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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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ow token of course if you are part of a progression raid team and don t partake in gdkp the introduction of the wow token won t have an impact on your ability to play wrath classic myself for example however there will be inflation in the prices found in the auction house and that might just have an impact on me after all i d like to do the quel delar questline on linnawyn at some point but i do realize that given my history of getting that battered hilt to drop i d expect the ah to be selling said hilt for well over what i paid for it back in the day then the question becomes do i want to farm for the gold to buy the battered hilt on the auction house or do i want to buy gold via the wow token or maybe a better question is is it worth it to try to recapture some magic from the old days when i know it s destined for failure at this point i m starting to think that it s not worth it era has been a shot of adrenaline to my system and i d be foolish to give that up narrator it didn t drop for quintalan in original wrath and q had to pony up 5000 gold on the auction house for the battered hilt posted by redbeard at 7 00 am 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels wow classic wrath classic wednesday may 24 2023 they actually did it well madseasonshow was right in addition to the return of joyous journeys to wrath of the lich king classic there was this little ditty hidden below the top of the news section woah the wow token has come to wotlk classic which means you can pay money to buy a wow token for wrath classic and in turn sell the token to buy gold in game you don t need to go spend money on a third party site just give it to blizz instead the details upon clicking are this so the token is for wrath classic only for now but i guess you can go out and buy your way into ulduar runs legally via in game gold you purchased by selling said wow tokens to say there are some unhappy people is an understatement reddit s r classicwow has suspended their rule banning promotion of private servers and it wouldn t shock me if blizzard gets classicwow suspended shortly for promotion of basically pirated content this won t end well i kind of presume that blizz is adding the wrath wow token to not only boost their bottom line but they figure that people will come back when icecrown citadel opens and they ll want to gear up as quickly as possible or to be blunt about it to pay people to get them geared as quickly as possible or to put it a third way the kingslayer title is now officially for sale via gdkp runs and carries with blizzard approving for blizz to keep the random dungeon finder out and bring the wow token to wrath classic i have to wonder who blizz was listening to most of the heat generated over wrath classic was from the rdf not from any lack of the wow token but the token directly generates profit for activision blizzard and the rdf does not oh well posted by redbeard at 8 00 am 8 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels wrath classic tuesday may 23 2023 a big problem of epic proportions there are only so many times the characters can save the world before it becomes old hat ad d 2nd edition dungeon masters guide 1989 page 123 that little quote from the 2e dmg highlights a big problem in a lot of consumable media today every conflict has to have bigger and bigger stakes and each movie or book or game s conflict has to be earth shattering to draw your attention and give the protagonists something to do while i realize that some might blame this on the success of the marvel cinematic universe or star wars for that matter this issue of constantly raising the stakes has been a staple of sf f for decades works such as lord of the rings dune and michael moorcock s eternal champion stories have all had epic consequences that result in a heightened form of dramatic tension even michael moorcock s elric short stories while typically not so epic in scope over the course of the cycle build toward a world shattering conclusion in the sixth collection stormbringer you could even make the argument that stories that may not have such dire circumstances such as isaac asimov s original nightfall or the martian way still present a conflict epic in scope yes yes i know it s right there in the name epic fantasy duh the thing is the sf f genre and the media industry as a whole movies television video games has a big epic problem everything needs to be epic in scope or in conflict and to borrow that oft used term from the incredibles if everything is epic nothing is yes this one is back again i didn t realize just how pervasive this was until i started rummaging around the sf f section of bookstores looking for something new to read after being away from the fiction section of bookstores for several years the shelves were full of massive tomes with taglines such as every age must come to an end or the greatest sagas are written in blood and i couldn t get excited about any of them that lack of interest has nothing to do with who is writing and neither does it have to do with the setting i m sure that some people would tell me that it s because of woke culture or a politically correct setting or some other bullshit answer but the thing is i don t have issues with any of that yes i read a lot of classic sf f back in the 70s 80s and 90s so i have my street cred and i have absolutely no issues with new voices or settings for science fiction or fantasy it s just that i m tired of the same old the world universe nation needs saving epic story trope because in the end the stakes are of the same variety that i ve seen countless times by now and video games aren t exactly helping i ve said it before about world of warcraft and it bears repeating now i prefer the original vanilla version of wow because of the overall lack of an epic plot to the extent the expansions put into place sure there are storylines riddled throughout the leveling areas but nothing so laser focused on an epic conflict to the extent that you see in the latter expansions you ve got nefarian c thun and kel thuzad but you didn t have two continents worth of quests focused on the storylines behind those three that lack of an overall epic narrative meant you could forge your own story picking and choosing what to do and where to go without having an overarching epic story to direct you let s be honest here video games and novels are one thing and movies are quite another i mean look at the tons of movies and shows that are churned out year after year in the mcu alone not to mention the dc universe or star wars everything is epic in nature where the mcu is involved and even a movie such as captain america the first avenger goes fishing would somehow turn steve rodgers catch of the day into an epic worthy of ernest hemingway i had no idea this existed i swear from a youtube video by reel hazardous but therein lies the blandness of it all you ve seen this story a few times and it all starts to blend together and trust me given the amount of books video games and movies i ve consumed over the decades i ve seen far more than just a few versions of the same trope i need to be perfectly clear i m not saying that insert content here sucks i m saying that i m tired of these stories these books could be incredibly well written the video games programmed and designed to an exquisite