Alas, WeakAuras.
I’ve been following the undercurrent of discussions for the upcoming expansion, Midnight, and one of the most Azeroth-shattering disclosures is that a lot of data previously available to addons is going away.
This is, allegedly, mostly related to data available during combat, and the alleged goal is to flatten things out in such a way that we don’t have a bunch of parse lawyers dictating how every encounter runs.
Whether they are being disingenuous or not (I’m 60/40 on that right now), it is what it is, and when 12.x rolls out, a great number of our favorite addons will die.
Some of them already have, even if the body is still twitching. The creators of WeakAuras, for example, have already declared that they will discontinue the addon completely when Midnight releases. They do leave some wiggle room for Blizz to change their mind, but overall, that addon is dead.
I personally never used that addon to the full capability that it offered, but even the limited use I make of it will be killed off, and the addon developers just don’t see any reason to try to work within the few features that will be allowed.
Now, it’s hard to say how hard this will hit, since Blizz is rolling out some “native” features that are supposed to fill in for a lot of these functions in WA.
My situation is one of those. My use of WA was basically to let me know when abilities were available, in priority order. So, for example, one of my main directives is that whenever Bestial Wrath is available, use it. Another might be for when I have X stacks of Y, do Z. You get the idea.
Most of these are actually atainable by the native Cooldown Manager, in certain respects. When it was first rolled out, it was unusable. But, Blizz has made efforts to refine it, and it is, in fact, refined. Not refined enough to make me happy, but close enough1.
There are several candidates for replacement by the native UI, now that they’re actually putting effort into it. Nameplates, unit frames, and so forth.
But my main fear is that when Blizz does something like this, they rarely do enough. Let’s consider unit frames, for example. Unit frame addons like VuhDo, ElvUI, Shadowed Unit Frames, Z (nee X) – Perl, Grid2, and so forth.
Let’s look at Grid. Grid is very popular with the healers, but in fact works for everyone. Units can be dressed up with decorators, such as showing who needs a shield, who needs decursing, as well as who’s about to die.
Now, from what I’ve read, the native unit raid frames will accomplish about 2/3 of that. Defining indicators about the status of the characters isn’t something that I see mentioned. Buff / debuff icons, yes. But user-defined indicators of state? Not seeing it2.
So, as I mentioned, my main fear is that, once again, they’ll try to implement a popular addon but only half-ass it3.
I keep seeing comments from Blues such as “don’t want the addons to do the thinking for you”. I feel this is insulting. Those addons are providing you with data that is not available via the native UI. But that information is available from the current addon API. So, fine, remove that API, but, please, don’t be a bunch of insulting bitches about it. The fuckup, if any exists, is by Blizz.
I also see comments from Blizz such as “Addons are providing more information than the native UI does” as a justification for the changes. This, also, is insulting, as in “insulting my intelligence”. The UI is just a window into the information that the game provides. The game provides more information than the native UI discloses. A lot of addons provide this information from the API in a usable way. Again, who fucked up here? YOU did, Blizzard.
It’s fine to shut down information that you never intended users to have access to. But say that’s what you’re doing, instead of try to paint addon developers as the bad guys. They’re just providing a window into the information that the game makes available. It’s your decision, Blizz, to make that information available, and it’s your decision to later on renig on that contract.
This drama is yet to conclude – we’re in alpha 9 at this time, I think, and the levels of info available via the API are wildly fluctuating. But a few things are clear to me.
- Blizzard’s contempt for the users is barely under the surface.
- Blizzard’s contempt for addon developers is just above the service, even as they try to deny it.
- Any addon developer that decides to abandon Retail is completely justified.
- Any addon developer that decides to abandon Classic is likewise justified. Seriously, fuck a bunch of Blizzard.
I am not encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, but addon developers surely are feeling the hate right now. Blizzard is accusing them of all sorts of unseemingly behavior, demanding they don’t collect any money for their hard work, and now are stripping the API of features they use. I’d be pissed off in their situation.
In many ways this reminds me of the old “screen scraping” accusations you see from time to time (including from Curse, which is why I don’t use their shit any more). What is this, you ask? Lemme essplain.
“Screen Scraping” is frequently an accusation that owners of popular web sites make when someone uses public API interfaces which they provide to provide users with enhanced information based off of that API. In the case of Curse, for example, their website had a public REST API that they did not document. Someone discovered this, and provided information to others derived from that interface – again the data was public. Curse got snippy, and accused these people of “Screen Scraping”, implying that these people acquired the data by parsing the web pages that Curse presented, illicitly.
Let’s be clear: actual “screen scraping“4 is morally horrendous and tantamount to theft, which is why entities of weak moral character such as Curse will resort to accusing others of this when all they are doing is accessing data provided freely5. They fucked up, they don’t wanna admit it, and here we are.
So, anyway, the whole “addon developers r bad” theme of Blizz’s antics falls into the whole false screen scraping accusation strategy. And it pisses me off.
The WoW API is Blizzard’s to define. And that’s fine. What pisses me off is how they are blaming the players and addon developers for the decisions they have made. For their short-sightedness.
Grow a pair of balls, Ion6, and admit that Blizz fucked up7, and these changes are to make it right, and that there will be pain, and you’re really, really sorry8.
Collected articles on this:
- No WeakAuras Addon for Midnight (WoWHead)
- What other addons will be broken in End-game content in Midnight? (WoWHead)
- World of Warcraft confirms addon limitations coming to Midnight and possibly to its pre-patch (Massively OP)
- Raid Frame Updates Coming in Midnight (WoWHead)
- ElvUI Development on Hold for Midnight (WoWHead)
- Midnight WIP (oUF Github)
- What the heck is happening with my WoW addons in Midnight? (Blizzardwatch)
- Addons should not have Exclusive Functionality in Midnight (Reddit via WoWHead)
Plan accordingly for the coming Addonpocolypse. Learn to live within the limitations of the native UI, and you may prevail.
