Xe’ra should learn the meaning of "consent"

Why so Handsy?

You may have seen the  cinematic that deals with “The Fate of Xe’ra”.  Here’s a link if you want to watch. Note it contains spoilers for the Argus campaign, which you may wish to experience in pristine purity of the pure. In which case, close this article now and come back when you have been pristinely enlightened purely.

We’ll wait until you leave …

Okay, here we go.

 

I Saw the Warcraft Movie and It Didn’t Suck

Based on the disgruntlements I have heard from “The Internets”, I had very low expectations for this film.  Had I had moderately high expectations, they would have been exceeded. I quite enjoyed it.

Spoilers below the cut.  Don’t read if you intend to see the movie now and don’t want spoilers. On the other hand, if you’re waiting for the Blu-Ray, you’re part of the problem and you deserve no spoiler guards, so read on.

(If you’re unable to afford to see the movie, this is probably your only chance to find out what’s in the movie since you wouldn’t be able to afford the disk, either, unless you plan to pirate it. Don’t pirate it.)

They see me Trollin’, they hatin’, mon

The 2016 Running of the Trolls is an event to benefit The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention among LGBT (and other) youth.  I will be there on my fresh Troll hunter, GrimmtoothTu.  I intend to be at least level 20 so I can help retrieve lostlings with my mammoth, but one need only roll a level 1 and show up to participate.

Essential links:

The Trevor Project Info:

thetrevorproject.org
Lifeline: 1-866-488-7386
Get help online : http://www.thetrevorproject.org/pages/get-help-now

Date: June 11, 2016

Time: 9PM EST / 6PM PST

Here’s a more thorough explanation of what’s going on, how to sign up, how to donate, how to participate, and an FAQ.

Magical Warlock Girl – Running of the Trolls

This is a truly worthy cause – I hope to see you there!

Life Imitates WoW

… or something like that.

Behold:

Remind you of anything?

Them Zeth’gol Orcs, they be Dramatic.

Hiding in Plain Sight

WoW is in a similar position to a lot of high / gothic fantasy and terrestrial MMOs, in that adding new play areas is often a case of the game designers pulling new zones out of their metaphorical asses. WoW is in a lot better position than most in that there are plenty of other canonical worlds out there, though oddly they’d rather go the time traveling grandfather killer route than actually explore those other worlds ((And if you take that to mean that I think that the WoD premise is just plain lazy storytelling, you might be onto something.)).

And they said his predecessor was grim.

While I usually look forward to exploring other worlds, the thing I actually am enjoying when I do that is the exploration of new zones, regardless of where they are, and the discovery of fun things.  But I’m very sensitive to the harmony of the zone with the established dogma of a fantasy world, and I often feel the “new world” approach is very disharmonious with the established dogma when it comes to my completionist makeup.

What is he going on about?

Let me put it all out there: I think that the three worlds we know now – Azeroth, Outland, and Draenor – are only partially explored, only partially revealed to us.

Draenor and Outland are, at this point, only conjecture on my part, but it’s common sense. Looking at the tiny island that makes up what we know of Draenor, there are only two possibilities.  The first is that Draenor as we know it is a speck of land half the size of Khaz Modan and an ocean the size of Azeroth.  The other possibility is that Draenor as we know it is just one land mass among many, that the world of Draenor is largely unexplored by ourselves.

This does of course open all sorts of possibilities, including lost tribes of Draenei, Orcses, Ogreses, and other denizens of Draenor that we have either encountered or been hinted to.

 Honestly, they might be trolling us already.

By Extension

And since Draenor as we know it is the bedrock upon which Outland is built, that also means that for every lost continent of Draenor, there is a possibility of the same lost continent of Outland, only with more shatteryness. For lore purposes, it also opens a lot of possibilities since we have 35 years of Azerothian lore on that shattered land mass and its supposed compatriots.

Alleria‘s gotta be hiding somewhere, right?

Closer to Home

But what I’m getting at is this.

Azeroth only makes sense, from a climatic point of view, if you assume that it is only half explored.

Kalimdor and Khaz Modan make excellent sense climatically if you assume that they are northern hemisphere continents. Both continents are arctic to subarctic in the north, and tropical or arid in the south. Khaz Modan’s northern half is very European, while its south is very tropical. Kalimdor’s northern parts are very North American, and its south is very African – arid, dry, desert.

