I stopped the video.

Yeah, I was not pleased.

The trailer started playing straight away, ignoring my settings, and I was definitely not a happy camper. The only thing that would have made this more annoying was that there were video ads before the trailer played, which I'm surprised wasn't the case.

You know, I should have known better, but given that the Battle.net app tends to be pretty well behaved overall I was thinking it wasn't going to go full Google on me. But nope, not the case.

Oh well. Live and learn.

#Blaugust2025

It's Not Exactly Being Unshackled, But...

...four of the toons in Operation Spread the Love are at L42 or above.

These are the levels as of August 20, 2025.

Oh, I still like to play Azshandra, but when I play a Rogue I tend to spend more time sneaking around and getting into places than actually questing. Plus there's the additional issue of Rogue-hate out there, because some members of the Rogue Brotherhood simply have to behave like asses.

"A lot of Rogues suck, but you're okay," I was told in a Scarlet Monastery run the other week.

I should just take the compliment as it is, but it does get me down a bit knowing that some people simply take delight in torturing others just for shits and giggles. I was whispered out of the blue in Arathi (or Southshore, not exactly sure which) by a player if I wanted to go to SM: Cathedral. I was wracking my brain, trying to remember if I'd run an instance before with the person whispering me, but I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth and said "Sure!"

During the long run up to the Scarlet Monastery I found out that the group was partially through the run and originally had another Rogue in the group, but said Rogue stealthed up to the front of the altar inside the Cathedral and attacked the end boss, causing all of the mobs inside the Cathedral to attack at once. The Rogue then dropped group, their mischief complete. 

I had a few choice words for such behavior.

So, when I behaved like a normal person and didn't act like an asshole, the rest of the group was appreciative enough that they were fine with another Cathedral run since I came in halfway through.

***

That whole whisper out of the blue to run a dungeon is by far the exception rather than the rule for my experience in the Anniversary servers. Typically, if I want to run a specific dungeon, I'll begin making my way there before I'll even make myself available by either LFG chat or the in-game tool. This is especially important if I get into a run as either as a Warlock or a Mage: the Warlock for the summons, and the Mage to make food and water for the group. I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten into a group on a Mage where I've been making food and water for people throughout the first third of the dungeon. My response to that is to either make all the food and water prior to making myself available, or make food and water while going to the dungeon entrance.  

I also just figure that it's the polite thing to keep people from waiting. I'm personally fine with not having instant summons to dungeons like in later versions of WoW, but I also know I'm in the minority. Dungeons that are hard to get to, such as Maraudon, Scarlet Monastery (for Alliance), Gnomeregan (for Horde), or Shadowfang Keep (for Alliance) are ones I make a conscious effort to be at least well on my way there before I make myself available for a pug run.

***

Overall, the past couple of weeks in-game have gone pretty well. The pace of leveling has picked up again, as you can see by the results, and I weathered the cost of all of the mounts at L40 and all of their training costs upon reaching L42. 

Yikes, L42 had a nasty amount of training cost for some of these toons.

While my original plan was to get people to L50 by August, I think it more likely that late September-early October is a reasonable goal. So we'll see how it progresses.

EtA: Apparently I can't count. There are four toons at L42 or above, not five.

#Blaugust2025

At The End of Everything be Sure to Buy the Merch

There was something that was supposed to happen yesterday, but I can't remember what it was...

Hmm.... Not exactly.

No, that's not it. Something else...

Kind of funny how this is likely going to upstage

that other announcement yesterday. Then again, Microsoft
owns them both, so I guess it doesn't matter to them.

Maybe? It is video game related...

I don't know about that. Midnight in Goldshire
is a wee bit different than Midnight in other places.

Oh yeah, that was it: something was supposed to happen at Midnight.

Or something like that.

Under the headlines of "I'm not sure they know their audience," This appeared in the WoW Classic tab this evening:

Mists Classic, 20th Anniversary Servers, Retail Midnight. Same difference, I guess.

But what got me was that email I got this afternoon, even before the "Adventure is Calling You Home" email:

I guess Blizzard knows their audience, but... Meh. The universe is ending; buy the merch! And buy the top end package for the housing exclusives and Early Access!

Unfortunately for me, I apparently never bothered to post about Retail's impending player housing --because I checked under "Retail" and couldn't find it-- but if I had I'd have said something along the lines of Blizzard making some aspects of housing dependent upon the Cash Shop. Well, the Expansion Price Tiers isn't the Cash Shop, but it's close enough for me. 

