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description= Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;
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Text of the page (random words):
ask maybe your goal isn t to have fun at all let me explain walkthroughs are very common in teaching they provide students with a process to understand a concept with known starting and ending points and if you get stuck during homework or a test you can fall back to that walkthrough as a guide to help you work through your issues for example my advanced lab 1 and 2 classes in physics at ud relied heavily upon you as a student to study and reproduce journal articles then write up the results as a formal 10 20 page lab report my third lab experiment was provided to me by the professor showing me the lab equipment and the basic design handing me the requisite journal article and then said now go and reproduce the photoelectric effect while some lab experiments are more simplistic than others they are all walkthroughs however i would argue that entertainment isn t the typical reason why people utilize them yes there are those who find it fun and i m one of them but the primary reason why they exist is for instruction and understanding likewise walkthroughs are found in various other sporting and hobbies they provide a basis for understanding a learn by doing methodology and a foundation to build upon i m thinking of the karate do kata that the kids and my wife used to perform for their karate class and you get the idea i recognize this kata from their classes from the standpoint of games for some people walkthroughs are the best way to learn to play the game they provide you with the understanding of the logic behind the game where the pain points are and how to solve the problems presented so assuming that the answer to what is your goal is to have fun or be entertained then we can proceed to are you having fun that answer is completely on you if by having fun you go do your own thing then go do it if to have fun you follow a walkthrough or the meta then do that too however that doesn t mean that people won t judge you because of what you do people are people and i ve found over the years that the people who love to say i won t judge you often are judging you just not out loud and yes i m guilty of that too i m not going to deny that if people react negatively to you for not following what they perceive is the correct way of playing don t be surprised but it also needs to be said that you don t have to yield to their pressure if they want you to play a specific way and if it s a requirement for your participation with them then you have to decide whether it s more important to play your way or play with those other people if others can t respect you for the way you want to play a game i think there s your answer so for me having fun means doing my own thing trying to puzzle out answers on my own and not utilizing walkthroughs or a published best method to those who use those because they ve got other things to do such as raiding then that s fine you do you yes i realize it s my blog and i can do what i want with it but i try to avoid being an asshole it could be argued that botting software for mmos is rapidly approaching this tipping point even then it must be said there are greater and lesser degrees of engagement while watching television or a movie if you re in a movie theater watching a movie the crowd can be more engaged than if you re watching alone at home the same thing goes for the shared experience of watching a sporting event in a bar or a stadium you may not be playing the sport itself but you re engaged with the shared experience of watching and cheering on the participating teams i ve told this story before but i ll mention it again the night before all of our advanced lab 1 lab reports were due i was working on one of my last lab reports when i somehow nuked the floppy disk my lab reports were on i had to scramble and rewrite 4 lab reports a total of 80 pages worth over the course of 8 hours i somehow managed to finish it in time my memories of that caffeine and terror fueled night are pretty hazy posted by redbeard at 2 06 pm 7 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels gaming memes musings self video games videos wednesday april 22 2026 a solved game forces you to respond to it whether you like it or not in the midst of planning the construction of some raised garden beds studying for the amateur radio extra class license and handling family related activities i ve had plenty of time these past few weeks to do some thinking the biggest thing on my mind was why i actively avoid trying to follow the crowd and follow the clearly defined optimal game path when playing any video game am i committing self sabotage by doing this when i play a single player game it s not a big deal because there s nobody looking over my shoulder to tell me i m doing it wrong i m quite aware that just about every video game from baldur s gate 3 to oregon trail has wikis walkthroughs and meta builds out there for people to use but unless you re actively streaming your gameplay people will be none the wiser but in the case of an mmo there is always a best way of doing something courtesy of algorithms and mathematics and if you re not following that meta build that s going to be a bit of a problem maybe not if you re playing the game solo but if you want to do any group content there s always somebody who will be annoyed if you re not doing things properly that s one of the big reasons why i never played what was at one time the best rated boardgame on boardgame geek puerto rico aside from being a eurogame with a pasted on theme designed to hide a mathematical exercise puerto rico suffered from what for me was a fatal flaw if you follow everything perfectly the winner will be explicitly determined by your initial turn order some puerto rico fanboys were so into the meta that they d absolutely flip their shit if you didn t play exactly according to the meta eurogamers aren t very fond of randomness in boardgames either from pinterest if you play mmos does that sound familiar here s the thing whether or not you play according to the meta of a game the mere existence of an easily obtainable meta for a multiplayer game means that you have to deal with the consequences even if you consciously ignore it other players will expect you to play it and if you don t that will impact their opinion of you as both a player and a person ignorance is unfortunately not an excuse for a subset of mmo players and once you become aware of the meta you really have no alternative but to deal with it yes i deal with it by actively ignoring it but that s also because i kind of figured out a lot of the meta playstyles in my classic wow toons through experimentation while questing sure i m not aware of the entire meta of a particular class but a short jaunt to icy veins or wowhead will present it to me in full gory detail i guess you could say that i m happy i got 80 of the way there by myself and it s frequently enough for the pugging i do or casual play raiding would certainly put that philosophy to the test because a i don t want to look like an idiot and wipe the raid and b i have a certain amount of pride in playing well and not being a liability at the same time i know that looking at the meta is opening pandora s box akin to downloading and utilizing your first damage meter addon once you see how you re really doing there s no going back there s