The Wandering Inn

https://wanderinginn.com/

I have cried over dead ants and goblins, followed Gnolls and Drakes, half elves, witches, other races and of course humans cross continents. Discovered a leveling system of classes and skills, a runners guild, a mage school and felt deeply for a host of great characters, but no one like the Human Inn Keeper Erin.

I have rejoiced and laughed out loud over moments of fun and frivolity

I have held my breath, sleep, other forms of entertainment all to come to the end of an epic battle or drama. Needing to know.

I have come to question morality and doing the right thing. Found my self nodding along to hard but fair decisions.

I have fallen in love and been envious of the home and family built around Erin’s Wandering Inn

I have binged, devoured, savored, gotten lost in such a rich, detailed complex world and marveled at the tentacles of political intrigue, motivation and the fear of the other. In a world scarred by war and death but with so many moments of love and deep friendship.

I can’t comprehend the word count of the ongoing epic web serial that I am still playing catch up on. But this story had sucked me in, shaken me with the range of all emotions. I am unexpectedly suprised that the web serial and Lit Rpg just works and is being pumped out chapter after chapter.

I started off with all the ebooks then found where I was up to on the web page and have been working the way through it. You can start on the webpage at the beginning if you want ( https://wanderinginn.com/table-of-contents/ ) but if you want to support an amazing dedicated writer please buy the Author Pirateaba’s ebooks or if you find yourself loving it subscribe to their Patreon.

I have also enjoyed the many creative renderings of the characters that the fans of the series have created.

I love reading, but this has been an addiction, and I can see so many WOW related things I can associate to the imagery in my head of a drakes walled city when I walk through dragonflight Valdrakken. The Innverse feels so familar to me. and even has me playing Chess again, and I was so happy to see am Aussie contingent of humans in the chapters as well. ( read chapter one and it will all make sense, though the Aussies don’t appear to a little later )

/signing off I have some reading to do. About the adventurers of Erin, that crazy Human from Liscor, all her friends, and so much more.

Crafting orders – paying it forward

I gave up on the crafting order system early on. I was slow at getting the in demand enchanting and tailoring orders and when I could craft them I didn’t have on hand all the rarer mats needed.

I picked up all the new green pvp crafted gear just to add to my collection and get the first craft bonuses and while I was at the loom checked on the tailoring public orders and someone had posted what could be called as dummy orders for multiple items, stuff I had materials for with a minimal tip. Reading the crafting note the instructions included “crafting request for your weekly quest”It was a public order and I got to actually craft my first public order.

What a great idea to help people meet the weekly quest requirements/ monthly quest requirement. Inspired I posted a number of basic bolt/thread items that didn’t need any special or rare items.

In my excitement I forgot to untick the provide materials boxes so not only did I lose my mats ( not a great impact) but I still tipped 10 gold, AND paid the crafters fee. The person who picked those up actually got a pretty good deal out of it. Hopefully it was someone who needed it.

I got some of my value back when I got the items and was able to Disenchant them for shards which will help after that nasty Loamm Niffen quest that wanted 75 silver level Vibrant Wildercloth which required both shards and bolts to make.

My next set of orders I wasn’t so generous with my own mats, but I wish more people did this to help people out, and liked that someone out there did it for a stranger ( me) and also inspired this post. I feel the crafting order system needs further work, while it does make it easier to connect to people who have the recipes you need/want or even a skill level you need. It also assists to co-ordinate with guildies who have mats, and doesn’t require you to spam or sit in trade chat, its still highly competitive and the weekly trade orders, or even the achievements of 500 and 1000 orders just seem a long way off obtaining without having an exclusive recipe or really helpful friends.

Divine Ascension

Divine Ascension is a Priest PVP ability and lets you leap into the air and float down. You have access to Holy spells while in the form as you leap high up in the air.

It feels higher then a Demon Hunter leap and while I can be attacked in air by range and some melee dps using some kind or charge/intercept it has the advantage of surprise when your foe ( me who is getting wailed upon in the BG ) suddenly disappears. Combine this with shadow meld as a night elf dropping combat and it works as a significant disruption to being targeted by dps.