To be honest, I'm surprised that Blizzard isn't abandoning the lower price tiers entirely and just having everybody pay $100 or more for the expac. After all, look at what Nintendo is doing for the prices of their new games on the Switch 2, and WoW is deliberately orienting the contents of the various packages that if you want to be "serious" about raiding or collecting, you'd better shell out for the top end price.

I don't really have a leg to stand on here, it's just that what I spend money on is different than what others in MMO spaces do. Like on raw materials to make another one of these:

No appendages were lost in the construction
of that end table.

#Blaugust2025

Have We Crossed the Rubicon Yet?

There was a joke --probably found in a Dilbert comic back in the 90s-- about how management felt that if they made everybody redundant the company could maximize their profits.

Back then, watching coworkers get replaced by overseas labor*, it certainly seemed like this was what Corporate America had in mind. The ultimate goal, however, was to use automation to replace the need for actual employees. Think of how robots moved into assembly lines back in the 80s, improving both quality and the need for extra workers, and you've got the idea.

Well, with the advent of Generative AI tools such as Chat GPT, Corporate America is going all in on using such tools to supplant actual workers. Unlike the robots of years past, this is aimed right at the white collar employees, but not just the ones in so-called "high cost" countries**, but all white collar employees. 

If the AI ingests buggy code, will it learn to write
buggy code? Blizzard is asking for a friend.
From LinkedIn.

If you told a C-Suite person that you could replace about half to 3/4 of your workforce with generative AI tools, they'd leap on it. "Imagine the cost savings!"

But those within the corporate world that are embracing Generative AI aren't thinking about their own jobs. Why would you need people in Finance if you had Generative AI to handle the budget and understood Finance Law? Why would you need people in bookkeeping if all you had to do was let AI manage receipts and pay requests, make judgements as to whether the request was legitimate, and make the proper payouts?

Or, why would you need people in a Legal capacity if AI had ingested all of the law in a locality and could make judgements based on both that and your company's contracts? Generative AI could even review case results and inform you which court to file a grievance in to maximize your chances at a favorable result. Generative AI could review all of the legal cases throughout a country (the US, for example) and determine how best to word your submissions to a court. And in which locale.

In a customer service job, an AI would be immune to social engineering attacks, as an AI customer service representative would stick to only what they are allowed to work with. Customers won't like it, but an AI being immune to any form of social engineering would likely balance out any public relations problems. 

For all of those gung-ho on AI in Corporate America who also manage by spreadsheet, I'm not so sure that they're aware that their own job can be replaced by Generative AI. All that has to be done is have someone prioritize the data ingested into the spreadsheets and just let the AI handle the rest. 

Imagine Bain Capital being just about a half dozen people at the top and Generative AI managing everything else, how would you tell the difference from the real thing right now? To the grunts or the people who buy the products that their businesses are selling, it would likely seem the same. 

Soulless investment firms aside, about the only thing that Generative AI can't do at the moment is sell something. Not the point-of-sale systems, mind you, but being an actual salesperson selling cars. The sales process itself is pretty well known, but people will likely prefer human interaction in a face-to-face environment over an AI. 

But who knows? Maybe that will change over time, but that also requires the risk of teaching an AI to dissemble or subtly lie, and I'm not so sure we want to cross the Rubicon there. Generative AI already "hallucinates" when it attempts to provide you with what it thinks you want, but intentionally lying for a separate agenda is a different thing entirely.

As for the end game, I suspect the sheer volume of investment dollars thrown at AI the past few years will eventually implode as such a bubble is unsustainable without a real return on investment. And let's be honest: a ROI I'm talking about is "I want to see profits next quarter" rather than "I want to see profits in 5-10 years". In a very real sense, Corporate America's short-sightedness may ultimately help employees in the short term, because investors expect to make a ton of money in return and they typically don't have the stomach to wait a decade for it to pay off. In the long run, however, most MBA work will be able to be run by Generative AI, so the same Finance Bros and Tech Bros who are all in on Generative AI may find themselves without a job themselves. Those same people had better start dreaming up what they want to do after they discover that Generative AI ate their lunch. 

*And then watching that first round of cheap labor from the 90s get replaced by even cheaper labor in cheaper locations in the 00s and then the 10s.

**Yes, that's what employees in the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan/Taiwan/South Korea are called in corporate-speak.

EtA: Corrected a misspelling.

#Blaugust2025

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