The Queue: Oh what a beautiful morning

It is always a beautiful morning here at the Queue, where we are once again answering your questions (and occasionally questioning our answers).  So what are we waiting for? Let us carry on to the questioning and answering portion of our program.

For all that the online community is full of toxic behavior, no one has found an ideal solution… though EverQuest 2‘s idea of a “prison server” is an interesting one. In EQ2‘s case, rulebreakers of any kind get a one-way trip to the Drunder server where no rules are enforced and customer service does not exist. These players cannot transfer to other servers, and so must either make the most of their new server or, presumably, start new accounts entirely.

But will it work? Even EQ2 defines this as an experiment, and it’s a recent one, too. This has the potential to get the worst players off of the regular realms, but rules don’t necessarily catch all bullies or abusive players. There’s a chance that plenty of bad seeds could remain on regular servers, just skirting along the gray areas of the rules while avoiding entirely breaking them. Though toxic behavior is something we certainly need to solve, I’d recommend keeping an eye on EverQuest‘s success here before deciding it’s a solution for WoW.

In the meantime, be good to your fellow players, because you never know how a even a small kindness might make someone’s day — and get passed along to make the entire community just a little bit better.

The problem with making racials — or making anything — more powerful is that not everyone will agree on just what more powerful means. Overpowered racial abilities is a problem the game has had before — say, when Dwarven Priests, who had race-specific abilities, had the must-have for raiding ability Fear Ward. And while this isn’t exactly a racial ability, it demonstrates the problem with them. Blizzard tried to design cool abilities that fit the theme of each race, but in practice there were always racials that were particularly useful for the game… and racials that aren’t.

The imbalance of early racial abilities feels like the reason we’ve landed in our current situation: racials have become watered down and, at least in my opinion, less interesting across the board. Is it perhaps time for the pendulum to swing back the other way, as Blizzard tries to make racials compelling again? Perhaps… but Blizzard always has to keep balance in mind. Even if racials are buffed, Blizzard needs to keep them balanced, especially in PVP, to be sure no one is entirely above the rest.

That can be a tricky proposition — and it might just be more straightforward to leave racials, even if uninteresting, as they are.

While I haven’t used the above question in its full text, you can go back and find the rest of it — including more Legion speculation — in yesterday’s Queue. Personally, I doubt we’ll see much more about Legion before BlizzCon. After all, BlizzCon isn’t so far off and Blizzard has to save something showy to present us. If anything, I’d expect small tidbits in interviews, as we’ve seen sneaking out since the original announcement… but I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything new.

As to the leaks and rumors… well, there are always leaks and rumors, but it’s hard to put stock in them. Early in the development cycle, even things Blizzard thinks will make it into the final game might not. Are these things they planned to add? Maybe. Are these things that will wind up in the game? Maybe. We just don’t know. While it can be fun to speculate, we simply won’t know for sure until Blizzard tells us one way or the other — and perhaps not even then, as plans can change and features can be cut.

Alas, as of last month, Blizzard wasn’t planning on adding any new Hearthstone classes according to Senior Game Designer Ben Brode.

@3Otterz We aren't planning on any new classes at this time.

— Ben Brode (@bbrode) July 6, 2015

It does seem like an obvious way to build on the game, however — and it’s something I’d very much like to see happen in the future. Perhaps another expansion? There’s nothing to do but wait and see.

If you get any kind of email that asks you to reply with personal information like your account name and password, you should immediately pass it off as phishing — no Blizzard employee will ever ask for your password, and you shouldn’t enter it anywhere save Battle.net or an official game client. However, there’s a good reason you might have extra gold in Heroes of the Storm. 

With the introduction of dynamic bundles in the last patch, players who bought bundles that included heroes they already owned are getting some gold in compensation. Not everyone who’s gotten gold has gotten an email, so I’d recommend checking your game client to see if you have extra gold… and if so, feel free to spend and enjoy it!

As always, please leave your questions in the comments below where Mr. Matthew Rossi will be in to answer tomorrow. We’ll see you back then!