The Queue: 2,469 more to go

I’ve been really busy the first half of the year, so my WoW playing has taken a hit. For quite a while I was only able to log on once a week for an hour-ish, which really didn’t leave much time for anything. But now that things have quieted up, I’m left with a very annoying final part of a rep grind before I can fly.

2,469 more rep to go before revered. Then I can Ashes of A’lar all over the place.

As SJHawk mentioned, it can depend on the specific class. The paladin one, which I just go through playing, is much more spaced out than the hunter one was.

In some regards though, it’s good to front-load the activity. It makes you feel as if you have a home base throughout the expansion, and makes you feel like you’ve got something that you’re reporting back to. The other interesting thing that it does is get you situated with being in the same phase as other players relatively quickly. This causes you not to be an island.

As we know for WoD, being alone by yourself in your garrison going about business felt pretty empty. I think the success of the order halls is that you see others players and are aware that yes, indeed, there’s more than just you and your NPCs playing WoW. Its good to see that throughout the leveling experience, especially if you’re one of those that takes more than a few days to level a toon; you’ll see people walking around in better gear with different artifact appearances. From a psychological perspective that does a ton compel you onward.

First, if there isn’t a photo of Sylvanas getting Starbucks from the next BlizzCon something is wrong with the world.

Second, I think that’s very much intentional. We’re used to seeing the story be about the leader — the main guy or gal. This person has the natural rise and fall expected in a plot and can represent a wide range of activities going on. WoW is an instance where this isn’t the case. The game is focused on you, the “champion” of the realm, and as its champion, you have to take orders from the king or queen just as everyone else does. The faction leaders are probably not off getting coffee, per se, but they’re certainly sitting back most of the time and strategically plotting their next moves. After all, Sylvanas’ schemes don’t just come out of nowhere.

I actually find the center point of story telling to be quite interesting, especially in the modern day. Games are pretty evenly split between being centered on the character as the one in ultimate power and as the character following orders (or not) of the one in power. When those power structures exist in TV, particularly the shows with grand arcs and serials that spread over seasons, it’s quite interesting to watch the difference. HBO’s Rome from the early 2000s is a great example of a story where the main characters in the show were far from the leaders of kingdom, they were just a couple of champion soldiers. You knew the leaders of Roman society through the character’s eyes (although it eventually it did veer off towards the end more towards the arc of the historic figures). Compare that against something like Battlestar Galactica or any of the Star Trek shows, where the protagonist is almost always the captain. You rarely hear the words “Ensign Ro’s log, stardate 43989.1” (bonus points if those things actually mean something to you without having to Google it). There was a rare exception in TNG that focused on non-leadership characters called Lower Decks. It’s also notable that the new Trek coming out on CBS is supposed to focus on characters beside the Captain (although we’ll see…).

I think I veered off track enough with this question, let’s move on.

Adam answered: Let’s take the day off, folks can post if they want, but otherwise let’s keep it chill.

Yes.

The phasing has defaults to the current realm (as far as anyone can tell), but as the capacity grows and new phases are needed, you can switch anytime you cross a zone (as far as anyone can tell) or some other demarcation (as far as anyone can tell).

You used to automatically be put in the same phase as your group leader when joining a group, however that behavior has been somewhat curtailed. It doesn’t always work on certain zones/areas (probably ones that are low population, as far as anyone can tell), but does work on others, such as the Broken Isle.

There’s a lot of “as far as anyone can tell” in there because Blizzard doesn’t give a ton of insight into this, and a lot is conjecture. That said, if you follow some of their engineers and designers on Twitter, they drop hints about how they’re using phasing and how much it’s changed the way the game is looked at these days. Quite interesting.