The Queue: Moooooooooo

Every game needs a secret cow level, every game has a secret cow level.

I certainly feel this is going to be a big BlizzCon. We knew 2019 was going to be a relatively slow year for Blizzard, because they said so on an investor call — but all the things that haven’t happened this year suggest a busy 2020. And a busy 2020 means a busy BlizzCon.

We’ve only done pretty basic planning so far, which is to say we’ve done a roll call for who will be on the home team and the away team. Anna and I will be running our team at home (11 people), while Dan and Mitch will be running our team on the ground (4 people).

Every year, content coverage is pretty predictable — though BlizzCon is always hectic, we know more or less how it will play out. The opening ceremony will be packed with announcements, and we’ll want a post on each one — and even on a slow year, that means a lot of writers that we need to turn posts around very quickly. The panel after that is inevitably about whatever the convention’s biggest news is, and we’ll want to put out posts for key points and start doing analysis and opinion posts. That’s usually our busiest time of the convention, no matter the year.

The schedule from there is varied, but the “what’s next” panels for each game are usually our next busiest periods, because these deep dives give us a lot of interesting details — and again we need posts that break out and analyze them. Q&A panels are a mixed bag — I tend to think they’re boring, but there are almost always interesting tidbits. Then there’s live coverage to do, galleries to make, and more in-depth features to write.

Our team at home will be responsible for most of that. The away team will be focused on getting the things you can only get at the convention — photos, hands-on impressions, in person interviews.

This year we’re going to focus on getting shorter posts out faster. Sometimes we’ll spend a lot of time transcribing an entire interview or liveblogging a Q&A panel when really there may only be a couple news posts worth of excitement. I want us to spend less time spinning our wheels on big, tiring projects and more time getting the important news out immediately.

But until we have a schedule, we can only plan staff and content based on past experience. When we get that schedule, we’ll have a real feel for how much work we have. There’s always a lot of planning done on the fly, but knowing the schedule lets us start planning specific assignments and it will give our plan some structure.

We’ve covered a lot of BlizzCons over the year. Some of them have been big and some of them have been small, but the basic structure of BlizzCon remains. Hopefully we’ll be ready for it and have enough people here to get things published as quickly as I’d like. And if we don’t… well, we’ll work out a plan on the fly.

That’s what we’ve always done, really, and that’s what we’ll do this year, too.

It’s included! If you have a physical BlizzCon ticket, you should get an email about it. So anyone who has a BlizzCon ticket, don’t rush off to buy a virtual ticket — you have one coming.

Uhmm…

Unfortunately, I think this is always a problem with multiplayer games — and it’s always going to be a problem. Because we share our world with countless other heroes, we can never quite be the stars of the show.

I think Blizzard has done a really great job by adding us to in-game cutscenes, but they still only put us walking next to the NPCs, who are inevitably the real heroes. In the end, we’re following these heroes and the story Blizzard has built around them.

Our characters have no agency of their own. We get quests, we turn in quests, we follow wherever Blizzard leads.

And if Blizzard isn’t leading in a direction you or your character agrees with, that feels pretty lousy. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t really been into Battle for Azeroth’s story. The cinematics have been beautiful and moving. I genuinely care about the characters. But I don’t feel like my character has a personal investment in things.

I see the problem, but unfortunately I don’t have a fix. I think Blizzard’s storytelling is better than ever… but my character feels well on the periphery of events.

Nazjatar has a great story (though it also has some annoying grinds), but in my opinion it is wholly worth doing. And I’m pretty sure you need to do it to complete the War Campaign, which is also a very well-told story, even though not

Here’s the 101 on starting and going through the zone.

I want to see Ragnaros the Firelord and Ragnaros, Lightlord fight.

Who would win? I don’t know! I want to know!

Okay my friends, that’s all for this week. Please be kind to one another and I’ll see you back here next Wednesday.

Unless the world ends before then, which is always possible.

But I’ll probably see you here next Wednesday.