I'm only talking to you, but I just want to say that by the time I finish writing this (currently 09 Feb, 23:45), it will be Pey's birthday (in my time zone).
I thought that Pey's birthday, as 'something happening that marks the passage of time', would make me stop writing things to you. It turns out I'm like the person in the study about electrical shocks, who gave themselves an absurdly large number of electrical shocks for no apparent reason, rather than sit and wait for time to pass.
Some hotels skip floor 13 and I was wondering whether to avoid 13 in the title of this post. In real life I have encountered this only once: the channels, maybe related, that uploaded videos of the dance group 屏東潮州六姐妹, including a performance of Paparazzi by Kan Mi Youn and a performance of 逼逼逼 嗶嗶嗶 by 謝金燕 Jeannie Hsieh. (Both videos should be stretched wider to sample aspect ratio 32/27, but obvs not possible with YouTube player.)
These channels skipped the numbers 4 and 14 in titles, instead using ３+１ and １３+１. This is because 'death' and 'four' sound similar in Chinese, as well as in Japanese (which lacks tone to distinguish the words, so they're not just similar, but identical). So I was thinking of doing the same, like "12+1".
I thought what I would do with this post was "make myself seem old", by talking about an old game which mostly has old players. Maybe you haven't read any of these posts, and I'll just be wasting time creating words that don't matter. Or maybe you have read them, and by posting this, I might induce you to post something on Chirp Club that isn't about the idea, which by my self-imposed rule would allow me to talk to other people online and like I might be less bored or something then.
Starting with the clip at 2:13 in this video:
(Embedded video player might be way too small)
Summary of clip: a mage dies and loses probably over 100 hours of progress.
I thought at first that the mage had abnormally low health. But it's around 1470 health, at lvl 45. I think when I deleted my first (non-open beta) WoW character, 21 years ago, I had about the same amount of health, 1300~1500, at lvl 50. It was something to which I paid enough attention to possibly remember now because my low health was getting me killed by rogues who could open from stealth with a high-damage Ambush that could easily do half of my total health. My health was low (other characters could have 3k health at the same level) because I had prioritized spirit, as the best stat for solo PvE.
So I can't say that this mage who died geared in a way that made his death more likely. My first thought had been, "if your health pool is low, you need to take special care not to take damage." It was just poor play as a mage — not unlike your second death in hardcore WoW, except that it is a mystery how someone could still be making these mistakes at lvl 45.
How verbose to be? No frost armor (just like you). Standing in melee range while getting hit by mobs, just like you. I actually had to check for any evidence that they might actually be a warlock, due to complete lack of any mage defensive abilities.
Maybe it was a challenge: "don't use any of these abilities". No Frost Nova, Blink, or Polymorph. None of these are visible on action bars. (Ok, the character's name is Fireonly.) But in that case, it just makes sense to kill mobs before they get to you. The Fireballs that he gets off do ~20% of the mob's health, from maximum range should be able to get off about three fireballs before mob gets to melee range.
The Ignite tick for 229 means that some abilities did ~1145 crit damage, which must have been two spells. Basically, he was in "this is fine" mode; he might have had more urgency about losing the second mob without those crits. He says at 2:40 "We're dead, I threw", because without the add(itional mob) that he aggroed through lack of situational awareness he would have survived.
I have been thinking that what players in Hardcore WoW need is an addon that panics whenever the player gets below 50% health, and tracks the number of times this has happened. Then you treat it like you died; i.e., you try to avoid it at all costs (other than potions), and if it happens you take the time to understand exactly how it happened and how to prevent it in the future. For streamers, this 'external enforcement', with like the screen flashing red and alarms going off, would be a better justification for the streamer reacting to this event than doing it without the addon.
Because this player used, instead, "did I survive" as his measurement of success, with near-death experiences being just an exciting stream moment that entertains viewers, his miscalculation of risk and mistakes in play led to his death.
Note how he doesn't look behind himself from 2:13 to 2:20, and at 2:37 while bandaging he doesn't take the time to look around. At 2:23 he gets dazed though he's stationary for its duration; we don't have in-game sound, but the sound of the mob behind him shooting at him should probably have been audible.
Compare the awareness of an experienced PvP player, like in Gegon - The Last Ovski !
At 3:46, while casting Fireball, he turns the camera to look behind himself. Again at 6:56, although later in the scene he doesn't look around.
I have heard the player who was the best in AoE2 for a long time say that streaming always decreases performance. Checking chat, instead of checking for danger in the game, or just having the awareness that there is an audience. But it's natural that there are times when one just does not have time to read chat. With his restriction of using only fire spells, this streamer should have acted like it was one of those times as soon as a second mob was aggroed, before the clip started.
Tbh it became harder to critique once I finally noticed his character's name, but there's always something to criticize.
I first started watching this compilation on 01 Feb, and had to stop after the second clip, which seems to feature the Thrash ability stacking to give extra attacks at 0:52.
WoW Classic: should dumb mechanics, including unintended ones (bugs), be changed?
Yes
Only if the overall effect is to make the game harder
Only if the overall game difficulty stays about the same
Only if the overall effect is to make the game easier
No
(thrash stacking up on mobs)
It's hard to get people to agree that specific changes to Classic would be good; or rather, I only bother to suggest things if there isn't already a strong consensus that those changes are needed.
If I think of solutions, including ways of changing a conversation to support those solutions, but can't talk about them, it just makes me frustrated, so that's why I stopped watching this video at the time.
The third streamer, at 0:58 (names are in video description): it's possible she had never seen seen elite mobs before. "I think I should kill one at a time actually" — many classes, with a typical player's ability, can't even kill a single elite mob. So it suggests she did not put importance on the gold dragon border, which would have made her pay attention to the damage dealt by her Wrath spell as a percentage of the mob's health. Then she didn't know how to avoid getting dazed, didn't consider the use of a healing potion to be serious enough (the whole, 'alarm bells going off if below 50% health' addon thing) and didn't think to use Entangling Roots; and it just goes to show I never played a druid that I didn't immediately think of Travel Form, though she was too low-level to have gotten it yet. I guess she also didn't complete the cast of War Stomp and didn't realize it. And Swiftness Potion instead of healing also might have saved her.
Her mouse movements show where her attention was focused: she was looking for a solution in her action bars, so basically she was focused on finding the ability she wanted to use (Rejuvenation) instead of thinking about what she might do. OODA loop, with "act" taking up much more time than it should have, leaving less time for the other steps. Nature's Grasp is also visible on her bars and honestly, having never played a druid myself, it always sounded like a nice ability and something that should be frequently used. She didn't think to use it in this situation, which suggests she might never have used it after talenting into it.
Just like you never used Polymorph after getting it and might never have used Frost Nova, other than maybe like once, either. *Correction, you did use Frost Nova in the fight where you died.
___
Update 10 Feb 2026, 04:37
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpina
Proserpina was imported from southern Italy as part of an official religious strategy, towards the end of the Second Punic War, when antagonism between Rome's lower and upper social classes, crop failures and intermittent famine were thought to be signs of divine wrath, provoked by Roman impiety.
Logical motivation? I thought,
Possibility 1: crop failures and famine do not have a divine explanation. Maybe they will continue, and society will collapse. Better start stealing now.
Possibility 2: they have a divine explanation. Humans acting better can fix these problems, even if the weather may seem on first glance to be outside of human control. Law and order will be preserved.
It sometimes seems that religion is about getting people to believe in consequences for good or bad actions, that matter even after death — "The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn no traveller returns." In this explanation, religion and belief in the gods instead affects confidence in worldly consequences and the enforcement of order by humans.
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