Discord, walled gardens, and barriers

For professional (and also personal) reasons I hang out in a lot of different spaces where not mostly gamers, but people who work on and maintain free/libre and open source software also hang out. Generally the opinion is that open platforms (self-hosted or ran by non-profits) is preferable to walled gardens ran by for-profit companies. One name that comes up more and more is Discord. People complaining that open projects choose Discord as their point of contact over forums, IRC, Matrix, XMPP. There are a lot of good reasons for this criticism and I fully agree.

And yet I’m also hanging out in a couple of spaces that are mostly ran by non-technical people who play games. These spaces (at least the ones I am part of) are on Reddit or Discord.

I remember running forums and TeamSpeak for my WoW guild. It’s some amount of work, and that’s when you already have the server or webspace. Alternatively it’s some amount of money per month, probably “just” as much as another MMO sub, but still. I mean, I would not mind paying that for a certain group, but I would absolutely not for others (usually the ones where I just poke my head in once every few weeks)

Reddit and especially Discord solve that problem, and especially for bigger communities with hundreds or thousands of people. Think class discords or the awesome No Pressure community in WoW, or what I recently discovered, the Guild Wars 2 university.

Yes, maybe some of them are in fact ran by technical people – but then I wouldn’t know as a casual observer, everyone can run a Discord server (bad name, it’s also not an instance, they are called guild – but everyone calls it a server, so let’s stick to that), or just get some mods to help out with stuff, without handing them access to your rented or physical server.

So it’s probably all to easy to say: What’s missing is a combined chat/audio call platform based on free software, but also a non-profit that offers free hosting. And that’s usually where it breaks down – even if we ignore that Discord is generally working well and people have figured out how to join and use it. Their mandated use of phone number based verification for newer accounts sucks, though

Back when Facebook was big, we had these same discussions, but the common theme was usually “but that’s where all the people are” – and I think that’s now also true for Discord, but it’s not such a problem, because not everyone plays the same games with the same people.

A lot of rambling, and I don’t have a solution. I guess I’m hoping the free software projects will choose different platforms (but I also don’t see a big problem here, because these free offers do exist for that kind of comunity) and while I would hope some gaming communities would also do that, I think it’s usually just not feasible because no such open hosting platforms exist, and that’s even ignoring that everyone has a Discord account already.

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Grinding it out

Last Friday evening I finally got my Skyscale mount in Guild Wars 2. I don’t know how many hours it took, but it was a lot of time, especially as I had to finish Living World Season 4 first, and unlike a reasonable person who is mid-step 3 of 6 and would just continue there, I started fresh on a different character.

A “fun” detour was also noticing that the Roller Beetly might be needed (or handy) for getting some of the Skyscale stuff, so that was also done mid-Skyscale grind. Anyway, now only the Griffon is missing as far as mounts go (and the Skiff from EoD…), it’s just a few PoF mastery points now to finish the Mastery track for the Skyscale.

In terms of total “story completion” it still looks a bit grim:

  • Base game personal story: 3x, plus 3x stopped in the last chapter
  • Living World Season 1: 1x Step 1 of 5 done
  • Living World Season 2: 1x Step 3 of 8 done
  • Heart of Thorns: 1x done, 1x stopped at 14/16
  • Living World Season 3: 1x done
  • Path of Fire: 1x done
  • Living World Season 4: 1x done, 1x 50% done
  • Icebrood Saga: nope
  • End of Dragons: 2x the intro to discover the new zone, aka: basically nope
  • Secrets of the Obscure: 1x Step 10 of 17 done, so 50%, yay
  • Janthir Wilds: nope
  • Visions of Eternity: nope

Yeah, that will also take a while I guess. But I’m not playing this game only for the story. It’s fun enough to log in, do the dailes, work on the weeklies, grab some stuff, do some achievements – and in the midst of that, also progress the story. LWS2 is actively being worked on, but then.. no clue. I’m inclined to at least skip the Icebrood Saga, but maybe not End of Dragons, because of the Skiff and the Jadebot. We’ll see.

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Raiding Manaforge Omega – Week 13

Sunday was a quick clear of the first 7 (wow), just one wipe on Fractillus (expected) and Nexus-King (unexpectedly low) and calling it early.

Tuesday was 23 wipes on Dimensius, with a best of 36% in Phase 2, but 17 wipes in P1.

Our main problem seems to be number of people – with 10-11 it was terrible, with 12 and some shuffling it went kinda ok. Ideally we’d be 14-16 and running 4 healers I guess, not 3.

In M+, we’re up to 2760ish rating with 3 +12s timed, but we kinda forgot to do our last 2 +10s in +11, so if I could assume we’d manage that, 2800 is very close – just that the target is still 3000…

Other than that I’ve not really logged in – 4h of raid, close to 3ish hours of M+.

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Raiding Manaforge Omega – Week 12

Friday we cleared the first six with only one wipe on Loom’ithar, then 5 wipes on Saladhaar.

Tuesday Salhadaar died on the 4th pull (58 overall), followed by 18 wipes on Dimensius – that will be a piece of work.

For M+, we did our weekly 4 10+ (one failed Eco-Dome +13 that was not too terrible) and I didn’t even manage to get one done on the Warlock. Slow week for WoW.

