Before Mastercard sues me I'll have to admit that I borrowed my title from their ads. Specifically it was an add that suggested that the freedom of traveling where you want when you want is priceless. And that struck a chord with me regarding the way I play MMORPGs these day. Because it answers the old question of why somebody would play a "massively multiplayer" game solo.

I am clearly missing out on both content and the best rewards by playing World of Warcraft solo instead of organized in a guild. I can do normal and heroic dungeons with the LFG functionality, but haven't even tried mythics, where you either need friends/guildmates or a more complex version of the group finder. And I have only done one raid in LFR mode for a quest. So there are several raid dungeons and mythic dungeons which I haven't seen yet, because they aren't available (yet) for LFG/LFR.

It isn't a problem of skill or gear. My three level 110 characters are all above 840, and the main in above iLevel 850. I have found two legendaries already, albeit on two different characters. And while my dps skills have always been mediocre, my healing skills are pretty good because in spite of many changes group healing is still very similar to what it was when I was playing in a top notch raiding guild years ago.

Rather the problem for me with organized play in a guild or with friends is that it puts me under a certain amount of pressure. I'd want to keep my gear level up to par with the other guild members. And I'd have to be there at certain times for a certain number of hours to play with the guild, especially if you explicitly sign up for some raid. And I don't want to feel compelled to play any more. I want to decide at any given moment whether I feel like playing or not, and what I feel like doing. I don't want to measure my progress against others. I want to play at my own pace.

And while World of Warcraft sometimes feels like it is designed for people doing raid content, in some other ways it feels as if it was designed for my slower pace as well. Even if expansions are now coming slightly faster than once ever two years, and there are slightly more content patches, World of Warcraft is still far away from expansions that really offer two years worth of content. I can play as slow as I want, and there is still zero danger that one day the next expansion comes out before I have finished Legion. I already have three level 110 characters, and my main reached exalted with the Nightfallen and is now on the most current chapter of the Suramar storyline, Insurrection. Unless patch 7.1.5 and 7.2 come soon, I'll run out of content before Christmas. Playing at my own, slower pace seems to be a better fit with the speed with which Blizzard can add new content. Missing out on running the same raid dungeons over and over again to me seems a small price to pay for the priceless freedom and better story pacing that solo play gives me.

Since I was old enough to form a political opinion, I have been a liberal in the European sense of the word. That has never been an easy position in a political world that has mostly been about the left fighting against the right, as both sides were half liberal and half anti-liberal: The right was liberal on economics, but anti-liberal on social issues; the left was socially liberal, but anti-liberal on economics. If you wanted the state out of your wallet *and* out of your bed, you didn't have much of a team behind you.

But then around the end of the 80's something curious happened: Economic liberalism won. Well, mainly the alternative of a communist economics catastrophically lost, but the effect was the same. Suddenly we got left wing leaders who were fiscally responsible economic liberals. And then some sort of truce developed: Left wing politicians coming into power advanced social liberalism while leaving economic liberalism alone. Right wing politicians coming into power advanced economic liberalism while leaving social liberalism alone. Some countries ended up being governed by coalitions of center left and center right parties, who agreed on a common platform. Liberalism went only ever forward for decades, and a sort of great liberal consensus developed.

It is when your side wins that the flaws of your position become obvious. Liberalism isn't perfect. Economic liberalism was proven to be great at wealth creation, but relied on the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. It didn't, some boats were left behind and the rising tide gave them the impression of sinking. Globally the wealth creation did happen, and literally billions of people were saved from abject "less than $1 per day" poverty, and ambitious "Millennium Development Goals" on poverty reduction were reached early. But in the already rich countries the created wealth went only to a small elite, while a middle class majority profited very little from economic liberalism and globalisation. Even minor efforts to distribute the wealth a bit more fairly in the rich countries were decried as anti-liberal and met strong opposition.

Social liberalism developed two failure zones: Religion and nationality. The ultimate liberal position is one in which neither your religion nor your nationality matters at all any more, and we are all free to believe whatever we want and live wherever we want. But on the religion side that means that religion simply doesn't matter at all any more, which wasn't really a position that religious types could support. And even within itself liberalism failed to provide an answer to the question whether granting religious freedom to somebody whose religion had strong anti-liberal elements should be done. Political systems that were based on nation states developed issues with the free movement of labor and capital. Liberalism clashed with patriotism and nationalism, and couldn't provide answers to pressing questions like how to responsibly handle immigration. Liberalism completely failed to even acknowledge that the talk about immigration wasn't just xenophobia and racism, but a very fundamental question on what exactly the advantages of being a citizen of a nation state should be, compared to being a foreigner in that same nation state. I personally experienced a situation where I as an immigrant received preferential treatment over the locals, and I have fullest understanding for people who think that this isn't the way it should be.

