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Operation Hey Folks

September 16, 2016 by Belghast

For the last week and some change, I have been running at least one dungeon a night. Often time I am queuing with less than a full party. This is a situation that generally causes me great anxiety, because I like going into a group knowing that folks I know… outnumber the folks I don’t know. I said awhile back that I have been trying to force myself to be more cordial in dungeons. As a result I have adopted my common “Hey Folks” and “How Goes?” greetings. My friend Grace that I am often dungeoning with has been doing the same. Mostly we had a discussion awhile back about how this is the common expected behavior in Final Fantasy XIV, and that maybe if we attempted to treat World of Warcraft the same we might get similar results. Folks in FFXIV are largely charming and willing to help you sort out mechanics that you might not understand, all just because you spoke up and said you were new to a dungeon. My experience in the past of WoW has not been nearly that charitable, but I was willing to give it a shot either way. The awesome thing about going in with the majority of a party… it means the moment someone resorts to toxic behavior you can punt them quickly. All in all I have to say I continue to be pleased at just how well this is going, even in Heroics. If you present a friendly face, more often than not it has been met with a similarly friendly response.

Last night we had someone drop shortly after introductions… which I am hoping was just a case of them getting disconnected or being needed elsewhere. However others in the party not only were cheery but performed admirably. At the end of the dungeon run we took time to praise the Deathknight for example who did an amazing job of pull casters into the group, and pulled off a clutch rez when our healer inadvertently stood in some “bad”. All of this is really making me wish that World of Warcraft would adopt a commendation system similar to Final Fantasy XIV. I think a lot of that culture is based on the fact that at the end of a dungeon run, each player gets a single commendation that they can give to someone in their party. There is the additional caveat that you cannot give commendations to members of your own guild, meaning you have to be giving random strangers these nods. To make it something that folks are actually interested in receiving there are a number of achievements based on the number of commendations you have, and some of the rewards are things like mounts, titles and cosmetic items. Basically the system would port perfectly to World of Warcraft random dungeons, and give some additional reinforcement of good behavior. Last night for example I greatly wished I had the ability to heap tangible praise on this Deathknight for doing a pretty amazing job all around. Even the mage that ultimately replaced the dropped Demon Hunter, was deserving of commendations because for the most part everyone “mechanic’d” like a pro.

Other than dungeons, last night I spent most of my time attempting to catch up in Suramar. I had been lagging behind horribly in the questing there, namely when it comes to unlocking things in the actual city proper. I am not a huge fan of stealth mechanics, and it is foreign to me to attempt to sneak around. A huge part of me wants to simply fight my way from one side of the city to the other… but the sheer mob density here makes that not really a viable option. Similarly I don’t believe a lot of the quests are actually open to you unless you are wearing the illusion. As Tam and I have commented… Suramar is like being a High Elf Enchanter in Neriak… for those who ever had that experience in the original Everquest. The illusion works most of the time, but occasionally there is someone all to happy to murder you. As you progress however you start to build little enclaves where you are more or less free to roam safely. Last nights grind was focused on getting far enough in to be able to start unlocking some of the lucrative world quests, one of which yesterday was an epic trinket. Before I went to bed last night I managed to unlock the dinosaur quest… which is truly amazing and with it the trinket world quest. Nothing quite as fun as riding along on the back of a devilsaur and gobbling up demons and evil elves.

Book Challenge #99: Piers Anthony’s Xanth Series

September 9, 2016 by Grace

The next item on my reading list is Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. It starts with A Spell for Chameleon, published in 1977. I knew this was a long series, but I had no idea that there are 39 of them, and several more still forthcoming. These books were always staples at my local used book store, but I never picked them up. Something about getting into a long series like that is incredibly daunting.

Luckily after the last book I read for this challenge, this one doesn’t take itself seriously at all and is a light, vaguely pleasant read. Well, most of the time. Spoilers ahead!

Also TW for discussion of a rape trial.

The story follows the (mis)adventures of Bink as he tries to establish a place for himself in the magical realm of Xanth. As an aside, the map of Xanth in the front of the book looks suspiciously like the state of Florida, and is the first clue that this book is going to poke some fun at fantasy tropes. In Xanth, if you can’t demonstrate some form of magical ability by the time you come of age you get exiled out into the mundane world where the rest of us humans supposedly live. Bink is trying to avoid this fate, so he sets out on a quest to discover if he has a power and what that power is.

The story takes a few interesting turns, but unfortunately it lost me fairly early. If you enjoy humor and fantasy you have probably read at least one book by Terry Pratchett. If you haven’t, stop what you’re doing and go grab one. Small Gods is a good one, and in fact is farther up on this reading challenge list. In any case, Terry Pratchett has spoiled me a bit on other fantasy humor, because not only are his novels funny, but they are often packed full of biting British satire so potent that you often laugh to release the explosive pressure of all the snark. That’s the bar that has been set for fantasy humor. Piers Anthony’s humor is funny (sometimes) for its own sake, and lacks the sharp edge that I enjoy from laughing at something that is funny because it is shedding uncomfortable truths.

The main uncomfortable truth laid out in A Spell for Chameleon is that Piers Anthony’s depictions of women are abyssmal. His humorous touches were entertaining most of the time, but when it comes to any interaction between Bink and a female character, human or otherwise, the jokes could have been written by a horny 14 year old boy. I suppose that’s who this series is really aimed towards, since I have several friends who read them when they were young and seemed to have fond memories. Heck, I probably wouldn’t have had much problem with it when I was younger, and that thought makes me deeply uncomfortable. The women in this novel are horrible caricatures of the worst stereotypes of women. The one who seems most like a person, the initial love interest of Bink, Sabrina, gets written off as heartless and traitorous early on because she doesn’t sacrifice her entire life to try to save or to be exiled with Bink. The centaur woman Bink meets is smart and capable in some ways, but her whole reason for existing in the plot is to “temper” the hot headed male centaur and to get “accidentally” groped by the protagonist. That was where the book lost me, 10% in according to my Kindle. After that we get treated to a disgusting sham of a rape trial, a power mad older woman who uses illusions to appear younger, and the pinnacle of the book, Chameleon.

