The Queue: This is not okay

Really, nothing, nothing at all about this is okay.

But since we’re all here, together in this digital time and space, we may as well do the Queue.

YES I AM TALKING ABOUT ME.

Also my raid group downed normal Mekkatorque and I’m pretty upset about that. Sure, I was a Blood Elf at the time, but it was still me pressing the buttons which led to the destruction of one of my fellow Gnomes.

Maybe he’s still alive out there somewhere and maybe he isn’t. All I know is that my actions, or perhaps my inactions, led to this.

VanCleef had good reasons — Stormwind’s nobility did stiff Edwin and the stonemasons after they rebuilt the city — but he did lead riots, which lead to Tiffin’s death, and …

Wait, are you just making fun of my feelings about Mekkatorque? Because I have just lost a beloved Gnomish friend and that is just rude. :|

Of course, I suppose we are both kindred spirits here, forced to kill characters we would have rather fought alongside of. Mekkatorque may be back. (He’d better be coming back.) It seems less likely that Edwin is getting another chance in the storyline.

But then again, this is Warcraft, and you never know who will (or won’t) stay dead.

Because Mekkatorque is a genius who constructed a fabulous suit of armor that took 20+ of the Horde’s best to convince him to retreat. The encounter is complicated, and every raid member has to stay on their toes or everyone’s going down.

Mekkatorque presents a heck of a challenge, and, like any challenge, it feels good to overcome it.

But my friend Mekkatorque is still missing and I’m still not okay with it.

But I understand. You’re upset because you don’t have a faction leader anyone would mourn. I assume the Goblin race has already come to a decision of how they would divide up Gallywix’s pleasure palace if he were to wind up dead. His loss would be a celebration in which everyone made audacious grabs for power and the wealth that inevitably comes with it. It would be Goblin Christmas.

For for Mekkatorque, we mourn.

I’m not particularly engaged in the game, either, and for me it’s all about the story. There are a few things that aren’t working for me:

• I’m just not into the faction conflict. While BfA has had some great new characters and moments (Jaina on a boat, Talanji on a boat, Mekkatorque on a boat… can you see a theme here?), the story itself hasn’t really engaged me.
• The story seems less involved than it was in Legion. When each class had a unique storyline, I felt compelled to level multiple classes to see the whole story. And some of those stories were spectacular. (That Death Knight story, y’all.) Now we have one big story for the Horde and another for the Alliance, it doesn’t feel like much after the huge swaths of story we had in Legion.
• I have no emotional investment in anything that’s happening. I know, I know, I’ve spent the rest of this post being upset about Mekkatorque, but Mekkatorque’s death (or whatever it is) just seems like something the plot needed. Blizzard needed a raid boss who was a big Alliance figure, and would be a fun fight. Mekkatorque makes sense. But this isn’t a heart-rending story about Mekkatorque: it’s a story where Mekkatorque was placed, like a cardboard cutout, where he was needed.
• I haven’t been surprised by anything. Oh boy, the Horde and Alliance are fighting. Again. I’m utterly unsurprised by this fact, or anything they’ve done since they decided they needed to murder each other above all else. Yawn. Wake me next expansion.

When you remove the story, everything about WoW turns into a grind at max level. You can repeat dungeon runs or world quests or battlegrounds or island expeditions forever, but do you really want to? I have limited patience for repetitive tasks, so I’m just not into it right now.

What is keeping me logging on is my guild and my raid group. My guild is full of magnificent weirdos who are fun to play with (and I’m not just saying that because some of them could be reading this). And my raid group lets me — lets us — tackle some of the game’s toughest challenges cooperatively, together. (Also, some of them are also magnificent weirdos.) I enjoy playing because of the people I play with. I log on to play with them even when there isn’t anything I’m excited about in the game itself.

I’m not sure what that says about the game. Does it say something about the quality of the game, or simply the quality of my friends?

Maybe this is the same for you, or for us, and maybe it isn’t. Either way, I understand the lack of enthusiasm. (But if you wanted to log on and run Freehold with me, well… you know where to find me, right?)

Probably Method. They’re playing, right? They can telecommute, can’t they?

I… I… don’t know.

I have been stunned to speechlessness with this question.

Which means it’s probably time to wrap up this Queue.

So that’s it for now. I will see you again next week, and I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

(Unless you’re one of those people cheering on Mekkatorque’s death. I wouldn’t object if you had a lousy weekend that had to be entirely spent doing laundry and yardwork.)