- One point of contention is for what I call my ‘buff’ icons. I keep these seperate from the rest, and, when appropriate, they appear in a seperate place from the combat icons. For example, whether my character has a food buff. Or, if a priest, whether the stam buff is active. That sort of thing. Right now, I have two fields for icons – the combat icons, and the “aux” icons. I could use more! ↩︎
- I have to caveat this with the fact that I am not in early alpha or beta testing, nor do they necessarilly discuss ever aspect of the raid frames, but, BUT! The images they share do not show any sign of such things, so I have my doubts. That, or, ya know, once again giving Healers 2nd-tier treatment yet again. ↩︎
- In this case, 2/3-ass, I guess. ↩︎
- i.e. using software to parse the data from a web page and process it into something new. ↩︎
- I’m getting off in rabbit hole territory here. Short version: Screen scraping bad. REST API usage fine. If obe doesn’t want someone to use one’s REST API, don’t provide a REST API. And if that means one has to hire somone competent in order to secure that API, then one needs to pay up. Curse has always been adept at playing the victim, but what they really are is a bunch of cheapskates that tries to paint their shortcomings as someone else’s transgressions. ↩︎
- Or at least one. ↩︎
- Unlikely. ↩︎
- And … you pretty much are. Sorry, I mean. A sorry excuse for a project lead if this is how you handle this kind of thing. ↩︎
Bag Addon Bake-off
At the introduction of The War Within, my favorite Bag addon, Adibags, was discontinued, but with the promised replacement in BetterBags.
Let me summarize this statement’s context.
Bag Addons are addons that make your inventory use and management experience somehow better. There are various levels to this, from just combining all bags into one, to the full-on AdiBags experience where you had the means to categorize and sort items as you see fit.
That’s actually what I liked the most about AdiBags; the creation of custom categories, and the assignment of items to them, was a great boon to someone like me that managed several toons across several expansions. I have toons everywhere from BC to current expansion, and being able to sort out all the garbage from the potentially useful garbage was super helpful.
When the author of AdiBags declared Adibags dead and replace with BetterBags, I was 100% sympathetic. I, as a coder, have also coded myself into a corner, and had to refactor my shit. No harm, no foul, I get it.
But I found the implementation of BetterBags, as we went along, to be not entirely aligned with my goals for a bag addon. So I started looking for other options.
I knew there were already a few alternatives out there, and, I did try them out during certain dry spells with BetterBags, but most of them failed to lure me away from BetterBags, usually for lack of functions I liked (i.e. being able to arbitarilly create a category and assign items to it). There are a million dealbreakers, and a million features, and it’s not entirely possible to break them down at a glance, but I can at least spreadsheet that shizzle.
I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again, so let’s make it happen, captain.
First of all, let me introduce the offenders.
- AdiBags (RIP)
- BetterBags (Heir Apparent)
- ElvUI
- Bagnon (longtime contender)
- Baggins (another longtime contender)
- Baginator (the new hotness)
- My Bags (fan service)
- Baud Bag
… there are dozens of other bag addons that are extremely specialized and as such are not included in this comparison. Others, such as Combuctor nee Bagnonium, haven’t been updated in years, and thus don’t actually work. Not gonna kick an addon while it’s down.
Anyway, let’s have a look. As always I break things down into a spreadsheet, because I am, in case you hadn’t noticed, a complete and utter nerd. This spreadsheet does the heavy lifting of breaking down major features as part of each addon. Granted that what qualifies as a major feature is entirely subjective, and you have absolute permission to blame me for any oversights or shorfallings in this.
The spreadsheet is, of course, only a starting point. It allows us to quantify our subjective perceptions in a somewhat objective way, but each of those ratings, if you will, must be followed with some sort of subjective opinions. I will endeavor to ensure that the subjective part is couched within its objective data.
When we get to the end, I’ll share this as well as explain the various things I am grading on, and how.
Anyway, let’s do get started.
AdiBags
Starting with the benchmark.
In my mind, the Winner and Still Champion, as another comes to dismantle its castle. This addon was so good. All in one bag, categories, a helpful category management feature – I am not sure why this was not sustainable, but in my mind this was the perfect bag addon, and thus the Gold Standard. Right now, it’s still supported in Classic, but given the way the wind blows, one should not count upon that. Fortunately, Classic is not a rapidly moving target. So maybe “stagnant” is equal to “good” in this case.
I am incredibly grateful to Adi for this addon and wish the best for their future endeavors.
The version I am using for this baseline is the Classic version, as the Retail version stopped working with the release of TWW. As such, some features – Warband, Reagent Bag, Guild Bank – aren’t even available1.
BetterBags
This addon is the presumed sucessor to AdiBags, seeing as it’s the same development team. They have implemented in both Retail as well as Classic Classic. In terms of support, this feels like a good thing. If issues arise in any implementation, I feel it will be supported and fixed.
But I have to comment on the non-intuitiveness of this addon. And I have to admit, my definition of “intuitiveness” depends heavily on AdiBags. When I said AdiBags was the Gold Standard, the categorization of items figures hugely in this assessment. I admit that I have bias in this regard, but it is purely feature-based.
In this I am wondering why the categorization feature of AdiBags was abandoned, as it was envisioned in that addon. Being able to drag an item into a category was one of the great features of AdiBags. Why was it abandoned for such a clunky and, if I’m honest, unhelpful interface? I have every reason to believe that it made perfectly programatic sense, but not so much from the user interface level. Which implies either a lack of vision from the UI perspective, or a lack of caring about it. I am hoping both for the former and for the development team to take that lesson to heart.
For the time being, the BetterBags UI is, really, only fair to middling. Sorry.
While the addon comes with dozens of preconfigured categories, it can be a little overwhelming to tweak these to suit your own preferences.
ElvUI
The ElvUI inteface qualifies as “barely qualifying” in this particuar evaluation. If you were unaware of Bag Addons, it “would do”. But otherwise, it’s barely a replacement for the generic bag interface. It has a few features that make it better than nothing at all, though.
Bagnon
Bagnon is one of those inventory addons that makes me feel like I’m using Windows 95. Like, I’m familiar with everything I see, but it feels like it’s driven by a coal bunker.
For the most part, Bagnon pulls the task off. It’s functional, but its age is showing, and it’s lacking some features I really want, such as categories / filtering, or the simple feature of collapsing empty slots into one. So every time you open your bags, it’s huge. And don’t get me started on the bank!
The Warband bank isn’t really supported, and hitting it just opens that gigantic Bank frame again. Please, make it go away.
