The Queue: Behold your new tyrant lizard king

Today’s Queue header was brought to you by Phil Davis Giles, who tweeted it at me yesterday while I was recovering from my eye injections — you know, the ones I need to keep being able to see but which hurt a lot. So I was very appreciative to get such a cool picture, based on my ranting during last week’s Queue. Anyway, check it out in all its glory — I had to crop it to fit the Queue header, sadly enough — and also, here’s Scott Leyes excellent runner up.

Let’s Queue this.

Can anything actually make up for that? But regardless, this is the Queue we have, and it was a good Queue to have.

Honestly, I’m probably not the right person for this question because frankly, I’ve come to believe that game systems are a lot less important than story. I’ve played World of Warcraft for years through so many game changes and iterations, from Vanilla to the game today, and while I’ve really loved some changes and really hated others, they never got me to the point where I stopped playing the way I think I would if the end of the Battle for Azeroth story doesn’t satisfy me.

I simply don’t care all that much about gear, except for how it looks — I’ve done cutting edge raiding and I’ve done casual play and I generally prefer casual, to be honest. Any change that set the clock back to “you can only get good gear from raiding” I would resist like it was an actual plague.

Now, if you handed me Diablo 3, I honestly don’t think I’d bother to make any changes — it’s pretty close to perfect at what it is, and they’re making the changes I would anyway like adding new sets and more legendary powers. I think I’d mainly just make sure that there was more gear — more weapons, more sets, more legendary items. Just more stuff. That’s all I’d add to D3.

Dude, this is a video game.

I think you need to cut yourself some slack here. Worrying about hypocrisy in regards to a moral or ethical question is good, it’s a sign of thoughtfulness and self reflection. But worrying you’re a hypocrite over not liking WoW Classic is not something I think you should devote even a second of your time towards.

The people who want WoW Classic are getting it. If you’re not one of them, you’re taking literally nothing away from them. As long as you’re not actively crapping on their parade, feel free to feel however you like about it. It’s not hypocritical to want something new.

Okay, true confession time — I was playing in an Exalted RPG campaign at the time (a game I heartily recommend if you like weird over the top anime-esque fantasy) and I really enjoyed the 2000’s reboot of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe because it did a really great job of essentially being an Exalted cartoon.

He-Man was a Solar Exalt, Skeletor almost certainly was an Abyssal, many of the Masters worked as Dragon-Blooded, Beastman was a really stupid/emotionally abused Lunar who was going to turn on Skeletor some day, Evil-Lyn was a note perfect Daybreak Abyssal going up against the Sorceress’ Twilight Solar, it just all worked. So I was one of like maybe five people who really hated to see that show end.

Honestly, the Filmation series was not a coherent story, and I have no idea what Kevin Smith is going to do with it. I honestly would have been curious to see Noelle Stevenson’s take on it.

I relate to this very much, although for a completely different reason. I stepped away from endgame in WoW a while ago not because of grinding or questing, but purely because of the tension I feel whenever I play through the story content in BFA. Simply put, until I know how this all ends, I can’t enjoy it and I’m taking a break from it so I don’t make myself tense and stressed out.

I still keep current on what the endgame story is, but I made the mistake of maining a Night Elf in Legion and really identifying with her — I came up with a backstory for her, I RP’d her as much as you could on a non-RP server, and in generally I really liked who she was and the stories I was concocting for her in my head. A happy, family connected Nelf who was out in the world essentially trying to figure out who she was and what she wanted to be, very young (maybe 200 or so years old) and proud to be fighting for her people and her world.

And wow, Battle for Azeroth ruined every last bit of that. Her family died — I’d set up that they lived in Dolanaar, which is now cinders. Her former characterization as a friendly, helpful, cheerful sort who honestly thought the Alliance and Horde could eventually learn to co-exist is gone and to be honest all the fun I had playing her went with it. I tried pivoting, but without knowing how it’s going to end I can’t decide how she should change — I don’t want to waste my time having her devote herself to revenge if she won’t be allowed by the game to have any, and no, the Darkshore Warfront is absolutely not revenge.

Not even close.

So I’ve been playing alts, leveling characters for a few levels and then switching to another alt when I get bored with that one, and Diablo 3 has taken up a lot more of my time lately. I’m cool with that, but I do wish I had some sort of idea where this expansion is going, because without some sort of resolution, I think I’ll remained burned out on my Night Elves forever.

In many ways I think this is an amazing expansion, but it was not a change I wanted for my main. I liked her happy, but it’s impossible to imagine someone who loved her family and her people so much being happy now.

That last answer was a bit of a bummer, so here’s that T-Rex with two Ashkandi to cheer us all up. See y’all next week, remember to ask Anne a ton of questions.