The Queue: No Shadow Priests here (probably)

Today, Mitch offered to write The Queue for me, asking only that he could answer each question with a subtle suggestion that everyone play a Shadow Priest. I thought about this and finally decided that perhaps that wasn’t the right angle to take, and the result is (perhaps sadly) a Shadow Priest free Queue.

But, just for Mitch, I will say that it’s a terrible oversight that Shadow Priests haven’t found their way into Heroes of the Storm yet. Talonpriest Ishaal, where are you?

That out of the way, let’s get on to today’s Q&A.

Honestly, this seems unlikely to me for a number of reasons, but first and foremost because I think that Blizzard can — and has — done a lot of under the hood updates to WoW to make it competitive with other, more modern games. And not just in adding visual flair: sure, we’ve seen new graphics, new models, and updated animations, but we’ve also seen WoW borrow plenty of features from popular addons and other games. World of Warcraft isn’t static, and while its old codebase may hold it back to some extent it hasn’t stopped Blizzard from growing the game. So making a WoW 2 just doesn’t seem necessary.

And, secondly, MMO sequels — often built to do just what you’re suggesting — don’t have a great track record. (I’m looking at you, EverQuest 2.) As Queue commenters pointed out, we’ve invested a lot of time into our current WoW characters, and coaxing us into abandoning them will be a lot harder than selling another expansion — so why would Blizzard risk it?

If anything, I think we’re more likely to see future Cataclysm-style expansions that “reboot” the game world to make it fresh — but I doubt anything so drastic as a WoW 2.

Theramore.

I suppose it’s not so much that the story wasn’t told — it’s expanded on a lot in novels — but because so much of it wasn’t told in the game. As someone who plays the game and hardly ever touches the extended universe, the story felt very incomplete. In fact, for much of my time in Pandaria, I would hear friends talking about Theramore and have absolutely no clue as to what they were on about simply because I hadn’t bothered with the scenario in which Theramore is explained. (Though, admittedly, I took a break from the game in Cataclysm and was playing catch-up in Mists.)

The whole sad story seems a decidedly interesting one, but I’ve had to figure it out through wiki pages rather than gameplay, which is just a shame.

I have no objections to heirlooms themselves, though I do think they’ve contributed to wrecking the leveling experience… but perhaps not the same way you’re suggesting they do. Leveling, especially after the stat squish and skill pruning Blizzard has done is a very disjointed experience. The stat squish has wrecked the gear curve, so you’ll often find that leveling gear from the end of one expansion’s content — mind you, I’m talking about gear you get from questing, not raiding or even running dungeons — is often notably better than gear from the beginning of the next expansion’s content. A lot better. If you’re gearing up, without heirlooms, as you level, you’re likely to go a couple of levels at the beginning of each expansion equipping no new gear — you’ll find gear 20 to 30 ilvls higher than your own that’s a downgrade from what you’re wearing. It’s not exactly game-breaking, but it is frustrating for a player not decked out in heirlooms to progress through the game without picking up many tangible rewards for that progression.

Pruning skills, too, has been particularly bad to the leveling experience. While you might not be terribly bothered by the loss of skills at max level, as you level a new character you’ll run into level ranges where you simply don’t have the spells you need to be effective. (I’ve found this especially true in leveling healers, who really have to be level 30 or 40 before dungeon running is practical without leaving you wanting to tear your hair out.) In other cases, you’ll run into class abilities or talents that effect or modify other skills… that you haven’t gotten yet and might not get for dozens of levels.

These changes feel like they were primarily weighed for end-game content and end-game players, without much consideration for new players who might be jumping in and trying to level for the first time. (And, yes, those players do still exist… though I suspect fewer of them, because the leveling process is a frustrating one these days.) Instead of addressing these problems directly, Blizzard’s solution seems to be heirlooms, which have been made easier than ever for max-level characters to acquire. With heirlooms, you never see the issues with gear while you’re leveling and, in general, your gear level outpaces the content to an extent where the lack of skills won’t slow you down, either.

Heirlooms are a band-aid for a larger problem that Blizzard seems set on ignoring — and if they want to keep recruiting new players into the fold, they need to consider what the leveling experience is like for those players. Right now, it’s not great.

This is the question I’ve had ever since Blizzard rolled out Timewalking. While, yes, Timewalking is one of a series of events Blizzard has running weekly, the problem is that the non-Timewalking events are boring. Did I say boring? I meant boring. Sure, getting extra Apexis crystals or battle pet experience isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not something so exciting that I’ll log on especially to do it — in short, it’s not Timewalking.

Perhaps Blizzard sees the rewards to be earned — from great gear to unique mounts — as too good to have them available all the time. Plus Watcher has come out and said that the rewards are meant to be long-term goals rather than something you’ll just grind out in a weekend or two — and all of this points to Timewalking remaining a limited-time event.

But that’s not to say other dungeons couldn’t join the rotation. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for Karazhan.

That’s all for today’s Queue. As always, leave your questions in the comments and come back tomorrow for an all new set of answers. Thank you and goodnight!