Category: ramblings

Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump 11

Kurn / / blogging, general, gold, ramblings

Shockingly, I am posting this on a Sunday! Will wonders never cease?

I can’t believe it’s Sunday already and I have to go back to work tomorrow. We built the world wrong, gang. SIGH.

Topic 1:

I need a challenge of sorts to do. Please give me one.

I probably won’t continue with my Whelplocked challenge because it’s basically boring, which is something I’m realizing now. Did Kurn get the whelp or not? And how long does someone have to watch to see if Kurn got the whelp? Boring. So give me a challenge! Or many challenges and I’ll pick one! Please? Pretty please? I’ve got 7 days left on my current token, so I’m looking for something to do. (And I’m intrigued by “heroic” world stuff, but not sure if that’ll be enough to keep me interested.)

Topic 2:

Speaking of challenges, I started watching this guy doing two challenges simultaneously. He is trying to get 1 million gold (in cash) on a toon solely from what he gets out of Scarlet Monestary (on Sokratez) and 1 million gold (in cash) on a toon solely from what he gets out of Zul’Farrak (on Bofades). He’s about 11% of the way there on Bofades (the Troll druid) and maybe 8% (?) of the way there on Sokratez (the Worgen druid), but Sokratez has looted some sweet drops, so that challenge could be over any day now, if one of those sweet drops sells. Anyway, it’s SUPER interesting, so go check it out. Episodes out almost every day, each is about 10 minutes long.

For funsies, I’ve started running old-school SM armory and cath and have gotten some decent drops too. Nothing amazing, but hopefully some of this stuff will sell. I’ve got alts on other servers to help with that, too.

Topic 3: 

Anything you want me to talk about for Storytime? Perhaps one of these would be interesting to tell:

– The history of me and Majik

– The Night Kurn Drank Red Haterade

– Why I rolled Madrana (holy paladin)

Let me know!

 

    Missing data…!

    Kurn / / blogging, facepalm, general, ramblings

    Well, well, well. What do we have here? It’s a case of missing data.

    I could die of not surprise.

    So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Sunwell Plateau on my hunter. And I recorded it, but the sound was unrecoverable, so I recorded a new video, which is here. In both videos, I noted that something was really messed up with my rep, because Kurn couldn’t wear the “of the Shattered Sun” title, despite being exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive, and also the tabard (which required exalted to buy and wear!) didn’t show up in my tabard options for transmog.

    Doing other things at the time (like running Sunwell and narrating for you folks), I was like, whatever, I’ll figure it out later.

    Figured some of it out today, when I finally figured out how to open a real ticket and not some bug report that is just going to die quietly on a to-do list somewhere at Blizz HQ.

    First, I didn’t own a tabard of the Shattered Sun. Which is plainly horseshit. I ran around wearing that tabard for months! And apparently I don’t own the shields either? Also horseshit, because I used them for months (on Madrana) so like… wtf.

    So some of my items are legitimately missing outside of stuff that was yoinked from me during the Great Blizzard Bank Heist. It is possible that I tossed the tabard on Madrana, but I wouldn’t do that on Kurn. Kurn has an exceptional collection of tabards and shirts and I love them! And I wouldn’t just junk them!

    Anyway, ran up to the Shattered Sun staging grounds and got me a tabard. Madrana can now wear it and Kurn can transmog into it… but so can my dwarf shammy. Who is emphatically not exalted. So transmog doesn’t required rep? Interesting.

    Still, even with the tabard able to be selected, Kurn still can’t select the title, while Madrana can, and the shammy cannot (as intended).

    Folks, something happened to my data at some point!

    I have a missing tabard and a missing title on Kurn.

    Then, on Madrana, I have at least some missing items (like the Shattered Sun shields).

    Who knows what else I’m missing on those or my other characters?

    Am I pissed? No. I’m a little annoyed. BUT, I said to myself, this is what happens when you trust The System. Not only do they own everything, but they host everything, and that means you will lose data. Just like the Great Blizzard Bank Heist. Why? Because the people running the show can’t be bothered to back up data that’s lost. I honestly don’t care that I had to spend a whole 80 silver on a new tabard. I do still care that I had a couple of thousand of dragonscales I couldn’t farm back in less than a decade of running BWL weekly to skin Chromaggus. 52 weeks in a year, ten years, I could feasibly rebuild my ~2k of dragonscales of various colours. But why bother when they can all just vanish again when a patch goes out?

    When I returned to the game, I had three rules for myself:

    1) Don’t pay these people a dime of your money.

    2) Play and have fun. If you’re not having fun, stop playing.

    3) Never forget that your data is not your data. It’s their data.

    And on a related note, did you folks hear about the poor person who was (originally) permabanned after 20 years?

    Original YouTube video here

    Update here

    Basically, the individual wants to know what actions made Blizzard get out the big ol’ banhammer. He has no idea. He’s appealed several times and got his ban lowered to 6 months, but now is questioning why return to the game when the ban expires? Apparently “other players” reported him for various actions that can get you banned and he has absolutely no clue as to why that might have happened. All he wants to do is understand and then get the issue resolved. Of course, as usual, Blizzard isn’t giving any details.

    He’s decided to file consumer complaints. He’s based in Norway, but is originally from the US (I think) and has form letters linked for both countries’ consumer advocate organizations.

