The Queue: Later, nerds

Today’s edition of the Queue is my last as a regular Queue contributor and my last as Editor-in-Chief. (Note the little addition they made to my title in my byline.) If you haven’t yet heard, I’m stepping down from my current role at Blizzard Watch. I’ve shared the full details on my personal blog, but here’s the short version: Don’t worry about it. I’m okay. Everyone’s okay. There’s no drama. Blizzard Watch will be in good hands. Today is officially my last day, so expect news from the site’s new editorial team tomorrow. I’ll still be around contributing to news and what-have-you, and I might still be doing the podcast, but beyond that? We’ll see!

With that out of the way…

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!

Nah. I imagine it’s super useful if you’re really competitive and want to review your mistakes, but Heroes is my super-duper-chill game. In fact, I have so little interest in rewatching my replays, I didn’t realize the game was automatically saving them. I’ve played Heroes almost every day since the game launched. When I discovered it, my replay folder had thousands of files in it with a total filesize well over 1GB.

Either the same size or smaller. Hitboxes in Heroes of the Storm are circular, so characters who are longer than they are wide are probably difficult to handle. Azmodan gets away with being large because his general body shape is fairly circular already. How would you handle a quadraped with a long tail? Is the tail excluded from the hitbox? That would create countless situations where people think they’re hitting him with their abilities, but they’re not, because part of his body doesn’t count. If the tail is included, the circular hitbox then becomes massive. You can hit that character with stuff that isn’t touching their body at all.

I have not been involved in these talks/decisions, but my understanding is the Patreon link is intended, but when it ends up overlapping a quote box or something like that, it is not intended. The placement rules are a work in progress.

For what it’s worth, speaking as someone no longer involved in these talks, we often got feedback we should make our Patreon more visible.  When we try to do that, though, we then get feedback where people are like “no, don’t make it visible there! Or there! Not there, either! We want to see it, but don’t put it anywhere we’re actually looking, jeez!”

At some point, you just gotta do it. If you find my answer to be obnoxious, take it out on me and not the new leadership. That answer is 100% my own and I bear that weight.

Overlapping images or quote boxes is not intended though, no.

I’ve been doing this job in some capacity for ten years now, so it’s difficult to pin down any one thing I’ve taken away from it. I’ve been playing this game, working with these people, and interacting with this community for a full third of my life. It’s been formative in a lot of ways, and honestly, I’m not sure I’m up to writing thousands of words about that right now.

Time and distance will allow me to form an actual thoughtful answer, too. How often have we seen people quit WoW and immediately rage out about it? They don’t mean those things they say. The game didn’t change. They changed. They spoke before they had the time or distance to adequately recognize it, though. I don’t want to be that guy. My feelings now are not necessarily the feelings I’ll have tomorrow, or next week, or next year. {PB}

To provide the simplest, most basic answer: Be kind. Be respectful. Be considerate. We all come from different backgrounds, we all have our own struggles and challenges, and you never really know what another person is truly going through. Being understanding is the only way to get through life and we’re all in this together.

Being kind in even small, minor interactions can brighten the day of countless people. Being snarky and shouty can likewise bring everyone down. Yes, sometimes we’re having a very bad day and being shouty feels really good, but try to find a better way to handle those situations. Don’t make decisions when you’re angry. Finding a friend and confiding in them will accomplish much more than typing angry messages to the world.

I have not always taken my own advice. I’ll be working to improve upon that.

As for what I’ll miss, that’s something that will need time and distance to answer, too. I don’t really miss anything yet considering this is my last day. I’m not going into this decision with regrets. Blizzard Watch is in goods hands and, right now, I’m looking forward to my own future. I’ll enjoy being able to set my own schedule again. I’m excited to be able to focus almost entirely on my own creative works. I’m excited to be able to express myself in ways that don’t need to be placed in WoW terms for the sake of an audience. It’s terrifying and exhilirating for my successes or failures to be entirely in my own hands.

Ultimately, this is an opportunity to figure out who I am, personally, professionally, and creatively, outside of the looming shadow of Blizzard Entertainment. I’ve loved their work and I’ve loved covering it, but it’s been my entire adult life now. I don’t want my entire life to be defined as “that guy who writes about WoW.” Hopefully, I can be more than that. If I end up being known as that guy who writes about superheroes, that’s something I’ve created myself. If I don’t, and I end up being something else, at least it’ll be something new and different and that’s good enough for me.

Also, I placed the Patreon button in the answer to this question manually. Nobody was being crass about my departure or anything like that. Visually, it fit in this answer the best, because it’s a big ol’ block of text. (Placing the button manually is a solution to the overlapping-quote-boxes problem.)

I’d like to think we’d manage to gather actual food on a tropical island, but if not, it’s probably me. I’m the biggest.

She lives on Azeroth. It’s a miserable, wretched place. She’s always grumpy.

Peace out, y’all.