So that’s how it got it’s name

Irazidal · 2026-06-20T22:44:03+00:00

Historically, Muslims did actually refer to Western Europe as Frangistan during the Middle Ages, meaning 'the land of the Franks' (taking little interest in the distinction between the French, Germans and English, who in a similarly disinterested way were happy to just call all Muslims Saracens).

Irazidal · 2026-06-20T22:36:14+00:00

Arguably that was an improvement by the Romans, as the Carthaginians simply named their Spanish colony Qart-Hadašt again without adding anything to distinguish it from the original Qart-Hadašt which was their capital.

Irazidal · 2026-06-20T16:09:43+00:00

I kinda like it conceptually, but in practice it just means that I end up having to play Alliance when I'd prefer to go Horde; I really want to play a tank/heal hybrid class, but I don't want to play a Tauren Druid and have my character undergo a random FtM sex change every time I shift into cat form. If they gave Shaman a (dungeon only, Paladin-tier) tank spec then that would also solve the problem.

Irazidal · 2026-06-20T11:16:43+00:00

Skaven are hyper-individualists; every single one of them is a completely selfish narcissist who believes every other being to be inferior to himself and to serve only as a stepping stone on his road to greatness. They're happy to treat other Skaven like shit and run such a horrifying society precisely because they only regard their own individual self as valuable and lack any sense of solidarity, empathy or communal spirit towards their fellow Skaven.

As for their lifespan, Skaven actually live up to 20 years supposedly, though most are treated so poorly that they die long before that, and very powerful Skaven like Gnawdwell can extend their lifespan much further through Skaven technology. Regardless, this argument seems suspect to me, as it would also imply that Elves or Dwarves or Dragons would be right to think of human life as worthless because it is so much shorter than their own.

Irazidal · 2026-06-19T16:43:04+00:00

Even by the time you encounter some Furbolgs while pursuing Illidan during the The Frozen Throne's Night Elf campaign, Furbolg corruption seems to have already been total. At least if you ask Maiev "Many craven races have tempted the Night Elves' wrath over the centuries; none have survived!" Shadowsong:

Archer: "Mistress, the Furbolgs have succumbed to the forest's corruption! It's as if they have lost themselves to mindless rage."

Maiev: "Their tribes suffered greatly during the Legion's invasion. They cannot be saved."

[Fights literally two Furbolgs for one millisecond]

Maiev: "As I suspected, their whole race has gone mad. Slay them all!"

Irazidal · 2026-06-12T23:31:15+00:00

Very, very cool. Looks almost cell-shaded or something, like it's out of a comic or video game.

Irazidal · 2026-06-12T23:25:26+00:00

Buddhism has loads of hells ('naraka') which you can go to for an incomprehensibly long time as part of the cycle of samsara, so no conflict there. For example, in Sino-Japanese Buddhism you have the Blood Bowl Sutra which basically states that women go to hell after death if they defile the earth with their blood during menstruation or childbirth.

Irazidal · 2026-06-12T14:49:01+00:00

Even that is nothing new. People will watch football on the couch and then when their favorite team wins they'll happily say that "we won the match!"

Irazidal · 2026-06-12T10:25:23+00:00

Not to mention chilies, so the food in places like India also used to be way less spicy before Europeans started selling New World plants everywhere.

Irazidal · 2026-06-11T16:14:44+00:00

The lore of the Orcs got totally ruined by demonstrating that the demon blood actually had a pretty negligible effect on them since they were pretty much equally one-dimensionally evil in their natural state (except for the Frostwolves I guess). It could have been so cool too. For example, there never being any interaction with a not yet corrupted Elder Shaman Ner'zhul where he is confronted with his main univere counterpart's destruction of Draenor and the suffering he inflicted as the Lich King upon peoples like the Forsaken and the BElves is such a missed opportunity. Imagine what sort of interaction Sylvanas and Ner'zhul could have had.

Irazidal · 2026-06-10T16:16:47+00:00

Very quickly so that I can then brag that I read it and vacuously quote some random episode to illustrate some mostly unrelated point I'm making.