On the political front the recent electoral defeats of liberalism against anti-liberal forces like Brexit and Trump are clearly mostly related to the inability of liberalism to give answers to the burning questions of the voters. It isn't as if the Brexiteers or Trump appear to have those answers, but at least they aren't denying the importance of the questions. What advantages does economic liberalism bring to the middle class voters? What should the contributions and benefits of foreigners be compared to citizens? As long as liberalism refuses to even acknowledge these questions, it doesn't stand a chance in elections.

For me as a liberal, the greatest betrayal of the liberal movement to its core values is how the movement became overly obsessed with language to the detriment of the value of freedom of speech. Today the liberal movement is one that is perceived as being more concerned with policing the thoughts and language of others than it is with freedom. People are being told that they don't have the right to be offended by a guy in a dress entering a girl's public toilet, and they don't even have the right to make a joke about that guy because *he* might be offended by that. Pretty much any sort of joke has become a target of the liberal movement. That not only makes them look like sourpusses, but is also psychologically unwise. Since language was invented, making jokes about something has been a relief valve for people to deal with situations they don't fully understand. Closing that relief valve only risks to increase the psychological pressure, until people react with harsher means than words. The obsession of the liberal movement with language becomes downright embarrassing when you have to watch the naive belief that somehow the problem of Trump becoming president can be solved by calling him a fascist. As if that would change anything.

My hope as a liberal is that the cultural hegemony of liberalism dies out in favor of free speech and true political discourse on the advantages of economic and social liberalism. Liberalism can be a force for good, but only if it is a position from which compromise can be found. The complete annihilation of religion and the nation state are not viable goals, and liberalism needs to find answers for voters who believe in religion and the nation state. On immigration the unrestricted movement of labor and internment camps are not the only alternatives, and compromise has to be found on what exactly the contributions of immigrants to their host nation should be, and what benefits they should be given in comparison to native citizens. Liberalism needs to find answers on how the wealth of nations should be distributed among its citizens. And maybe liberalism needs some more electoral defeats to get to that point.

After the previous session filled with investigation, this session had a bit more action, even if it took us two hours of discussion to get there. Their investigation had clearly identified a prime suspect, Reed Macbannin, mayor of the Nettles quarter of Flint. And their boss had provided them with a search warrant for Macbannin's manor, so the path forward was very clear. But two of the players just wanted to avoid any direct confrontation.

So the group first talked again to Julien Lebrix, head of security of the Danoran consulate. Lebrix had previously been prevented by the consul himself of pursuing his investigation further. Asked whether he knew who was behind this, Lebrix could only speculate that it might have to do with the person who had been visiting the consul that morning, and who had shot Nilasa (a fact that Lebrix had tried to conceal at their first visit on order of the consul). That visitor was Cillian Creed, and Eldion remembered that name as being Macbannin's butler.

So after a long discussion and having run out of other clues to follow up, the group finally went up Cauldron Hill to search Macbannin's manor. They were greeted by the mayor himself in a friendly fashion, but there were quite a lot of Macbannin's staff around. While the constables were still discussing with Macbannin, suddenly there was an earthquake. The city had experienced minor earthquakes in the days before, but this was a bigger one. At that point the group and Macbannin were in the garden of the manor, and at a random location in that garden a sinkhole opened up and started to fill with witchoil. Macbannin shouted to Creed to "check the reservoir", while he himself and his staff turned to attack the constables.

Now Macbannin was using a form of black magic which linked his life to the lives of his staff. For every 11 points of damage he took, one member of his staff died, while he remained unharmed. The staff was otherwise not too dangerous, just throwing bricks and using makeshift weapons, although during one turn in which the dice rolls for the staff attacks were unusually high, that ended up doing noticeable damage. Besides Macbannin there were two of Lorcan Kell's gangsters disguised as gardeners.

The fight was made more interesting by the earthquake: At the start of each round another sinkhole opened up in the area where the group was fighting. At one point a sinkhole opened up right in the middle of the group, with 4 group members falling in. But they all managed to get out before the hole filled with witchoil and started to damage them. Macbannin was casting rather nasty black magic curses on James, but between saving throws and Eldion dispelling the black magic with religious chants the curses were countered. After killing the two gardeners and all the staff, Aria asked the mayor to surrender, and he did. As it was already rather late at that point, we stopped the session there.

I finally got around to try and do all the quests in Suramar, of which there are a lot. I liked the quests that take place further into the city, where the game gets a sort of Assassin's Creed feel: I sneak around, trying to avoid detection, and I climb up buildings (although only at specific grapple points, WoW doesn't have real climbing).

Unfortunately after one afternoon of having fun in Suramar, the fun suddenly stopped very abruptly: The next two quests in the series require me to kill specific mobs in specific dungeons. On mythic difficulty!!! Which means no LFG functionality. Hey, Blizzard, if I had a large group of friends to do mythic dungeons and raids with, I wouldn't be doing your quest content! It really annoys me that Blizzard can't keep their content separated, but must always try to force people into content they don't want to play.

