I, the royal we, of the Jackal of Stormwind, took a lot of hits to get to this point in time; the forums here have never been this civil since after Legion prepatch. I casually lurk around like I do and there’s virtually no drama, a far cry from Y2023. It’s enough to make a celebratory thread. Even if it’s more of a desert, there is peace. Jackals do love desolate places, after all…
That’s what makes the multiple ineffectual vacations worth it. Vacations never accomplished what the Jackal’s enemies thought they would. If WPvP actually still existed after the summer of '22 when certain key developments were remitting the Retail community, I would argue successfully that the Jackal would still be very active today and actively contributing. So the lack of WPvP was what really “deleted him off”, and that’s nothing this class community really did. They took away the #1 best endgame content for this class. The irony gets more sickening that Hunter actually did get better in DF and now in TWW, but with nothing to hunt?
Even so, when he still went out of his way to help this community with valuable street smarts of the class, particularly MM spec, he was punished no less than 5-6 times in a year and had to go into “the Program”, because he simply didn’t give a hoot about an inconsequential thing as a vacation. He had less than no reason at all to be afraid because he was right about how MM functioned at the core. If it wasn’t Blizzard who took special notice of his previous gameplay and decided to go forward based on him, it can be universally agreed upon that he betted on the right horse in DF era and that his enemies betted on the wrong one. His enemies are largely absent today.
But no apologies were given–not here nor on the Jackal’s 𝕏–not even for the vacations and that which was stealing something that’s paid for $15+tax/mo or $20/mo worth of gold. No apologies that say, “Yeah, I was the buffoon who got it all wrong. I was drunk with power and just loved getting people vacationed because I could, because I had all the right people on my side to get rid of players. I loved it more than I loved playing WoW itself,” whenas, if it was resolved in a PvP fashion, it would determine things very differently. Forum vacations would not have stopped them from getting farmed by their betters, and I doubt that in-game reporting would have done the same as there were reports that the Jackal was reported on in-game for his ganking efficiency. He was never convicted for breaking EULA.
They can dismiss WPvP because they’ve never done it, that they enjoyed the safety and familiarity in instances among the same people as opposed to running up against total strangers whose brains, psychologies, they’ve yet to crack. They can now dismiss something that ceased to exist because of War Mode ON-OFF, Chromie Time, crossfaction guilding and grouping, auction houses in sanctuary cities, and overall abandonment of all WPvP objectives. Not to mention click-to-report in-game chat, which didn’t exist during BFA’s time and that trashtalking was most important to the WPvP experience than any other endgame. The version of WPvP that may still exist is not something the Jackal recognizes as green grass in comparison to that of the Classic persuasion. Yet interestingly, the very reasons WPvP is waved off are the same reasons the Jackal doesn’t exist anymore…
Almost as if those who successfully pressed Blizzard to focus more on the INSTANCED endgames are those who actually SLEW the Jackal, but at least not before the Jackal got City Attacker solo when it was Leg era, when PvP servers STILL existed, in the last of the best days of WPvP with a united and active community that hasn’t yet split for Classic Vanilla WoW.
But not every Hunter does the thing it’s the BEST at; not every Hunter does open-world with 1st priority. There’s a place, no matter how marginalized, in instances for Hunters. If the Jackal has something to offer to help the non-WPvPing Hunter community, it’s why he may be still around. Does that not make someone more of a friend, a fellow beggar helping another beggar where to get bread? His factinions matter because he wisely played as Blizz intended, and like a certain orange man would say, “He did it better than everyone else.”
TL;DR: The vacations never worked, only the general direction of the overall game. But no apologies for one’s own evils to this day. Someone that could wreck you up outside instances and keep you in the GY forever, like he has with the odd Gladiator as someone who never did one rated Arena game, is the same that, if he still can, wants to make you the best possible in instances. The power to make or to break, to create or to destroy. This is the hard, inconvenient truth that cannot change with or without an apology. It’s only a matter of consequence of how long you last where it really matters.
I do love Starbucks still. Something to think about there…like an apple for the teacher. Pike Place, just black. And I’d say about 30 Venti’s, give or take a couple.
at least? Believe me, it’s a really cheap internship.