If Kalimdor and Khaz Modan were truly global, you’d expect Tanaris and Stranglethorn and Pandaria to be subarctic at the very least, rather than the tropical – dare I say, equatorial – climates they exhibit.

It only makes sense that the equator of Azeroth passes somewhere in the vicinity, or just south, of Pandaria, rather than in between the Arathi Highlands and Wetlands as depicted on some representations.

You Can’t Prove a Negative

Mea culpa – the possibility that those two continents are northern hemispheric does not in any way prove the existence of one or more southern hemispheric continents. It merely opens up the possibility. It provides an opening into which these land masses could be inserted.

For all we know, the southern hemisphere of Azeroth is an empty ocean, devoid of little more than the occasional island kingdom that would provide a content patch’s worth of exploration at most.  But there is one or more expansions’ worth of space in this alleged southern hemisphere, and not exploiting it seems to me, as a certain fictional astronomer’s fictional father said, “a waste of space”.

The Solid Case Against

There is, however, a solid case against the possible existence of these alleged continents. In fact, there is a solid case against Kalimdor and Khaz Modan being northern continents rather than globally spanning.  There are three such cases that I am aware of, in fact.

Hard to see detail, admittedly.

The first is revealed either when raiding Black Temple, or doing the Warlock “Green Fire” quests. At one point you can look up, and see, in the sky above you, the planet Azeroth.  I have absolutely no explanation as to why this is – you can’t see Draenor from Azeroth, after all – and from any other point on Outland, you can’t see it. But from that particular point, you can. And the planet you see shows the two continents spanning the planet from north to south. This makes no sense whatsoever on many levels, but it is there as established game lore, and that’s that.  Azeroth, as seen from The Black Temple, has no missing southern continents.

It also doesn’t appear to have Pandaria or Northrend, either.  So the infallibility index of this sighting just took a dive.  If you’re gonna use this sighting as an example of why the North is alone, it needs to at least include all of current lore within it. And the weak tea excuse of “But it was made before Northrend was part of the map” also works for “But it was made before the southern continents were part of the map” as well, now doesn’t it?

Moving on, then.

Dungeon delvers in Ulduar are familiar with the room just prior to Loken’s in Halls of Lightning. It bears within it a holographic representation of Azeroth. And, just like the BT sky-orb, this holo-orb shows no indications of there being more to Azeroth.  It also doesn’t show Pandaria, so once again we have no evidence that this ancient holo-orb is actually accurate, or if the Titans are trolling us.

Finally, we have the globe that Algalon uses as an instrument of destruction against Azeroth. Not only does it show no more than the other two representations, it also shows one of Azeroth’s moons as a crescent, which is just weird if it’s supposed to be an accurate representation. Clearly it is not, nor intended to be.

These are the facts

The facts are, there is no evidence that there is a southern hemisphere beyond the shores of Tanaris and Uldum. No sign of a missing southern continent. No support for a theory that there is more to Azeroth than we can see right now. But there is also no solid evidence against it, nor against a missing continent (or raft thereof) on Outland and Draenor.

All we have is this.

1. in 2007, there was no reason to believe that Northrend or Pandaria were real, and they were not depicted in any available representation.
2. The physical climate of this imaginary world of Azeroth makes absolutely no sense without an unexplored southern hemisphere.
3. Draenor and Outland are too small to be entire planets. There must be more.

The Possibilities are Endless

We know that Blizz is near the end of its planned story arc for WoW. This arc, so widely known, has proven to be a burden that they’ve fought hard to shake off, coming up with the ridiculous plot of WoD as a way of bucking the system and shaking up our expectations.  But even if the next two expansions adhere slavishly to that timeline, there is so much potential left in that prophesied timeline of Azeroth.

But imagine an entire set of southern continents equal in size and scope with Khaz Modan and Kalimdor. What might we find there? Feral Elves that predate the Titans? A whole continent of Trolls? What of Draenor / Outland? Might we find an entire land where the Draenei reverted to Eredar ways? Did Turalyon and Alleria start a new Alliance-based ((Did the Alliance as we know it even exist then? This might be retro-futuristic Alliance, if not.)) trade empire just out of sight?  Where might there be dragons? A lost Ogre empire?