Baggins
Baggins has a lot of the same issues as Bagnon, but also the air of trying too hard. So much about this addon feels like a multi-car pileup on a stretch of freeway at the most remote point in a desert. It’s exhausting. It does have a sophisticated and complex item categorization methodology to it, but at times it seems to trip over its own dick on the way to implementation. It’s really quite spectactular, and I say that with as much respect as I can muster.
Augh
Baganator
Baganator has me excited. This is the new kid in town, and has made a massive splash.
It supports natively the all in one bag concept. A little bit annoyingly, if I’m honest, in that reagents and other stuff that goes in the reagent bag is automatically part of the default view. That’s small potatoes, though.
It has a UI category interface that, while not the most intuitive, works well.
It also supports categories natively, and also supports pre-configured categorization. What this means to you and me is that if you don’t touch categorization at all, the native categories make a certain amount of sense. And yet you have the freedom to change that, and it doesn’t require an Act of Congress.
Custom categories are easy to define, prioritize, and modify. I am especially happy with the ability to modify categories.
For example, trade goods can be defined by profession, and yet grouped by expansion. Gear, however, can be defined by expansion and grouped by slot and sorted by item level. This is usually exactly what a player with multiple alts needs.
Alt support! Support for bank caching (including warband bank)! Support for Guild Bank caching! Basically this means that once you have visited something, it “remembers” and you can review it at leisure. This basically means that if you were using something like Alt-a-holic to track your alts’ banks, you don’t need to with this addon. It does it for you.
It should be noted that in order to function, Bagainator requires the Syndicator addon. While the installer for Baginator implies that Syndicator will be automatically installed, manually verify that it is installed. In this age of decietful AI, always take that extra step.
My Bags
This is an extremely simplified addon that focuses on the categorization of items specifically. That is to say, it lets you categorize everything, and if there’s an error, it’s your fault. As a minimalist, I approve of this approach. If there’s a fuckup, check your source code before that forum post, asshole.
I can say that, if categorization is your sole focus, this addon has some real rizz. You’ll work for it, but overall, that is probably a given. Happy hunting.
There were a few annoyances about this addon. First, there didn’t appear to be a way to set the number of columns for a category – locked at four for me, which seems to jibe with the documentation as it were.
Secondly, you can’t move the bag.
On the other hand, category creation was quick and simple, and moving them around was easy as well, if unpredictable.
Since it doesn’t support any other bag type – including even the reagent bag, which the default bags do, you really need to like the category support it provides or you will just end up hating life.
Baud Bag
This one is an oldie and goodie, and seems almost frozen in time except for some of the newer things that it also supports.
First of all, it really doesn’t support categories at all. In fact, it doesn’t seem to support themes, profiles, or currencies as such, making it one of the lowest-ranked addons in this list. On the other hand, it offers support for new things like the Warband bank, so it’s not frozen in amber.
So let’s talk about Results
Let’s start out with what features I used to grade this. Listen, if you’re an addon author and disagree with this, I will represent your objections2. I will admit right up front that my priorities are biased. I am looking at categories and sorting and all the help I can get to handle the chaos that is the residue of a 20-year player of this game. All other things are eclipsed by that simple need.
Anyway, let’s talk about that.
- All In One Bag – This is a really big deal. Even the stock interface now posesses the ability to switch between seperate bag view and all in one view. You almost have to work harder to exclude this (and somebody did3).
- Filters / Categories – The nomenclature drifts a bit, but the general ability to be able to group items arbitarilly is what I am looking for. This was the key feature of AdiBags that got this ball a-rolling. If the addon doesn’t support this, I will not be using it.
- Retail – Is it supported in Retail? Noite that in some cases, it’s listed as supported in Retail, but doesn’t actually work there. That’s the difference between a 5 and a 1.
- Classic – Same, but for Classic.
- Plugin Support – Is there an ecosystem of addons that support this addon? A lot of times the author of an addon will release additional features as plugins, which is kind of clever, but in a lot of cases an author will offer an API that other authors can use to add their own personal priorities. A strong plugin community can be a blessing or a curse. Is your addon just that limited? Or is it just that promising?
- Profiles – Does the addon support profiles – can different alts have different configurations?
- Themes – Does the addon support themes / skins?
- Warband – Does the addon support the Warband bank, in any way? Some addons actually don’t even let you access it.
- Reagent Bag / Bank – What level of support is behind the reagent bag / reagent bank?
- Guild Bank – Does this addon support the Guild Bank, or are you on your own?
- Currencies – What sort of support is available for the configuration of, and display of, different currencies (not counting gold)
- Auto Filters / Categories – While having infinite abilities to sort by category, it’s also nice to have a nice baseline to start with.
- Void Storage – While it is going away at some point, it is good to have support for it in your chosen inventory tool.
- Search – The ability to search for items is great. Bonus points if that search also checks your alts, your bank, your warband bank, and your guild bank.
- Sort / Cleanup – Does the addon let you click a button to clean up your bags?
- Hide Empty Slots – In the old days this was less of a concern, but in these days of having something like 120 bag slots in your backpack, it’s a critical feature. Empty slots should either be hidden or condensed.
- Alt Support – Different from profiles, this is the ability to see what your alts have when viewing your bag.
- Annoying Things – An arbitrary feature category in which I air grievances for slights.
- Other Interesting Features – Conversely, if the addon offers some sort of interesting feature(s) that don’t fit in elsewhere, I offer points here.
A word about points. Every scoring slot offers a range of 0 to 5 (except for Annoying Things) in which 5 is the best and 0 is nonexistant. In most cases, a value of 0 or 5 is all we have, though in some cases the item is scored on the scale. For example, Search is a varied item. You don’t support search or not. Some are a lot better than others. On the other hand, you either support Classic or you don’t4.
Okay, with that said, here’s the raw results.
The default – “Base” is WoW without any inventory addons enabled. And, thanks to years of enduring our bitching, they’ve added a few features to core WoW. As a result, the core WoW experience is actually not the worst score.
AdiBags is my alleged baseline, though I could only look at it in Classic. Its lack of support for Warband, Reagent(s), Void Storage, and Guild Bank don’t take away from its shine, though, because lack of support for a thing doesn’t mean that you have to interfere with those things – and it didn’t. It was a good run.
BetterBags, the Heir Apparent, scored third-highest of all the addons, so it’s not hideous, but, as I’ve said, I’m not happy with it.
