The Queue: A very tricky Splatoween

I’m absolutely biased — because Halloween is the best holiday ever — but I think this may have been my favorite Splatfest so far. It was Team Trick versus Team Treat in an extra-long, 48-hour fight for domination. Naturally, I chose Team Trick because, well… have you met me?! On top of a fun theme and awesome ink colors (orange vs. purple), Nintendo also recently allowed players to download spooky masks. Totally free, and you got four of ’em to make this Splatfest even spookier than it already was.

All of the above said, Team Treat won (barely), and the Shifty Station this time was cool but the gimmick made for some frustrating choke points, so… Ah, who am I kidding? It was still awesome. I love October!

Oh, right. Queue time.

I could go on for a lot longer than would be reasonable for a Queuestion, so I’ll try to keep it brief. They’re positive changes. I mean, I’m not sure any of the changes have any actual downside, so of course they’re positive in that sense. But they’re not perfect.

Is “perfect” too high a standard? Yeah, it is. But I’m still really disappointed Blizzard isn’t saying anything about giving Shadow Word: Death back as a baseline ability. I don’t understand why they made it into a talent to begin with, and its continued existence as a talent will never stop perplexing and angering me. But outside of that, the increase importance of Voidform duration is a double-edged sword. It rewards high-skill players and makes Voidform feel important again. But it also means some fights — ones where we have no control over movement, regardless of skill level — will be overly punishing because we won’t be able to maintain it long enough.

Again, I could go on a lot longer. I think I had higher hopes for Shadow in 8.1, and because of that, even positive changes feel… almost but not quite. Granted, I expected that to happen. But it doesn’t change going from “anything is (technically) possible” to “well, now we know.”

There’s no way Classic servers will live up to whatever expectations people have, even if those expectations conflict. Even if you played from Classic until Cataclysm, it will be close to a decade since that time was over when Classic servers finally come out. No one’s memory is perfect. Everyone remembers parts but not the whole.

So what do I think of content never changing? I think some people will get bored of it way quicker than they thought. I think others will make it a goal to level every class to max, get them every collectible possible, and come up with addons to track “Achievements” that don’t actually exist. And I think others will play at their own pace, enjoying it as a distraction here and there once its worn out its welcome.

What people think will run the entire gamut, and there won’t be one unified school of thought regarding the “Groundhogs Day” effect. I know that’s not a great answer, but that’s at least what I expect.

Technically, sure. But I’m only saying that because I don’t think Classic servers are being made because Blizzard thinks they’ll make a profit off of them. I think Blizzard wanted to — to be blunt — shut up that vocal portion of the community that would never stop pestering Blizzard about Classic servers. That community ranged from a small thorn in their side to a group that coalesced enough to potentially become toxic, especially once it was given a “notable” figure to spearhead it.

Yeah, protecting their IP kind of comes as a side effect — but they did that for years already anyhow. Genuinely, I think Classic servers are a move to 1) make Blizzard look more amenable to the community and 2) quiet the discontented.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, because Vulpera really do seem like they’ll go to Horde. I initially thought the Snek pepple would go to the Alliance, but once I played through each faction’s stories… that doesn’t really make any sense.

So what could Alliance get? Wildhammer Dwarves! You want more Dwarves, right?

… Okay, but really. Blizz can either go “each faction gets an equivalent-ish Allied Race this time” or “this is the Horde’s ‘cool’ Allied Race patch, next time is the Alliance’s.” Given the lack of viable options in BFA content, I’m inclined to think the Alliance might get something like Jinyu or Botani or Saberon while Horde get Vulpera. Then, the next round of Allied Races will be a group we see in 8.1 or 8.2 for Alliance and an older one for Horde.

Clearly, you aren’t making great enough sacrifices to Yogg-Saron.

Also, it could be because you’re on an off-kilter cycle and aren’t doing enough to break out of it. Don’t nap. Don’t have caffeine. Stay off your phone well before bed. If you wake up, practice meditation or breathing exercises to fall back asleep but do not get out of bed or pull out your phone or anything besides trying to go back to sleep.

At this point, I don’t care about which character we see in the next short — I just want to see the story move forward more. Give us an animated short that covers a bunch of characters but shows what’s happening now. Backstories are cool — and, seriously, all the shorts are amazing in their own right — but I want to see what’s happening next.

Give me that, and I won’t be upset by anyone Blizzard chooses to focus the short on.

Have you played through the Horde side of things? Run Atal’Dazar? Becaaaaause…

(Bwonsamdi, even ignoring the actual story.)

They have not, but the demo should at least help give you an idea of how your laptop will handle it.

Alternatively, take your laptop to Outland zones and see how it performs there under various settings. A big difference between current WoW and Classic WoW is the amount of detail put into each zone. You know how Draenor’s Nagrand was full of waaaaaay more foliage and complicated scenery than Outland’s? I guarantee you it would’ve looked that way on Outland if computers during Burning Crusade could have handled that sort of thing. Burning Crusade zones are, visually a pretty close comparison to what Classic zones will be.

That’s all, folks! Go play some tricks on people and show them which team really deserved to win Splatoween 2018.

Also maybe leave questions for Liz.