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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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ud play more or drop out given i didn t have the time to play to such extreme levels to effectively git gud i eventually dropped out in frustration since that time i ve come to understand that the way the seasonal content is designed this is a feature and not a bug companies want you to login as much as possible and spend real life money on stuff in cash shops too so seasons are designed to maximize fomo without turning off the player base en masse there s a fine line between utilizing fomo to get people to constantly login and buy stuff without pushing them at all or too much and over the years the more successful games have figured out where that happy medium is hint that happy medium is much too fomo driven for my liking from dean signori it s the consumption based society placed in a video game however instead of keeping up with the joneses with cars or computers or power tools or spouses it s skins and bling and pets and gear and mounts and weapons and titles can t forget the titles part if you like that great have at it apparently you re very much in the majority here but for me i m tired of it the unintended side effects on social interactions i m tired of the naked manipulation by game companies to profit off of psychological tricks i m tired of the systems and fomo driven seasonal activities being first and foremost and items such as story and the world being the afterthoughts i can t tell you the number of times i ve heard in an mmo the equivalent of i really don t care about any of this shit the story or the lore i just want to kill things and get my loot and for me nothing is a bigger buzzkill than hearing that from someone i m playing group content with if money is all you love then that s what you ll receive princess leia star wars i realize that game companies are giving people what they want if people or the right sort of people didn t want that they wouldn t make it they can justifiably say they are responding to player feedback but at what cost i look at mmos as these big expansive worlds galaxies but seasons tend to reduce the scope of an mmo to that of a lobby game or focusing on fewer specific activities that are part of the current season this is heightened by the time limited nature of the seasons which can not only focus on the tasks at hand but heighten fomo as much as possible for example i couldn t login to retail wow for the past few months without seeing this pop up it s nice that at least they let you know how much time you have left but this specific implementation was also done to artificially heighten the fomo behind the remix environment after all which item gets the largest font size the time remaining not what this little box actually is about wow remix legion social media hasn t exactly been helping people cope with fomo either there were youtube videos that came out around the same time as that screencap above that said is it too late to start playing legion remix i know people are doing this for clicks but still it s abject lunacy all around if it s too late to start and you re over two months from the end then that s absolutely terrible game design and the devs should have locked character creation when it was effectively too late if it s not too late to start and you re over two months from the end then the community is actively sabotaging itself yes i considered the trolls but i also look at the players who only consider engaging in something if it s not too late to do something as a problem in itself it s never too late to try something out but if you won t do it if you can t get a certain specific item or title then there s a wee bit of a problem here having raised three kids i know better than to give in when one of them threw a temper tantrum and people who throw temper tantrums because they didn t get the thing they wanted or those who would take their ball and go home if they didn t win don t amuse me still it s extreme fomo set in motion by the design team if the only way to achieve certain things is to login practically every day that s part of the reason why wow s player base melted down in bfa and shadowlands pressuring a player whether by peer pressure or in game pressure to login and do certain activities every day if you don t play with a circle of friends you re kind of screwed if there s one constant in the positive commentary i ve seen from bloggers and online forums about seasons it s that it s great to play seasonal content with your friends it certainly appears that when someone complains about seasons in any forum based environment reddit discord game company forums the solution most often presented is go find a guild or a circle of friends and play with them so basically what people are saying is that the way to fix problems in the seasonal format whether exacerbating already extant ones or creating new ones is to avoid the problem entirely go find some friends and do the content with them do you not have phones friends possibly apocryphal i find that answer extremely disingenuous for two reasons it doesn t actually address the problems and if you play at a different pace or style than your friends you ll create fractures in your group of friends and you ll be unconsciously pressured into operating at the speed of play that your friends are operating at in my years of playing mmos every guild i ever joined imploded or changed to where i or my style of play was no longer welcome i honestly envy people who have no qualms about jumping to another guild at the drop of a hat or joining a bunch of guilds because i simply can t when i commit to a guild i commit to playing with people who i at least consider acquaintances for me it is not a lightly held commitment and i don t leave a guild without some serious consideration likewise i ve experienced the gradual fissures in my own current friends group because most of them pushed far ahead really fast in the current anniversary servers while i deliberately chose to not get swept up in the euphoria of progression raiding in vanilla wow again sure their rewards were great including one of them landing an atiesh but i was adamant in pushing at my own pace for my own sanity i was talked to by them about how they just want to go do stuff with me and that they d be happy to boost me i basically said thanks but no thanks and that was that i very rarely directly interacted with them in game save for general chatting and i ended up having to go the pug route whenever i wanted to run instances or do group content i was fine with that but i did miss running content with them in the end i guess you could say that they were all more hardcore than i was looping back to seasonal content if you operate at your own pace or you simply don t know people and aren t inclined to randomly join one of the many guilds who try to chat you up with whispers you re left with random pugs and we all have our horror stories about toxic pugs in mmos all the more so when the limited nature of seasonal content means that puggers want to go harder and faster than what they explicitly state add to that in retail wow at least the very real potential that if you screw up in a mythic plus run by a lack of understanding lack of skill the person whose key it was loses their key let s just say that people can get cranky about that which adds to the toxicity of doing pug runs hence the evergreen play with your friends suggestion that