ElvUI was never a contender, even given its high score. Maybe I should have had a scale of 0 to 10 for really critical features, since I really feel light the 2nd highest score of ElvUI is unjustified. I agree, that sounds biased. But, seriously, show me someone that thinks that ElvUI’s bag interface is good.
BagNon scored better than I expected, but that doesn’t make the lack of category support acceptable.
Baggins just feels like its trying too hard. The bag interface is confusing and, well, looks aweful. The categorization has its strong points, but the use of such is so painful I just can’t recommend it, especially with better options available.
My Bags has its heart in the right place, and, if the author really put in some work, would be a great lightweight alternative to the others, given its very strong support for categorization.
Baud Bag scored better than it felt. Of all the addons, this felt like a relic, and I would not be even tempted to use it, based on its complete lack of support for categorization.
Baganator ends up being the best scored addon of the bunch, but I don’t feel it’s unjustified.
- Its category support is excellent, and its support of “auto” categories that can be overridden is likewise solid.
- Support of all modern bag / bank interfaces is excellent.
- Alt support is superb.
At the end of the day, I can’t not recommend Baganator based on features alone, for Retail and Classic5.
- Some possibly available in Cata Classic, but, no. ↩︎
- Unless you say something about my mother, in which case let it be know I survived the FidoNet Wars, so at me you will come. ↩︎
- Looking at you, Baggins. ↩︎
- Unless it’s available for Classic but doesn’t work, in which case you get a big fat 1. ↩︎
- Not including Cata Classic. I’m off that track, permenantly. But if the author is supporting Cata Classic (future Panda Classic) at the same level, it’s a sure bet for best inventory addon over there, as well. ↩︎
The Users want Classic (or something like it)
I tend to play Classic on the weekends and Retail during the week. It’s hard to track trends in that situation, but it’s really hard to deny that Classic Fresh (The “Anniversary” realm) is really busy. The featured image above is just one indication – sitting on the bank steps, and just scads of people logged in1. Ironforge looks similar, only it’s easier to see how many people are around the Commons due to how it’s constructed (a big open space).
In practically every zone, finding someone to team up with for difficult quests is easy – and sometimes the only way you’re gonna get that kill without someone ganking it. Quests where the mobs are plentiful are, still, painful to complete because of the huge number of people on the same quests2. You gotta get inventive, for example, to get your quota of Murlocs in Redridge. Protip: bring a Water Breathing potion.
When I was still playing Cata Classic3 it was pretty much the same after the server merge4. The population on my server was high, possibly too high, but at that point I wasn’t down in the lower levels trying to Get That Murloc. Played hell with the AH, though.
All this is to say: if there wasn’t an interest in the Classic eras, we wouldn’t be seeing this kind of robust activity on the servers. I give you that my experience is weekends only, but I think that’s an error bar’s level at best. The overwhelming evidence is that people like it there, and possibly they like it better than Retail5.
Blizz is kind of in a box, now. They are of course fully committed to the story and lore of retail. To do otherwise would be death for the franchise; they can’t even admit there’s a faction of players that hate retail without feeling awkward. Yeah, I’d feel awkward, too.
But the evidence I have on hand is that the Classic-ish era(s) are popular, and that even when Retail looks like a ghost town, Stormwind and Ironforge in Classic(ish) are just popping.
Blizz has of course pandered to these factions of players, with multiple angles. Season of Discovery, while not my thang, still shows a lot of activity, especially from the developers. They’re up to, like, the 8th phase now, and probably gonna keep rolling on that, because, hey, people pay for that shit. Even if the armchair theorists claim that it’s gonna die ANY DAY NOW.
No, I think Classic(ish) isn’t going away, and I’m pretty well convinced that they’ll keep poking that bear until the last server shuts down at this point. People like me aren’t the target, but there are plenty of people that are the target, and they’re in engame raiding for whatever version of Classic(ish) they’re playing.
Ultimately, the lesson Blizz should be taking away is not that we want to play Classic for the rest of our sad lives. No, the lesson is that what people enjoyed in Classic should be brought forward into Retail. Things like the lethalness of certain areas (such as those around an instance entrance). Things like the difficulty factors (locations of graveyards, locations of flight points6). Things like the convoluted nature of crafting. Listen, I can’t put my finger on it, but it remains that people seem to like it, so, hey, Blizz, you have the Big Damned Data Scientists – FIGURE IT OUT.
That’s kind of a joke, really. If Blizz could “figure it out” they would have. And, hey, let me be clear on this, a few things have been good moves (the newer more complex talent trees, for example), but there are still massive misses (let’s talk crafting!), which indicates that they’re still letting the theorycrafters drive the bus.
I do hope Blizz will take the Classic(ish) experience to heart and try to wrangle some useful conclusions from it before it’s too late, and we do see the Last Server Shut Off. Retail can, and should, learn from the past.
Up to you, geniuses.
- This is, in case you missed it, a weekend. ↩︎
- The number of people charging through an area with mobs and aggroing as many as possible and marking as many as possible – whether they survive or not – has lead me to coin the phrase “Jabronis gonna jabroni”, or “The jabronis be bouncing around like popcorn out here in Redridge” – because the one thing they cannot do is walk from one point to another without hitting the space bar like it’s a propulsive device. ↩︎
- Before they announced Panda Classic and I gave up in disgust. ↩︎
- Which, I’m still not a fan of, but since I’m not playing Cata Classic now, who cares? ↩︎
- Well, some of them, anyway. ↩︎
- Listen, I’ve been on record as praising the proliferation of flight points as a great QoL feature of the Cata expansion, but maybe we got carried away? ↩︎
Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Redux
A long, long, LONG time ago, users of 8-bit machines encountered a gamed called Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. No stinking I, II, III, or whatevs. Most games back then didn’t have roman numerals after the title. The game, was the game, and that was cool.
I encountered this game back in 1983, in a computer bar of sorts, running on a Franklin Ace1. The graphics were primitive, but good for the time. You were presented with a crude visualization of a dungeon you were crawling through, some info about your party, and a description of the action, such as it was.
This was one of the first true party-based dungeon crawlers, and it blew up the scene. Almost every RPG you can encounter now is a direct descendant of this game.
There were eight total games in this series, with the final one being released just before the company that made2 it filed for bankruptcy3.
