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Belghula Rising

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Belghula Rising

This week marks the last week of the Legion Invasion event, and with it goes the insane leveling elevator that many of us have ridden over and over.  At this point I have every slot on Argent Dawn Alliance filled with level 100 characters, and over the last bit of this week I have been pushing Belghula my female Orc Warlock on The Scryers.  Scryers is a linked realm with Argent Dawn and when that occurred I made the choice to roll a complete set of Hordies over there, so that I could hang out and play with friends I had other the other side of the server.  The Argent Dawn community has always been an odd one, and for a period of time we had a thriving official… and later unofficial server forum.  I still somewhat wish I had not killed the domain behind that forum, but at that time I thought I didn’t really want to be playing World of Warcraft anymore.  In any case I have a large community of horde friends that I love dearly, but never got to play with.  When I purchased Legion I ended up using my boost to create a level 100 Tauren Paladin and I even got to raid over there for a period of time…  until Sundays didn’t really work that well for me.  Now I am pushing up a second 100 to have a more balanced set of characters to play.  Something happened and I decided that I don’t mind casters… and even really like the Warlock so that ultimately is the one I have decided to push.

Last night during the podcast I managed to get her to level 95, so it should be relatively trivial to finish off and ding 100 today.  Similarly I have an Orc Deathknight waiting in the wings as well in the 60s… but I am not completely sure if I am going to push it hard or not.  I would like to at a minimum get it to 80 because the Cataclysm/Panda/Warlords grind seems much faster than getting a single character through Wrath of the Lich King.  I’ve talked about this in the past, but content design has changed a lot since Wrath and quest stacking was a much harder proposal back then than it is now.  By quest stacking I mean gathering up a bunch of quests related to a specific area and then burning through them all at once.  As far as the Cataclysm/Panda/Warlords grind… I feel like I have that one down to an artform jumping zones each time my adventure guide lights up telling me there is a new zone to jump to.  The most interesting thing about the whole experience however has been seeing how folks have broken the event over their knee and abused the hell out of the system.  The other day I talked a bit about the idea of resetting the event, but ultimately decided that it just made it a boring grind.  Some folks however have apparently taken this process to the extreme.

Last night I was sitting in the Crossroads minding my own business and working on the event, when someone broadcast a message across general talking about an Exp Grinding party.  They had auto invite scripts set up so that if someone typed 1 in chat it would throw out a raid invite.  The level of organization was impressive, even to the level of asking those of us who happened to have two seated mounts to use those and give rides to the players who were on foot or on slow land mounts.  From there we took a very specific route, killing what I feel was probably the optimal path through the mobs.  There were several times were we paused for a second to wait for the next mob in the sequence to spawn in… or when she went off to pull one that was within range to burn them down at the same time.  I cannot state how impressive this level of organization and cooperation from players actually ended up being.  She shouted the next target to general so that anyone else NOT in our raid could also reap the benefit.  The real coordination however was that when we finished phase three she told everyone to log out, and disbanded the party.  The idea being that when everyone logged back in they would potentially be in the same Stage 1 event.  I went ahead and finished out this event and moved to the next zone instead, but I have to marvel at how well that worked.  In truth I don’t want to really abuse this event, because doing it legitimately provides more than enough experience and loot for my tastes.  That said I guess this method probably works much faster and provides and endless supply of experience in one of the easier zones that the event is taking place.

Introducing Luna

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Introducing Luna

This is the Luna, and you all have not been properly introduced to her.  There has been a reason in part because we have been trying to see if she would ever get accustomed to living in our world.  Roughly a month ago after losing Chloe we went to a pet store… because sometimes playing with the “babbys” makes us happy.  They however were having some “clear the shelter” event, and the store was full of animals hoping to get adopted.  We of course went back to look at the cats, and the shelter showing there was one that we had gotten several animals from in the past.  They had some really lovely animals, but nobody really tugged at our heartstrings, so I was fully expecting to exit the store and get on with our lives.  It was at this moment that my wife deviated from the course.  Instead of exiting the building the decided for some reason to turn down this row of dogs.  We are not dog people, and while other folks dogs are cute and friendly…  we are not exactly the type to look at dogs regularly in pet stores.  Now up until this point it seemed like the store was very clearly segregated into the “dog” area and the “cat” area, but as she got to the end of the row of dogs she found a cage with Luna in it.  She was there all alone and looked frightened to be mixed in with all of these dogs.  The shelter showing was from roughly an hour and a half away from the Tulsa area, and literally had the one cat.  We spent some time with her, taking her into a walled off area…  during which time she was affectionate but also spent most of the time just exploring the confines of the area.