I was forced to pick another PVP ability when I lost one in the last patch and I have been playing a little more because Starship troopers went quite when they brought in more regional servers, and my other side game Planetcrafter is almost complete for the available content ( need the mammal phase! – will write a post on that soon)

It’s been fun – I’ve not seen any other priests use it in a BG yet, and I feel like I am almost cheating when I can leap while carrying a flag in WSG or Twin Peaks.

The downside of the ability is that the leap is straight up in the air, and the descent means that you end up where you leapt from. If you are carrying the flag it means you aren’t moving forward, and I get frustrated with flag carriers who want to be heros and don’t move forward when support and healers are there to help them push through a horde offensive attack.

( Yes I know squishys aren’t always the best flag carriers but sometimes desperate times, or players not showing initiative will look at each other awkwardly in the enemy flag room, or worse run off leaving you alone. ) I have to heal someone anyway and it leads to success if I do Cap it Huzzah!!

Will AI replace World of Warcraft blog writing.

WOW classic seems to bring some people to the old posts I wrote when it was current content, and to my surprise according to my stats a single person read 500 posts in a day. Or did they?

The only reason I could think for reading 500 posts in a single day would be that the site was being scrapped, and the best guess in our current era of technology is for AI. A quick google search shows that it’s not just ChatGTP that is available for writing Article or Blog posts. People are actively using AI writing tools in their day to day work.

The quality of my writing in this blog varies, and changed as I got access to better tools in wordpress in browser spell checks, grammar, formatting, some of the old posts are still a mess. If the posts are used to train an AI I am not responsible for what happens.

So without debating the ethics in this post – could a ‘prompt engineer’ or AI writer replace blogs, and could they replace me.

I did some experimenting with Googles Bard

Prompted ‘Write a gaming blog post complaining that all girls are expected to play healers’ and it produced the following.

Comments: The use of I makes sense given I asked it for a complaining post, but I also feel that it makes it less honest, because when I write a post about my experience It’s my ‘I’, AI writing ‘I’ feels like it’s assigning a personal experience that may not even be true. ( Even if it reads as true) Paragraph three doesn’t read completely correct. If it’s assumed girls are going to play healers why would other people be playing healers, I think it missed the point on that section. Where the prompt needs to be more specific here, is that I know I want to write a prompt about WOW, and it came close, but the use of assassins isn’t purely wow (and while we have an assassination rogue spec it’s not clean to be specific about a spec rather then a role)

Would you know it was AI? – its a very generic post, about a common complaint. I have written about my experiences being pigeonholed into that role, but then I have also been allowed to discover my love of healing on my own terms. What could have made it better is an example of a personal experience and if I was to write a post like this I would include a specific example of a situation I was in.

Prompted Write a world of warcraft blog post about dying on heroics

Comments: What a fantastic structure, it’s clearly laid out, it looks clean and readable. I improved on my prompt logic by specifying World of Warcraft and the advise while common sense could be applied to dying on heroics so it’s relevant, but if I were to write this, I would be focusing more on the people or personal element again, I would talk about an experience on a topic like this, and would be focusing on putting an appropriate team together. I feel it lacks that personal aspect of what I expect from a blog, and it’s more instructional and cold.

Prompted Write a World of Warcraft Blog post on best place to fish

Comments: I didn’t even have to ask for pictures, but where it got those pictures from is interesting. Both those sites that are the source of the pictures are not Official Blizzard, one appears to be taken from a forum, and the other from another blog and while they have referenced the link if you are writing a blog what you should try and do is only direct your readers to sites that are trustworthy – it also doesn’t consider the copy write. I have a creative commons license on my blog that requires attribution if you take what have posted. Not all sites would be that case.

Just for fun

Prompted Write a World of Warcraft Blog post about the Pugnacious Priest

HAHAHAHAHAH

Conclusion: It’s not perfect, I feel it’s missing genuine personal experiences, and all the blog examples are very instructional. I can feel a little miffed that it thinks a Pugnacious Priest is a style of play, but I did pick that name for a reason. AI could replace blog content, but would anyone want to read these examples? As filler blogs or articles it could work, being more specific in the prompts helps but does it entertain? I hope I entertained my readers more then what these posts do.