While I first encountered this game under less than ideal circumstances, I eventually obtained a C-64 and a copy of this game for myself, though it was a somewhat enhanced version of the game, with beefier graphics and so forth. Still, it had the same charm to it. My strongest memory of this, however, is one of frustration. Some time after getting hit with a power spike4, my C-64’s random number generator got frozen on the same number, and as a result, every random encounter was the same result. I eventually tired of that and bought an Amiga 500, “but that’s another show.”
At any rate, the dungeon crawler became one of my favorite genres. The TSR Gold Box games, the Black Box games, other independent efforts5, even variants of Angband6. Hell, even Diablo (I and II) maintain some connection to the mothership.
Over the years, my discontent with the genre has grown. As dungeon crawlers became a side-product or sometimes a non-product of RPG games, I got more and more annoyed at the endless dialog options, character drama, and other asociated issues7.
To the point where I’d basically given up on it. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Baldurs Gate III, but even II was a bit too … dramasy? … for my tastes. III seems to be compromised of 90% drama, which, eh … no thanks.
And then we get this.
SOMEBODY, and I’m not pointing fingers here, decided that what the world needed was a reproduction, in a manner that would run on modern PC systems, of the first Wizardry game, with improved graphics on every possible level.
And it’s glorious.
There are no sops to modern sensibilities here. Dead is dead. Hard is hard. Hell, it still doesn’t support auto-mapping, which hadn’t been invented in 1981, so you probably need to bop down to the stationary shoppe and get some graph paper8.
In short, I love it. I’m still on the first floor of the dungeon, but it’s just so much damned fun. It even provides old-school options and has a little tiny window that shows how the dungeon would look in the original game, which is cute as hell.
Possibly my favorite feature so far is the Wizardry version of “Fireball”9. The Sir-Tech guys had learned from the past and made sure that party members wouldn’t torch their own party when casting it. So that leaves just the massive appreciation of the phenomenal graphical depiction of the spell10.
The allure here is the fidelity to the concept. Our characters are differentiated, if at all, by the portriate. There is no back story, or sub-plot, or other distractions. The goal here is to beat the bad guy, by levelling up your toon. Your toons could be block diagrams, it wouldn’t matter. Your imagination is what fuels a lot of this.
And it’s a good thing, too, that they’re just rote blocks in the big RPG management game here. This game is brutal. Death is death, and if you don’t have the coin, you don’t have the rez. Hey, it’s easy enough to sub in another toon, at least for a while, and you might even get to like the sub more than the original, though, please see comment about lack of personality in the toons.
Any personality perceived is actually personality imposed, and that’s on you my friend.
Anyway.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds is effectively, a return to the primeval content of what makes a dungeon crawler great. It’s not just a nostalgia trip. If you at any time just wanted to wade in and kill things, but were tired of the Diablo Bullshit, this game might just suck you in.
If you are into basic dungeon crawlers, rush out and get this game. At the time it’s on sale for roughly $21 US on Steam, and worth every penny.
- This was an Apple II clone and if I’m not mistaken got sued out of existance, which is ironic since Apple released the full schematics of the Apple II as part of the manual. It was a good machine at the time. ↩︎
- Sir-Tech ↩︎
- I was fortunate to receive my eight-CD set of Wizardry VIII disks, however crudly packaged, though I suspect many did not. ↩︎
- My own damned fault for using this computer on a US Naval vessel with a janky SSDG. ↩︎
- Legend of Faerghail broke my heart with its unpatched issue that made it unwinnable (at least in the Amiga version). ↩︎
- I still go back to Zangband from time to time, especially because of the Princes of Amber ambiance. ↩︎
- Astarian, I’m not going to warn you AGAIN about those crisps wrappers! ↩︎
- Which was included in the original game’s box, so I’m feeling a bit ripped off here, as you will need to map your own shit. ↩︎
- That’s not what it’s actually called, but you’ll figure it out once you get the “Big Fire” spell. ↩︎
- Really, all of the spell animations are pretty cool. ↩︎
Housed
So, Blizz today announced some stuff about Player Housing which is to come with the Midnight expansion (this year? Maybe.)
There are a lot of problematic things about Housing. Some of this was exposed with Garrisons back in WoD when it became a factor in isolating players from each other. Others are more subtle. Like, what kind of compute resources1 are consumed by having all those Garrison instances floating around out there?
I don’t want to excuse Blizz on this one. Any number of MMOs have implemented Player Housing in some form. And I’m sure there are as many solutions to this as there are MMOs that survived implementation of Player Housing. But I will also state that Blizz does have a bar to clear that may or may not be set by other MMOs, and that is performance. Specifically, implementation of Player Housing in such a way as to not fuck up performance of the game in general.
Let me be clear on the challenges here. First of all, any time a player is logged into their “housing”, resources are being consumed in some fashion. Which resources depends on how housing was implemented. A common method is to instance the housing, in which the player and their housing exist in an instanced bubble in the game that is neither part of the game nor actually seperate from it. Regardless, it has to be rendered in some way when the player is inside of it, and if there are any time-dependent things (such as maybe the aging of beer in a barrel of crafted beer in the basement of the dwelling), they will have to be maintained in some way. Regardless, there are compute resources that will be consumed, and that multiplies in games with a lot of players in the game2.
So, anyway, any private dwelling in an MMO will consume resources when in use, and if it is not “private” per se, then it is accessable by any jabroni that wanders by, which, Oh Joy. And, also, since it isn’t private, it has to be available and renderable 100% of the time that the game is active.
In the case of WoW, we’re talking some pretty crippling stuff, as Garrisons illustrated. Whoever was keeping that part of the game running during WoD deserves a medal. That had to have been a nightmare. I mean, consider the number of concurrent users at any given time in this game. Scoff as you will about the relevancy of WoW, but the sheer numbers of active players at any given time are the envy of any MMO extant. WoW may be old and feeble but only in relation to its past self. In relation to even the most popular other MMO out there, it’s still the Gold Standard.
The other challenge is isolation. If the instnanced existance of a Garrison was bad, consider that it was for one, and usually only one player. Sure, you could invite your friends in to your garrison. Sure. How’d that work out? Anyway, the average user per garrison was someting like 1.01. In WoD, users were not congregating anywhere unless forced to, and since garrisons included everything you might want to go to town for (AH, trainers, etc), there was zero incentive to participate in the second ‘M’ – ‘Multiplayer’. Blizz found out pretty quickly that “Other people are Hell” was more of a way of life than an amusing chestnut from Mark Twain. When given the chance, we avoided the hell out of our fellow players3.
