Classic WoW Release Announced!

So now that I have an actual date to plan for (August 27th, 20019), I feel I can make things happen. I'm not exactly pleased by their beta opt-in requirements, being you need an active sub running, but I guess I won't be spoiled by re-discovering everything earlier than others.

Now the pressing question: what is the plan when launch comes? I personally am in a group on Discord planning everything for our semi-casual/semi-serious guild and outside of the needs for structure for everyone's sake, I turn my eyes to alt characters. I will be needing high-level alts (perhaps several max'd out, even) for the purposes of easier farming materials for my main and various other expenses (mount/training, for example). I'll need to have a character or two placed in specific locations for specific spawns, be they world bosses, annoying rares, etc.

So many things running through my head and yet I get this nagging feeling in the back of my head as if something is amiss. I musn't dwell on things as any news should be good news this far into the thick of things!

Onwards, upwards, and all that other good stuff!

HOLY NOODLES! This blog is still up?

So, after years of "life drama", I found out this is still somehow a thing on the internet. I would have thought it'd have been purged a long, long time ago.

So...yeah. I don't play WoW currently. Stopped in October of 2018. Had a full-blown anxiety meltdown which alienated everyone I knew, caused a great deal of undue stress on my family, and pretty much borked me up pretty bad for about 6 months as I tried to "find myself", came back and couldn't get hired on to anyone (even the absolute slop-fest of scraping the bottom of the barrel), but finally stumbled into a job that is NOT completely and utterly crippling my physical, mental, and emotional health! Yay; go me!

I had a slight temptation to start playing the game again but my computer is no longer supported. At least I still have Hearthstone, though admittedly I primarily play that on my phone when I'm not pre-occupied with Jurassic World: Alive. Seriously, that game is Pokemon Go that still isn't rural-player friendly but at least it allows SOME form of progress and isn't structured that you may as well uninstall for not living in a city. Also, dinosaurs are way more interesting than cartoony plush toys that can only say the name of their species.

I am currently in the process of saving for a new computer for work purposes and if I just so happen to have the time and enthusiasm for WoW, well...that's a bonus. However, I HAVE been following all the Activision/Blizzard news for the past year and all I can say is this: Classic WoW better be DAMN GOOD (by which I mean properly handled and not equipped with a skeleton crew to fix things and such) because I absolutely loathe the WoD/Legion/BFA direction of feeling like you pretty much have to log in every day to do chores. Gear should just be gear. Content should be actively participated in and not delegated to mission tables that NPCs get to do. Anything even RESEMBLING artifact power can go to hell as getting benched because you have 0.00471% less raw power than the next guy because you skipped a day or three (when you're not even in a hardcore Mythic or raiding group!) is simply pathetic.

I know every era of WoW had its downsides but I have no interest in feeling like working a second job to MAYBE live through a few fleeting moments of euphoria before immediately being snapped back to reality and having to undergo the personal hell of getting to that "high" which diminishes with each passing instance, demanding more and more of my time for less and less return on my investment, so to speak.

Anyone else in the same boat as to their feelings on the current state of things? Should I (when I am actually able) entertain a month or two into BFA and re-analyze from a first-person perspective instead of my current third-person one?

Random Thoughts Make For A Psuedo-Post...Maybe?

This is just freaky. I keep on being completely drained of my will to go on, I don't post for basically a ludicrous amount of time, and then I suddenly get hit by inspiration to post something which, in reality, doesn't actually accomplish anything.

So as anyone knows (or at least SHOULD know), Blizzard no longer "intends" to re-implement flying in WoD or anytime thereafter for the forseeable future.

Sucks, right?

I am an avid supporter of flight and I will not make excuses for Blizzard as they have PR of whom are paid to do that, amongst other duties. However, we do have to realize that in a game that has gone through as many and as major of dramatic changes in its relatively recent history, we the players are to blame for this complete wreck.