Chameleon is a woman who changes over the cycle of (surprise!) a month. At one peak of her cycle, she is beautiful but completely devoid of intelligence, while at the other end she is very smart but also very ugly. I am not even going to start unpacking that here. But Bink decides that this is exactly the perfect kind of woman for him. Basically this book gave me insight I didn’t want into the mind of Piers Anthony, and probably millions of men like him. Insight like how they think a rape case is as bad for the victim as for the defendant, and that if you know each other ahead of time it couldn’t really have been rape anyway. Insight like thinking women who won’t reshape their lives to suit yours are cold and unworthy, but ones who try to reshape your life to theirs are grasping and evil. And insight like the the assumption that no man could settle for a smart “ugly” woman or even a moderately smart, moderately attractive woman when they could also have a beautiful idiot. Let’s not even mention the fact that beauty plus brains seems to be an impossible combination.

This book did have some genuinely funny moments too. Outside of its treatment of women it was mostly fine. Some other stuff happens in the plot but honestly by the time that happened I was so checked out I couldn’t really tell you. If you like sophomoric humor and gross stereotypes about women, there’s 38 more where this one came from including one charmingly titled “The Color of Her Panties”. For anyone else, you’re better off skipping this series.

TL;DR:

A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony

Rating: 2/5 stars

Verdict: I would have enjoyed this more and probably given 3 or so stars when I was a kid. Now I’m old and cranky and think the way it treats women is supremely gross.

Hand Update

September 9, 2016 by Belghast

This isn’t going to be a terribly amazing blog post this morning, but I still feel like I need to put one up. Yesterday did not involve an awful lot of gaming, though I did manage to move the needle forward a little bit on the Warrior class hall quest. Largely I was in a holding pattern waiting for my wife to get home from work, so we could decide what we needed to do about her hand. During the course of the day it had gotten worse. When she went to urgent care on Wednesday night, they drew a margin around the red area. They said that if it crossed that boundary, she really needed to get to the emergency room and get some IV delivered antibiotics. Well during the course of the day yesterday it crossed that line… and then the school nurse drew a new line… and by the time she got home from work it had crossed that boundary as well in several places. Neither one of us really like going to the doctor, but my wife specifically abhors it. So to contemplate going to the emergency room was almost a bridge too far for her. Thankfully we live in a smallish suburb with an ER that isn’t too heinous, but I assumed as the night went on it would get considerably more busy.

The long story short is that they did in fact hook her up to an IV and let a bag of some sort of high powered antibiotic drip into her for about thirty minutes. As of this morning there was really no noticeable change, but they did also tell us that the redness wasn’t really the big warning sign. If she started having shooting pain up her arm, or red streaks traveling in that direction… then it needed to be taken seriously. The worst part of this whole thing however is now my wife not only has one hand that is partially functional but the other one is going to be bruised up more than likely from the IV and also not completely functional. The other worst part is that by the time we got out of the hospital at 9 pm last night we were both starving, and decided that since they took a lot of blood work that we would have some red meat. The frustration of the whole situation is knowing that what you are going for isn’t that critical, but that it is also literally the only way to get IV antibiotics. I have no clue why urgent care places can’t do that sort of thing, because it seemed silly to actually have to go to a hospital.

In any case… by the time I got upstairs I was zoning out pretty hard and ultimately went to bed around 10:30. I would have gone earlier but I was trying to allow Luna some snuggle time with mommy before carrying her upstairs to sequester her up in the office over night. I hate that my wife is having to go through this, especially considering like a week and a half before I had the exact same thing happen to me… and my cat bite healed just fine. I guess after a couple decades of having cats, it was bound to happen to one of us. I just wish it had happened to me, because I am used to being malfunctioning.

Legion Launch Love

August 31, 2016 by Grace

Unlike many unhappy people, my Amazon order of Legion arrived on time and I was able to play when I got home from work. It sounds like most of the issues were with the collector’s edition, and I only got the normal version, so that probably saved me. I booted up the game and spent about 20 minutes waffling about which character I wanted to level first. I logged in to every level 100 alt so they could start gaining rested XP at least. Then I finally decided on my mage. It is just too fun to pass up!

I decided to go with fire mage even though I usually level as frost. This time around getting the artifact power as I leveled seemed like it would be worth it. I snagged my fancy artifact weapon and then spent a long time wandering around the mage class hall. It is so perfectly magey and I love it!

I chose Azsuna as my first leveling zone and I was not disappointed. It has been a mix of enemies so far, legion and naga and others. I don’t want to spoil the story yet but it was interesting enough to keep me entertained. I was surprised that I completed the “main” story fairly quickly, since I still have a lot of the zone left to do, but I got the quest to do the Eye of Azshara dungeon. I dinged level 101 and popped back to Dalaran to check on crafting quests and my class hall. That’s when the DDoS attack struck. Since it was getting late anyway I decided to call it a night instead of getting increasingly annoyed at not being able to do anything. I can’t tell you how happy I am to not be in a hurry this expansion. Questing has been fun and pretty relaxed, and I don’t have to get enraged when normal launch day issues happen. I’m really looking forward to finishing Azsuna and seeing what the rest of the zone has to offer before I move on!