So all this has to be on Blizz’ mind as they approached the Player Housing issue. It has been more expansions released after WoD than before. They’ve been thinking about this issue for more time than the first exposure to the unique issues assosiated with “per player housing” actually occurred.
Anyway. Regarding the proprosed solution. We’re lacking details right now, but here are the bullet points I have gleaned so far:
- There will be two “zones” for Player Housing. One for Horde, one for Alliance.
- Each of these two zones will present as combinations of iconic early zones for each faction – for Alliance, we’re talking Elwynn, Westfall, and Duskwood. For Horde, we’re looking at Durotar, Barrens, and Azshara.
- The door is open to other housing zones later on.
- Each “zone” is a 50-plot “neighborhood”, and I assume that we’ll have as many of those ‘hoods as needed. My main concern here is that 50 seems a bit low. 500, maybe 5000 feels better to me, but then again I’m a city boy these days. I just feel like digging out the Thomas Guide4 isn’t a deal breaker, I guess?
- The commitment to players sounds pretty strong. For example, don’t expect to lose your house of your subscription lapses, which is a common “solution” to housing issues in other MMOs.
- The commitment to social also sounds strong, though is lacking substance so could mean anything up to and including Elon Musk Sniffing Your Undies5.
- The commitment to “customization” sounds good until they run out of assets, to be honest, but it’s a nice thing to have in mind for those that are inclined to do the thing.6
I have billed myself as the ultimate WoW cynic in many ways, specifically where it comes to Blizz and their relentless PR campaign to make it seem like they actually give two shits about the players7. I am also unfortunately a Blizz Believer in many ways. My belief is in the engineering people, in their commitment to making good software regardless of the shit that the PR people8 puke out on a schedule.
Which of course is why I have focused so much of my opinions on the engineering side of things. The technical aspect is what interests me. That is what held back implementation of this feature for six or so expansions, if you count Garrisons as the first attempt at this9. Six expansions in which there was probably a whole team devoted to solving this issue10 and what we are seeing in the next expansion will be the ultimate answer to that prolonged rumination.
Either that, or it will suck massively and we’ll see the next response in WoW 20.1.11
- “Compute resource” is the cool way of saying CPU Drag in the AI age. ↩︎
- Seriously, did you see what Rades did in Wildestar? That probably killed the game IMO. ↩︎
- Having met them, would you not? ↩︎
- If you get that reference, go ahead and climb in a shallow grave and pull the dirt over yourself. ↩︎
- I realize that’s an ongoing issue but … ↩︎
- Just … please, don’t emulate Rades. First, he was unique. But, also, please don’t. ↩︎
- As opposed to giving two shits about the players’ money, which they crave. ↩︎
- Which unfortunately includes many outlets that you take your WoW news from. ↩︎
- And I do. ↩︎
- Allow me my illusions. ↩︎
- Scoff if you must. We’re well on the plus side of getting there at this point. ↩︎
Classic Classic is hella fun
Okay, to get it out of the way, I am well aware that Classic Classic and Classic Era are effectively the same thing. So get off my back and maybe make it to the next paragraph like a good soldier, hokay? Cool.
Anyway.
I have been drinking in the experience of leveling in a Classic setting
As I have been progressing through four toons on Classic Classic1, I’ve been comparing the experience in the primeval WoW against the current game play. And, I’m sorry, it’s not that easy to compare one to the other, I’m afraid. It’s hard to say this, but, really, they are two completely different games.
I am trying, with great difficulty, to seperate my nostalgia from my experiences in Classic. Not saying I’m doing a good job at that. But I am hella enjoying myself in Classic Classic. Is all I’m sayin’.
One thing I can say, without any bias at all, is that Classic Classic – AKA Vanilla – is hella fun. There’s no real point to this, it’s just that WoW Classic, AKA the Vanilla experience, had a certain charm to it, and I’m hella digging it. I can’t say why, but I am totally enjoying this frozen moment in time, even though I realize it is fleeting.
My biggest takeaways so far:
- Hunter BM reduces down to two abilities in combat
- Affloc is still not that distinct at level 20
- Frost is making an early showing at level 15
- Disco with a wand is pretty awesome, actually
Also, with twenty-year hindsight, it’s not that hard to stick to my guns and rely on Hunter:BM; Warlock:Afflock; Mage:Frost; Priest;Disco to get me through Vanilla to BC in the Winter months of 2025. It’s kinda comforting to see these builds working out in the ancient frameworks.
The main point here is that Classic gives us a way to relive the old game and make a basically unbiased judgement of how it compares to the current game. And, I am sorry, but the Old Ways clearly, to me, win out.
Now, I realize that there a zillion subjective things here. And I agree that, subjectively, the current “retail” version has its advantages. But I truly feel like they are outweighed by the old game.
- Talent trees are a lot better. Don’t get me wrong, the current talent trees are light years better than the old talent tiers.
- “Elite” means something. You wanna take on an Elite mob? Better bring your “A” game.
- You really need to manage your quest hubs, as it were. Travel is expensive. You only have one flight point per zone (with very few exceptions2) So unless you have a sugar daddy paying for flight points, optimization is a thing.
- Every new zone feels like An Event. Most quests that take you into a new zone make you feel like you just stepped into a war zone. Right now, in this moment, Duskwood is the scariest thing I have seen so far, and it’s damned scary.
- Every training opportunity feels like a major decision. I have seen a full GP for two toons, both which immediately surrendered most of their cash for training. Hell, Grimmy, at level 25, couldn’t affort to fly to Menethis Harbor after his most recent levelling. And he didn’t take all of the abilities, considering not just a few to be superfluous.
My current strategy is to play Classic only on weekends, retail the rest of the time. Given my RL schedule, the two pretty much even out. I have to say, right now, that I am enjoying the hell out of Classic Classic a lot more than Retail (TWW). I’m certain that a lot of it is the nostalgia factor, but, also, it’s all about edges and corners.
Retail has had 20+ years to sand the edges off and make the whole thing a lot slicker. Some of these I approve of. Flight points and quest hubs are a good thing. Some, I do not – making half a continent’s contents irrelevant is a travesty3.