bypasses the toxicity problems without actually addressing them to me this is akin to an ostrich sticking their head in the sand and pretending everything s fine too few people use the full meme from kc green and the verge the short term nature of seasons means the long term is rendered less important we ve all had our posts or commentary about why does the story in x suck now or maybe why isn t company y putting out new story for their game well game companies aren t made of money despite what it certainly seemed in blizzard s case 17 years ago so if they re pumping out things to do in seasonal content guess what typically gets the shaft the overarching story game being focused on the short term so much means that resources aren t being allocated to the long term and that poses a problem for the overall success of the game this is not exactly a new phenomenon since it certainly seems that most publicly traded companies or those owned by private equity firms operate on a quarter to quarter basis i ve personally seen my own company or one of its predecessors basically use financial funny business like temporary pay cuts for one month to make the quarterly bottom line look better so i m quite familiar with how such a short term focus causes long term problems people notice a decline in quality employees get frustrated with the lack of pay or working conditions and leave or management lays off all of the people with institutional knowledge in favor of cheap labor who make the same mistakes that were done years ago so yeah such a focus on short term seasons whether there s an overarching road map or not means the overall plot can get lost playing single player instanced content in an mmo is a band aid on a community problem oh yes i figured i d address the other suggestion i m sure people will promote at least from a wow perspective if you can t do group content go solo stuff in delves that s always reworked for each season after all that s what it s there for isn t it yes and actually that s the problem delves are an admission by blizzard that it s cheaper to devote money toward creating a single player instanced experience in wow than it is to clean up the toxicity in the wow community let me put it this way every company has to devote resources in such a way that provides the most short term profit not long term because a company that s publicly listed on a stock market or owned by a private equity firm has to show maximal quarterly profits cleaning up an in game community takes a firm commitment from a game company and the community itself and more importantly it takes money frequently more money than a game company wants to spend for an intangible benefit of having a good community and let s also be blunt losing the bad actors in a toxic community also means that the game company is losing those players money so to a lot of game companies creating a single player experience to circumvent the toxic community in the pugging scene is the way to go it only costs some developer time as opposed to a lot more money invested in admins and enforcement and voila you get a workaround for those left out of group content to do instanced content of their own never mind that it is the gaming equivalent of pay no attention to that man behind the curtain here s a shiny new thing that you can play with from choice of games and the pythons of course it s not a matter of whether it s fun or not that it exists annoys me it also feels like it s a game company patting you on the head telling you to go play and leave the other content to the big boys and girls that single player instanced content is popular is kind of an understatement and yes i m quite aware of the green eggs and ham nature of my dislike but i do know that the nature of my dislike is grinch y enough that i would never even admit to liking it if i did try it and like it i could probably delve deeper rimshot and provide more reasons why i dislike seasons and seasonal content but i think that i ve beaten this topic enough and like i said above i don t expect people to agree with me on this because they have different experiences and they do have a tight knit group of friends guildies that play at the same pace as them so many of the potential pitfalls with the seasonal format don t manifest with them and that s fine with me i m glad they re having fun but for me i dislike it when not everybody is having fun when people don t find the seasonal format to be an enriching experience it doesn t matter if it s in wow swtor eso or any of the other mmos out there i don t consider a marker of success to be whether merely enough people are having fun but whether those that aren t can find their place at the table as well maybe game companies can only do so much as the community s own behavior has its own part to play but game companies can create the conditions that a better in game community can arise or they too can focus on the short term and worry about the long term ramifications next season always next season or ham radios i guess it s a sign that this is everywhere and not just in gaming communities seriously do a short youtube search and it ll pop up and blood pressure it happens to me all the time this is my understanding as i ve never played retail since mists so it might have changed my watching the crowds at the major cities and goldshire don t count as playing imho except for the executives because of course that s the case it would also require me to engage more in the retail wow story and that is simply not happening posted by redbeard at 3 21 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels elder scrolls online memes musings retail swtor wow wow classic wow classic anniversary wednesday september 10 2025 it s that midwestern mentality alas i did not win the 1 80 billion powerball jackpot last saturday of course there s the small matter of actually purchasing lottery tickets if you want to have a chance at winning i m very much in the if the winnings are high enough i ll buy a few tickets camp but that mentality also wars with a line an old friend from college used to say about lotteries lotteries are a tax for people who can t do math i m an irregular at best lottery player although i did buy a few tickets on saturday even if i had won you probably wouldn t have noticed any changes to the blog because i m not the sort of person who runs around showing off what riches they have and before you ask no i m not rich luckily for me i live in a state where the identity of major lottery winners can remain private so there s that at least i used to joke that the way you d find out if i won the lottery was not because i bought a new car or something like that but that i finally got some major repairs done to the house growing up and living in the midwest has given me a very specific set of values where the ostentatious display of wealth and or success is frowned upon obviously that midwestern mindset has declined a bit over the years as pop culture has penetrated even the most remote parts of the country but at the risk of sounding once again like an old man yelling get off my lawn tm i m a not a fan of the oh look at me sort of mentality sure dress the way you want i m fine with that hell i admire people with a fashion sense such as kamalia that i don t have if you want to see what you can do with fashion in an mmo such as wow go read her blog kamalia et alia because she is amazing at what she can pull off but if you go running around acting h...
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