Author: mdhughes

World of Warcraft Classic

This is pretty exciting.

  • I started in original World of Warcraft as a Dwarf Hunter (IIRC, I made a Nelf Rogue first, but that did NOT work for me), determined quickly that I hated Alliance as a bunch of juvenile Nazi-wannabes and switched to the real heroes, The Horde!, played an Undead Mage, didn't progress as much as I'd like due to real life but had fun.
  • Burning Crusade was great, and rather stereotypically I started over with a Blood Elf Warlock (selama ashal'anore!) and maxed out, did some raiding, loved that version of the game. Outland is amazing, that's some of the best content WoW or any game ever made.
  • Lich King was OK but kind of same-y and grindy—why make Dalaran when Shattrath exists and is better? Why are there two indistinguishable forest zones and two indistinguishable undead zones?
  • Cataclysm wrecked everything in the world and in character; it did add some detail to areas that needed it, but it's not worth it.
  • Pandaria had a nice setting and the Monk was a fun class, with beer as a powerup drink!, but letting the Pandas choose their faction made no sense (Goblins in particular, and all the neutral-ish races in general, should've been able to choose, too!), and the higher-level content is trash.
  • Everything after is even worse. After 15 years, what we've learned is that Blizzard can't improve content, only make it worse; everyone good left after Classic and Burning Crusade, and institutionally they aren't able to hire best-of-breed writers or game designers. Restoring Classic is really the only option they have.

So, I've been following this WoW Classic thing a while, since in 2016 when the Nostalrius, RIP and Elysium private servers let me play classic "vanilla" World of Warcraft again; I was frustrated by bugs, and basically couldn't use airships or ships because they'd drop me halfway in an out-of-level zone or the ocean, but it was interesting to have a version of WoW that didn't suck. As previously, I played an Undead Mage; that or Warlock seems most likely when Classic goes live. I am what I am, which is an evil sorcerous corpse.

Crendor and ClassiCast have done excessively exhaustive dialogues of what they want from Classic, which is a super-conservative "No Changes!". I'm much more moderate about this. If they add achievements (added in Lich King), pet battles (added in Pandaria), barbershop (added in Lich King), and use new models (added in Warlords of Draenor), I'd be fine with that; those improve the game without changing any balance. Dungeon/Raid Finder wouldn't bother me, I likely wouldn't use them, since I loathe PUGs (pick-up groups, not tiny inbred dogs), but they're a boon to people in no guild or a small guild that can't organize those things. The actual gameplay should be like the last patch of Classic, or the last patch of Burning Crusade when/if they add that content.

I'd totally be up for getting a "Virtual Ticket" for Blizzcon just to try the demo, except it's $50! That's like, a case of beer and a bottle of whiskey, which is a far more entertaining weekend (please drink more responsibly than me). Minecon on Saturday is free; it's not a real convention anymore (I went to Minecon Vegas back when the audience was much more adult). How the fuck does Blizzard justify $50 for some videos?! So anyway guess I'll just watch Youtubes of the demo when they come out.

End of Lineage

During my long dark OS install time, I did something I never do: I browsed the iOS App Store, which is full of F2P garbage. Installed Lineage II, since that looked the least terrible, "played" up to level 15. It autoruns and autofights quests, there's nothing to actually do except pop open loot boxes, and you get free top-tier gear right at the start so if you open & equip it, you instantly win all fights.

Character customization consists of choosing from 3 hairstyles, and there's a shop to buy a couple more which look identical, and hair dyes; I was able to give my dude a dark purple ponytail instead of generic oatmeal-colored ponytail, but he otherwise looks like every other dark elf.

There's infuriating chat spam everywhere, and announcements of random people in zone winning loot boxes, scrolling over the main display; I turned off every notification and it was still there.

It's not even a fucking game. Uninstalled.

My standard for games isn't that high: Once a day I log into DanMachi: Memoria Freese (probably not much longer, I've got max level on all my main chars, can win PVP against everyone except the whales, no reason to keep going until S2 of the anime gets converted into game story, probably 2 years away), and spent a year playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp which has even less mechanics, but scratched my item-collecting/room-decorating itch. I'm perfectly fine with gachapon, as long as 1) It's fair with stats listed right by the button, 2) You can progress without paying real money; I'll pay some real money voluntarily if they don't force me, I delete and get angry if they try to rob me.

SIGH. When is Elder Scrolls: Blades coming out?!