    In the US, this is typically the Better Business Bureau. However, Blizzard is not accredited with them, so any complaints probably don’t need to be handled. Still, Blizzard does respond to these:

    https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/irvine/profile/wholesale-video-games/blizzard-entertainment-inc-1126-13050668/complaints

    There are hundreds of pages just like this and that’s just the last three years. They have a 1 star rating pretty consistently throughout everything. It shows that Blizzard’s interests and ours (the players’) are not aligned.

    You play this game, it’s by their rules. They don’t have to do anything. They can gaslight you into next week with their vague and obscure references to logs and analyses. They can boot you off their servers never to be seen again with absolutely zero warning.

    Or, they can steal your bank.

    Or your shields.

    Or your tabard.

    Or your title.

    It’s all the same. Because we play on their servers, our data is theirs to manage (or mismanage) as they please. And that goes for bans that are upheld with no real proof as well as dealing with canned responses from shitty Customer “Support” people. (I’ve worked in support spaces for 12+ years and I would never treat a customer of mine as poorly as Blizzard has treated me, or thousands of others, in the past.)

    You want to play legitimately, you gotta play by their rules. No matter what they do to your characters, your inventory, your achievements, your reputation, your account.

    Just a reminder to us all.

    Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 10

    Kurn / / blogging, ramblings

    Well, I ended up redoing the entire video I had talked about last week because of the audio glitch, which I found was an errant setting in OBS. So entirely my bad. Whoopsiedoodle. Anyways, here’s the new video.

    In other news…

    Topic 1:

    It was my birthday not long ago and my good buddy MajMaj (aka Merrymaker Majikmarine, aka Majik, aka fuckface) was kind enough to purchase me a Steam gift card and then recommended a couple of games to me. This past weekend, I bought two of them and one of them, Esoteric Ebb, is a really interesting RPG. (Its publisher is Raw Fury, which also does Blue Prince, as an aside.)

    The amount of lore/world building for EE is absolutely overwhelming, and I mean that in the best of ways. It made me think about how different WoW could be if it had focused on the true differences between the races of the Alliance or the races of the Horde, not to mention every faction out there. Like, imagine that we didn’t have the common languages. Or imagine that there are separate flight paths depending on how the different people we encounter decided to travel long distances? Or what if money was different? What if my gold was only good with the Alliance and, say, the goblins, but if I wanted to interact with… I don’t know, the Scryers, my gold was useless? I guess we get some of that lore with turn-in items, but I’m thinking of something beyond that.

    Topic 2:

    There’s no character alignment as far as I can tell in EE, but it makes me wish we had active alignments that we could alter with our actions in WoW. Like, Madrana? 100% Lawful Good. Kurn, too. (Me as well!) But maybe my ret pally (the grandbaby pally) is Lawful Neutral. Or Neutral Good? Lawful Evil? We could get benefits to each of the 9 alignments and it would be possible, across the course of many, many, many actions, to change your alignment, but it would be impossible to do within 30 days or something equally long so that you couldn’t cheese it/abuse it to your benefit.

    What D&D Alignment are you?

    Topic 3:

    Speaking of games, I have hardly touched WoW. Wondering if I really want to spend another 250k in gold to get another month, but I guess we’re getting a patch next week or something? I guess I’ll see if that’s any good and see if I’ll stick around for another month. Dangit, I keep meaning to reinstall Hardcore Classic too. Maybe I’ll try to do that this weekend. My weeks are so busy lately that it’s hard for me to do much in the evenings. Damn you, late-stage capitalism! <shakes fist>

    What should I tell a story about next time?

    Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 8

    Kurn / / blogging, general, ramblings

    Brace yourselves — I actually opened WoW for more than auction stuff this week! hahaha!

    I’d been watching a video a few weeks ago about rare titles, and that video basically got me thinking about titles, and it also encouraged me to watch a video series about this one guy Barny on a Classic server and the title Scarab Lord.

    Scarab Lord is a wild title. The things necessary to get the title are absolutely bonkers.

    So I visited Silithus (old world version) on Kurn and recorded a little video which is the first of a series in which I tell a story or two. Or three. It’ll be called Storytime with Kurn. And so my first stories have to do with Scarab Lord and the Brood of Nozdormu and such.

    I may rerecord it because I think I rambled too much, so I need to rewatch it before I post it anywhere, and then potentially rerecord it, but expect it this week at my YouTube channel!

    ETA: Here’s the link, I didn’t rerecord it:

    Let me know what zones/dungeons/etc you want to hear my stories about. Anything from Vanilla to Cataclysm is valid.

    Haven’t done much else and don’t have a lot of thoughts today, but let me know what stories you want to hear, go subscribe to my YouTube channel, and I’ll do what I can to get stories up weekly-ish. :)

    Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump 7

    Kurn / / apotheosis, general, raiding, ramblings

    Once again, didn’t do much to do with WoW this week. Part of it is the hockey playoffs. My team, the Montreal Canadiens, is still in the Stanley Cup playoffs as I write this. They may be eliminated Monday night, or they may move on to the third (of four) rounds. Who knows? It’s been a weird playoffs.

    The other part is a lack of motivation. I feel like there’s a lot of hoops to jump through to get anything in terms of gear, so I’m just… not doing a lot? Maybe?

