The Queue: Why did I log on today?

I am really not feeling welcome here, you guys.

Sounds like you need to find some people who respect you to play with.

Also, from a time efficiency standpoint, the carousel is a faster way to get your XP buff. Plus I think the fact that you can stay on it for as long as you’d like while keeping the buff at max is a nice perk. It is a little break in the middle of a leveling binge.

Definitely, though I am currently suffering from a bout of post pack opening blues. I think this happens to everyone who just opened a pile of new expansion packs: no matter what you got, you didn’t get the right cards and your future decks are ruined before you have even started building them.

If I didn’t care, I definitely wouldn’t feel like that, so… hmm… maybe it’s better not to care?

Ha, who am I kidding! I’m going to figure out some way to make it work after I’m done being unhappy that I don’t have all the pieces I need to make a dragon Paladin deck.

It’s all about perspective. Are Dr. Boom and his compatriots fighting for freedom against the oppressive rule of the magocracy? (And maybe, just maybe, pick up a few treasures for himself while he’s there.) Then they’re the good guys, fighting for freedom!

Are Dr. Boom and his compatriots invading the free and peaceful city of Dalaran? Then they’re a mean crew of criminals.

But maybe they’re something else all together. Maybe you’re a warrior disillusioned by Dr. Boom’s erratic, obsessive behavior and you want nothing at all to do with this. Perhaps you’re out to defeat him and defend Dalaran, or perhaps you just don’t care and you’re staying as far from Dalaran as possible.

Hearthstone is an anything goes sort of game. Good, bad, we’re all praying to the same RNG gods in hopes of getting a good card draw.

Wrathion, but not to rewrite him, exactly: I’d just like him to have done something over the last few expansions. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

I’m not sure, but I hope it’s the Heart of Azeroth because I don’t speak Old God.

I’m going to file this one under “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” even though I’m aware that what you’re describing probably qualifies as “broke.” For my part, sometimes I have graphics set to 6 or 7 and get a super smooth 60fps. Sometimes I’ll have those graphic settings and get 10fps, under the same or similar conditions. Sometimes I’ll drop my graphics settings down to 2 or 3 because of poor performance and still get 10fps (or less). Reboots usually fix it.

I actually suspect part of the problem is with the Battle.net launcher, which will sometimes get “stuck” running in the background even when it appears to be closed — I have mine set to automatically close when I launch a game because it is a computer-murdering app, but sometimes it lurks in the background, eating CPU cycles and destroying everything in its path.

I just opened it and checked: Agent, which is part of the Battle.net app, is using up 98% of my CPU cycles. I just closed Battle.net but Agent is still there, still chewing through my CPU power until I can do nothing else. I have to force close the process or reboot to make it go away. Now that I’ve closed it, Chrome is my CPU hog at … 5%. Some of this code is definitely rough.

It may be time, or even past time, for WoW to get a new engine instead of continuing to pile new code on top of old. But starting from scratch isn’t exactly easy. The dev time for a new game is measured in years, and I don’t think any of us want to pause our playtime for that long while we wait. That would mean a dedicated dev staff for a 2.0 engine, building it in parallel with the existing game. And while they do build it, they may still find themselves beholden to old code to maintain compatibility with existing game content — or they would have to update all of that, too. However you slice it, it’s a big job.

And though it could amount to a huge quality of life improvement, what if it isn’t? Even a new game will have bugs (sometimes lots of bugs), and a brand new version of WoW could just swap old problems for new problems. Maybe Blizzard’s patches to the old engine are as good as it gets.

Even if this isn’t as good as it gets, building a new engine from scratch would be a big job. I just don’t see it happening unless something really is really broken. And if it isn’t… well, we don’t need to fix it, do we?

:(

… why is everyone conspiring against me today?

Well, that’s enough of that. I’m off to build a wall around my house to ward off potential attacks. There will razor wire and a moat full of alligators to keep anyone who might do my harm at a safe distance. Bye for now!