As we went about our day my wife started to warm to the idea of bringing home Luna, but we also had a bunch of errands to run.  So we did the whole thing of…  “if she is still there when we get back, we will consider it”.  Turns out that sure enough she was still there and that the folks from the sheltered hoped we would be back by.  Traditionally when we bring a new animal into our house we set up a little sequestered environment up in my wife’s office with a separate litter box, and food… and kinda keep the cat walled of for a few days to get adjusted to the new environment.  Then when we start letting them out into the house as a whole, the office serves as a bit of a safe place for them to keep going back to.  So far this process has not gone as planned.  Traditionally when we get a new animal the moment we decide to let them out into the house… they are happy to go exploring.  Luna on the other hand seems to be afraid of the outside world.  Now when we talked to the shelter folks we specifically asked about how she did with other animals.  They specifically said that she doesn’t really like dogs, but is completely fine around other cats.  So far however that has not been the case, because she is not blending well.

Kenzie our youngest admittedly can be a little butt, and even though Allie and her tolerate each other than can still get into spats.  Luna and Kenzie specifically do not get along at all, so what has ended with these moments of taking her around the house with us and closing off a room so she would be comfortable.  We tried to just start opening the door to let her out of the office, but then found that she simply was not eating and drinking.  I guess she was afraid to leave the area of her bed to cross the office to get to the food dish.  After moving that closer to her bed and into her safe area she started eating like we would have epected.  Now she expects me to bring her wet food every morning, and meows at me until I have done so.  Over the last week I have been opening up the office when I get home from work hoping that she might take the initiative to go out and explore the house.  She seems to be less skittish about the other cats, or at the very least has begun to fight back against Kenzie.  They really had not gotten into a real fight up until now…  but it was a lot of meowing and making sounds that are extremely similar to “oreo”.  The last few days however she has run Kenzie out of “her” room a few times, so she seems to be getting a little bolder.

Yesterday however was a bit of a turning point, of a sort at least.  I opened the office door when I got home, like I have for the last while, and I went upstairs to check on her a few times where she wanted copious amounts of attention.  However late in the evening I heard her out in the loft, and next thing I know it she was walking along the banister and staring down meowing at me.  So I went upstairs and gave her more attention, and apparently she settled into the top of the couch and took a nap.  When it came time for bed, I went upstairs to shut the office thinking she had retreated, but she was still sitting in the loft happily perched on the couch.  At this point I made a decision and just left her alone, hoping that maybe she was finally starting to get comfortable with the house.  Now over the last few weeks there have been several times where my wife took Luna to bed with her, since she goes to bed way earlier than I do most nights.  She would shut off the bedroom and before long Luna would be snugged up on her.  When I came to bed I got the job of being the bad guy and taking her back up to the safety of the office.  I could tell she was hungry and thirsty because as soon as the office door was shut she would bolt from my arms and run to the food dish like she was starving and then make her way to the litter box before coming back to me for attention.

Introducing Luna

Apparently last night she got lonely up in the loft, and found her way downstairs to the bedroom at 1:30 in the morning.  This caused a massive cat fight, or at least a massive amount of noise and motion.  To which Luna went under the bed, and the other cats were scared out of the room.  After trying to calm down the babies it was around 2 am… and I simply could not get back to sleep.  I did not finally get back to sleep until 3:30 or so… so at this point I am groggy as hell.  However it feels like progress.  Throughout the night she kept braving getting up on the bed with us, only to run off when another cat entered the room.  The whole experience has to be equally traumatic for them, and I have been trying throughout this to be wherever Luna was not so that they had some sort of stable anchor to go hang out with.  So as the night went on we alternated having Luna in bed with us, an having Kenzie and Allie with Luna under the bed.  Once we finally got up and around I carried her back upstairs where once again she went to get food… but this time I didn’t close the office door.  She didn’t seem to mind at all and went about her normal business…  and was quickly begging for wet food.  A few minutes ago while typing this, she was back out in the loft meowing down at me…  so even though it was a rough night for me personally with the whole not getting much sleep thing…  I am hoping that we made actual progress.

She is a very sweet cat, and I think she will do well with the others…. if we can ever get past the phase where they are scared of each other.  I thought it was high time however to introduce you all to her.