    Still, as usual, I have things to say. :) (And I’ll note I started this entry on Sunday even though as I finish it, it’s now Monday. But I have Monday off for Victoria Day so I’m still going to pretend it’s Sunday.)

    Topic 1: The Old Days

    I had a former guildie, Aaza (hi Aaza!), comment on my last post. She’d wanted to know if I had a copy of our Illidan kill. That kill happened in, uh, like August or September of 2008. And I had it! I didn’t realize it was set to unlisted, so I set it to public and linked to it. (Thanks to Dayden for frapsing it and putting together the video!)

    That someone, from that old version of Apotheosis, wanted to see our Illidan kill, was kind of interesting to me. I’ve been feeling nostalgic recently. Not nostalgic enough to do all of that GMing/raiding/etc again, mind you! But nostalgic enough to feel as though some of the memories my guild and I had made together really meant something to people at the time. So to have Aaza pop in and be like “hi!!!” was really lovely, because it sort of validated that I hadn’t wasted my time back in Burning Crusade. (Or in Cata, for that matter.)

    Topic 2: I miss… something

    Growing up, I read. I read, I played video games, I called local bulletin board systems… and, of course, being a teenage girl, I talked on the phone a lot. But I never really had much interest in joining a sports team. I didn’t really feel the need. I got a lot of my social needs met just by hanging out with friends and stuff, and then dating, later on.

    But the school I’d gone to for eleven years of my life (grades 1-11!) had taught me a lot about teamwork and leadership. We were separated into different houses (yes, like Hogwart’s — and, btw, fuck JK Rowling for being a transphobic piece of shit!), and so we were forced to participate in teams to do with the houses for various things. Two of my closest friends from school weren’t in my grade. They were in the grade below me — and both were on my house. And we’re still close to this day. One of them is my RL Friend the Resto Druid I have mentioned dozens of times on this very blog!

    So when I joined Fated Heroes in, oh boy, like late 2005… I was kind of all-in. It was the first time I’d really been part of a team. And, naturally, I wanted to be helpful. Back then, I was in learning mode. I wanted to know everything about how the game worked. Absolutely everything. I think I reached my peak knowledge of the game in Wrath, when I learned about parry thrashes.

    We lost my brother to a rival guild, who was already actively raiding, while Fated Heroes was… fated to stand around a lot. ;) But I worked hard to bring information to the guild, put up a forum for us, dropped info for attunements, T0 gear drops, etc. And we slowly but surely got to the point where we raided. We never had 40 people in a raid (well, maybe once, but that wasn’t even all our guild) and we didn’t clear MC or kill Ony (do not get me started on the warrior who claimed to me he had like 3000 defense when, in fact, that was how much ARMOR he had), but we cleared all of ZG, including Jindo the Hexxar and such. And we did spawn Majordomo Executus in MC. And we did get Ony down to like, 20ish percent. It was just a rough time to get everyone used to raiding on these days at these times when most people had only joined for fun. Still, I pushed as much as I could. I got so many people attuned to everything way back then.

    Why?

    These people in Fated Heroes, they were my team. And if I knew one thing from my schooling, it was that the sum of the parts of a team are a greater force than the individual parts alone. I believed we could do anything we set our minds to doing.

    That was really my first taste of real teamwork in an environment where I cared about the result. If my house lost at floor hockey to another house during 7:45am inter-house games at school, I honestly didn’t care. But if my guild didn’t get Venoxis down? I cared. If my guild didn’t get Lucifron down? I cared. If people in my guild didn’t loot their goddamn Core Hounds? I very much cared. ;)

    So that’s the feeling I’m missing right now. I’m not super into any online communities right now. I’m not even really into any offline communities right now. I am missing a sense of belonging to a team. And I’m not sure where to get it.

    And it always makes me think about WoW, because WoW is the place in my life where I have put everything I had into running good teams. Whether it was the guild as a whole, just the healers, just the hunters, whatever. I gave it my all.

    I’m not saying I want to give my all to something, mind you. I don’t have the time or even the energy for that these days.

    But I do miss something team-like.

    Topic 3: Rabid end-stage capitalism will be the end of us all.

    Between billionaires and AI, I have come to the conclusion that we are not only fucked, we’re super fucked.

    Eat the rich. And if you can’t, tax them.

    For the first time in my entire life, I have wanted to be offline more than online lately. And you have to understand something about me — I have been terminally online forever. For decades. I started using the Internet in 1994. That’s over 30 years ago. And while I’ve certainly managed to create, you know, a life for myself, I work in tech, and I work remotely, and I have done so for the last decade. (another 2 years spent in an office at a startup here in Montreal, so 12 years in tech.)

    But the more I think about tech and the world and where it’s all going, the less I even want to sit down at my computer.

    Who would have thought that AI (and the billionaires, let’s not forget those motherfuckers) would be the thing to push me away from online? Who would have thought that something I’d always enjoyed thinking about (in a very “someday in the future” sense) would come to be and be one of the worst blights on humanity?

    Sometimes I do wish I could just live at my parents’ cottage for the rest of my days. Read. Canoe. Write. Even go swimming, occasionally, despite the fact that the lake is fed by mountain streams and is always bitterly cold.

