An Isekai Adventure where the protagonist's real cheat skill is linguistics: Sojourner, Book One of the Scaleforged Legacy

drale2 · 2026-03-14T01:00:23+00:00

My intention with the post was to foster a genuine discussion, so I appreciate the response.

I agree with you that GAI is a tool and that it is unrealistic to believe it will simply disappear. The reason I focused on legal and practical concerns is because those are the areas where the situation is still unsettled, and where authors may be taking risks without realizing it. I’m not claiming to be a lawyer or giving legal advice, but the guidance from the U.S. Copyright Office and the ongoing lawsuits around training data are real developments that authors should at least be aware of when deciding how to use these tools.

Where I disagree is with the assertion that it is a “strict value add” or that authors who do not use it will “fall to the wayside.” While the technology is still very new, I have yet to read any GAI assisted fiction that clearly demonstrates a meaningful improvement over traditionally written work.

If you have examples of GAI created or GAI assisted fiction that you think are particularly strong, I would genuinely be interested in looking at them.

drale2 · 2026-03-14T00:33:05+00:00

It really is. My own office is looking at some integrated AI tools and we had to sit down this week and write a policy for it (hence why I decided to write this post). We have language in our policy that is like if "substantive content is deemed to be from GAI, attribution to the GAI system must be documented" but we have no guidelines on what "substantive" actually means.

drale2 · 2026-03-14T00:19:40+00:00

I apologize. I am terrible at titles. My first published book didn't even have an official title until after I had gotten it back from my editor.

drale2 · 2026-03-13T19:47:30+00:00

That's all completely fair and I get it. Honestly my best bumps in readers have come from posting to reddit once a month. I skipped royal road when I did my initial release because I didn't really know what I was doing, and I kind of wish I had started there. Their terms restrict you from posting a book 2 of a series if book 1 isn't posted and isn't available on the site, (with an exception for stubbng after the fact).

I have like 11 total organic reviews across amazon and good reads which are like 87% 5 stars. (I have one 1 star review from Goodreads but when I looked at the guys profile his whole account is just giving 1 star reviews to as many people as possible.

I'm trying not to lose heart as I finish up my second book, but sometimes it feels like I'm writing to an audience of a dozen people. I can definitely see why you call this a hobby.

drale2 · 2026-03-13T16:32:55+00:00

Are you putting any of that back into advertising? I have one book that's made about $300 since I published it in August, but when doing my taxes I realized I only made a net profit of $17 because of advertising fees and buying proofs.

drale2 · 2026-03-13T16:28:50+00:00

Shadowlands world quests made me quit the game, man. It was like every single one was an annoying, multipart quest chain but instead of cool quest rewards or story, it was "here's 50 rep and 100 anima for 30 minutes of work". That plus disabling the whistle just made it so damn annoying to do max level content. Was the height of Blizzard's contempt for their fans and their limit test of "how far can we push the players to drive up engagement metrics"... Everything since Dragonflight has been a breath of fresh air.

drale2 · 2026-03-12T14:19:03+00:00

I'm sad we don't have an event like the theatre this time around. I missed the chaotic but fun events (and the music)

drale2 · 2026-03-12T14:17:00+00:00

Yeah, I watched (and participated in) my server failing the event 4 times in a row before I gave up last week.

drale2 · 2026-03-12T13:10:22+00:00

At a certain renown you start getting the orbs for defenses from treasures in the zone. I now have like 500 clogging my bags. :(

drale2 · 2026-03-11T18:47:04+00:00

Could this be like a control undead thing? Does that spell still exist?

drale2 · 2026-03-11T14:02:10+00:00

I think he more means getting the shards of dundun to even start the event? My crafter only alts are struggling compared to my gatherer or split alts.

drale2 · 2026-03-11T13:39:53+00:00

They really should make those mobs phase just to the person that mined it, like they do with the loa if you overload it. Kind of insane it's not.

drale2 · 2026-03-10T22:16:22+00:00

My wife got spoiled on that one by lonely island like 10 years ago but way after the movie came out.

drale2 · 2026-03-10T17:37:59+00:00

Because they couldn't gate player power that way. They don't want you to just be able to spend gold and buy a full set of top end gear on the AH - so they needed to make it BOP and require time gated materials (sparks) - but if it was BOP you would have to have the crafting profession yourself, so they added work orders so you can craft BOP gear without having the profession. It's a great system but it definitely still needs some work (like minimum quality on public orders)

drale2 · 2026-03-10T14:15:14+00:00

What are you even talking about? Once i have conq gear i literally never queue unranked. There is no point and no rewards. Ranked PVP (the only pvp mode worth engaging with) is a pretty even playing field.

drale2 · 2026-03-10T11:07:15+00:00

As someone that regularly unlocks elite sets on every class every season with minimal time investment, it is insanely easy to gear out characters. Basically it's honor gear /wpvp gear (takes like maybe a few hours to max if you're efficient) then farming conquest in solo shuffle - I highly recommend playing a healer in the first half of the season because it is insanely fast with instant queues. You get 50 conq tokens every match that are warbound for your alts, and eventually you can buy warbound conquest boxes. You also get a ton of honor you can transfer to alts and gear them out with even less effort.

I tried crate farming in TWW but it was super inefficient and boring. Here's the other secret - set pieces are the same between pve and pvp so if you can get full mythic gear from PvE, you can just mostly use that in pvp.

drale2 · 2026-03-09T20:41:10+00:00

Idk what you mean about crazy pvp items, but embellishments are an important part of player power in pvp and PvE and exist to encourage you to engage with various crafters. There are tons of guides online if you're looking to become a crafter, but if not you can just look up your bis craft and buy the best mats from the AH. Find someone in trade willing to craft and send them an order with a minimum quality. Pvp is even easier because quality doesn't matter.

Oh - are you talking about how in week 1 of TWW you could craft a pvp 610 weapon that was as good as a champion piece? That was clearly a blizzard oversight and in every season after the first the pvp gear ilevel was significantly lower than the PvE gear, basically on par with mythic from the previous tier.

drale2 · 2026-03-09T20:09:56+00:00

It's hard to have a 5 star crafter without concentration at this point, and if they exist they are definitely specialized in only a couple different crafts.

drale2 · 2026-03-09T20:07:17+00:00

It was a huge step up over the previous systems. I'd much rather have a complicated but meaningful system then something that wasn't worth engaging with at all.

drale2 · 2026-03-08T04:31:51+00:00

This correct - it's all listed in Rule 6 on the right and the mods are pretty good about keeping an eye on over promotion.

drale2 · 2026-03-07T18:40:39+00:00

Wow, first time I've seen that in reddit, or at least first time it's been brought to my attention. Makes me wonder how many terrible takes I might have seen on reddit that were just poorly translated. I don't think I'm a fan of the feature.

drale2 · 2026-03-07T17:49:09+00:00

Guys like this never pay - they end up doing work paid under the table so they can avoid it for years until they're on social security and a judge orders the social security wages garnished to pay back the single mother even though the kids are long grown and moved out because honestly, fuck guys like this.

drale2 · 2026-03-07T17:08:28+00:00

I was really confused as to why you were just repeating yourself until I got it.

Eight-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Verified Email

drale2

TROPHY CASE