There are clues. That anonymous bit of land to the southwest on the Draenor map.  The ports on Draenor! Why build massive ports unless you are trading with people that you can’t reach by land?

The stories for these places are completely unwritten.  But, like Pern’s “Southern continent”, bursting with potential.

I hope we get to see them.

Drunken Friday Night’s musings

If I’m sober enough to type, I’m sober enough to post.

Ennyhoo.

The latest news on bag management – and especially reagent management – in patch 6.0.2 is exciting and very smexxay. Allowing you to use your reagents bank from any location is a game-changer, no doubt about it.  I hope that cooking mats are included, not that that’s a big deal to me these days ((Raids? I’ve heard of them.)).

Without attributing to any specific incident, let me say that the ladies of WoW are an especially awesome group of people.  I might get worn out trying to keep up with some of them ((And I’ve dropped a few twitterz because of that.)), but the thoughts that they put forth on the topics of gender equality are well worth the time it takes to read and digest. I may not agree 100% ((And I suspect that my XY chromosome arrangement renders my opinions to some of them irrelevant.)) with all that is stated by them, but overall they fight the good fight and I am totally okay with that. Not that it matters, right ladies?

It occurs to me, though, that there are very few male bloggers whose opinions I cherish. A lot of them come from a position of privilege and seem to somehow carry that with them, but others have multiple points of view and therefore bring something interesting to the party. Which I find interesting ((I remembered ‘Rades’ but not the name of his blog. Go figure.)). I’ll always have interest in the various hunter fora  ((BTW, WHU is back, Metzen be praised.)) without actually endorsing them, but it’s the blogs that have opinions on the issues that matter that keep me coming back.

A long time ago I used Amiga computers pretty much exclusively, and participated in a FidoNet “echo” that the current WoW “twitterverse” has a strong resemblance to. Those people – more than any blog, forum, or website – epitomize the goodness to be found in the WoW social universe, in the same way that nothing that mattered on amiga,org seemed to matter in #AmigaGeneral.. Not the pustulant sewers of the WoW fora, and certainly not the reeking crevasses that represent the ‘discourse’ to be found on MMO-C, 4Chan, or Reddit.

Cultivate the proper list of tweeters on Twitter, and your life will be better in every respect.

Ai  swarez.

Sophie’s Choice

From the novel and film of the same name, an impossibly difficult choice, especially when forced onto someone. The choice is between two unbearable options, and it’s essentially a no-win situation.

(Source)

 

WoW culture received a shock this week in the form of a scathingly critical article on Polygon that pointed out what we had all seen and chose to ignore: Rob Pardo, one of the senior seniors at Blizzard (("Chief Creative Officer", which implies a lot of responsibility for the way things go at Blizzard.)), stating in a talk at MIT that Blizz just didn’t see that it was Blizz’ place to be all that much of an exemplar to people with regards to socially progressive topics.

I wouldn’t say that’s really a value for us. It’s not something that we’re against either, but it’s just not something that’s … something we’re trying to actively do.

— Rob Pardo

In the an article on Rock Paper Shotgun, Harper points out Dustin Browder ((Game Director on Heroes of the Storm)) arguing that Blizzard is "[…] not running for President. We’re not sending a message. No one should look to our game for that."

RPS countered, "let people have fun in an environment where they can feel awesome without being weirded out or even objectified."  to which Browder countered ((I swear before the Titans, this is a direct quote.)),

"Uh-huh. Cool. Totally."

— Dustin Browder, master of artful dodges

All this plays eerily like Nintendo’s earlier comments regarding their game Tomodachi Life, in which relationships are possible, but not if you’re gay. They apologize for this, but state

The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation.  We hope that all of our fans will see that Tomodachi Life was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary.

Eerie, because it seems like Blizz is responding to some sort of game developer culture dog whistle here.

All about framing

In an earlier tech scandal this year, Mozilla Corp., better known for browsers than politics, hired a vocally anti-gay CEO, who stepped down a few days later after talk of boycotts, protests, and other general discontent.  At the time, Mozilla announced his departure along side a statement that it was "hard to balance free speech and equality".