This snowballed out of control the moment we started only half-heartedly giving our opinions and felt that the mediocre attention put in towards these and other (usually more pressing) issues was "good enough". Let's face it: we got lazy. You did, I did, the vast majority of us just wanted to be left alone to our own agendas. I have to wonder, though...when did we just get too exhausted to fight back? I know my own downfall was when my guild imploded and I don't ever see a single person on at the same time as me anymore. A few people I have been friends with for years still play but at various hours I cannot match and we all do our own little things but don't have any consistency.

What about you? Are you like me, sighing in mental frustration, not wanting to cut myself off from what few people I know by guild hopping in hopes of just finding people to DO things with and make me care about what little I have going for me in this game? Did you bite the bullet and just accept it is what it is and either don't care or, dare I say, enjoy the idea of no flying from here on out?

In less depressing news, I have found myself playing a LOT of casual play Hearthstone. Priest is, by far, the most fun with wildly varying results due to Mind Vision and Thoughtsteal. I really hate playing as a mage in this game just due to feeling I cannot be "allowed", as it were, to have a creative deck due to so many cards being a "must-have" feel to them (double fireball, double polymorph, at LEAST one flamestrike but two is usually better, etc.).

I feel armor should have a cap, though, as fatigue doesn't ignore armor like in virtually every other game I've played with similar mechanics. No one can exceed 30 health so why can I (though admittedly rarely) find myself against a warrior with full health AND something like 78 armor if they are particularly lucky on draws while I'm dumped on with my *terrible* draws.

I still win most of my games against such situations, as hopeless as they might seem, but that's just because of very niche spells and the fact priests heal as a hero power. Mind Control on an enraged Grom Hellscream does wonders.

Anyway, fun game and all, been far more likely to give in and invest some money into it but don't due to my feelings towards Blizzard in regards to WoW. Would not make sense if I supported a company in one game for minor reasons while despising the direction it takes for another game for major reasons.

I'm getting a bit of a headache now but hopefully I managed to pull off something resembling a sense of rational thought.

Hopefully I can break this terrible habit of infrequent updates, while I'm at it!

Have a good one and I hope everyone has a positive week! Remember to check out the World of Warcraft Q&A they are doing on Saturday. We need answers and hopefully Blizzard doesn't dance around the issues that are urgent.

Ye Gad: It's Been Forever and a Half!

So...wow, WoW has been a complicated thing for me.

I had spent the latter half of 2013 on the opposite end of the country (BC to MB) and when things didn't work out over there, I had to leave anything that wasn't clothes back there, my computer included. It's all still there, courtesy of one of my best friends allowing me to come back at a later date and pick it all up.

I'll just say this: I've tried to follow WoW but it's been difficult without being able to log in. My guild was one, maybe two nights away from a Lei Shen kill before I had life overwhelm me and I missed it, never to go back. I was able to get a slightly staggered presence in SoO at a later date, mostly LFR, but was able to get to experience a little bit of the raid. I forget if I got to down anything in normal mode but I did have fun attempting Nazgrim. Maybe Malkarok (I was not able to keep any consisentency in attendance so I probably had that another night).

However, long story short: I'm hurting real bad for my WoW fix.

Given the influx of information about the new expansion, Warlords of Draenor, I felt it was time to put my two cents in. I needed to find a quiet place to collect my thoughts so I needed to be creative. Hell, I'm typing this from a public college library computer!

As a mage (Fire For Life!), I found myself rather horrified at the school specialization being surprisingly forced. I actively used several frost spells for multiple purposes, mostly gimmicky add control in dungeons/raids, and obviously for solo treks in the world. R.I.P. Cone of Cold, you will be missed. Deep Freeze, too, but was harder to set up when other people wouldn't stop hitting stuff. Had to really be on the ball for timing inbetween your allies' attacks.

While I appreciate the drive of the development team to define various specs across all the classes, I feel they should have made the mage class an exception. We're *supposed* to have all sorts of magic available. I mean, really, why not just have demonology, necromancy, etc. be different mage specs if they are going to limit us in this way? There's very little point.

