The Queue: Pulp fashion
It’s a pulptastic showdown in this month’s Splatfest, with those who prefer their orange juice without pulp pitted against those who actually have good taste. We’ll find out this coming weekend which team comes out on top.
Until then, let’s Queue!
Q4tMitch: I have used my witchcraft to turn Sylvanas into a potato for my pork and potato stew. I guess it’s only fair that turn an Alliance character into a pig, so I can have my pork. Who will it be?
Um, wow. Okay. How dare you do that to the Dark Lady?! But since the damage is done, I suppose you’ll have to turn Velen into a pig. Why? Because he’s done nothing wrong and is a total badass and he’s the Alliance leader I can imagine the fewest people will be happy to see go.
Honestly, if Mitch got as passionate about the Horde during the podcasts as Rossi does about the Alliance, I’d be more inclined to think of BW as more balanced. Not that I don’t love y’all. But it is pretty hard to listen to some of the podcasts sometimes.
I genuinely mean this: I’m sorry if I haven’t come across as passionate about the Horde as Rossi does about the Alliance on the podcasts. Part of this is because, well, I thought I was coming across fairly passionate. The other part, though, is because I know Rossi can get actually upset over jokes like…
“Hey, did you hear the name for the new Night Elf capital city?”
“No, what is it?”
“Darnashes!”
…and I don’t want to make him mad for real. Also, I don’t want to detract from the discussion at hand by devolving into a Horde/Alliance fight with Rossi (which I could easily do).
Q4tQ: Has anyone in Beta tried to solo Mythic WoD raids? Are previously impossible things (like Butcher or Blast Furnace) now soloable? Will I forever be denied my foundry tier? Say what you will about the wad that is WoD, the Foundry tier transmog was fantastic.
HFC tier…. was not.
I’ve tried several things on the beta, and I’ve had trouble killing bosses all the way down to Illidan. Ion did mention during the Q&A that tuning on that stuff was not done, yet, though. So I have to take my beta experiences with a grain of salt until Blizzard comes out and says they’ve made a tuning pass on old content.
As it stands, though? Good Yogg, does Blizz need to do some work making old raids soloable.
Hypothetical Scenario: You’ve been given the rights to use a small part of Blizzard IP to make a game in another genre, ala what Games Workshop does, farming its IP out to other devs. What do you make?
At first, I thought you meant “pitch another genre to Blizz,” but I realize now you probably meant take an existing IP/universe and make another genre (kind of like how Warcraft went from RTS to MMO?).
Regardless of what you meant, I’ve always been interested to see Blizzard make a horror game. Not like Diablo’s kind of horror — more like F.E.A.R., Resident Evil, Dead Space, and so forth. If I had to use an existing IP to make it happen, I’d probably use the StarCraft universe. Not only would it give StarCraft… well, anything… but it also has potential for crazy alien worlds, diverse combat, and Alien-like scares.
So I guess I kinda just had Blizzard make a slightly scarier Mass Effect, huh? Oh well, I’m on board with that.
Q4tMitch: Have you read Before the Storm? Do you also feel like shadow priests have been retconned out of the story? :P
So, I am not done with the book, but I’m far enough in that I’ve questioned the existence of Shadow Priests already. I was waiting to finish before making my final judgment, but I mentioned my concern to a friend, and he confirmed that it stays the same for the rest of the book.
Given Blizzard’s track record of ignoring Shadow, it’s not super surprising. And given how much I can see the head honchos wanting to keep things strictly Light focused for simplicity, I’m also not surprised in that regard. But still… it would’ve been nice to acknowledge Priests do more than Light-based things. Like, at all.
Q4tQ: So, uh, it seems like Blizzard have just said “yeah sorry some specs aren’t going to be fully ready for release and will have to wait for a patch”. Doesn’t it seem like they’ve moved away from “we’ll release it when it’s ready” and gotten way ahead of themselves? I mean, it almost feels like they should push the launch back a few weeks or so…
Q4MitchQ: So how worried should I be for Shadow going into BfA? I’m hearing a lot of news that several specs, Shadow included, feel like they are in an early alpha state. Then we have comments from Ion during the recent Q&A saying Enhancement, Elemental, and Shadow are most likely going to have to wait for patch 8.1 for additional changes. What are your impressions from beta? Do you find playing, both solo and grouped, as Shadow tough but do-able?
I am incredibly unhappy about all of this. I’m not sure I’d say that “release when it’s ready” is gone, but it did take a bit of a hit hearing Ion flat-out acknowledge 8.1 would fix how some specs feel. Yes, numbers tuning will mean they’re competitive at launch.
But Shadow has felt like crap throughout all of alpha and beta. They’ve had time to adjust, and they’ve barely done anything. Shadow feels a lot better with War Mode enabled (though, some of the best parts were recently nerfed) but that just makes it all the more jarring to enter a PVE scenario and suddenly remember you don’t have access to PVP talents that smooth out the rough edges.
All in all, Shadow is doable, sure. I’ll be leveling my Priest first and maining him as I always do. But if you’re not as tied to your Shadow Priest as I am, or you’re choosing between it and something else? Just wait until 8.1.
2BE: the original Warlords of Draenor vs the AU Warlords of Draenor
I don’t really want to give credit of any kind to the AU Warlords, so I’m giving the MU team the win here. Assuming they have Crotchety Axe Guy Durotan’s crotch joining in, of course.
That’s all for today! I did this before 11:00 p.m. last night, and I think that’s a record for me. Good job, Past Mitch!
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