The Queue: Slow down

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments!

This weekend’s Queue comments were even lighter than usual this weekend thanks to the holiday, so we’re rather short on questions today.

I like Stormwind in both cases. I don’t find it particularly hard to get around there, but it still has distinct districts and so forth. Going to the Mage Quarter presents a slightly different feel than the Dwarven District or Old Town. It sprawls a bit, but the canals make it easy to get where you want to go even if you don’t fly there. Ironforge is an ugly donut.

Orgrimmar is a city I want to like. I enjoy when cities are a little more complex. But Orgrimmar’s revamp added complexity without much thought about how to get around it. Elevators are honestly the worst thing in World of Warcraft and alternative paths are hidden from view. If a little more thought had been put into user friendliness, I would actually enjoy Orgrimmar, I think. It’s large, it has distinct areas serving varied purposes, and there’s a lot of flavor to be found there. It’s just… elevators, man. Your elevators are awful, Blizz.

Cities like Ironforge, Thunder Bluff, and Dalaran are the exact kind of cities I don’t like in WoW (or in games in general). They’re too simple and samey. I like at least some illusion of being lived-in. I know none of these cities are large/detailed enough to actually represent real cities, but some are better at expressing the idea than others. Ironforge, Thunder Bluff, and Dalaran are some of the worst in terms of feeling like a living city.

I noticed this over the weekend and I’m actually okay with it, personally. From what I understand, video creators don’t get paid unleses the viewer watches at least 30 seconds of a 30+ second ad, or the entire ad for ads shorter than 30 seconds. Knowing that, I always waited the 30 seconds before skipping. The people who make the silly videos I enjoy gotta get paid, too. I have the option of watching an ad or signing up for YouTube Red. Until I pay for that, I’ll watch an ad.

Allowing people to skip a 30 second ad after 15 seconds just meant the vast majority of a video’s viewers hit Skip and the video maker didn’t get paid. If I’m skipping/ad blocking, I better be doing something else to pay the content creator for their work.

There’s one within walking distance of where I live, but I’ve never been. I was surprised to see one in my neighborhood at all, honestly. I don’t exactly live in a hip and happening part of town. They must be doing alright, though. The place cropped up a few years ago and they’re still there.

As far as I’m aware, no. Gold can’t be moved to different realms short of a paid character transfer. If it’s between realms that have been merged/connected, you can send gold around to characters on the same faction as if they were on the same realm, but that’s as far as it goes. For now, Blizzard still seems to support the idea that you need to put in the work on a specific realm to partake in its economy. They have (if I recall correctly) increased the limit on how much gold you can take with you on a server transfer, but there’s still a limit.

Try out other classes. Don’t feel too attached to your main(s) if you’re still enjoying the game as a whole. Maybe you’re not enjoying WoW at all anymore, and if so, maybe it’s time to move on completely. But if you still enjoy the content and not the class, forcing yourself to continue playing it is a good way to burn yourself out on all of it. After playing my priest for ages, I moved on to my paladin, because priest stopped being fun. Now, I don’t play my paladin, either. I play my warrior, who was previously something like a 4th-tier alt.

That initial switch away from my priest was painful, but once I got over it, I realized I am not my character. I’m a guy playing a video game and I should be playing what seems fun at any given moment, not forcing myself to stick to one character forever. If you find something that’s fun, play it. If none of it seems fun, maybe do something else for awhile.