    And yet, we have to at least play along with the capitalism that is eating us all alive, because we have to do things like pay for rent. And food. And everything else that comes with being a human in the early 21st century.

    It’s a major bummer.

    What are your thoughts, gang? What’s on your mind?

    Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump 6

    Kurn / / blogging, ramblings

    I did sweet fuck all this week in WoW.

    And I didn’t really miss it.

    I had a short work week, spent time with loved ones, friends, family, read a book and a half in the last week, watched four hockey games and that meant no real time for video games.

    Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts on things. :)

    Topic 1: The WoW Store

    There’s a sale being advertised in the Blizzard launcher, for many (all?) of the Blizzard games. When you click on World of Warcraft, they are encouraging you to buy Midnight, but also a housing thing. “Cozy Treehouse Retreat Bundle”, which has some druid or panda themed housing stuff, including the externals. Only 7500 Hearthsteel!!! WHAT A DEAL, PEOPLE!!!! ahahaha. That is $92.50 CAD, and that’s before tax. That is more expensive than all but the epic version of the Midnight expansion.

    But wait, there’s more! You can get a “Blooming Arboon” mount, either “Blossomback” or “Amberback” for $32 CAD apiece. (I’m guessing that’s about $25 USD.)

    And if that’s not enough, they’re bribing you to buy a 6-month subscription ($97.99 CAD, pre-tax) in exchange for a flying mount in Retail and a pet in Classic. And if you buy a 12-month subscription ($195.98 CAD, pre-tax), you get an additional flying mount and ground mount in Retail and a flying mount in classic. Or some nonsense like that. You can read more about the offer here.

    Why at least a six-month subscription? Because that’s like $100 (CAD, maybe 70-75 USD) in their pockets immediately. It’s a very nice revenue bump. And why does that matter? It matters because the Microsoft fiscal year ends at the end of June. So the revenue bump helps the bottom line now, right before the end of the fiscal year, and then since it’s for 6 months, any money from those WoW subscribers between now and November is sort of like the icing on the cake. So if they buy Hearthsteel, or if they buy a mount, or a pet, or a character boost, or whatever. It’s above and beyond what they anticipated from you just having an ongoing subscription.

    Honestly, looking at the finance page at Yahoo about Microsoft makes me feel vaguely ill. Everything is basically in billions. The market value of Microsoft is approximately 4.1 trillion dollars.

    And they couldn’t be bothered to fix the guild bank issues.

    Or make sure a patch launches without game-breaking bugs.

    Or ensure that textures persist in housing.

    But they can take the time to come up with new art assets and sell them or bribe people into getting them, as long as they make a quick buck!

    It’s pretty gross.

    Topic 2: If I were rich…

    If I were very, very independently wealthy, there are several things I’d want to do right off the bat, most of which is caring for my family and friends. You know, pay off my brother and sister-in-law’s mortgage. Pay for private school for their kids. That sort of thing.

    But assuming I’d have a good chunk left over, I think I’d want to try to put together a small game dev company. Nothing huge, but a nice place to work, where everyone gets benefits, mostly flexible hours, work remotely, all that good stuff. I have a lot of ideas rattling around in my head and I am not talented enough to code everything, nor do I have the time to code everything. Because it would be a lot.

    And just looking at the Microsoft financials (even more info here), and knowing that they’re doing voluntary layoffs makes me feel even more ill. All of this means that they hope their numbers will go up.

    We are in late-stage capitalism and the numbers cannot always go up.

    I am tired of living in such a rabidly capitalist society, and I don’t even live in the USA (although anything they do affects us significantly). But in order to, you know, have a place to live, one needs to at least try to play the capitalism-numbers-go-up game. So if I could run a small game dev company, hire carefully, pay very well, and then get some kind of return because the games are good, then that would be awesome.

    Alas, I fear I will never be independently wealthy to the point of doing so. But it’s nice to dream about.

    Topic 3: Classic Dungeons

    I think Strat UD is my favourite of the Classic dungeons, but BRD is a close second, followed by LBRS as a close third. Strat is my favourite because of my multiple failed (and some successful!) 45-minute Baron runs. I just know it so well and have so many great memories of being in there.

    BRD might be closer to Stockholm Syndrome, given the number of times I’ve run Jailbreak or attuned someone to the core. But again, the memories made there are priceless to me.

    LBRS is a freaking labyrinth until it clicks. And once it clicks, you’ll never get lost again. Or, at least I never did. It was one of my first runs with my guild at the time and I was level 52 (? Maybe 53?) and I was level-pulling everything around us. Whoopsiedoodle. :D But I always enjoyed it. There was a ton to explore, lots of rare drops, lots of bosses, lots of tier 0 pieces to be had.

    What about you? What are your favourite Classic/Vanilla dungeons?

    Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump 5

    Kurn / / blogging, classic, ramblings

    Welcome to yet another Sunday Brain Dump!

    Topic 1: Haven’t done much

    I have to admit to not having done much in the last week. After many years of not watching hockey regularly, I’ve returned to it, and it’s the playoffs now. My team, the Montreal Canadiens, have played 7 games and have now won 4 (they won Game 7 against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Tampa) and are now moving on to the next round. So I haven’t done a whole lot in WoW. But I also don’t have a lot to do in WoW. Farming remains the constant chore, but it does sometimes feel like a chore. Maybe I’ll take month off or something. I feel like I need to find a goal in the game.

