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The QueueFeb 12, 2019 12:00 pm CT

The Queue: Waffles > pancakes

This month’s Splatfest was all about those two classic, syrupy breakfast foods: Pancakes and waffles. At first, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to go with. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, while I do have pancakes more often, it’s hard to actually beat the shape, crunch, and overall fun waffles provide. Looks like I chose wisely, too — waffles won in all three categories, which (AFAIK) hasn’t happened in quite some time.

Enough about syrups and inks, though — let’s Queue.


DILLENE, THAT’S EASY. IT’S JUST LIKE THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG…

Until I started looking at D&D stuff, I had no idea how much of WoW was based on it. Or did some of the WoW stuff come first?

I almost guarantee you WoW’s content is based on D&D rather than the opposite. Not having specific examples, though, I can’t say for certain 100% of content came from D&D first — but WoW (more than most Blizz IPs) takes from a lot of different “classics.” The Old Gods, Odyn and everything relating to him, literally all of Uldum… it’s all “heavily inspired” by pre-existing material.


PUMABACKUP TAKES ME BACK TO MY BC DAYS:

So with the Netherwing mounts, I thought you could only buy one per character, after you’d done the quest chain…Is that not accurate? Or is that unlock just account-wide, so you can buy a different color with different characters?

I know people answered in the comments, but for the curious — you get one for free at the end of the chain, then you can buy the rest. Technically, you can do the Netherwing grind on several different characters and just choose a new mount reward at the end if you want to save some gold… but I’m pretty sure the cost to buy them is more efficient then spending the time grinding on several toons.


JOSEPH SMITH HAS A FANTASTIC QUESTION THAT WILL BE TINGED WITH NOSTALGIA:

Q4tQ: What is your favourite in-game storyline? Whether it’s a quest chain in a specific zone, A racial starting zone, something no longer available in the game…?

Mine is still the DK starting zone. Probably partially due to nostalgia, as it was the first truly story driven start zone, and the first to use phasing. I was halfway through the zone before I realized that I wasn’t going to different spaces, but that the land was changing every time I was summoned back to Acherus. Phasing is pretty commonplace now, but that first time it was a pretty cool realization that the ‘unchanging’ world was in fact changing (even if it was just in an instance)

You’re absolutely right in pointing out nostalgia’s role here, but the very first thing that jumps to my mind is the (now removed) Linken quest chain. It started at level 47, brought you all over the world, and was chock-full of Legend of Zelda references. It’s the one quest I was always excited to do as soon as a character hit 47, and I still have items from the chain in my banks.

Nostalgia aside, though, I think everything about the Forsaken storyline introduced in Catacylsm — from Deathknell all the way through Silverpine, Hillsbrad, and Western Plaguelands — is fantastic. It gives you a real sense of how Blizz wanted to go from “a continent worth of leveling” to a subset worth of zones telling a story. Not every revamped zone tied together as nicely, and the Forsaken experience set the high bar for how quests and quests chain could be done from that point onward.

Also the Death Knight Class Hall campaign. That was fantastic.


ARTHONOS, DOES IT REALLY MATTER IF THEY COULD HANDLE IT?

Q4tQ: Do you think the WoW community could handle Blizzard gradually adding new specs to existing classes where it makes sense, without having a massive meltdown about fairness? I’m thinking back to Classic, where each class had to wait for a content patch to receive changes, and each patch you would have X number of other classes complaining that it should have been their turn. To me it seems like an impossible conundrum, as the work to add that many extra specs to everyone all at once would be too massive, but gradually rolling out extra specs for a few classes at a time would result in meltdowns.

Do I think the community could handle it without having a meltdown about fairness? No. Not necessarily because I think the community as a whole would disagree, but more so because it’s easier than ever for the vocal minority to form mobs and make it seem as though negativity is pervading the entire community. As a small example, the patch guides that Blizz has put out for WoW typically have a horrendous amount of dislikes compared to a very small amount of likes. The community sees this, spreads this information, and it soon becomes “fact” that the game is in such a horrible state that even the videos are being mass-downvoted.

Take a look at the videos from the French WoW channel or any other number of non-NA channels and the ratio looks much better. But that fact doesn’t change the community’s view, and it’s not going to stop mass-downvoting future videos until “fans” feel the game is what they want it to be.