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

This has become a popular idiom as of late; getting ahead of the reader and trying to force the reader to make a decision that they don’t have to make.  In the case of Mozilla, they try to make it so that you can only have equality or free speech.  But the fact was, nobody’s free speech was at risk here.  They made the decision to hire a known homophobe.  But they were unprepared to accept the consequences of their actions. The REAL choice was whether or not to stand by their choice, and Eich took the choice out of their hands ((Arguably, they could have rejected his resignation, so they DID make a choice.)).

Pardo and Browder both want to do the same; present their decisions as a choice between having fun, and making a "statement" about social issues.

The problem is, of course, that nobody asked them to make that choice.  They chose to force that choice.

All about Inclusion

A few years ago, Blizzard muckety and general brodawg Chris Metzen ((Senior Vice President, Story and Franchise Development)) got up in front of Blizzcon and made a speech about what "Geek is". Among them:

• Transformers
• Ten-sided dice
• Conan the Barbarian
• Captain America
• Star Wars
• G. I. Joe
• Batman ((At this point, if you’re asking "Where’s Wonder Woman?", I would not be surprised. HMMMMM.))
• Doom
• EQ  ((Chill out. this is where we came from. It’s legit.))
• LotR

Okay, more or less on track. But the thing he missed, the thing he didn’t say, that "Geek is" inclusive.  Real, true geeks welcome all into the fold that live by our code. We don’t care if you’re man, woman, child, elder, Eldar, gay, trans* ((And the Facebook-sized gaggle of terms that goes with.)), country, western, Coke, or Pepsi. 

If you’ve felt more at home in a library than a soccer pitch, we feel you.

If you’ve stood in line in the rain for a Harry Potter ticket, we get you.

And if you’ve ever felt excluded because what other people like makes you feel sad or weirded out or uncomfortable – we get you.  We accept you.

Because GEEK IS … inclusive.

And I imagine Metzen left that out for at least two reasons.

1. He – and the rest of his dawgs ((Okay, I hate that term, I hate applying labels as some form of obscure shorthand that is as exclusionary as the thing it derides.  But dawg … seems to fit.)) – don’t get that. Don’t understand that.
2. His company would not be able to deliver on that.

This is not new. This is not sudden. This is baked in to the corporate culture.  If you don’t fit their mold, it’s okay if you want to hang out, but if you don’t feel comfortable in their sandbox, they don’t care. Worse than that, they want you to shut up about it.

"Women are okay, I guess. Some of my best friends are women. But this is a boy’s trip. So if they’re not really cool with that, that’s just too bad. We’re not trying to make a social statement here."

A Crisis of Conscience

WoW is in crisis. It’s a crisis that nobody talks about.

It’s not that the alpha isn’t ready to go or that raiders are feeling shafted or that there have been x number of days since the last major content patch.

The crisis is the wave of people that are leaving because they no longer feel like they belong in this game.  Every time Blizzard reaffirms this, more leave.

WoW has a unique place in this kind of conundrum.

On the one hand there is a beautiful, wonderful community of bloggers and tweeters and forum posters and such that are supportive, informative, and delightful to be around.  On the other hand, there is this seemingly toxic corporate culture that sees no profit from making the game friendly to over half the people in the world.  It’s hard to decide between the two.

For a long time, many of us have avoided deciding.

But more and more are deciding. Many major names in WoW blogging have departed lately, and they have stated this toxicity as the reason why. Not all of them are women or LGBT – some are simply sympathetic to the cause, and are leaving in a show of solidarity.

It’s a quiet crisis. We rarely speak of it. Surely, you will not see stalwarts in the WoW community like WoW Insider or WoWHead or MMO Champion reporting on it, because they know better than to antagonize the golden goose too much (But kudos to Matt Rossi for at least addressing the issue behind it, not something I would have expected to see from an AoL property.).  Note to said stalwarts: Reporting on this sort of thing is not the same as taking sides – unless, perhaps, Blizzard have made it clear that any mention of it is antagonistic to them. Is it?  I have no visibility to it. There is no transparency AT ALL.

But the crisis exists, nevertheless.

And maybe we should make it worse.