I am VERY excited about the hunter class, though. At first, it started with the promises of cutting ability bloat. I found that to be the bane of my alt existence in that I never knew what I should bother pulling to the action bar. Too many options with far too similar purposes. At least mage spells all had a very clear reason for existing alongside the others.

Then came when a hydra was Tweet'ed and confirmed as a possible tame. See, for me, the hydra is my favourite mythological creature of all time. It was about time, given they've been not only in WoW since launch, but also memorable units from Warcraft III. I never played a hunter during WotLK and its accompanying Oracle quest bug where you could have a ghostly hydra. I was so jealous and I am one of the few people ever to LIKE the fact that it never shuts up with its squabbling amongst its own heads. I was probably annoyed at some point, sure, but I have grown to like it. I know, weird, but it is what it is.

Upon looking at the specific changes to the hunter class as a whole, including cut abilities, I was sold so fast on the idea that I will learn to play this new generation of hunter no matter what. Best of all, I'll finally have an alt that can solo older content without resorting to rolling yet another mage (I lost count how many I've made which are strewn across multiple servers) OR a class which I have once loved but have grown to despise with all the extra nonsense (death knight and warrior are the two biggest ones for me).

My love of this game has only strengthened over the past going on 9 years, despite all my concerns, complaints and even full-out rage over various design choices, decisions of change, and implementations of entirely new concepts but I will take a stance of cautious optimism with this expansion.

Now...I really want my computer back.  =(

Random Comeback!

So.

I went away for a while.

Yeah, that was relaxing. For a little while, at least.

I got in on MoP's release a little later than I expected but it was ultimately for the best (about a week or two in so that I didn't have to deal with the obvious flood of people who would ruin the experience for those that just wanted to go at their own pace).

There was a ridiculous amount of new content that overwhelmed me with just how much variety there was in how to spend your time (pet battling/collecting...whew, I knew it'd be fun and more involved than I suspected, but man did I have fun with it) and even got my main geared out a good portion but without a consistent raid schedule due to a number of factors I'd rather not go on about here.

Currently, though, I'm sitting without any time on my account (Blizzard's 3-day courtesy reminder email didn't make it to my inbox for some reason, I checked spam/trash/filter settings, nothing is out on my end) but I'm not re-upping until I re-install the game and update to 5.1.

While doing non-WoW stuff, I accidently saved some files into my WoW folder and when I went to delete the intruding files, somehow managed to catch my WoW Launcher, preventing me from running the game repair tool as well as the more obvious aspect of locking myself out from being able to download game updates.

Oops.

Anywhoo, despite all this, I wanted to express my latest distaste since I didn't have enough experience with MoP content to justify making any blog entries for a while.

Now, though, I can definitely say that I am burned out. I tried tackling on too much and paid the price. Golden Lotus rep kicked the everlasting bejeesus out of me and I've done maybe one, two days max, worth of Shado Pan/August Celestial dailies and I know I'm well behind everyone already but it's just not going to happen.

I got exhalted with the dragon trainer faction (sad, I can't even remember their name, despite it being one of the more fun things to work on so far) and the Anglers (but something seriously needs to be done about trying to cast anything if you're on the mount from them, extremely aggravating to be prompted with error messages when I can use any other mount fine and dandy when I decide to cast something) but the Klaxxi story wrap-up will have to wait since revered status is good enough for me, just as Golden Lotus is left to the same fate.

I was led to believe, prior to MoP's release, that we could pick and choose what to work on and not be penalized for it. This was not the case because I wanted to dive straight into Shado Pan content but no, I had to work my rear off for a bunch of random people I had absolutely no incentive to care about (Golden Lotus) just to be given the go-ahead and continue the story arc that just gets thrown to the wind JUST before you hit honored status with them.