    Topic 2: Classic Plus?

    There’s a lot of talk about a Classic Plus mode — hints from Blizz, a possible announcement at BlizzCon, stuff like that. And there’s the final shutdown of Turtle WoW coming this month. I can understand, Blizzard/Microslop need to protect their trademarks and copyrighted material. But my understanding is that Turtle WoW was developing new CLASSIC content? Wow. That’s wild. And it’s SO COOL. Different zones, mobs, quests, loot? Incredible.

    So is that what Blizzard’s potential Classic Plus mode will include?

    I played a tiny bit of Season of Discovery and I … didn’t like it. Was it kind of neat to see new talents/spells/abilities on different classes and specs? Sure. But they were all a bit weird to me. A mage, healing? Very weird. And having some key abilities available at like, early levels? My nephew was a rogue who had shadowstep extremely early on. I don’t know if that’s the way to go, at least for me and my interest. Part of what I always enjoyed about levelling was the gaining power aspect. Getting talents at 10 and then building on that every single level, even if you didn’t get anything at the trainer, that was awesome. So it’s weird to me to see stuff showing up at the start.

    But the idea of exploring new zones at like, 50-60? New quests? New gear? Maybe alternative dungeons or small raids? I’m not saying I would do a ton of that group content, but I’m saying it would interest me.

    Topic 3: What happens after Naxxramas?

    The question occurs to me that if Classic Plus exists, is Naxxramas still the endgame in Classic? I mean, you typically go Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, Naxxramas, right? With things like ZG and AQ20 thrown in there for people who are maybe trying to gear up to get into something like Molten Core.

    But what happens after Naxx? In a Classic Plus, that is? Do you get a Tier 4 that isn’t from Burning Crusade? Or a Tier 5? What about a Tier 6? Because the thing about Classic is that it does have a termination point. After Naxxramas, that was it. You headed to Outlands. Naxx released June 19, 2006 and patch 2.0.1 launched on December 5, 2006, followed quickly by Burning Crusade’s release on January 9, 2007.

    So what do you do after Naxx? IS there something after Naxx in a Classic Plus world? I don’t play a ton of Classic these days, but I know that people were definitely raiding Naxx successfully, way more than originally. I’m sure that it having existed for 15+ years before people got into it in Classic servers really helped, as most of the challenges are solved. People know how to do 4 Horsemen. People know how to do Instructor Razuvious. There’s no mystery left. And raids and stuff have gotten harder since Naxx. Kael’thas and Vashj were hard compared to what we saw in Naxx (well, the Wrath version of Naxx at 80, anyway).

    Another question: if there is something post-Naxx in a Classic Plus world, does that mean one has to go through MC, BWL, AQ40 and Naxx to get the gear required to go through whatever comes next? Or will they introduce a catch-up mechanic?

    There’s an interesting site, The Classic Project, at wowclassic.plus. These people are not affiliated with Blizzard, but are taking surveys to see how people feel about various bits of change in a potential Classic Plus world. It’s kind of neat, just need to sign in with a Discord account and take the surveys if you like.

    In one of the surveys about the world, it asks about attunements.

    Should attunements be streamlined/made easier?

    • No, and if you touch the Onyxia attunement questline, I’ll lock you away with Marshal Windsor
    • Sure, cut out the aggressive travel sections, but keep the spirit of attunements intact
    • Yes, I’m tired of going to BRD or grinding righteous orbs just to enter a raid – cut it down and allow players to walk in easily.

     

    I definitely voted no, because I will lock someone away with Marshal Windsor if I need to! I believe that attunements do a lot for bonding and team building.

    Seriously, go do these surveys. I’m doing one right now and one of the questions is:

    Should Damage/Heal over Time spells be able to crit baseline for all classes? The options are No, DoTs and HoTs shouldn’t crit, Yes, change it to allow them to crit, or Only if they make it a new talent that you can spec into.

    And I instinctively went for the talent and then stopped, remembering one of the Blizz folks at a BlizzCon years and years ago saying that if you didn’t take a specific talent in one of the DPS warrior trees, you weren’t being creative or imaginative, you were just being a bad (whatever spec) DPS warrior. So while I don’t particularly like the idea of HoTs and DoTs critting for anyone, I don’t like the idea that you have to talent for it. If there’s an action someone can take in order to get their spells critting, and they don’t take it, that seems like a bad (class name here), right?

    Basically, this survey is making me think a lot about what I want to see in a Classic Plus world.

    What about you? Any interest in such a thing? What would it look like to you?

    Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump 4

    Kurn / / blogging, midnight, patches, ramblings

    Welcome, one and all, to Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump — actually on a Sunday! :)

    Topic 1: 12.0.5

    Gonna be honest, I really don’t care much for this patch.

    I tried the void assaults — boring.

    I tried the ritual sites — less boring, but still boring.

    Haven’t messed with Decimus’ stuff yet. In part, because I don’t have anything except maybe my bow that is already upgraded to 6/6 Hero.

    Hide and Seek Decor Duels: apparently, Track Humanoid worked for this. Which is hilarious to me, as a hunter. But also, zero interest in this. (It was hotfixed.)