Classic Classic (and Classic Era) is an implicit acknowledgement of that, and the numbers bear that out. We wouldn’t be seeing Classic Classic and Season of Discovery otherwise.
My understanding of the meta roadmap of Classic Classic is that it will progress to at least WotLK levels. If it goes beyond, I will delete my Classic Classic characters and move back to Classic Era, because a less than optimum Classic is better than what we get with Cata.
Ultimately, I feel fortunate to be able to revisit Classic as it was. While far less than perfect, it was nevertheless something special at the time, and, compared to its future self, all the more special, as the precursor and the current “state of the art” really aren’t the same game anymore. And I have the nerve to enjoy playing the game that I fell in love with 20 years ago. Sue me.
- Hunter, Warlock, Mage, and Priest, to be mostly precise. ↩︎
- Looking at you, Ashenvale. ↩︎
- Look, I am not arguing against shortcuts to max level to bring a new victim to the newest expansion or whatever. That’s why we have boost tokens. I personally have four that I haven’t even used. And you can buy the damned things. So, if you’re interested in ignoring 90+% of the content to get your toon to current gaming levels, there are avenues. So let’s not cheapen the actual leveling experience for everyone else just to score points with a few raiding princesses, okay, Blizz? ↩︎
When is a choice not a choice?
The WoW Hunter world1 was rocked today by the news that in 11.1, Marksmen Hunters will no longer have a pet.
There are a lot of reasons given for this, but it reeks of (as Blizz Watch so well puts it) throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
The whole “Class Fantasy”2 of Marksmen leans heavily on the concept of the Hunter being an expert shot, and not reliant on pets for the greater part of their abilities. Alleria is a good expample of this, as she has no pet. She, like many Marks Hunters at this time, has taken the Lone Wolf talent. This talent boosts your damage output if you don’t have an active pet. Really, the Hunter equivelent to Fire mage (except the mage doesn’t have traps, yo).
Now, there are a lot of issues with the current Marks spec, not the least which is that they still have talents that require a pet to be useful, so you see a lot of situations where a hunter will summon that pet, do the thing, then dismiss it for that damage boost. And I agree, that’s a messed up way to run a show.
But … removing the pet completely? That’s not the fix. You address all the problematic use cases!
Before, it has been a choice. In 11.1, the only choice will be whether or not to run MM spec.
I would say I have no horse in this race, but I do – I am looking forward with rapturous anticipation of the day that all of the former MM hunters pop up in the BM forums and start to bitch how effed up BM is and what needs to change to make BM more like MM. Oh, yes. I live for that. /eyeroll
Seriously, Blizz. Don’t do this to the BM Hunter forums, I’m begging you.
This is the Final Finding Jaina Day
I know I said I would not post about Jaina any more, but this day, the 21st of December, would have marked the 13th Finding Jaina Day had she been around to celebrate. So she’s on my mind.
Unfortunately, as you probably know, we lost her this past May, which is also just after we lost Petey (May 2024 is SO FIRED).
Over six months have passed, and I still miss her terribly.
The damage this year was horrific regarding our feline friends. We lost 3 out of six of them – Petey, to a tumor, at over 18 years in age (probably close to 20), Jaina, and then Washburn to an intestinal issue.
And, a couple of months ago, we got a big scare from Zoey, the cat we obtained at the same time as Washburn. As with our other kitties, we were seeing a serious loss in weight (my guage here is the shoulder blades – if you can feel them boney, the cat is in trouble). She was previously weighed in at 18 pounds, but when I took her in for this issue, she was down to 7 pounds. Looked like a repeat of the previous 3 cats we lost this year. What horrific issue was killing her?
But then.
The vet diagnosed hyperthyroidism, deemed treatable. A pill was perscribed, and she quickly turned the corner and started gaining weight, and her thyroid numbers started improving. We’ll be giving her that pill1 for the rest of her life, but it beats the alternative2. She’s over 10 pounds now, and the vet is no longer scheduling follow ups, so the assumption is that we’re now in maintenance mode. We are incredibly happy that our little House Panther will be sticking around, and even more so that we’re not looking at a 2 out of 3 fatality rate this year3.
The other two Inners – Butterscotch (aka Professor Jiggly) and Tater (aka Morgan aka Psyco Cat) are doing well, and are probably confused at the increased lovings they have received. Butterscotch still cuddles up to his mommie at night, and Tater still comes and makes us biscuits one or two times a night.
Regarding the Beltalowdas, they’re still sticking around. Noodle, Gremlin, Scooter, Monster, and Pip all come inside for a good part of the day / night. The “newbies” – Highbrow and Lowbrow – are still making a showing. Lowbrow has actually started coming inside to eat, and occasionally spends the night inside. Highbrow is still an occasional visitor, in tomcat fashion.
The big news in this regard is that Goblin – the patriarch of all of the ferals here – and who had not been seen for months, has made a reappearance. His shoulder appears to be healed up, but one of his eyes may be gone now – hard to say, it was all white when we first saw him, but now it’s improving. He’s still a grizzled old veteran of the Feral Wars. We’ve fed him and he’s been availing himself of the feral shelters we have outside. I hope he sticks around some.
Finally, the daughter’s cat, Pelna, has taken to spending more tim out of her room with us. He seems to be apparently interested in football, and possibly NHRA and NASCAR. Happy to cater, little man.
So, we honor the memory of our little Bearcat by looking after the kitties that remain, and the ferals that continue to appear, similar to how she appeared to us in the parking lot one December morning. While I still miss her powerfully. looking after her spiritual feral kin feels like a good way to honor the way she made me feel.
Good bye, little bear cat. I love you still. May your flame never dim.
- So, if you wonder how to give a cat a pill, we’ve devised a method. We use a mortar and pestle to grind the pill up, and then mix it in with a puree treat – in this case, Zoey loves the Temptations Purree brand. It costs a little more than mixing in with the cat food, but has a way higher success rate. ↩︎
- Well, there are two alternatives. The first is death. The other is nuking her thyroid. Not sure I’m ready – mentally or financially – for that. ↩︎
- Not that we’re keen to just delay things until next year – which doesn’t appear to be the case FWIW. ↩︎
Killing Azeroth
As promised, I nuked my Cata Classic toons and uninstalled the Cata Classic client. Not interested in MOP Classic, and never will be. Wasn’t that interested in MOP when it dropped in retail. Absence has not made the heart grow fonder.