Because I had planned to be an early adopter of raiding in MoP, as well, (well, on a *relative* scale), I had to keep up best I could with dungeon runs, dailies, and LFR. Scenarios helped a bit due to their more forgiving nature, but Valor had been a drain on time I could be doing things without feeling pressured to log in every freaking day. Good thing I am not worried about THAT anymore, eh?

Regardless, knowing what awaits me when I come BACK into the game is a bit depressing. Do I jump into the new dailies as someone who hates PvP on a mage? Do I try to polish off previous rep grinds now that a lot of it is now "old content"? Do I just hang back and do previous expansion content with the occasional LFR queue thrown in just to not go crazy?

I'm so mentally sore and tired that the only specific thing I feel I *should* go on a tangent on is all the people complaining about the never-ending grind dailies present.

But then again, I'd feel pretty hypocritical, since I certainly agree with many points raised on the issue but here's the thing: I am not even REMOTELY as invested in complaining about dailies as a lot of people are.

It might be that I make it harder on myself because I've yet to read any truly engaging posts on why they are a good thing and made into the next evolutionary step of "casual endgame" content that isn't necessarily loot-based (yes, it helps lead to an initial boost in gearing people up if they so wish but it's better than logging in just barely long enough to complete one or two things and actively staying away from the game for as long as humanly possible, really, for $15/month, why wouldn't you at least find other things you enjoy or play a different game?). People are focusing on the same negative points to such extremes that I just want everyone to shut up. I am so frakking tired of the lack of *variety* of discussion.

Whenever I see some promise in someone's argument, they fall into the trap of talking about the same thing everyone else has already covered a thousand times already. If that doesn't happen, though, and they DO actually have something new to bring to the idea pool, I am unfortunately met with that person no longer participating in the discussion as they recognize only a marginally slim amount of people will bother to read their input at all because the sheer amount of old ideas and complaints pushing them as far away from view as possible, hidden from most readers since no one honestly likes the idea of having to go through hundreds, if not thousands, of posts to HOPE to find that *one* idea everyone should focus on.

Stupid mob mentality and its ability to crush the creative process through brute force alone.

Ignoring the stupidity, however, only goes so far, both for in-game purposes and general human limitations. You can't simply will yourself into a blatant state of blissful ignorance and continue doing something. Even if I managed it, I'd have to ignore several connecting states of awareness that would take apart my personality, the very core of what makes me...well, ME, and that is completely off the table for obvious reasons. Well, I'd hope they're obvious, or else that'd be pretty scary as to how many zombies may already be among us.

So long story short: discouragement from merely existing within the same environment as this overwhelming amount of discontent people makes an already tiring experience just that much more of a drain.

Not surprising when you take a step back and look at it, really. But does it have to be in my face every single farkin' day I play?

Even just *thinking* about how tired I was getting doing all this and not having any positive reinforcement to push onwards with finishing content in the game is enough of a brain-drain, let alone the actual act of participating in it.

So, with that, I hope I wasn't gone for so long that my thoughts are just 'preaching to the choir' at this point (oh, I suspect some but hopefully not ALL).

But yeah, sleep nodals  ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,aaaaknoijak ,,,,j,,

Queue-Griefing: No, Not the 'Tank is a DPS' Type

***This post contains coarse language and should be considered NSFW.***

There are many thing that while I do appreciate about the automatic random dungeon-finding tool, every once in a while (though growing more apparent each day for some reason beyond me) is that I am getting insta-queues with the healer or tank (usually the latter) literally clicking the rejection button so fast that I can't even move my cursor to just the damn box that pops up, let alone the 'ready' button. Sure, once or twice is annoying but you at least eventually get a *real* queue wait time going.

Ha! Sure, if I'm lucky that'll happen. I can spend anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes repeatedly going through this stupid loop of people just queuing JUST so they can decline. I don't know why the system doesn't ignore these people and move onto the next or maybe I'm just unlucky. I even wait a good 5 to 10 minutes in-between these sessions of griefing the LFG system because I figure either they'll stop their shenanigans or I'll be placed in such a way that I don't deal with that person/people. Hardly ever works.