    Fishing: Listen, I like fishing. I don’t know that I want to bother with spearfishing, etc. I’ll probably give it a try, though.

    Marksmanship Hunter: I had to partly respec due to the partial refund of talent points I was given, but I didn’t take Explosive Shot. I should probably research things and respec appropriately, but I don’t know that I need Explosive Shot? Again?

    Decor stuff/Housing: All I really care about at the moment is using Decor to make money, so most of this doesn’t affect me.

    So… really, it’s all kind of meh to me at the moment.

    Topic 2: Gold

    When I hit about 1.7 million gold, I bought my next token, for about 235k gold. I’m now back up to 1.6 million and have used my token. I’m making decent money, but it’s not consistent. I need to look at making more cash more reliably. I’m way too reliant on concentration to make top-level potions and flasks at the moment. And I’m not using a lot of my other crafting professions to make good-quality gear, but I am getting recipes pretty regularly with moxie.

    What stuff are you selling lately?

    Topic 3: Bugs

    Tell me you coded your Midnight patch almost entirely with Copilot without telling me you coded your Midnight patch almost entirely with Copilot.

    That’s how it feels. Reading through the hotfix notes makes me chuckle and also just shake my head. How do these things get through whatever passes as “quality assurance” these days? Do they even have quality assurance at Blizzard presently? Because it really doesn’t feel like it. Like, what the hell is this patch note?

    Valeera is no longer unwilling to attack Poison Dart Frog or Giant Cursed Bullfrog.

    … why would she have been unwilling to attack the frogs? Why is she so poorly coded? Or what about this one?

    Pandaren characters who boost during the intro sequence will now be able to port to their houses.

    ??? How on earth does a boost during the intro mean that they couldn’t port to their houses?

    I know part of it is spaghetti code. This has got to be a vast codebase that dates all the way back to the early 2000s. I’m sure there’s still some code there that has been untouched since Alpha versions of Vanilla WoW. So I assume that’s part of it, right? But still, that’s where QA should come in.

    I don’t develop software for the masses myself, although I do know how to program and read code in a variety of languages (PHP, JavaScript, Python). I have, however, spent the last decade of my life working for various SaaS companies (Software as a Service), so I see up close and personal how software is built. I know that the product team has to communicate their needs to the development team. The development team does the hard work of research and coding. Then, theoretically (although this does get skipped out on a lot), a quality assurance team tests the potential release for bugs, including regressions (which are bugs that were squashed previously, but can sometimes return for various reasons). Once internal testing is complete, you then get some public users to beta test it and development continues to fix any bugs the beta testers have found. Meanwhile, marketing is getting ready to push out a ton of, well, marketing about the latest and greatest, support is working on documentation and stuff to ensure people know how to make things work, and everything goes live when the new version goes live.

    Or, at least that’s how it’s supposed to go.

    As Helmuth von Moltke the Elder wrote in 1871, “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.”

    And it’s true. Sometimes you have to roll things back because something happened once everyone got access to something and something went horribly awry. Sometimes a bug that wasn’t part of testing anything shows up and you need to hotfix it. All of that is totally normal.

    What I posit is not totally normal is the frequency with which these WoW bugs occur. Not only that, but the type of bugs that occur. If it has to do with the new content, QA didn’t do its job.

    So the track humanoids issue in the Decor Duel? Bad QA.

    The Pandarens boosting thing? That was assuredly not part of testing at all, which is why it’s having to be hotfixed. My theory on this is that when they introduced housing, something in it is tied to character creation. And character creation gets interfered with by boosting. Not only that, but Pandaren are special, because they are neutral until the end of their intro quests, right? So if this only happened to the Pandaren, we can make the following assumptions:

    1) Housing relies on character creation to some extent, which makes sense — someone cannot have a home without a character.

    2) So somewhere in character creation, they (now, or at least since housing was introduced at the tail-end of The War Within) tie … I don’t know, a housing and decor database to the character. So let’s say that as the character is created and various database tables are created, we now create a housing one and a decor one. (Again, this is a guess.)

    3) At some point, long ago, they introduced character boosting. I believe you can create a new character who will automatically be the boosted level. So they had to interrupt character creation at a specific moment to prevent having to start out at a level 1 or whatever.

    4) When creating housing, we can assume that the link has not been fully established for a character who is not one of the two factions, Alliance and Horde. We can assume that the boosting track goes down one path instead of reusing the original code, lest boosting not give you your boosted toon.

    5) End result: Pandaren who are boosted, who (presumably) get their faction at a different point than fresh-rolled Pandaren, cannot port to their plot because something went wonky on character creation.

    Again, that’s just my assumption. But we can see within that assumption where things went wrong. Based on those suppositions, I believe that whoever implemented housing at character creation did not think about boosted characters beyond a regular boosted character who starts out as a Horde or Alliance player. Most Pandaren (except maybe those who, like NeutralAgent on YouTube) choose a faction eventually. But it’s not immediate in most cases.

    So while I will say that such use-cases are more difficult to think of, someone should be thinking about it.

    And what really gets me about this is that so many of the players of this game could think of the use-cases that could break things. Like the Track Humanoids thing. Or could at least question whether or not character creation for a boosted Pandaren is similar enough to other characters. You know what I mean? Often, our knowledge of the game is just so deep and so broad that we can see these problems coming a mile away.