All that said… who cares if the community can’t handle it? If it would make a class better, Blizz should do it. If people are going to whine about that, I’m sure they’d have whined about anything else. Blizz doesn’t always make the right game decisions, but community reactions and overall perception of reactions shouldn’t affect their willingness to try new things.


OMEDON, YOU PROBABLY WON’T LIKE MY ANSWER:

Can we, in this time of notable uncertainty for Blizzard’s games and therefore fans, maybe mind the tone of how this fansite presents the news and starts discussion about our hobby that I’d like to think we all at least somewhat emphatically share?

By all means, please do tackle the news as it comes! I don’t need to tell or ask you to do that, Blizzard Watch are among the best and I know you’ll keep us up to date. But can we please resist the pull to give in to the “what do you dislike” topics and the sky-falling inferences when they’re not actually part of the facts being reported? […]

Again, do please continue to give it to us straight, but please be better than the comment section and try to resist the low hanging fruit of Bellular-Thumbnail-Like headlines and tones of news delivery. I’m asking nicely. Please.

Thank you for reading and for generally being awesome, Blizzard Watch team.

I get where you’re coming from, Omedon, I do. But at the end of the day, one of the things that sets Blizzard Watch apart from other sites is that we are an editorial-based site. Our writers have opinions. Those opinions don’t necessarily reflect the site as a whole, nor do they overlap with all the writers — just look at Rossi and myself for an example of differing opinions within the site.

But it would be a disservice to the “Rossi crowd” if I said he couldn’t write something negative just because I disagreed. There are people who read the site who agree with him, and they’re completely valid in their views. Likewise, I’m not going to not publish an article with my opinion just because I know Rossi would be upset by it.

People dislike parts of games. That includes folks at Blizzard. So articles in the vein of, “Which part of the game do you dislike?” are just engaging in a dialog with the community about shared frustrations. That said, if you see something you feel is egregiously over-stepping bounds — “sky-falling inferences,” as you call them — please let me know (Twitter or Discord DMs are easiest). I don’t feel anything we’ve put out recently falls into that category, but I’d be interested in chatting if you have one in mind you feel does.

At the end of the day, it’s important we discuss the games we play — good, bad, everything in between. The important part is that we’re civil about it.


MISTAH JAY, LET’S LIGHTEN THINGS UP WITH SOME MALFURION HATRED!

reposting 2BE incase it got lost in weekend comments

2BE: “Terror of Darkshore” Malfurion vs “Warcraft 3” Tyrande

It’s never Malfurion, dude. Never.


AUSSIEEEVEE, CONGRATS! ANOTHER QUESTION TO YOU!

Oh another question.

Why do NPCs that are supposedly powerful warriors, stand back and watch us fight? Like Greymane and Shaw in the latest raid? (I hope that’s not a spoiler :P)

Boring answer: Because gameplay always trumps lore. Blizzard has said so in the past, and it holds true today.

More fun answer: They view us as their little babbies and want to make sure we can hold our own. They’re watching us fight with pride in their hearts — they’re just really bad at knowing when a good time to step in and prevent their babbies from dying is.


BUSCAVA IS FREE! FREE!!!

So according to the wowhead attunement thing, i’m 100% ready to unlock KT and ZD as soon as they are available. Sweet.

So if i’m going to reroll to a KT monk, is there really any point in playing my current monk aside from money right now? I’m sort of thinking no…. So i guess i can play some Breath of the Wild or Yakuza?

Is this short term freedom?

If you’re re-rolling (lolz) and not race changing, then, uhh… I mean, there are account-wide goodies like mounts and pets you might want to farm now so your KT Monk has a buddy? And it might help having your current Monk able to farm BoA gear (which… I think is coming at some point…) to help gear your new Monk.

But, really, even if there are points I’m forgetting about, go play another game. Have fun! Experience something new! WoW knows you’ll be back.

That’s all for today’s Queue!

However, before I go, I want to remind you all that today might be a rough day for our friends at Blizzard. At the time of this writing, nothing is certain — but please remember that the folks who do get affected by layoffs likely aren’t the ones who make any of the decisions you hate. Even if someone you know doesn’t lose a job, they’ve likely just had to watch a friend lose theirs. Be kind, offer hugs, and — above all — let those individuals reveal if they’ve been let go or not rather than asking them about it.

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Filed Under: Splatfest, Splatoon 2
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