Not Missing Much

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Oh no! I’ve missed a couple of days worth of posts! Good thing this year is the super chill version of Blaugust, and there’s no repercussions of a few missed days. I’ve had some medical stuff come up (don’t worry, I’m fine!) that makes sitting at my desk for long stretches a problem. Thus I haven’t done much gaming to speak of the past few days and don’t have much to say here.

I have found that Diablo 3 is pretty great for squeezing a little gaming into small doses. I can pop in and run a rift in 15 minutes or so and then take a break. I’ve even managed to get myself through GR69 and do a T12 rift in under 6 minutes for the season journey, so I’m almost finished the Destroyer rank. D3 isn’t as fun solo, but playing solo means I can walk away and pause the game at any time so it has been working out for my needs this week. At this stage I believe the only things I have left to do for the stash tab are 2 conquests and a T13 rift in under 5 minutes. Maybe I will get it this season after all. It is definitely looking like there’s more D3 in my future than I had planned, anyway.


Not Missing Much

How Many Songs Need To Be Good?

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I had an off-the-cuff thought during the podcast this weekend that keeps resurfacing in my head. We were talking about music, and I asked how many songs off of an album needed to be good for that album to feel like it was worth it. Pretty much universally, the answer was “about three”. It’s been sitting with me ever since.

How Many Songs Need To Be Good?

I’ve been looking at media in general, and how much of it I have to really like to stay engaged. There’s a song on an album I own that’s three minutes and fifteen seconds long. At about the 2:45 mark, it cuts into a different vocalist for a segment that I really dislike. It’s jarring and ruins the track for me. I now skip that track entirely, even though I like the first two and a half minutes of it. In the same vein, I haven’t played MGSV in days for a relatively banal reason. It’s not any of the objectionable things in the game, it’s that I have a mission where the drop off point is way too far away, and I just can’t be bothered to go through the hassle.

So, I need about 25% of a music album to feel like it’s worth it, but if the last thirty seconds of a track isn’t to my liking, I skip it. I am willing, and in fact expect, to sit through the first few episodes of an anime before making a decision, yet if a game hits a lull, it becomes harder and harder for me to come back to it (see also: grinding of any kind). My tolerance for parts I don’t like varies widely from medium to medium, and sometimes wildly within the same medium.

For any given bit of entertainment, there’s a threshold where the parts I don’t like outweigh the parts I do, and I check out. It seems simple and obvious, but it’s also something that’s gone entirely unevaluated. What are the exceptions? Can I predict this? I feel like if I can understand what the mix is like, I can better understand both myself and the media I consume.

Trying to pin it down is frustratingly elusive, though. When I try to analyze my thoughts across media, I find myself immediately making excuses, about how one thing is different in some specific way. I know enough about psychology to know that there’s almost certainly a pattern I’m not seeing– or more likely, not letting myself see– but knowing it’s there and trying to make sense of it are two very different things.

I say a lot that good design is about knowing what people haven’t yet realized they like. The real magic of good design is being able to elicit a positive, wholly unexpected reaction from someone, and I feel like if I could tap into my own mental hangups and processes, I could start to get a handle on how to better approach design. If I could precisely (or even roughly) pinpoint where people check out, where a piece of media loses people, I could develop better intuition for how to avoid those pain points.

I am opposed, fundamentally, to the idea of “I’ll know it when I see it” design. It asks a designer to magically intuit something that the requester can’t even articulate. It’s like telling a chef to “make some food, I’ll know if I like it once I try it”. It’s why I started taking notes on the things that I loved and didn’t expect to, and the places where I find myself checking out of something. I’ve tried to get better at articulating precisely why I like or dislike something, because it’s from those evaluations that I learn and grow, and can tell other people what I like and don’t like. It’s meant I need to have a constant mental cycle active, monitoring my own reactions as they happen, and drawing connections. When I talk about my “designer brain” always being on, that’s what I’m referring to. It’s comforting at the same time as it keeps me from ever fully engaging with something.

I’ve gotten so used to that background process running smoothly that it’s jarring when it runs into something it can’t or won’t process. I’m still mulling over the idea from before– how much of something can be bad or uninteresting before I stop caring? Why and how does it change across media, even across different entries in the same medium? Why do I get frustrated at stretches of fruitless-feeling running around in MGSV and, in that frustration, switch over to trying fruitlessly to solve challenge puzzles in The Witness?