    I think that’s part of the frustration players have with the game. If we could see something coming a mile away, why can’t the devs?

    There are a couple of possibilities that come to mind, here.

    The first is that the devs don’t have deep game knowledge. Seeing how much turnover (and how many have been laid off) means that people are relatively new to the codebase. And while we can probably assume that a certain percentage of Blizzard employees are fans of Blizzard’s games, they may not be assigned to work on the game they enjoy the most. So it’s entirely possible a large chunk of WoW people don’t have a ton of long-term game knowledge.

    The other thing that comes to mind is that people are relying entirely too much on AI for coding. It is mandatory for Microsoft employees (which Blizzard employees are) to use AI. Mandatory. As in, you don’t use it, you’re likely going to be out of a job.

    Do you think Copilot or Claude or ChatGPT or whatever “AI” model they use (probably Copilot) has any game knowledge whatsoever? Do you think that an AI model can truly wonder about the possibility that if someone is appearing as, I don’t know, a chair, their character would still show up as a humanoid? Do you think that an AI model can contemplate and reason through why Pandarens might have a problem with porting to their homes?

    The answer is no. Even AI models that are trained on that codebase cannot necessarily make the links between seemingly disparate items the way a real human can. It may know the exact chance of looting a Skullflame Shield off a random mob in Silithus, but it cannot link these examples together on its own. It would need a real human being to force it to review the code for all these things and ask if there are differences, or to point out the differences, at which point the AI will undoubtedly say something like “great context, thanks!”

    A third possibility comes to mind — it could well be both of these.

    All right, enough ranting for me for now. What would you like to hear me ramble about next week? And what do you think about patch 12.0.5?

    Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 2

    Kurn / / gold, ramblings, skinning

    Well, time got away from me and so here we are, again, on Monday, posting a Sunday Brain Dump. Whoops!

    Topic 1: Valeera

    I really didn’t think a delve companion could be more annoying than Brann. I really, truly did not think that was possible. AND YET… Not only do I not like her emotes, but she will occasionally (frequently?) run into a room to harvest a node of herbs or ore and PULL THE ROOM. Great. Thanks, Valeera. I was totally ready for that.

    Then, because I have been playing this game off and on for 20+ years, I know how to pull mobs back so that we don’t get other mobs, like patrols or whatever. So I will often set my pet to passive, autoshot one mob and then take care of that large and ugly thing in a safe area. Valeera, on the other hand, does not like my pro strat and will leap into the fray, fighting the mob basically where they started. 🙄 This has, on more than one occasion, led to multiple mobs pulling. Thanks, Valeera. Super helpful. 😒

    The other thing she does that drives me absolutely bananas is that she yells “STRIKE!” right after something dies. Strike? Strike what? What the hell, dude? Blizzard, tell me you coded Valeera entirely with Copilot without telling me you coded Valeera entirely with Copilot. 😟

    And none of that even touches on the fact that she will occasionally just… not fight? She leaps in and out of the fray, seemingly randomly. She also breaks my traps EVERY CHANCE SHE GETS. She is the absolute worst and, I cannot believe I’m saying this, I wish I had Brann as a choice.

    I will say this, she is not the worst healer. She’s not the best, but she’s not the worst. With my pet, Fluffy the Turtle as my tank, Kurn as DPS and Valeera as off-DPS/off-heals, I can do a fair amount. It’s just painful is all.

    What do you hate most about Valeera?

    Topic 2: Gear

    Look, I’m glad that we have other ways beyond raiding or even doing dungeons (and mythic dungeons) to get gear. I’m really glad. My characters have traditionally lagged wayyyyy behind in gear. The whole Adventurer to Veteran to Champion to Hero thing is stupid though. IMHO. I miss when you got a piece of gear and it was good and you were like “nice!” and would try to get another piece of gear. Now it’s like “okay, I got a Champion piece so I may as well upgrade it because who knows when I’ll get a Hero piece” and like… what? Really? This is, to be fair, my first real go-around with this. I never really got anything higher than Champion (and on Kurn, at that, no one else) in past expansions. Like I said, I’m glad that we can get good gear from things other than raiding, other than dungeons, etc. But dear God, sometimes I miss the very simple “kill boss, hope item drops, hope the hunter doesn’t ninja it, yay got the item” routine of getting gear.

    Also, I am so not into the modifiers that were used at some point, like heroic, but I know things got even weirder somewhere in there, with like half-step upgrades and stuff?

    What’s your favourite way to get loot?

    Topic 3: Bad Guesses

    So when the expansion started, I looked at the skinning tree and thought that the diffuser skill would be useful. After all, motes of everything are used in basically everything, so I thought that was the wise way to go.

    In fact, I did not realize just how abundant the motes would be. I enjoy throwing diffusers on virtually everything I skin, but this is not the way to get the big bucks in skinning. I am finally getting close to maxing out the Talented Tracker section. I can make four of the lures and usually end up fishing for all the fish almost every day, and then I go spawn the majestic beasts and often get absolutely zero majestic items for my trouble. Next week, I’ll be able create the Grand Beast Lure, so that’ll be fun.