I don't have all day and when I decide I want to just do a few dungeons, that's it. I don't want to do 'x' and 'y' and 'z' things while waiting for said queue to pop; I just want to frigging do the damn dungeons. I will alt-tab onto YouTube or something else and wait for the blaring announcement noise (I turn my in-game sound WAY up, just to be sure) that my queue is ready but I can't exactly be flipping back every second or two just to realize I've been caught into the same horrid mess.

I would estimate on most days I get this bullshit wasting my time, I average two, TWO, dungeons per 3-hour span. And to think, that's being GENEROUS.

There's no reason for it and I honestly believe that anyone who does this should be hit by a debuff that locks them out of being able to queue for anything (LFG, LFR, BGs, Arenas) for at *least* an hour. I'd prefer two hours, but Blizzard has a tendency to react to most griefings with a slap on the wrist, if even that. Too busy studying botting trends (they all do the same fucking things to teleport here, there, and everywhere; they all have set behaviour patterns when confronted; they are practically all carbon copies of one another so can you just ban them and get it over with?) and answering inane conversation pieces that eventually make their way to the forums so we can all want to strangle people for bumping back legitimate tickets.

The fun doesn't stop there, oh no! No no no no no no no.............then we have the bastards who actually ACCEPT the queue when it pops up and promptly leave. Gee, thanks asshat #34619548, I just spent a half-hour or more (specifically queuing instead of randoms is murder, upwards of an hour and a half) to get here in the first place and now we have to wait 10 to 20 minutes on *top* of that for that slot to fill.

Sometimes it prompts the others to leave, as well, especially if the tank leaves first and then healer (or vice-versa) and then since you're by yourself, you can't look for more since you need at least one other person with you. You have to start an ENTIRELY. NEW. QUEUE.

Fuck you. Fuck your mother. Fuck your dog.

Fuck. My. Life.

Fuck it hard; fuck it long. It's going to be a long *fucking* night!

I cannot fathom what sort of person honestly thinks that causing this is entertaining. I get upset, sure, I understand that an eerily-large portion of the internet is comprised of sadistic torturers who I could imagine flourishing in the criminal sector, given the right push (they already have the motivation, after all) but where does that come from? Were they sheltered all their life? Well-off and got away with treating people in real life, face to face, like complete shit? No conscience to speak of? Complete sociopaths?

I don't know.

I *do* know, though, that they are costing me real time and real money that makes me reconsider the idea of paying Blizzard for what is *supposedly* a game. Y'know, a game? Intended for fun, to relax, to derive some sense of "downtime" from the hustle and bustle of real life?

I didn't sign on to support masochist practices and I'm sure most other people didn't, either.

Min/Max: Stop Harassing the Salvagers!

***Warning: this article contains a large amount of coarse language and should be considered NSFW.***


I don't like that I'm going to touch back on min/max stuff but unfortunately I need to.

I just got out of a Drak'Tharon Keep run on an alt of mine and by the end of it I had literally every other party member on ignore *and* I was shaking like I was having my own personal earthquake. In fact, I'm STILL shaking, making this difficult to type because of a) erratic movements, b) anger clouding mind so I apologize if I should have worded anything differently, and c) I honestly am flabbergasted (oi! look it up) that anyone could be this unreasonable, if not just plain ignorant.

Okay, let me set the scene for you: party members actively talking about min/max stuff and clearly having no subtlety whatsoever. In fact, the thought of racing to max level and getting everything prepared for only max level play is circling around their heads, correcting what people should and should not be doing.

I didn't check gear because I feel it to be rude, invasive, and completely unnecessary since everything is going smoothly. We finally get up to King Drek and the caster staff drops, me rolling 'Need' on it and winning since I rarely upgrade anything and when I do it is ALWAYS a massive boost. The healer complains that I, as a mage (yes, I suppose I forgot to mention that part), shouldn't be using spirit and completely ignores the fact that it's well-over twice the stat value (even without the spirit it has while there is no intellect or stamina on it) of my current staff.

