The Queue: Happy, uh, Hallow’s End?

Maybe it’s a holiday. Maybe it’s a virtual holiday. Maybe it’s just a Wednesday.

Reality is quite objective, so who’s to say, really?

Fired.

Warlords was disappointing in large part because it started out with so much promise. The game’s storytelling improved tremendously, with cinematics that added beats of excitement beyond the quest text. The world itself was lush, detailed, and beautiful. After launch, I think all of us were excited by the game.

But then patch 6.1 came with very little content. And patch 6.2, while adding a raid, a new zone, and an impressive amount of story, wound up being the last patch. Then we waited 14 months for Legion to arrive, with no new content at all. It was disheartening, at best. We had gotten so much great content at launch, but there was no follow through.

And yet, despite misgivings about Battle for Azeroth, we’re already being promised a patch 8.1 that is packed with content, including two new raids. That alone will put it at least even with Warlords in terms of the amount of content. And Blizzard is actively making attempts to address some of the frustrations we’re having with BfA, particularly Azerite Armor. The game isn’t perfect, but Blizzard is still working on it rather than abandoning it to focus on writing the next expansion.

That, I think, puts us light years ahead of WoD.

I’m not hugely excited by the current state of Battle for Azeroth, but I would still be disappointed. WoW has always been a game that iterated more than it invented. When it was first launched, WoW was not something astonishingly new — it just took what many games had done before and polished it into a more finished product. Every patch and expansion since, the game has gotten a little more polish.

That’s not to say every updated version of WoW has been perfect — but with every update, Blizzard has looked at the last version and thought “How can we make this better?” Some of the changes work, and are carried forward, and some don’t and are dropped. But either way, the game continues to evolve.

I want to see what’s next.

I have a real love/hate relationship with the mobile game market. Young Liz, sitting in front of her classic NES, would not have been able to imagine a day when she had something in her pocket that could play an endless number of games in high definition color, that were just as good as what she could play on a computer or console. We live in amazing times, my friends, to hold such magic in our pockets. Smartphone games mean we have games with us literally everywhere, even without carrying a DS or Switch (or, for young Liz, original Gameboy).

However, they are the worst examples of microtransactions the world has yet seen. We have countless free games that instead of making us pay up-front make us pay for each character we want to use and each costume we want to own, or they require some unit of energy or currency to perform actions, which cost money. Of course, most microtransaction-based games offer alternate ways to get what you want, but they usually require a player to be preternaturally patient.

… okay, I have gone off in a tangent that hasn’t answered your question. But that’s only because I hope Blizzard never introduces a game like this. While, yes, they have games — Hearthstone and Heroes — that both have microtransactions, I think they are balanced reasonably well between letting Blizzard make cash for their efforts — developers have to eat — and letting you actually play a game.

Whatever franchise or mix of franchises, I would hope for games that do not simply annoy you into spending money. Let games be games. Give us classic title that we love that we can play wherever we are, whenever we are. That, I think, would be a delight.

Most certainly the depths. After all, in World of Warcraft we can (usually) fly in addition to spells that might temporarily make us immune from gravity. I the dark depths of the water, however — at least I assume we’re talking water — there is nothing to save you from being crushed by the weight of water around you. (And, yes, Vash’jir continues to haunt me, infinite waterbreathing aside.)

The highest point I’ve ventured to would certainly be the top of Sargeras’ sword in Silithus, while the deepest… hm… I am less sure. Perhaps Vash’jir.

I hope we aren’t going into this with the assumption that I have to dress up as anything, because if so we are all going to wind up disappointed. Do I need to dress beyond being myself? Holidays are so weird.

And that’s all for today my friends. I wish you a pleasant day as we all continue hurtling through time and space together, and I hope to see you next week in a bright new post-BlizzCon world.