The Queue: Waiting for nap time

It’s kind of like waiting for Godot, only it feels like it takes longer.

I am all for a musical expansion, which would also be the perfect expansion to add bards. I think they would need a new weapon class for instruments, which they would use for stirring music that would heal wounds, calm attackers, and injure enemies. Just imagine running around Azeroth wielding an accordion. It would be great, wouldn’t it?

And because you can’t have a musical without fine choreography, it would make sense to add the dance studio, too. Basically, this expansion would be everything we ever wanted. (Almost.) And I assume that, like the dance studio, I will be here waiting for it… and waiting… and waiting… still waiting…

I agree that this is highly unlikely, but if it were happening, I’d like a reprise of Lament of the Highborne from Sylvanas. It could, like Jaina’s song, be used as a look back at where she’s been… and what she’s come to.

Azshara would, obviously, have to perform her own rendition of Poor Unfortunate Souls.

Dang. This one’s tough. Which class is devoted to spending all day napping sprawled out on the sofa, with occasional breaks to run around with lots of barking and tail-wagging? (With the occasional bout of having accidents on the carpet or eating my last good iPhone cable.) I’m not sure any class, whether restricting it to WoW or going all out to D&D, quite suits.

Whichever class has the skillset that just makes the people around them happier, without any need to do anything — that’s what they are.

Since the day they were announced right up to today. I almost always look it up to make sure I’m not getting it wrong. Still.

We talked about it and decided against an official community, in large part because there just isn’t much to help manage a community in WoW.  Moderation tools seem essentially limited to banning someone… and if we have the invite link posted publicly anywhere, they can simply click that and rejoin. Even Disqus, which I find to be less than ideal, lets me see a commenter’s history, whether any action has been taken against them, and any notes other moderators have left. I can delete individual comments, or ban someone by account, email, or IP, temporarily or permanently. Nothing remotely that sophisticated exists in communities. In fact, there are hardly any moderation tools at all.

The feature feels a little half-baked, or perhaps designed only for small groups of trusted friends. Not that I don’t trust you, Queuevians, but I have moderated online communities for over a decade now. Moderation tools are essential to keep them pleasant places.

Also, they’re limited to 200 members (and that’s characters, not accounts). I’m writing this at 3 a.m. Wednesday morning and we have over 300 people on our Discord server.

Until Blizzard builds out the feature, it’s hard to justify trying to use it. Discord does everything it can do, only better. Communities do have the advantage of being integrated with the game… but that’s not quite enough to offset all of the features they’re missing.

I think this can go both ways. It could cause drama, but it could just as easily help keep people in the loop because they can see things that were discussed when they weren’t online. It will make it easier to jump in to conversations and know what’s happening.

There will always be That Guy who wants to stir up trouble, but I think someone like that will find a way regardless of what’s in guild chat. Even without this feature, a guild needs to have rules or procedures for dealing with disagreements and drama. This may make such disagreements easier, but having extended chat histories also only reveals underlying problems. Someone who will kick up a fuss about something that was said in guild chat — or someone who would say inappropriate or insulting things in guild chat — would have eventually been a problem regardless.

As to the long-term effects… I think the system (similar to the community system) is too limited to have a huge impact. There are no time stamps. Chat isn’t searchable in any way. Chat logs only go back a few days (depending on how much chatter is in your guild). If you want to find something, there’s nothing to do but scroll. And scroll. And scroll. That makes it less useful for people who might want to cause trouble with logs and people who might want to use them to keep up with guild happenings.

It’s nice to have extra history, but it doesn’t seem likely to make or break the game.

And that’s all for now, my friends. You all know the drill, so leave your questions in the comments for Anne to answer tomorrow. I’ll see you next week!