Okay, before you tear into me for being a moron and saying that spirit is worthless to me, let me say: I AGREE WITH YOU.

However, if you completely ignored the part about it being an amazing upgrade for me, then I'll let you think on that for a bit now that I've pointed it out. Here we have someone who is so tunnel-visioned into reaching max level and will work tirelessly to reach that goal that they'd probably replace it in pretty much no time at all, rendoring it essentially vendor trash as opposed to a tool that will be appreciated and used for a long time. I level slowly on purpose AND I make things last far past their normally expected lifetimes.

I still use the goddamn GNOMISH ROCKET BOOTS, for fuck's sake. They're just that good and far, FAR more consistent than the rocket belt tinker. Kinda sad, that, isn't it? Mostly the latter point but the former one, too, I suppose.

I know in a couple more levels, I could do the Ampitheater quests but, y'know what? Probably not going to do it. No one of a higher level would DARE help a lower level without a nice tidy monetary compensation unless they're guildmates and even then only if they just happen to be on at the same time, happen to not be busy when the request is made, and just happen to feel comfortable doing it, the person asking for help having been in the guild an adequate amount of time. A lot of things that just have to line up and not everyone is so fortunate.

So then I'm getting bitched at from every angle up to the point where they start putting words in my mouth, claiming I said it was good for one reason or another. They kept changing their stories, so of course you can probably tell how fed up with this I'm getting. I said that it was good for my personal situation, explaining in simple words (I shit you not, they were posting '?' at the words "take into account that...", HOW do you not understand that if English is your first language?).

Anywhoo, a bit more back and forth resulted in me saying something that was a simple sentence that just *happened* to be longer than 4 fucking words and them doing the tl;dr and "don't need to post a book, bro" and even outright admitting to the fact that they were too lazy to read it.

I blew up. I started in with that being part of the reason I believe people should start beating children to within an inch of their life again: to learn some respect, manners, and actually put effort into something for once in their lives. This was not received by the "u mad, bro?" family, but rather by "philosopher of WoW, all up in this bitch".

What?

I had to take a moment because I really didn't see how that was relevant at all. However, I regained my composure and unparalled, seething anger/hatred.

I even went so far as to say, ahem:

"I'm angry because the stupid and lazy are breeding, only making me wish more George Carlins were alive, making people feel like they need to kill themselves because they are wastes of skin, space, and oxygen. No one is perfect but you people set the bar pretty damn low."

I got so flustered and wanting to cause levels of bodily harm (preferably through mutilation) that I was brought down to that level.

You happy, you fucking pieces of shit? Are you happy that you've made the world a little more dark and disturbing? Are you proud that what you've done is make yet another person wish they had the ability to wipe out the entire human race and pray that this fucking failure of a fluke mutation never repeats itself? Are you? ARE YOU?!

You make me sick.

Leave the salvagers alone. Not just in WoW. But in life, period. We don't brag. We don't feel entitled. We don't go out of our way to prey upon the emotions of others and their appreciation of having a bit of dignity, intelligence (be it logistics, observational skills, etc. the list goes on and on), and the idea that they don't need to rush through every goddamn fucking thing. Did I really need to be harassed about a single copy of potentially infinite amounts more of a digital item that would serve almost no purpose for most others but would be a great boon to myself, despite it not being the best of the best of choices?

There is no legitimate reason for why anyone should treat anyone else to the point where one is just outright ashamed to be a part of the human race. After all, if this is how we treat others in an online gaming experience, then what does that say about how we *really* want to treat our friends, family, co-workers, random people on the street?

Think about it. I have, and frankly, I can't get over how much I hate people as a whole.

As someone once said, "A person is intelligent; people are idiots."