Also without forgetting the ethical and commercial based discussions that creative writing, and art are going through right now ( Education is pretty clear – AI essays are not ok ) AI can not exist without existing content. While it did link back to images, I don’t know where it got it’s ideas from, and I worry that the people who created these ideas, or opinions are being adequately accredited.

Your post

I’m not sure how he would have felt having a post dedicated to him – probably not extremely comfortable but I think he would understand the closing of that circle, but this is a post about a Paladin who used to play wow.

I met him at one of the lowest points of his life, pretty sure it was in a premade BG. He knew my team mate. We became friends. Yeah he had a thing for priests, he was a terrible flirt, charming and confident.

I visited Victoria one year and we got to hang out. I met his mum and dad, and his dog and we got to talk in person like we used to talk online for long hours.

He was an excellent Paladin first, a perfectionist, and thorough and thoughtful theory crafter of at least of some what renown on our server.

He stopped playing wow when he realised the monopoly that wow had over his life, but we kept in touch over the years and when I would come to PAX, meet for dinner.

We had deep philosophical discussions about happiness, and I joked about that ideal of a white picket fence as a symbol of happiness so he made me one and sent it in the mail. I’ve kept it all these years It’s not the kind of gift you throw out.

I reached out to him before I went to PAX last year to let him know that I was going. I didn’t hear back and thought that maybe as friendships do, this one had run its course. His mother let me know.

I’ve had some very real experiences with people I have met in wow. Interstate and international. Had my heartbroken once. Met some amazing people ingame and in real life. Theres been some confusing friendships that I never really found out what happened to them, just one day they disappeared or had their own real life crisis and I’ve probably disappeared on a few too.

I don’t distinguish or qualify a friendship because its been a gaming one.

I always thought you would be out there. In a battleground, leading a raid, correcting my grammar, playing with your dog and living the new life that you had chosen without wow in it. So you get a post because your mum didn’t have your online friends contact details to let us know at the time so I could say goodbye. I know you used to read all my posts and you followed me to twitter and Insta. So maybe I can imagine you will read this and be a little mad at me because it is about you, to let know you know you will be missed and your legend will live on.

Goodbye Brian.

Ironforge Runes – a follow up

I got an alert that an old post of mine from 13 years ago Iron Forge Runes was getting lots of hits to find it was referenced in a reddit thread after a Hearthstone announcement. My screen shot and post seemed to have lead many astray speculating that there were Dwarves/Iron Dwarves for the Titans expansion. I am sorry for the misunderstanding, but the connection to the Dwarves and the Titans will make so much more sense when you remember Ironforge’s history.

From my original post

Went to Ironforge to get another shot, and they are still there

Also found this forming part of the city – which looks like the same script, but duplicated and mirrored. The Mystery deepens…..

Hearthstone offered a translation of some characters

Which would make the original script on the wall

RS?GTHLEI?ATHL nope, still doesn’t make any kind of sense.

SO! Wowpedia explains in Ironforge-the awakening of the dwarves that the forge within Ironforge was an altar constructed in honor of the Dwarves Titan father Khaz’garoth and also why Ironforge is also known as Khaz modan – “Mountain of Khaz” and the Titan Language ‘Titanic” is what the runes are. Which means my original speculation and translation was so off track.

I did go out to Honor Hold – as per a comment on my original post to check out the stone, and I can’t actually read any details because of the lower graphic quality but it does look like its Titanic . Not sure why its such a feature in a Human based town in Outland , particularly when the Draenei had a run in with the Titan Sargeras, and they have their own language. It does look like a remembrance stone of sorts though so maybe it was a memorial to fallen Draeni written in the language of their enemy.