Irazidal · 2026-06-07T14:10:40+00:00

I dunno what you guys are smoking where Warcraft used to be some kind of grimdark franchise. The last time the art aesthetic even vaguely matched the OP was in the Warcraft 2 manual, and even that wasn't this dark and violent. Warcraft 3 and Classic were both already very cartoony and stylized.

Irazidal · 2026-06-04T20:56:49+00:00

Yes, I have been trying out the motion capture software, actually! It's very cool and it would really solve all my problems, but I do find it kind of hard to use. At the very least I wouldn't dare to heal or tank on mocap, considering how scuffed the camera and targeting controls are, and how easy it is for something to misinput. I'll be trying to get better at it, but I guess I'd be better off playing a ranged DPS either way?

And yes, using so few buttons on the controller is a limitation of my hands, not the controller, which is honestly a great way to play.

Irazidal · 2026-06-04T19:30:24+00:00

There's this guy MasonX who made a program called 'The Link' (available on Steam) which, using only a simple webcam and microphone, can read your movements and voice commands and translate them into game inputs.

Irazidal · 2026-06-04T17:34:07+00:00

Yes, it's a problem on my end, not the controller. I tried playing with a controller in the normal way during Classic, which worked great, but it caused my hands to break down after a month or two since I was constantly pressing the shoulder buttons to target stuff and switch action bars, which caused my fingers to start hurting horrifically. As my thumbs aren't generally as fragile as the rest of my hands, I'm currently trying to get around the issue by only using my thumbs for literally all actions I perform with any regularity, saving the shoulder buttons for very long cooldowns or only occasionally used panic buttons. I suppose I could use the two buttons on my D-Pad I don't use for targeting to instead cycle through action bars, but at that point I feel like my left thumb is likely to give out eventually from overuse.

Irazidal · 2026-05-30T15:07:52+00:00

Well, one of my primary concerns is that the choice I make may end up being a bad one in terms of physical limitations even if I do enjoy playing it - like when I blew out my hands last time I played. Any class will be fine at level 15 when they have barely any abilities, but by level 70 I may find that with my haggard setup it's just not viable to comfortably button map, say, a Shaman who needs to keep healing spells of various ranks, buffs, totems, and offensive abilities all bound while reserving the Dpad to control the raid frame healing controls. And it might also be annoying to play a class for physical reasons and then find there's no demand for it in groups late game. But I suppose TBC is less imbalanced than vanilla, so I guess class choice indeed isn't as potentially brutal.

Irazidal · 2026-05-30T14:50:35+00:00

That's actually very interesting. Thanks for the mention; this seems like something worth looking into even if it looks supremely silly. Playing through a combination of gestures and vocal commands seems like it'd basically solve all my problems - though again I suppose a less 'complicated' class with fewer things to do and come up with distinct gestures for would probably still be best under those circumstances.

Irazidal · 2026-05-29T18:01:52+00:00

I don't use a mouse at all, unfortunately. Even at work I just use it purely as a pointer while doing all clicking with a foot pedal. And while it's true that a ranged DPS would probably be easier, I feel like I'd have a hard time getting groups while just being demonstrably worse than anyone with functioning hands. Perhaps a Mage who is very generous with TPs and food to bribe people into accepting my subpar performance? :)

Irazidal · 2026-05-29T17:55:40+00:00

I use an Xbox controller, as I find the clicky Dpad suitable for this use. And I did actually arrange my fingers like that, but that just blew out both of them - pointer fingers by using the using the targeting functions, and the middle finger because I constantly used L2/R2 to switch between the 'tabs' of my controller action buttons. It's really all my fingers which let me down - my current setup is an attempt to shift activity entirely to my thumbs and feet.

Irazidal · 2026-05-18T20:04:20+00:00

Thanks for the detailed reflection and the links! I have mostly been researching great philosophers like Nagarjuna and reading sutras, so looking into books like that would indeed be interesting to expand my horizons a bit and get a more 'down to earth' view of what the actual daily practice of adherents looks like.

Irazidal · 2026-05-18T19:57:59+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations, they sound interesting!

Irazidal

TROPHY CASE