    But it got me thinking about how good I am at predicting some things in-game and how bad I am at predicting others. Many moons ago, there were these green gems, I think it was Talasites, and in a forthcoming patch, a new cut was going to be released with stam and resilience (for PVP) and I was like “OMG, this will make a FORTUNE!”

    Reader, it did not, in fact, make a fortune. 😢

    I was, however, pretty good at predicting things like nerfs and buffs and stuff when it came to raid encounters.

    Honestly, I would take the inverse these days, and I would rather be able to properly predict what’s going to make money versus the meta-like things in the game. 😅

    What about you, are you good or bad at predicting in-game things?

    And that’s it for Brain Dump 2. Anything you folks want me to discuss next week? Let me know!

    Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 1

    Kurn / / cataclysm, healing, midnight, professions, ramblings

    Hey there, folks! Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in this very galaxy, I used to do answers to search terms here on my blog. I’d look up the search terms that brought people here and I’d answer them as best I could.

    I don’t have those kinds of analytics these days, but I do still have a blog and a brain, so I thought I’d use the combination to brain dump on 3-5 topics every Sunday. (Who me? Starting on Monday? Yes.)

    So here, for your reading enjoyment, is Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump 1!

    Topic 1: Patron Orders in Midnight

    I recently hit the 1.5 million gold mark on my bank toon. Most of my characters have somewhere between 1500 and 2000 gold on them, and if it’s over that, I send the money to my bank toon. (Gone are my days of trusting anything remotely related to a “bank” to hold my cash.) When I think about what I’ve done in order to get that much money (half a million profit in three weeks), a lot of it comes down to fulfilling Patron Orders on my various toons. I have like 7 characters I regularly do orders on, plus a couple others I’m pulling into the rotation.

    Here’s what I do, pretty much every day, on all of them:

    I log in, check the orders and then do them in this priority sequence:

    – Are all the materials provided? Do it if I know the recipe, regardless of the payment.

    – If not all of the materials are provided and I know the recipe and I have the materials on-hand, do I get 2 points of knowledge? If so, do it. If not, do I get 1 point of knowledge? Check to see if other orders will reward me 2 points of knowledge instead of 1. If they don’t, then fulfill the order.

    – I also prioritize first-time crafts, assuming I have the materials or they are easily obtained.

    – Unless the order gives 2 points of knowledge and a nice reward, I don’t fulfill it if it requires using more than 200 concentration to get to max quality. (a rune, a thing to help craft that goes for a thousand or so gold, etc)

    – After all the orders for that character’s professions are done, I send everything that’s not soulbound, in terms of rewards, to my bank toon.

    I then rinse and repeat for virtually all my characters.

    By the end of 15-20 minutes, I have probably gained 1-4 points of knowledge for each character, I have gained a few trade goods (ore, herbs, leather, scales, rarer trade goods too), and each character probably has earned 30-60 moxie. Most importantly, most of my characters probably have at least 800 concentration.

    It is okay not to fulfill a wildly expensive order, even if it’s a first craft, even if it’s got a nice reward, if it’s going to cost you 5k to get the materials. Don’t sweat it.

    * Fun fact: if you get a max-level vial as a saved reagent while crafting something alchemical, you can probably just sell that sucker by itself for a stupid amount of gold.

    Topic 2: Tuesday Prep

    On Monday evenings and Tuesday afternoons, I start crafting for reset day in North America. Tuesday nights are huge for selling of consumables. I will typically do the following, especially since most of my characters will have most of their concentration:

    – Flask-specced alchemist (Madrana): Will craft once or twice to get 2-4 flasks (pre-multicraft). Multicraft is, of course, the way to make money on max-level flasks. Nocturnal Lotuses are still outrageously expensive, so I save them up throughout the week from farming and can sell a couple of extras for over 2000 gold each on Tuesdays.

    – Potion-specced alchemist: Will craft 3-4 times to get 15-20 max-ranked potions. We’re talking mana potions, potions of recklessness and Light’s Potential, whatever I really have mats for without buying anything. Again, multicraft is excellent here.

    – Enchanter: will craft 2-3 times to get some max-level Oil of Dawn or Thalassian Phoenix Oil.

    If I’m feeling extra motivated, I’ll cook a bunch of food of Kurn, too, like Royal Roast or Impossibly Royal Roast.

    Last Tuesday, I made over 50k in the span of like 2 hours while all this stuff sold.

    Topic 3: Cleansing

    I went Timewalking to heal Cataclysm dungeons this past week. Here’s a couple of videos.

    Bar none, the thing I hate most about it, apart from running with randos whom I despise within three seconds of the start of the run, is that Cleanse is on an 8-second cooldown.

    DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH WE HAD TO CLEANSE/DISPELL/ETC IN CATACLYSM??? It was a freaking lot more than every EIGHT SECONDS. I know, I can hear you now, prioritize, Kurn! Yeah, well I was trained for like 7 years to cleanse all the things as soon as I could unless it was……. whatever that damn warlock debuff was. Oh, right, UNSTABLE AFFLICTION. I need to be able to cleanse all the things. I was GOOD at it. And having an 8-second cooldown on CLEANSE drives me absolutely crazy.

    And there you have it, folks, my first Sunday (Monday, in this case) Brain Dump.

    What do you want to hear about next week?