degree or the movies insanely well crafted it s just that i ve seen it all before and to get my attention something else needs to be done what doesn t need to be done is do what s been done to death in video games the moving goalposts problem you play a video game with an epic story finally defeat the big bad and then either in the final cutscene or a lead in to the next expansion installment in the series there s a revelation that it wasn t this big bad who was behind everything it s this new big bad or the princess is in another castle meme from knowyourmeme com or you saved your town in this video game now you get to save an entire province then the next expac is now you have to save your country then the world then you now have to save the afterlife oh wait that s shadowlands that s a huge trap that authors and developers alike fall into where the stakes have to ratcheted up more and more to keep people s attention after infinity war what then marvel multiverse mayhem well crap that s exactly what they re doing now what s the solution hell if i know and besides if i did know the way out of this do you think that publishers and developers and producers would be beating a path to my door oh hell no right now the sound of dollars from the people who consume their content is louder than anything i can say or do if i ve learned anything in this world content creators want a sure bet on where to put their money and it s a lot easier betting on the same old same old than trying something new of course game companies discovered that breaking their games up into pieces got them a lot more money than release it all at once dorkly don t ever change that doesn t mean that i ve turned into a costume drama loving highbrow or lowbrow or midbrow or whatever the hallmark channel fits into consumer it s just that i want something more than what we ve got right now it also doesn t mean i want to eschew standard novel formats and instead go with modern novel constructs i had to read virginia woolf in an english class at university and that experience alone put me off of reading any novels designed to be modern for a couple of decades the english professor who taught the class i read mrs dalloway in warned us away from taking his modern novel class because non english majors sign up expecting to get to read modern popular novels but that isn t anything at all what they actually read probably the best way to put it is that maybe the sentiment go big or go home is missing the point perhaps not going all out will result in a better story and part of the end of the 00s beginning of the 10s posted by redbeard at 7 14 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels books memes movies musings video games wow wow classic monday may 22 2023 meme monday allergy memes if you re like me seasonal allergies kick your ass multiple times per year the one major drawback to my son s graduation last week was that meadville pennsylvania where allegheny college is located is in the middle of their big pollen bloom for the spring and for me that was well kind of hellish just when you think you re done with seasonal allergies they drag you back in michael corleone maybe so in honor of those who scarf down a bottle of zyrtec every spring and fall yeah kid i feel it too from science abc from imgflip don t get me wrong benadryl works faaar too well from izismile yeah geralt i get it really do if you re a hypochondriac covid offers a whole new set of paranoid fantasies from reddit via mematic posted by redbeard at 8 00 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels meme monday memes sunday may 21 2023 the lessons you learn along the way it s funny just how much our perceptions and playstyles are influenced by those first early hours playing a game for example when i first started playing a cleric on my recently concluded 20 year d d campaign we faced an enemy that decidedly had the upper hand on us our fighters and rogue had whiffed repeatedly and the enemy we were engaged with was getting ready for a killing blow against one of us my cleric was all out of spells and the only thing he could do was make an attack with his spear he was a cleric of zeus hence the spear as the chosen weapon my cleric charged in hoping just to get a hit in and distract the enemy but i rolled a natural 20 then i hit on the critical roll and well the enemy dropped out of that little fiasco my cleric learned that charging into battle with spear out was a good thing so he began to use that early and often not exactly the smartest thing for your cleric to do but hey it worked that first time and he just kind of ran with it this happened four years before leeroy jenkins from ifunny co fast forward to my first year of playing world of warcraft and i was in souldat s small friends and family guild that was a holdover from burning crusade sometime when my paladin was in his mid 20s maybe we had someone new join the guild seems the guy was originally alliance and decided to switch to horde so soul offered him a spot no big deal i thought a day or two later soul and i were on and the guy logged in after a minute or two of pleasantries the guy asked if we had any spare bags he could have quintalan wasn t a tailor and i said as much and soul didn t have any spare bags either oh the guy said and faded into the background soul whispered me a short time later saying he couldn t believe that this guy would want to mooch off of us like that we re horde he said not doing it yourself is an alliance thing to do i didn t know that i replied yeah back when wow started most people played alliance and those of us who played horde had to stick together because if we didn t we were going to get overwhelmed it made us strong and self reliant i had no reason to doubt the truth of it so quietly i acknowledged his side of things while i still have no idea whether soul s comment about how outnumbered the horde were back in the day really was true or not what i do know is that little exchange did impact the way i played mmos for a long time namely it was to never depend on other people for help in game and to do things yourself instead of asking for help who knew blanche dubois was alliance from utterdigital com and quotemaster the strange thing is that i ve no qualms at all as far as giving assistance to someone in need i mean i ve been known to assist members of the opposing faction if it looks like they re going to lose to a mob so the fact that i m happy to give help but not receive it is kind of odd so if my questing buddy ever has wondered about the origin story of my reluctance to ask for help now you know of course i now play on the alliance side and outside of some quests from the forsaken there s not much difference playing either faction in the various forms of classic wow but you know that didn t matter my mind was already biased in the almost 14 years since i ve started playing mmos i ve found those few offhand comments have had a huge impact on how i approach this genre i still prefer to do as many things on my own as possible and i ve even taken that to an extreme by not using any assists from wowhead or other third party player aids for quests well within reason i do set a mental timer for trying to figure out a quest and if i exceed that timer i pull out wowhead and bitch a little bit while i research but that s me and i think it s important to note that these internal biases are simply that a bias 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