The Queue: Bored now (or not)

I have to say, it’s very hard to be bored when you’re being chased down by several dozen whelplings. Sure, they’re only baby dragons, but they have so many tiny teeth and a small fireball will scorch you as well as a big one.

But just because I’m not bored doesn’t mean it’s not boring.

Blizzard has gotten craftier about surprising us where story is concerned. They’ve started using placeholder cinematics. They keep things out of patch files until they’re needed. They’ve taken steps to prevent us from seeing everything the first second a PTR or beta goes up.

Of course PTRs and betas are there to test things. They can’t be devoid of every scrap of content. For the people — like most of us — who simply can’t wait to see what happens next, the truth will out. Curious gamers will dig through the data files until they learn everything, until no secrets are left. (Of course, even then, there are secrets. There wouldn’t need to be a Secret Finding Discord, otherwise.)

But I think there are a lot of players who aren’t like that. Who read gaming news casually, and aren’t thoroughly reading Wowhead every day. (Or, if they do read, simply not clicking on spoiler posts.) These are the people Blizzard can surprise, and I think they’ve continued to take steps so they can. It won’t stop the people who really want to know, but for he people who don’t want spoilers… it’s possible.

I’m still having fun (as long as I’m not stuck doing endlessly repetitive world quests), but my definition of fun may not match your definition of fun.

My guild has been running Mythic Tomb of Sargeras. Sure, it’s last expansion content, but some of it’s still pretty tough at 120. The last few fights can’t just be brute-forced with DPS: they’re all about coordination and execution. It’s a real challenge, and it was a thrill when we managed to beat Maiden. We’re working on Fallen Avatar now. And my raid group is working on Heroic Uldir. We’re 5/8, and that’s a different kind of challenge.

And I like challenges like that. I like slogging through logs after a fight and thinking about how I could do it better. I like testing out different talent builds (it feels like I do a lot more talent swapping these days) and thinking about optimal rotations. I like doing that. Not everyone does.

So I’m having fun because I’m working on puzzling out a new raid and an old raid. But if I were just doing world quests and LFRs? I’d be bored as heck. It’s a different game for all of us, and that means “boring” is different for all of us.

These rewards have usually become less valuable as you’ve leveled up, but they feel like they’re worse in Battle for Azeroth. World Quests are good for gearing up and getting reps to exalted, and then there’s little motivation to do them. The Mission Table used to be something you’d stick with all expansion, but now it’s just reputation and a small amount of Azerite or a pathetically small amount of gold.

What’s the point of either once you’ve geared to your satisfaction and hit your rep requirements? Not much.

I wonder if we’re due a new Paragon system. On one hand, I didn’t enjoy Paragon rep because I don’t enjoy World Quests and they’re the best way to earn reputation. On the other hand, it gave me a reason to keep doing World Quests and Mission Table stuff through the end of Legion. Honestly, I’m not sure which option is less desirable.

I think this would be amazing, but I also don’t think Blizzard will do it. If they add WoW rewards to WoW Classic, it’s going to obligate players to play Classic. And, while Blizzard sometimes oscillates back and forth on this point, but I don’t think they want to make us obligated to play multiple games to make the most of just one game. And that means that if there are any rewards, they would have to be minor.

This is an interesting question, because the things addons are allowed to do changes every patch, every expansion. Will WoW Classic have vanilla-era addons or will Blizzard take advantage of over a decade of development experience and use the same addon system current-day WoW uses? Is it a classic experience with the limitations of modern addons?

If I were guessing, I’d speculate the game will be updated to use modern addons — so vanilla DMB would be the same vanilla DBM — but honestly, we don’t know anything this detailed yet. But since we’ll have a demo in just a few short weeks, we’ll probably be able to find out for ourselves.

I had no idea, so I asked in our staff chat room and eventually Nico came through with this, which sounds crazy easy to make:

12 apples, peeled and cored, chopped. Half cup sugar, couple of teaspoons cinnamon (I put in a lot tho), and whatever spices you want. 3-4 hours on high, 6-8 on low. Break up chunks occasionally with a spoon to your desired consistency.

Great. Now I just want apple sauce.

And that is all I have for you today, my precious friends. I will be back again next week, but in the meantime, keep questioning.