Maybe we will solve that mystery in another 13 years when I am still playing wow…

The Scorpion and the Frog fable – sabotaging our own WQ success

Fables were meant to be stories with moral lessons, and you’ve probably heard of the scorpion and frog one. If not, or you need a refresher – read here

Otherwise : Spoiler alert – the Scorpion stings the frog as the frog is carrying the Scorpion across the lake and they both end up drowning

I’m still playing in Warmode. A bounty was called upon my head as I was fishing and to see a flight of horde players on dragon back descend upon me was truly frightening. In Warmode, there are also several world quests that mark all players as hostile, Horde or Alliance alike. Like Blown Through Wind: Rhuzast

Most classes can’t solo the mob yet which is a rare elite so we need each other, we need to co-operate to achieve the goal, the kill. You can create a group, which is 5 max so you have some people who have your back, but it doesn’t matter because it’s the nature of players to try and kill each other anyway. Rhuzasts platform becomes a small collection of mini fights as players land, and see a hostile enemy and start to damage regardless of faction We are all foes in this battle.

Warmode servers has always been for me a weird mix of ‘we are just going to politely ignore that we could kill each other, and get along with our quest, or what ever it is we are doing’, or it becomes an opportunist slaughter fest. I will help a Horde, or be helped by a Horde kill a big Lunker ( getting them to shore can be hard and help makes it easier ) but the moment, a Horde player tries to access a resources chest in the middle of a crowd of Alliance it’s on. If a bounty is called on the map queries for players wanting to go hunting goes out in chat.

One person on my server called out their dismay at Alliances players willingness to kill our own in chat for these Pvp World quests .

One Rhuzast kill we had all managed to separate our selves around the Proto Dragon, and seemed to come to some kind of unspoken agreement and were dotting / dpsing it down, when it just devolved. Maybe someone accidentally dotted up some one, or there was a cleave and while the Dragon is stomping around trying to eat us, we were all trying to destroy each others health bars. When I do these quests, I think about the Scorpion and the Frog, and wonder if Blizzard, or the quest designers knew that they were creating some kind of social experiment to see how players would co-operate, or sabotage their own successes to complete a goal for the sake of PVP. We are acting like the Scorpion.

The PVP World Quest Wild Arcana gives you a choice to kill players or Unstable Arcana – at 5% a pop it takes 20 Arcana to do the quest, or according to the Wowhead page, only 7 players. I spent almost 10 minutes with 3 hostile players running around in circles, dotting up slow spawning Unstable Arcana just so we didn’t try and kill each other. No words were spoken aloud, no formal agreement was made, but we just didn’t kill each other. By the stage I was done, we had been collecting orbs like no tomorrow, and were completely overpowered. When a new player entered our circle and didn’t know that unspoken social pvp rule we had all agreed to and tried to attack us, he went down quickly, and we went back to running in circles looking for spawning Unstable Arcana.

Is that the answer?, we all just agree not to participate in PVP because we want to complete the quest without dying. Will our society then punish the rule breakers by making them targets until they comply, or it will just eventually be that only the strongest players could complete the quest because the weaker ones will always be fodder and easy HK kills.

Games I played in 2022

Thanks to my Razer I have a nice little summary of where I have been gaming the last year. ( other then Warcraft that is)

2022 saw me studying and working full time and next year will be the same, so gaming time is precious. I haven’t rejoined a guild because I can’t commit to any kind of raiding schedule, and I am ok with that for this cycle of my life – I don’t need to quit completely but I do need to manage priorities.

I also have a Switch lite and an Xbox, but the switch is really only used for animal crossing and two point hospital. I did buy the Star Trek Prodigy game and will play that more over Christmas break.

