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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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me and i realized that i was thinking of ziost not ziosk from swtorista ztill it z not everyday you zee zo many z wordz in a name you know blaugust2025 posted by redbeard at 8 24 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels blaugust2025 swtor wednesday may 28 2025 yes i do actually like playing them while you might think that my grumpy old man tm posts about world of warcraft and other mmos indicate i m not having fun these days i disagree i may not be having as much fun as i had while i was initially playing wow back in 2009 2010 but to me it is comfortable i can laugh at mmos now and not consider it srs bznss but i can also enjoy myself while recognize it s limitations this is something that simply doesn t happen in wow since wrath maybe from know your meme and justin parks yes there are things that annoy me i m opinionated enough that i ll always find something to annoy me but finding and complaining about annoyances doesn t mean i think that a game is irredeemable old blanchy notwithstanding one thing i have noticed the longer i ve played video games in general is that i m at my happiest when i m playing my favorite parts of video games for classic wow it s in the leveling process and just hanging around various parts of azeroth sure i also like running 5 person instances and a good match of alterac valley but that s in smaller doses rather than repeat runs for a deeper goal for example last weekend was alterac valley weekend so i got onto the classic era servers and ran alterac valley a handful of times but that was it i didn t have a need to do that more than just those half a dozen or so runs so once i got that out of my system i was fine on not doing any others all weekend or in retail instead of grumping about old blanchy s demise i decided to go exploring along the well trod path from stormwind to theramore the path is pretty traditional if you decide to not take a flight path straight to menethil harbor tram ride from stormwind to ironforge run from ironforge east through dun morogh take the pass either north or south from dun morogh to loch modan head north from loch modan into the pass down toward the wetlands run north and then east along the main road through the wetlands to menethil harbor take a ship from the harbor to theramore obviously i chose running along the scenic route because it was an option it gave me a chance to explore at a slow pace and enjoy the sights as i knew them in the pre cataclysm times okay that quest hub is new for cataclysm i didn t see a soul along the way but that was fine to be fair this is the fewest number of people on a ship to theramore that i ve seen in quite a while what was even better was at the end do i know you you look familiar my lone toon that has reached max level in 2014 used to be able to fly through a theramore that was devoid of npcs and everybody else because she never participated in the destruction of theramore event it is nice to see that a brand new toon doesn t have a completely empty theramore but rather a theramore that s as it was in cataclysm and largely what it was like from the tbc era there s also a measure of comfort when visiting areas i have fond memories of i ve been married for over 30 years and i simply can t comprehend why all these women would accept hanging around and sharing darmas like that maybe it s transactional by nature but the vanilla swtor planets particularly the low level ones bring back most of my nostalgia for the game the same goes for vvardenfell and eso i think the screencap is off a bit as it looked much more vibrant on the screen i ve also been known to roam the halls of spacedock i frequently get lost in this place what a fine example of starfleet training i am or just chill in town whether it be darkshire or stormwind i consider all of these lack of activities to be playing the game even though i might not have a specific plan at the moment you don t have to have a specific plan to play mmos so why not lean into it if that s what you feel like doing besides it keeps me from complaining about whatever people are hyped up about these days so that s a good thing even among my favorite bands i read an article yesterday out of bbc music that had a list of what the author believed were the top prog rock albums released in 1975 among them he put rush s caress of steel uh i stuttered not believing what i was reading i mean there was a reason why caress of steel s tour was informally described by the band as the down the tubes tour in my opinion caress was the worst rush album they ever put out and it s not really even close that holds true for me in swtor as well as i prefer the vanilla swtor leveling experience more than anything else in the game i can t say the same for lotro or eso as i ve not played multiple toons in either mmo but i can say that i enjoyed the story in each that i ve completed so far it is also apparently a thing in retail that a new toon has access to all of the flight paths that other toons have at least in the old world and for probably 1 10 the cost i was quite shocked when i first clicked on a gryphon master to see what was available and this popped up holy crap that has since been corrected as in preparation for this post i went back to theramore and discovered that az could see npcs and everybody else in theramore as it was i guess blizz finally corrected that gap in their event design eta corrected spelling posted by redbeard at 2 51 pm 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels elder scrolls online memes retail star trek online swtor friday may 2 2025 i m just playing with my dolls again okay i don t have any dolls or what adults would call action figures from thegearpage and spaceballs but i do have mmo toons i spent a bit of time yesterday visiting some of my old characters just to check them out for a bit such as dalaak here my original swtor toon hello big fella or my original lotro toon aranandor when he s not lounging around bree there s also my gw2 toon mikath i still think that the toons and npcs in gw2 all look like the beautiful people with flawless skin and impeccable grooming the beat up outfit notwithstanding or my friendly vulcan from sto and his entire officer corps too and there s also that crazy dunmer from eso those loading screens show the actual armor worn not the outfit she actually has on that s one thing that retail wow does better at least but i guess that this wouldn t be a post about mmo toons if it didn t include the instigator of this post wow hey lady long time no see or even longer really okay that wasn t the actual version of wow i was talking about but this one i occasionally go to the loading screen just to see how long it s been since i last logged into retail if i see gear update listed on all of these toons i know it s been some months and likely at least one major minor patch in the interim those are four of my most played toons on retail the original azshandra isn t there but given how things progressed in classic wow it just didn t feel quite right therefore i tweaked the composition a bit there that s better the gear and levels to be honest are all wrong from my perspective but i m not planning on doing anything about that at least now the names are correct on that warband there are other toons i have from mmos i no longer