Apparently there is a workaround to still get the Good Suramaritan achievement, which at some point in time will be needed for flying. But that workaround required exalted reputation, which as I have run out of quests requires grinding world quests for a long time. And then I still need to do a raid, although I can wait until that raid is available in LFR mode. So right now the story line of how the resistance movement in Suramar is faring is closed to me. Which at least brings me to the point where I can see the end of Legion, with every content available to me done. I had hoped Legion would last longer than that.

I do not share many values with Donald Trump, not that I had a vote in that. Personally I believe that immigration has more benefits than drawbacks, and women should be seen and treated as equal to men. However I would also say that not all values that I hold are of equal importance. For example I consider democracy to rank much higher in importance than immigration or polite language. And because of that I am opposed to the "not my president" idea and movement.

Democracy is an absolute value: The will of the people is to be respected, regardless of whether I hold the same opinion or a different opinion. There is nothing liberal about saying that people can't vote for the non-liberal option, or not accepting the vote if it goes against liberal values. I would say that both the Brexit and Donald Trump were the less good option in a choice between two flawed options. But the people who now try to reverse those results get no support from me. Believing in democracy means believing that the majority is always right, or at the very least the majority has the right to be wrong.

And don't start splitting hairs and finding numerous reasons why this or that election wasn't valid. The popular vote simply doesn't count in a presidential election. Feel free to lobby for a change in how the president of the United States is elected, but don't tell me that Donald Trump doesn't have a mandate. And democracy is for the people who participate, so speculations of what the millions of non-voters would have wanted are equally futile.

From the time of Reagan ("Tear down this wall. ... The wall cannot withstand freedom.") to Donald Trump ("I will build a great wall") we lived in an age of growing liberalism. But that liberalism (especially the economic liberalism) mostly benefited an elite, who went on and told everybody else what they could say and what was good for them. Democracy means that the majority has the right to disagree with the results of decades of liberal consensus. Maybe the majority is "wrong", but then you also need to admit that the liberals were wrong not share the wealth more widely and not to address the valid concerns of the other side. In the end we will need a compromise on many of the issues and flaws of the liberal consensus of the last decades, and we will never arrive at a compromise if the other side is never in power. Sometimes the people who tear down walls are in power, and sometimes the people who build walls are in power. The back and forth swing of democracy results in that eventually arriving at a good compromise on the number of walls out there. And that is the greater good, the greater value in this instance.

Political correctness at its core is a system to encourage people to not say what they think. The idea behind is that preventing people from expressing sexist or racist thoughts will ultimately reduce sexism and racism. That works about as well as the idea that not talking about sex will reduce teenage pregnancies, that is to say not at all. A brilliant proof of that comes in the polls for the US presidential election: Not only were the polls very wrong, but it also turns out that the polls that were most wrong were the ones conducted by human pollsters. A lot of people, undoubtedly influenced by the prevailing culture of political correctness, did not want to admit to another human being that they were voting for Trump. But in the voting booth, where they were alone and had no finger wagging at them, they followed their core beliefs and voted Trump.

It is not as if Trump supporters do not believe that Trump groped women and then bragged about it; while they would probably deny it when asked, deep in their heart they believe that this isn't something that should disqualify Trump from becoming president. Political correctness might suppress their freedom of expression, but it doesn't suppress their freedom of thought or their freedom to vote. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "silent majority". Which for me means that political correctness as a tool to make the world a better place completely failed. And is probably very much on the way out under president Trump.

The other big loser in this election is globalization. I sincerely believe that globalization as an extreme form of free market capitalism is the best system for overall maximum wealth creation. Unfortunately free market capitalism is only good at wealth creation, while being lousy at wealth distribution. We have reached a point where the average Joe is so enraged about inequality that he prefers less overall wealth creation, even if it hurts himself, as long as it hurts the fat cats even more. The dramatic stockmarket crash of today is not because of the likely damage that Trump will do to the overall GDP, but because of the much larger damage that he will do to the free movement of trade and capital, which will dis-proportionally hurt the rich.

Overall we can wish the Americans only that they "may live in interesting times". While most of the preposterous things Trump promised simply won't happen, and the US won't erect a wall a quarter of a century after the Germans pulled theirs down, the next 4 years are certain to be tumultuous. Possibly to the detriment of the winning Republican party, because in government and total control of all houses the rift between their anti-establishment leader and the pro-establishment party will become ever more evident.

In the previous session the constables of the Royal Homeland Constabulary saved the dying skyseer from an attack on Dawn Square, so that he could proclaim his vision of the threat coming from Cauldron Hill. That raised their prestige with the city of Flint, but didn't bring them much forward with their investigation on who was behind the various crimes they had uncovered. So this session was very much about investigation.