Stardew I tried both on switch and Pc and I was eternally frustrated by my inability to do more things because of energy levels. I was trying to rush ‘progression’ because Wow has trained me to grind – but thats not how to play. I may revisit when I can pace myself

Ark was my second love, but I’ve never quite recovered after losing my biggest base because I didn’t log in and feed my dinos in time – this can be a huge time sink and I ended up hosting an offline session and god moded my tame times so I could collect some dinos that were out of reach before ( try baby sitting a snoring T Rex for hours to tame it) I did get to explore the map more including the ice areas where survivability is harder. I was tempted to also try in xbox but there is a new Switch game out that is getting ok gameplay reviews, and I can see me playing it casually so will see what Santa brings this year. ( Or else I will buy)

Satisfactory has a great – non toxic community of builders and the game is not even fully released. As one person said – there is absolutely no pressure – you can progress as slow or fast as you like, the map is huge, and you don’t have restrictions on things like day/night and sleep requirements. ( your character is permanently fueled by Coffee ) you can be creative or technical or productive. I love the problem solving requirements, and the exploration. I still have a grind mentality here though, but when the goals are just so big you are also forced to pace yourself. I will keep going back.

I was surprisingly engaged with Raft, I just found the navigation hard trying to get to places I hadn’t seen. The build/ reinforcement was fine, was fed watered and protected – had a fantastic net debri system set up – starting collecting the animals and even found the radio tower and cruise ship, just got lost too often with wind direction, and couldn’t sustain a motor for too long so too much time spent on open seas.

Only a little way through Halo – but happy to keep going with the story.

Will see what next year brings – happily immersed in WOW for now till Uni starts back.

Respect the Role

I started dungeon running in Dragonflight as heals but it stressed me out trying to learn new mechanics including Dragon flying in the plains and chasing tanks who were determined to skip mobs and all have different shortcuts. Mana wasn’t a problem at that point but having time to loot those precious greens and cloth for leveling professions was, so to get more confident I ran as dps, and was dismayed at the dps for shadow until I got my Shadow crash timing right to mass double dot all the trash mobs and my army of apparitions floating at a pack.

I now have two decent healing trinkets and picking up gear upgrades as I go couple of rep pieces and lucky drops – I will probably go back to healing because of shorter queues and more likely to get picked up for raid pugs, but while running as dps I have come across some healer hate, and had to defend the healers.

First Heroic dungeon, a tank pulling mobs and bosses like we were running stockades again told a healer they sucked when we died because totems weren’t going down fast enough in Brackenhide Hollow on Decatriarch Wratheye. The Choking Rotcloud will silence casters which is particularity annoying for healers who need to stay mobile, avoid it, and heal dps silly enough to stand in it, if those totems don’t go down fast enough the fight gets too long and its harder. I defended the healer saying they were doing a fantastic job. The tank said /whatever and totems died faster no wipe the second time ( and I will always say a friendly reminder to kill totems now to make sure it goes smoothly)

Second Heroic last night saw a new Tank refusing to tank because the healer swore at him in caps for not asking for help. He was clearing all the mobs in the Forgemasters room in Neltharus, given he had gotten lost earlier and had admitted he was new to tanking this dungeon ( which we thanked him for telling us) the healer got impatient and got a little shouty especially as he accused us earlier of pulling his mobs for him when they were just connected packs and extra friends. Tank didn’t want to continue, healer refused to apologise for getting shouty – Tank said he was being abused, healer called him a sook and neither was getting enough votes when they tried to vote kick each other. I mostly soothed things over, appealed to both to allow dungeon to continue, and eventually we cleared with no wipes, but no one in that dungeon group had fun that run.

So respect the role, and each other and we can not walk away from a dungeon run feeling crap, because I can say from experience of now many expansions – this has all happened before and it will all happen again, the mobs might have changed but people haven’t.

The Dragons must have taken all the ducks

The Mystery has finally been solved as to where all the ducks had gone.

Many years ago, we realised that Azeroth had no ducks. I complained a little when I realised after a visit from my sisters Duck in my Post Where are all the ducks?

Blizzard has taken the missing creatures to heart and have managed to locate them in the new Zone. The Dragons had them all along,

It’s also noted in the Embassy Visitor Log as a reason for your visit when you sign the guest book.,

There is an escort ‘toy’ that puts a duck on your head ( fits nicely safe and snug in my crown helm)

It looks like we now have a selection to collect as pets,

And in the Wild there are all sorts of ducks – including duck meat for cooking.

These may not have been the fluffy ducks I was looking for – but I will take it.