Making it an issue

People like Rob Pardo and Chris Metzen are not going to take a threat of financial loss that seriously unless their board beats them up.  You can’t really get their attention that way.  They hired somebody else to worry about that.  Someone to "be the grown-ups" ((This is virtually verbatim from the 20th anniversary tapes.)) so they could go on being big overgrown kids.

No, what Rob and Chris want more than anything is for you to think they’re cool. They have that word tatoo’d on their tongues. They say it over and over again, like a mantra. Even Greg Street drank that kool-aid.  Cool. Cool. CoolCoolCool Coooooooooooooooool.

So kick ’em in the cool gland. If you have a voice, make it heard.  If you decided to unsubscribe, make it clear when you do that you feel that Chris and Rob and Samwise are really uncool people with uncool attitudes towards women and LGBTs and the like. Explain to them that you abhor their attitudes.  Tell ’em to get sensitivity training or something. Tell ’em to grow up a little (but not too much).

And maybe if enough people iterate on that, they’ll Get It.

I’m not holding my breath. Because entitled schmucks never really Get It until the world crashes down around them, and then they’re more likely to blame everyone else. ((See: "Affluenza".))

Making it Personal

Which brings me to me.

I haven’t played the game in days, ever since this came to light. This incident has poisoned the well, soured the taste to the point where I just can’t ignore this issue any more.

I said in the past that if they showed no progress on this issue, I’d drop my subscription. The fact that I’ve written on this topic before, multiple times, is evidence enough that the problem is baked in to their culture.  Last time, in the MoP lead-up, Metzen at least made noises like they were going to try to improve. This time, they’re actually regressing, trying to disavow any responsibility for the effects their culture has on the product. I see little hope of improvement.

I have a couple of weeks left on my subscription, so I have some time to ponder this.  And that’s my difficult choice – whether to implicitly underwrite a developer’s toxic culture which chooses to ignore or alienate a bunch of my friends, or to turn my back on a number of friends that are still doggedly sticking around – though far fewer than there used to be – and cast myself into the void, to land I know not where.

While nowhere near the eponymous choice’s difficulty, it’s still a poser.

Well, Wildstar opens in a week.  Maybe that’ll tide me over until Elite.

Community is hard work

I’m not going to say this again ((I’ll probably say it again.)), so pay attention – I’m totally not harshing on any particular people. I have an alternative viewpoint, and I want to share it.

Blogging often introduces us to new people that we really connect with. A lot of times these connections sink in, wrapping you in a cozy blanket of fellowship. I can’t count how many people have wandered into my orbit, or I into theirs, and we found commonality between us.

Belghast would contend that this is not a “community” per se , but something else that just seems like it. These people whith whom I’ve met, formed connections with both on the blog and outside of it, who’s guilds I’ve joined and with whom I’ve slayed internet dragons – this is not, strictly speaking, in his mind, a community.

Now, to be fair, he’s focusing outside of the WoW “community” (I’ll call it that for the sake of argument). And yet things he points out about the larger “MMO community” ring true for the WoW blogging community as well.

One of his first examples focuses on how so many people on Twitter have stopped following him over the years. I have to wonder why they don’t. I also have to wonder why he didn’t follow up on that, if twitter follows are something of importance ((They aren’t, really, but work with me here.)).  My point, the unfollows themselves are meaningless without context.

See, the thing that was missing in this case was effort. And no, before anyone thinks it, I’m not dissing Belghast for being lazy ((See, told ya I’d say it again.)). What I’m saying is that twitter follows are a two-way thing. The person that unfollowed did so for a reason. The person that was unfollowed was unfollowed for a reason. Until those reasons are actually KNOWN, everything else is just empty speculation.

However, Twitter isn’t the best of examples, nor is Facebook or even LiveJournal. What they have in common is a built-in framework that forms a false sense of “community”. You have “followed” ergo you are part of that “community”. The implication here – and an incorrect lesson that many may learn to their misfortune – is that communities are “built” in software and have a tangible “framework” that you can monitor the “health” of. A guild, your follow lists on FB, Twitter, LJ, etc. Your mailing lists. Your PHP-BB site. All of these are constructs that can call themselves “community” by dint of having a “box” within which the “community” is found.

But “community” in the “real world” is a lot harder.

Example.