play such as age of conan rift or neverwinter that would require me to install the games again to simply take a screenshot of the loading screen and then there are games that no longer exist such as wildstar archeage or tera i do miss wildstar but not the other two even though i really have no desire to play some games or specific toons it s nice to pull them up on screen every once in a while just to enjoy how they looked and the memories they recalled again i m surprised that age of conan is still hanging on after all these years eta corrected grammar eta and corrected some more grammar sheesh posted by redbeard at 10 01 am 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels elder scrolls online guild wars 2 lotro memes mmos old toons retail star trek online swtor toons wow wow classic saturday february 1 2025 hello old friends one nice thing about this short break from wow is that i got a chance to play my favorite class in swtor for a bit the smuggler oh i ve played swtor off and on the past several years but for some reason i ve ended up creating force users instead of a bounty hunter or a smuggler my first toon was a smuggler and here i am playing a smuggler once again ah coruscant don t ever change same goes for the migrant merchants guild if you stick with the type of smuggler i tend to play the gunslinger it s a pretty standard build and in keeping with modern mmos new abilities simply appear on my bar without me having to go train somewhere it s a bit disconcerting but it is what it is having returned to the republic side for the first time in a while i can see the bugs and roughness out there that haven t really been cleaned up over the years or in the case of the companion pathing bugs added over the years but the visuals and the sound are still fantastic the sound alone makes you feel like you re outside in a city where the skyscrapers create canyons and there s just that urban sound that you hear when you re walking around a downtown area the sound at ord mantell is also excellent and really immerses you in the game and those cutscenes can t forget the cutscenes this one starring senator kayl the more i ve gone into leveling this smuggler the more i realize that there s issues where a new player would get confused such as getting a training and skills quest only to find yourself on the republic fleet long before you re supposed to arrive there at least i knew how to get back to ord mantell but if i d been a new player i d have been screwed oh and as you can tell from my top screencap above i turned off that new map overlay and went with the traditional minimap just like how i turned corso into the tank he always was meant to be it was kind of like seeing old friends again such as talking to pat ak once more and senator whats her name yes i m ready to be your black bisector pat ak even when i return to wow classic i have to keep this player going not sure how but i ve developed a better tolerance for the pathing issue this time around but we ll see how long i tolerate it if i get to balmorra that ll be farther than i ve gotten in a long time creating that one smuggler for the screencaps of the intro quest a year or two ago for a post here doesn t count i went back and played a jedi sentinel instead and got as far as taris for i grew tired of the pathing issues eta corrected pat ak s name posted by redbeard at 6 00 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels swtor tuesday january 21 2025 finding that aha moment sometimes it takes looking at a game through fresh eyes to appreciate what we ve got i m not sure how this appeared on my youtube feed but this relatively short video is worth a watch back in 2009 i think my aha moment was questing through the ghostlands on quintalan my paladin and finally building up to deathholme i happened upon another player struggling through that place and we teamed up to finish off dark khan drathir neither of us had played before so it took us a try or two but we figured it out and defeated the traitor coming back from that part of the zone forever changed the game for me because i finally began to understand the story and what had happened there for vanilla classic in 2019 being the first time i d ever played the original version of wow it was a different moment it was exploring my way through wetlands to the arathi highlands to hillsbrad foothills up north i went and i found myself quite by accident in the western plaguelands i had experiences with doing this before but while i was stealthed and kept to the mountains i found i was able to sneak all the way up to the entrance to scholomance i had absolutely no business being where i was as a l28 rogue but sneaking there and into other places just whetted my appetite for more in lotro i know where my aha moment was reaching evendim and looking up at night and discovering the pleiades in the sky swtor was a bit different i think it was when i arrived on my smuggler at coruscant and there was a custom cutscene of me slicing a terminal to get into the spaceport unnoticed it wasn t much but it was a helluva touch given that i was trying to get my starship back what about you what was your aha moment in an mmorpg posted by redbeard at 6 00 am 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels lotro mmos musings swtor videos wow wow classic tuesday january 14 2025 economic life lessons from an mmo if there s one thing about my leveling experience in classic fresh that s a truism it s that i almost never run out of rested xp while playing when you think about it that s not a great surprise given that i m leveling 10 toons for joan i went with a vaguely unsettling look with a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes with her mocha skin tone in her red robe she had that look she had to have been a wednesday esque sort of child growing up the listings are current as of january 14 2025 right now i m at the point where i play a different toon every evening so i might get around to them once every week or week and a half and i can now go an entire evening session on wow without leveling at all admittedly a bit of that is that i m cheap and don t take a flight from a flight point if i can help it because my lack of gold means every flight cuts into my money quite a bit the economics of an mmo aren t exactly what people signed up for when they started playing eve notwithstanding but it s a reality that has to be addressed sooner or later i ve never played everquest or any of the predecessors to wow but i have played several games released after wow i m not sure whether the in game economy of wow necessitated changes or whether it was in response to other mmos making life easier but i never truly appreciated how easy it was to obtain gold by the time wrath of the lich king rolled around until i began playing vanilla wow in 2019 in wrath in 2009 i discovered very quickly that the gold coming in was greater than what my needs were and by the time i reached max level and started running dungeons i wasn t hurting for gold i wasn t rich enough to by fast flying or the battered hilt at the drop of a hat but i had a couple of thousand gold on me at any given time i didn t have repair bills due to raiding or enchantments or whatnot either so just doing a dungeon or two per day was more than enough to keep my gold supply increasing in other words i never had to really think about how to obtain more gold when i decided i wanted fast flying or that battered hi...