Paradise By the Dashboard Light

Hit F12 and no Dashboard appeared. Had to run Dashboard.app manually to get it to exist, and then F12 worked again. Added it to my Login Items, dunno if that's needed but shouldn't hurt.

The total neglect of this incredibly useful widget screen is baffling to me. I have weather, Deliveries tracking, stocks, Organized calendar/appointments list, PCalc, and iStat on a single screen. Used to have a nice meditation/tea timer, but it got broken a couple OS updates ago.

Mojave It Mojave It

Took forever to convert my drive, but seems functional in a single pass.

Dark Mode is kind of comically simplistic, especially the grey border around everything. It's better than the previous white room/transparency theme, but it shows that Apple designers don't understand how dark themes work yet. BBEdit's dark theme and Atom with Material UI look far more professional.

Apple's decided to nag me about disk space (about 60GB free):

Apple Notification nag: Your disk is almost full

Stack Overflow has some solutions.

TunesArt is crashing, and there's no update yet. Irritating. I miss Sophie's Coversutra.

Fucking Safari. In pursuing somewhat more secure extensions, they just blindly uninstalled all the extensions I used, including uBlock Origin. The only uBlock in the Mac App Store is ancient, tracks you, and sells whitelisting to fucking marketers. Criminal scumbag. I have Aral Balkan's Better Blocker installed, but that mostly attacks trackers, doesn't let me grab blocks of HTML per site to delete. FUUUUUCK.

Guess I should find out which mission-critical software I use isn't compatible now. And at some point rebuild MacPorts, that'll be fun/contribute to global warming.

Backed up. Mojave install started. Going from Sierra, skipping High-as-in-420 Sierra entirely because it didn't support Fusion Drive. Let's see if Apple got it right this time. Excited for Dark Mode to match my Atom theme, clothes, coffee, and outlook.

TES: Legends

TES: Legends finally gets its new-developer update! It might be playable now!

Update on Steam … update again because that update needed an update … binary not found. OK, look in the local files, it's renamed "app.app", which is stupid. Click, error.

status page:

Current Status: TES Legends is currently undergoing maintenance.

I mean, it's Bethesda, so I'm lucky it didn't clip thru the floor and fall out of the world.

Maybe tomorrow.

'80s Japan Sunday Music

And more from the same channel. A few tracks rock out, a few are too much jazz or disco for my taste, but mostly pretty great light JPop. I ain't always gotta be blasting industrial noise, you know?

Oh, look, there's a new American Horror Story season on Netflix! Oh, fuck, it's about politics and that fucking election. AHS is supposed to be tacky, campy parody horror, not literally the scariest story of the last 30 years. Hard nope.

What I'm Watching: BoJack Horseman

If you think "a dumb cartoon about a horse?", no. This is maybe the best dramedy about depression, success, and failure ever made, live-action or animated (the other contender is Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is about the crushing weight of parental expectations told with giant mecha and alien angels at the end of the world).

Finally finished S4 and now all of S5.

S1 was a funny show about depression. Not all that coherent, still wandering between Simpsons gag format and long series drama.

S2 tries to cover up depression with work and success, and has an epic meltdown. The most coherent season so far, but the least fun. The one that hits closest to me.

S3 is the hangover after success, and then gets real fucking dark. But E4, "Fish Out of Water", is something everyone should see; you don't need a lot of context for it.

S4 spends a lot of time in flashbacks, especially to BoJack's mother who is awful. E7 "Underground", E8 "The Judge", and E12 "What Time Is It Right Now" are fantastic, though.

S5 has been more like S1, dramedy with no real point, Princess Carolyn's flashback and the eulogy both dragged on forever, but E8 "Mr Peanutbutter's Boos" 25 years of Halloween parties was perfect. The meta-show Philbert is a dead ringer for many of the crime dramas I watch.

There's long stretches of BoJack that I find almost intolerably dull, and start zipping ahead 30s at a time to see if the plot advances. I have my own family hangups, I can't be expected to care about BoJack's shitty family.

There's other times when it's the only show that's ever talked honestly about this stuff.

★☆☆☆☆ to ★★★★★ but averaging around ★★★★☆

Nintendon't Fake NES Controllers

One of the few things I liked in the latest Nintendo Direct was "NES controller for Switch! Though there are good 3rd-party ones, but sweet."

Turns out this is a complete bullshit product: ArsTechnica says they only work with online, emulated NES. There's the Dick Nintendo I know and barely tolerate because they hate their players.

So, 8BitDo is still the best option.