a post by shintar on her swtor blog going commando that s 4 years old this month about this very phenomenon titled my dps is bad and i can t look away it has been living rent free in my head ever since i first read it that it came out 3 months after i gave up my progression raiding career certainly had something to do with it and i completely sympathize with her opinion at least with swtor the game culture doesn t trend toward hardcore that the versions of wow do but for me that post was uncomfortably close to the lead in before i d have another discussion from a raid lead about getting my dps up but that s the thing we re all responding to the very nature of a solved game consciously playing a different way from the meta is as much a response to the meta as embracing it i was thinking about this when my questing buddy spent some time playing stardew valley over the past winter in her usual way she went out and found a playthrough so she could follow the best path to completing the game i counseled her to just go and explore the game sure you get a score after two years but you can keep playing indefinitely after that unless you re deliberately trying for something very hard to do such as completing the original storyline within one year there s no real reason to follow a playthrough guide but you can guess the outcome can t you she kept up with the guide yes i m studying for the highest level of amateur radio license available in the us it is certainly much more technically oriented than what i found in the other license coursework while i originally thought i could be ready to take the exam by april i have since come to the conclusion it ll be more likely late summer before i m really ready seriously there s walkthroughs on how to win a game whose whole purpose is to get you to understand how migration on the actual oregon trail was like talk about missing the point i m very glad i m too shy to consider streaming because i would not be amused by such commentary typically having been told of its existence by another player wanting you help you get better at the game i m going to be charitable and it was a positive interaction but if you know mmos it s equally likely it was a variety of git gud scrub followed by a group kick of course i ve done that before do you have to even ask posted by redbeard at 9 55 am 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels blogs memes musings stardew valley swtor video games wow monday april 20 2026 meme monday writer blogger memes after some work i ve been doing for some upcoming posts i figured i d circle back to one of my favorite exercises in self flagellation writing writing is kind of in my blood because right now i m actually doing that i ve been doing that on this blog since 2009 and i don t see me giving this up any time soon i ve been writing fiction off and on since high school i was serious enough about it that i photocopied the submission info for science fiction and fantasy magazines out of writers market back in the 80s and 90s and the bug still has a hold of me today sunday while i put this post together i went back to a story i d been working on and tinkered with it a bit and tried to figure out the direction i wanted to take it a rut that i need to simply just tell my inner critic to shut up and just write myself out of anyway here s a few writerly and blogging related memes guilty from someecards sorry about that couldn t resist from bhargavkesavan wordpress com yeah been there this past week in fact from bang to write i keep thinking that my plot twists are so obvious that a truck could drive through them from autocrit this is also me from instagram well that s not gonna happen if my mom found this blog i m pretty sure she d think i was about to be damned to the fiery pit of hell or something from seoptimer posted by redbeard at 6 00 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels meme monday memes writing saturday april 18 2026 a tale of two extremes one of my unwritten rules about pugging is that i don t go all in until i get a feel for how a tank and healer operate together it obviously goes without saying that such a conservative approach would not be good if i were to ever get the urge to run mythic instances in retail but it s served me well over the years my credo boils down to don t do anything stupid pull threat and wipe the group while people are feeling each other out well i figured i hadn t been on my two horde toons in a while so why not pull neve out of the garage and go visit scarlet monastery neve is a frost mage so she consequently has a lot of utilitarian crowd control abilities when you combine that with my starting off slow approach what could go wrong almost from the beginning the healer kept pushing us to go bigger i can heal through it she said when i used single target for the first couple of mobs she said mage aoe to save mana instead of single targeting when over 3 in a mob i was annoyed at that because we originally had three in the pull but two additional enemies came wandering in midway through that fight and i mentioned as much i main a mage the healer replied i m used to it i main a mage too i replied and i want to make sure how well tanking is working before i go ham you ll pull threat it s what we do get used to it i grumbled at that there s enough tanks i know who dislike that belief and the behavior it encourages that i was immediately sympathetic toward the tank who said nothing we got partway through the instance and then the tank said brb 5 min and then stayed put well the healer was having none of that so she started pulling mobs one by one and we slowly worked our way forward i suspected the tank was just going to basically go afk and then vanish and sure enough he did just that so the healer got another tank and we continued on and finished the run once we finished it the healer dropped and we got a new healer the tank after the first few pulls asked me to go single target because he was having trouble keeping threat with me constantly aoe ing so much i know you want big numbers and all he began i m fine with single target whatever you need i finished we don t have that first healer around and that s fine whew our new healer said i m still learning healing no biggie i want to go at a pace you re comfortable with it goes without saying that while that first healer was definitely skilled i preferred the second healer because i worked at the pace that the tank and healer were comfortable with i didn t need any extra drama and i think that s a problem that some people seem to relish causing this reminded me of the time back in 2021 when i attended an aq20 raid where our raid leader had pugged one of the two tanks who turned out to be from the top raiding guild on our old myzrael us server yes the guy was good at what he did but he wasn t interested in listening to what the raid leader wanted which drove all of us nuts he began freelancing his way through the raid ignoring our raid lead and essentially directing people to do it his way well our raid lead kicked him top guild member or no and our guild master also kicked him from our discord sure the tank we got as a replacement wasn t as good but at least he could work within the raid team paradigm there comes a point where you have to relinquish your desire for big numbers to work with the rest of the group mmos have multiplayer in the acronym after all and the entire point is to work with people to accomplish a singular 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