When you move into a new house, you don’t automatically become friends with the people next door and across the street. You can’t go borrow a fiver from Bob next door on your first day. He won’t let you watch his kids while he and Mrs Bob go out for dinner. No, you have to earn each others’ trust and friendship. Your “community” is only geographical on the first look – after that, it’s a web of trust and caring, battles won and lost together, crises managed and averted, and so forth.

And that’s the proper analogy for blogging communities. We don’t just “fall together” into a box marked “WoW Blogger community”. That’s just our “geographical location” in greater Blogostan and says nothing about the web of trust (or distrust) that we have constructed.

And, unlike Twitter, you have no means to find out who’s “following” you (other than that “follow” thing in Blogger, and that’s hardly universal). So, people that you used to “follow” stop blogging, and unless you make the effort to follow up ((c wut i did thar)), you’ll never know why.

The question becomes, if a person stops blogging, is that person no longer part of your “community”?

The real world analogy is if your neighbor Bob’s kid grows up and he no longer shows up at the Little League games you umpire for, is Bob no longer part of your community? Well, he lives next door, surely not! But if your only interaction with Bob is at those ball games, you may feel estranged.

Now, in the real world, first links (Little League) forge longer chains. Chances are, if you and Bob connected at the games, you’re probably interacting in other areas as well. As persons, you both put effort into forging a friendship. You do so with many people, and the commonality of it is what forms a very real and lasting community.

And that’s the bottom line of the WoW, or even game blog community. It isn’t that we all play a game and blog about it. That is insufficient to form any real community. But a number of people care enough to reach out and interact and get to know each other. Those people then interact in other areas as well, and form real friendships. In fact, I can say that I consider many former WoW bloggers to be friends. I still consider them to be part of the “community” even if the first link in that chain’s now broken. Other links have taken up the slack.

A blogroll is not a community.

A group of blogs is not a community.

Nor is Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, or Google Groups.

Even Blog Azeroth is not, strictly speaking, a community on its own.

People are what make a community. Nothing else. The people within those frameworks make it work.

If you’re part of a “community” that started or still orbits around a commonality of blogging, so be it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I like to think communities are an organic thing. You can’t really force them via artificial social networking frameworks. Retweeting your latest blog entry doesn’t enhance anything regarding “community” – that’s just advertising, and that doesn’t help form “communities” either. But it can bring eyes to your site, and that can get the ball rolling.

That’s only the start, of course. Community isn’t a fire-and-forget thing. Your job isn’t done when you hit “publish”. If you have no further interactions, you won’t have a “community”, either.

Belghast may not feel part of a community at this point.  But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It’s not automatic, and it can’t be forced.  Sometimes even hard work won’t help.

But it won’t happen if you don’t keep trying, either.  So keep at it.

Finding Jaina

Two years ago today, this little white ball of fur trundled across the parking lot right in front of our car. We stopped and took custody. I named her Jaina in tribute to what I hoped would be the fighting spirit we would see from our own Ms. Proudmoore.  Also the white hair kinda brought her to mind.

So today we celebrate Jaina Finding Day!

Cold and alone in the word … no more!

We initially had bad news from the vet; they said she had FIP and had weeks to live at most.  We determined that those weeks would have warmth and love in store for her.

She didn’t act like she was dying. Within a short period of time, she was Airborne Kitty, flying through the air to attack what she might consider attackable (such as crotches and fingers), and terrorizing all the other cats.

Surprise Finger Noms!

Over time she showed no sign of slowing down, and by the end of the first year she was flourishing.  Her white fur had given way to a more chocolately hue, but it was soft as kitten down still.  And she had plenty of it.

Over time, she’s developed a cuddly side, especially with whoever is on the couch.  The couch is her favorite place.

We don’t even try to keep her off of it.

Here we are at the end of her second year with us. We know her second birthday was probably around 10 weeks ago, but this is the day we celebrate, because it’s when we found her.

Happy 2nd Jaina Finding Day!

Ten hat slots, and counting!

Something said at Be MOP reminded me of somewhere else that I had read of a hat-based business model.

So this probably happened at Blizz:

Note: this webcomic is by the same team that does Penny Arcade, plus one, which may turn some people off.  So, avoid if you are ethically inclined to do so.