On a lark, I rolled up four toons on Classic Classic1 in a non-hardcore environment. No longer having to worry if I died and would therefore have to start all over again, I discovered something.
Azeroth itself was a character in the game.
Now, this may sound maudlin or trite to you, and I have thoughts on that.2
Anyway.
The World of World of Warcraft is often overlooked in this regard, rather most people are focused on blasting through more content to get to the raids at the end. But when WoW first came out, there were no real plans for expansions3. The world needed to contain everything we were doing, and thus needed to have some character to it that we would find interest in.
There were so many easter eggs and hidden secrets to find, none which offered much in the way of reward other than the finding and enjoyment. Ever stumble across that memorial in Hillsbrad? Lots of nice little bits like this lying around.
That is not to say that this fine tradition didn’t continue. I’m especially thinking of those abandoned boots (no body) next to an abandoned campfire near Illidari Point in Shadowmoon Valley (BC). But even at the first expansion, emphasis changed for players. Rather than gathering rosebuds, they were burning through to get to the first raid.
And as we careened through each subsequent expansion, Azeroth died a little more.
So I’ve found the more sedate pace of Classic Classic to be to my liking. I hope it lasts for at least two years4 like this before they roll out Classic Classic Burning Crusade, though I have my doubts.
Listen, this isn’t some sort of nostalgia trip. There are zillions of things I miss from Retail, such as more numerous and well placed flight points, or favorites in the crafting window5, transmog, reagent banks, guild banks6, and so forth.
But it’s worth the tradoff. One poorly placed flight point that it takes a chunk of time to get to, for example, forces you to plan a little better, and allows you to take in the surroundings on your way. It’s a zen thing.
It’s very possible I’ll get fed up with it all eventually. But. This, right here, is the game I fell in love with. And I’m glad it’s available to me. Compared to this game, Cata – or possibly even Wrath – is relatively soulless.
I suppose a lot of games these days have that same aestheic going on – so much past in our present. But I can see the allure of playing the old pre-wow games, with all of their little idiosyncracies and ancient design, because it represents something more “pure”, for lack of a better, less prejudicial term. People play EQ – not EQ2 – for some reason. I’m guessing that reason has something to do with the “purity” of the game as opposed to something more, eh, “modern.”
In a lot of ways, this is something I like about WoW in general (Retail included). With its dated graphics and exaggerated looks, there’s a statement there about what’s more important – pretty pixels, or fun gameplay. And while I can argue whether gameplay in Retail is really “fun” any more, it would be a lot LESS fun if the graphics were burdening my computer just to render it. There’s something to be said for that approach.
There is something to be said for sticking to the basics.
A conversation I was having recently regarding the Civilization franchise kind of hews to this line of thought. Civ is – or was – a good game. A good ol’ fashioned 4X game. One of the first, really. And for quite some time, it did it the best. But then they started bolting on weird shit. Religion. Districts. That whole thing about diplomacy that never really gelled7. A good case can be made that Civ peaked at IV, but even V is better than VI. So, will VII make amends for this? I think not. Like Blizzard, Firaxis suffers from the ailment of never being able to admit they were wrong. So all those systems that nobody likes? They’ll never go away. Where does that leave VII? If they can’t fix busted shit, that means adding new shit.
It’s good to step back and realize that even though WoW has been around 25 years and has only managed to make itself worse, other game companies can also do the same thing, and, do so over a longer period – 33 years in the case of the Civilization franchise.
As I said in that conversation about Civ; I would prefer that they did a release every five years that was just an update of the graphics and compute engine, maybe some bug fixes, and call it a day. There are dozens of games that I feel that way about. No need to be “progressive” if progression means killing off what was good before.
It’s weird to realize that all of your favorite games are older than most of WoW’s player base. But there you have it.
Not sure how I feel about that. Not sure if I ever will. But the quest for something as engaging as Reach for the Stars on Amiga is ongoing. Maybe the chase is the thing. 8
- Or whatever it’s called these days ↩︎
- If you want more like that, get ye to https://effinbirds.com/ – I get nothing but the satisfaction of a shill well done. ↩︎
- Hell, I read they only planned for 100 quests for each faction. They intended the main part of the game to be a grindfest. Dodged a bullet? ↩︎
- Since I’m only playing Classic Classic on weekends, I suspect that I’ll need two years to get to 60 “honestly”. Way to be selfish, me. ↩︎
- But not that abomination we got in DF ↩︎
- Even though I’m guildless, I miss the potential. ↩︎
- Honestly, diplomacy in Civ VI is about as scrutable as in the original. ↩︎
- How could I resist going back to that well? ↩︎
Cata-didn’t
When Cata Classic came out, I was grumpy as in a “that ain’t classic no more” way, but I decided to keep playing just for spite, I think. In the process, I got kicked off of my server (a perfectly good server with plenty of people on it) and pushed onto an overcrowded server (Pagle), lost my guild, and in general wasn’t liking it a lot. Put, like I said, I think I stuck around out of spite.
At today’s “Blizzard Direct” (aka Twitch Blizzcon) even that will to stick around was killed off with the announcement of Mists of Pandaria Classic.
Now, if Cata weren’t Classic, MoP sure as HELL ain’t Classic. The last vestiges of the old talent trees are gone, and we get the lovely treat of those damned dead-end tier things where you can pick one of three talents per tier. I hated it then, I hate it now.
So I ain’t doing it.
I debated briefly about sticking around until it rolled out in Summer 2025, but I just don’t see the point of it. We know how this will go, having been through this bit of drama before. No choice. Deal or alive, you’re coming to Pandaria.
So, I am disbanding my Cata Classic presence this weekend. If you have a toon on Pagle and want my stuff, holla. “Grimmtooth”.
Later this month they are rolling out something called “Classic Classic”1 which will be new fresh progression servers that will stage out content similar to how it was staged in the original, only this time they’ll go all the way to Outland.2
So whatever servers they roll out, I’ll be looking to make a new home there. See you there.
Oh! There was one other thing not directly stated, but hinted very heavilly. See if you can figure it out.
Not All Hunters 