In computer games people frequently discuss about the merits of sandbox games versus games in which you follow a story. In Dungeons & Dragons you can have both. So this session was very much sandbox mode, with me just reacting to the various ideas of the players based on my background knowledge of the city and the villains.

Having been somewhat damaged in the Dawn Square battle, the group recovered over night and really started the investigation the next morning with their usual 8 am status meeting with their boss. Their boss commended them for having saved the skyseer, but was a bit puzzled about what exactly was going on. Initially this had been a hunt for the eco-terrorist Gale, but even Assistant Chief Inspector Stover Delft could see that these reanimated jaguar monsters weren't something Gale would use, and that Nevard the skyseer was a friend rather than an enemy to Gale.

Remember the start of the adventure, where the group investigated the death of a young girl that had died flying out of a window of the Danoran consulate and landing on the spiked fence? Over the course of the adventure the group had found out that the girl, Nilasa, with her dying breath had entrusted a bunch of documents to a foreign doctor who had come to her aid. The group had saved that doctor and received the documents from him. Now another constable (NPC) had analyzed them, and found that they were financial documents showing that the factories that had been damaged by arson had subsequently been bought up by henchmen of Lorcan Kell, a gangster boss. But the money had come from elsewhere. So the constables went to the bank, succeeded a diplomacy check and managed to find out that the money originally had come from Mayor Reed Macbannin. That was their second clue implicating the mayor of the Nettles quarter.

Next the constables searched Parity Lake to see whether only those factories had witchoil in them. But they found that witchoil flasks were hidden in many places where people died, not just in factories with their high rate of industrial accidents, but also in hospitals. So they lay in wait at one hospital where the witchoil flask appeared to be full of captured souls from the dying, to find out who would get the flask. After some hours, in the evening, a gangster from Lorcan Kell's crew appeared and took the full flask, exchanging it for a fresh one. They followed the man to the lake, where in a warehouse he put all the flasks that he had collected in a runed crate and loaded that crate onto a barge. The group followed the barge, and found that under the sixth bridge the crate suddenly disappeared. Searching under the bridge for a secret tunnel, they found instead a rusty iron portal etched with runes. From previous events they knew that with the right magic rusty iron rings could be used as portals into the Shadowfell, the parallel plane of the death. As they didn't have means to go into the Shadowfell, and it would have been unwise to try anyway, they only checked out the warehouse and found that other goods than the witchoil flasks were also smuggled into the Shadowfell the same way.

They then found the previous owner of one of the factories who under questioning revealed that he had been under pressure before by gangsters to either deliver goods secretly or sell his factory, and that they had come back after the arson and threatened him more. Seeing how serious they were and that they were actually offering market value for the factory, he had sold his property and kept quiet about it.

The next morning the group presented this information to Stover Delft, who agreed that they should look into Mayor Reed Macbannin. But first the group sought out Julien Lebrix, the security chief of the Danoran Consulate. Having arrested the two dragonborn arsonists that wanted to kill Lebrix since their last encounter, the group hoped he would be a bit more talkative this time around. But as it was getting late we stopped the session at that point.

I find the player economy of Legion to be rather messed up. It isn't as if you couldn't craft useful items; but everything is so damned expensive that few people buy or bother with crafting and selling. A flask that gives you a 2-hour stat bonus on my server costs 3000 gold, and very few people other than high-end raiders spend that sort of money for a short term buff. And the high price isn't a profit margin of the crafters, but comes nearly exclusively from the high price of the gathered raw materials like herbs and ores.

The culprit probably is the previous expansion, where the garrison gave everybody herbs and ores without needing the skill, so many people unlearned their gathering professions. And although you can gather in Legion with low skill, apparently not many people switched back. Maybe because skill isn't the determining factor any more, you need to do a lot of gathering to find quest items that give you quests that increase your gathering skills. Without those every node only yields little. Thus you can find basic ores or herbs going for 50 to over 100 gold for a single one. Stacks of 200 ores or herbs cost more than BoE epics.

Another reason why few people bother with crafting is that there are other alternatives. You can get a set of class armor and upgrade it to high iLevel using order resources. And if you do a lot of world quests, you'll also find a lot of good gear. I just recently discovered that you can buy bonus roll loot items that work on the weekly purple world bosses, giving you a chance of an iLevel 860 item without ever needing to enter a dungeon.

My warrior has mining and smithing, my mage has herbalism and alchemy, and my priest has tailoring and jewelcrafting. I haven't found any great money makers yet in these professions. Some people said stirrups would sell, but I found few buyers that would pay more than the cost of the materials for those on my server. And unless gathered materials become a lot cheaper, I don't see myself crafting flasks or turning crafted items into obliterum.