The Queue: Wishing well (well)

Toss your coin, make your wish.

I think the most likely scenario is that content updates alternate. WoW Classic dropped just when we were getting bored of patch 8.2. Perhaps patch 8.2.5 will drop when we’re getting tired of the Classic grind, then Classic Phase 2, and so on.

That seems like an easy way to keep players that love Warcraft — in one form or another — always playing, regardless of game. With two games, Blizzard has twice as many chances to give us something new and shiny (or old and well-polished by nostalgia, as the case may be).

It feels like there’s a haiku hiding in here somewhere.

Realm is always full

Ten-thousand player queue waits

Only nine hours left

Classic has me thinking about a lot of things I’d pushed out of my mind for years, so when you said this the first thing that popped into my mind was Dire Maul tribute run.

I don’t recall Dire Maul having any particularly exciting critters in it, but I am now mentally imagining a tribute run but on a smaller scale, with different kinds of mice or other ridiculously small, adorable things instead of lumbering ogres, each presenting you with a new challenge before you can meet their tiny, adorable king.

Battle for Azeroth has had some fantastically emotional moments, primarily (in my mind) with Jaina and Talanji. However, the overall story has really left me cold and I think my final reaction will come down to how it ends. We don’t know what Sylvanas’ end-game is, and so far we’ve mostly seen her taunting the Alliance and tearing apart the Horde to no particular end. Presumably she’s still chasing something that will give her the power for the Forsaken to live on, but I can’t recall that actually coming up at all this expansion, which makes her behavior rather baffling. If all of this confusion turns into a coherent story by the end, I’ll have enjoyed it. But if it remains a mess of confusing character motivations, I probably won’t. I think Sylvanas is a very interesting character, and if she’s doing all of this just because we needed a villain this expansion, it feels like a waste of her. So we’ll see what happens.

As to 9.0, I’m sure Blizzard will keep me in, but I’m so unenthused by this endless conflict, where we’re forced to follow leaders we don’t agree with as they do things that range from stupid to horrific. Blizzard has been leaning hard into this story for a while now, and I’m beyond done with it. So my enthusiasm there also varies.

A few people seem to be wondering about this, but I think Blizzard definitely has an expansion announcement prepped for BlizzCon. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out about 8.3 and a new expansion at BlizzCon this year — something coming soon and something to look forward to in the long term.

I still miss vanilla-style talent trees, but I don’t have any particular hopes that Blizzard is bringing them back.

I’m honestly on the indifferent side. I’ve enjoyed revisiting Classic but it’s cut into my already limited gaming time and I can’t decide whether I really have the time to play both, particularly since Classic is so grindy.

Plus I was working on replaying Dragon Age 2. There’s just not enough time to do everything!

And I think that’s all for today, my friends. Thanks for chiming in with questions this morning — it was a big help.

Have a great Wednesday and a chain of great days-ending-in-y to follow.