The Queue: There’s a question, but is there an answer?

Does every question have an answer? While this column posits to answer all of you gaming questions… some questions don’t have a right or wrong answer.

But I’m here and you’re here, so let’s see what we can do to answer the unanswerable.

I’ve actually been wondering lately if there’s any genuine lore connection between Hearthstone and WoW. There are some things that just don’t work as crossovers — like Jaina and Anduin becoming Death Knights. But Hearthstone keeps pushing into storytelling, adding interesting new characters and expanding on game locations.

Early expansions had a theme, but new expansions have turned these themes into a full expanded universe. Hearthstone has painted a new vision of Gadgetzan (which I like a lot more than the current iteration) and this expansion is completely based on WoW-NPC-turned-Hearthstone-hero Dr. Boom. This expansion has a story that goes beyond a premise and a trailer: there was a short animated series about exploring Boom Labs, there are three comics about Dr. Boom, and the single-player Puzzle Labs are full of mad scientist characters, each fully-voiced and with their own unique personality. Hearthstone keeps bringing these lively new worlds into being and I wonder where it could connect with WoW.

TLDR: Mecha’thun or riot. Come, my fellow Gnomes! Rise up and prove the Goblins are not our superiors! RISE!!

I’m no Night Elf, but I fear these potential redemption arcs. Waving a magic wand and saying “okay, you’re good now” would undermine the agency of either character… and in Sylvanas’ case, making her “good” again would wind up crushing her under the weight of everything cruel thing she’s done.

Dread aside, it’s definitely Sylvanas. That’s an open wound, and it’s not going to heal by the end of the expansion. Or the next expansion. Or the expansion after that…

And I was just typing that I’m not even sure what Blizzard could do to make an Azshara redemption arc — she’s far too self-interested to care about “redemption” — but then I remembered Illidan. So, really, anything could happen.

PAX West and Dragoncon are both this weekend, and there will be a Blizzard presence at both… but I’m not convinced we’ll see any announcements. PAX tends to be more about floor gameplay demos, and while it has one panel about WoW, it’s a history panel that doesn’t involve anyone from Blizzard. Dragoncon has some panels on lore, but I don’t think it’s likely we’ll see big news there, either.

Right now I’m expecting an announcement that’s not tied to anything except the fact that Blizzard is ready to talk about the next patch. Which, as you know, will be Soon.

The trouble with predicting Azshara’s actions is that we don’t know what she wants. She serves no one but herself, but even as we’ve seen glimpses of her here and there, we’ve seen nothing to suggest a particular goal. And I don’t think Azshara is one to sit idle and wait for N’zoth to wake up. She’s been building her empire, raising her army, and laying her plans.

Has she taken N’zoth’s wants into consideration while doing all of this? Probably, because it wouldn’t be wise to anger such a powerful patron. But it doesn’t mean her goals are its goals, or that she’s only becoming a big player in the story on its command.

And I can’t imagine her being pleased at N’zoth waking and ordering her around. Even in the face of her death, and the death of all her people, Azshara held a position of power over N’zoth, and I can’t imagining it’s different now. Even if N’zoth thinks it’s in charge, Azshara is still playing her own game.

There hasn’t been an intentional change, but having more writers lets us cover more things —and sometimes that may be more capital-G game.

There’s Tyler, who knows Overwatch and has the expertise to write about vaguely worded Overwatch patch notes which don’t highlight the real effects. But he’s also written about Reinhardt karaoke, and even though he’s only been with us a month or so, I think he’s responsible for 80% of our total D.Va fan content. Which is fair. D.Va is amazing.

We have Deb, who’s had some harsh things to say about the guild interface. She’s a guildmaster and deals with Blizzard’s poor support for guilds every day. I feel her opinion is more interesting than just saying “this happened.” She’s also written about steamy romance novels and WoW’s own crazy cat lady. Cory wrote a piece about Blizzard breaking World Quest addons that called Blizzard on what seemed like a really lousy justification for the change. He’s also written about Zappy Boi and dog memes.

As to meta coverage, I think this comes up a lot in Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Heroes, which are games we haven’t traditionally written much s about. But when we’re talking meta, we’re really just saying “these are the things that work well right now.” A post on Hearthstone decks for the Witchwood meta is kind of analogous to a post on gearing up for WoW heroics. They’re both advice on how you can achieve your game goals… though perhaps the “meta” phrasing isn’t making that clear.

Many mentions of the meta are also tied up in competitive gaming, which is another thing we haven’t always posted about. I admit, we’re experimenting to find the best way to tackle esports — but that’s something we do for all the time. The editors review traffic reports daily, weekly, and monthly to analyze what we’re doing well and what we can improve on. Content is ever-evolving.

Some days our balance of serious and silly may be lopsided, but our overreaching editorial direction hasn’t changed. We want to talk about the things we find interesting, the things we’re excited about, the things that annoy us, the things that make us laugh. We want to share our joys and commiserate over our frustrations.

Not every post does that, and not every post does that well, but that’s the goal.

That’s it for today, folks. (And isn’t it enough?) The ever-endearing Mr. Adam Holisky will be here tomorrow, and I think I’m contractually obligated to be nice to him because he’s my boss. Hi Adam!

Take care, everyone, and I’ll see you next week.