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Raiding Manaforge Omega – Week 11

Before this week’s raid even starts I managed to get the S3 “Runed” achievement on both chars, that’s a minimum iLvl of 704 in every slot, so I can convert my Runed Crests into Gilded. After doing just that and grinding out a couple Valorstones (ugh) they’re now both at 717. And yet there is not much M+ happening, also not in the No Pressure Discord.

So this also means I don’t need a lot of gear now. The Warlock can get a free belt or ring (hopefully after Sunday’s raid) – but apparently the belt from Dimensius sims a lot better. And for the Warrior I’d also need one good ring, but not even sure a Heroic one will be a big upgrade. So not even anything to motivate me there.

The Sunday raid was uneventful, 6 bosses down – no wipe (probably for the first time), then 7 wipes on Nexus-King, and Tuesday we only had 10 people and17 more wipes, but several below 30%. I hope this will work out next week. (Actually this week, as I write this.)

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Legion Remix

I didn’t plan to play, then I didn’t really plan to level, but the mounts and transmog kept calling me.

Started a Protection Warrior over a week ago and been slowly chipping at it until yesterday, when I was 35 or so – but today I had a few hours so now I just dinged 71, at 8h /played. Just want to get to 80 quick and farm some Bronze, I wouldn’t say I’m enjoying it, but I also don’t hate it. I always liked leveling in Legion, but it’s kinda ridiculous how you get weird quests that are just done so easy. I’ve been in the Heroic World Tier since Level 42ish and it’s fine.

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More Guild Wars 2

In the last weeks I played a lot more Guild Wars 2 than WoW, but sometimes progress is harder to describe.

I ended up buying the missing two expansions and investing in one more bank tab, so far. I also finally have some unlimited gathering tools and I did find some free Glyphs for them in some boxes in my bank.

That fractal event got me Legendary Gloves but I’ve not opened the box yet because I can’t decide which armor class to take. The “new” (probably since 2022) version of the dailies is curious. I bought some infinite Fractal potion for 1000, then a Legendary Weapon Starter Kit (already crafted it – Sunrise (Greatsword)), then 3 Ascended Armor Boxes and an Ascended Weapon Box (Longbow) and I still have one Legendary Starter Kit in my bank and I need to use those 3 Ascended Boxes, but I am not playing my Mesmer right now. And then I spent a lot more on gold and crafting mats.

I’m 1/2 through the Secrets of the Obscure story and restarted Living World Season 4 for the Skyscale mount (Guardian) and also started Living World Season 1 for the bags. My Necro is close to finishing Chapter 8 of the base story, finally. And then I did one chapter of Living World Season 3 on my Ranger.

Stuff I probably won’t manage to get into soonish: Icebrood Saga, End of Dragons, Living World Season 2, Janthir Wilds, and we’ll see how soon I will be able to start Visions of Eternity, which will release in 4 days.

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Raiding Manaforge Omega – Week 9 & 10

Every time we slow progress or I drift away from WoW except raidlogging I miss updates. Nothing of value was lost, but still.

Sunday of Week 9 saw 5 rekills, but 1 wipe on every boss except Loom’ithar. Weird. Then Tuesday a Fractillus kill and many Nexus-King wipes.

Sunday of Week 10 was 3 clean rekills, then 2,1,1 wipes an calling it early and then we lacked people on Tuesday.

Our DH was still busy with moving and having bad internet, so not a lot of M+ – still failing the +12s.

But both my toons are now 715 iLvl after the first Dinar item, but still below 2700 rating. It’s a bit of a slog right now.

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Raiding Manaforge Omega – Week 8

Sunday was some good reclearing, 1 wipe on Loom’ithar, 2 on Soulbinder and Araz. Then some progress on the Demon Hunters, 4 wipes and best at 23%.

Tuesday they died on the 2nd try, then another first kill of Fractillus on the third try. So we’re 6/8 Heroic now.
Finally some 10 wipes on Nexus-King, which felt a little painful.

Oh, and I had to tank on both days but hope to be back on Warlock.

With people offline we didn’t do a whole lot of M+, just 4-5 on the Warrior and one on the Warlock. The first part of Turbo Boost was scheduled for the next reset, so some gear upgrades incoming.

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WoW’s Midnight addon changes

I’ve not written terribly much about addons here, but I did make a post about my fully redone UI at the start of Dragonflight, and even when I wanted to go minimal I noticed that I didn’t go minimal.

At the time of writing this I have 148 folders inside my Interface/Addons folder, luckily that doesn’t mean I run 148 addons, because I can quickly eliminate around 100 by removing addons that are split in subpackages, but I think 40-50 remain. Surely they all can’t be important. And surely they all can’t stop functioning with the next expansion (if they are combat addons).

I suppose I’m just very happy to eliminate some quirks in the game, or just improve things I don’t love. My guess would be that half of those are just QoL addons.

Oh, and I hadn’t even counted my WeakAuras. A lot of those are also just QoL stuff or reminders “No Pet/Pet Passive/Use Battle Shout” which would be fine as addons out of combat. Or Profession knowledge point tracking, but we’ll see how that develops.

I’m certainly not in despair, especially not about combat. I’m just a little wary of maybe losing some customization I really like, stuff that makes the game more enjoyable for me – maybe because I don’t have to count to 10 in my head, maybe because a certain thing is positioned better than doable with Blizzard’s own UI.

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