The Queue: What a week, huh.

This is The Queue, where you ask the questions and we answer as best as we can. After the extremely long weeks between Halloween and Christmas, that ‘best as we can’ bit does quite a bit of heavy lifting.

If only there were a few extra hours in every day for sleeping. Like, a dozen would do it. Let’s Queue this thing so I can take a quick nap.

Nope.

I really wish there was a way to ‘archive’ characters, because I have several I will never, ever delete, but I seriously doubt I’ll ever play again. I have a slightly weird habit of abandoning characters after events like guild dissolutions, but those characters are effectively trapped in amber (until I need to log them in during a new patch to make sure Can I Mog It is up to date, of course). I’m never deleting my level 70 priest, who’s hanging out in Shattrath City decked out in tier 6, with 26 shards of Atiesh in her bank, for instance. I have probably a dozen characters like her, plus maybe a dozen more I’m using as name placeholders. Add in bank alts I don’t properly play — because I have a tendency to accumulate stuff from the leveling experience that would seriously cut into the amount of current expansion ore I can traffic — and I have roughly 20 slots left for characters to actively play and/or dabble in occasionally. Shout out to my rogue in the Queue guild, who I think is still level 100, but I do plan to revisit, eventually. Throw in a few characters I started for things like the Blizzard Watch Twitch stream or double checking pet battle numbers and it’s looking mighty bleak.

It’s Sophie’s Choice over here to figure out who I’m going to delete to make my Vulpera, because I have to make a Vulpera. I mean, have we met, of course I’m making a Vulpera.

That said, I totally understand why the team doesn’t want to raise the cap — keeping those 26 shards of Atiesh on the server is probably a pain in the butt for them, data-wise. I acknowledge that I’m just dragging some of these alts around just to drag them around. But I need them.

They haven’t discussed this, or really much of what’s going down mechanically aside from the marquee level squish and ability un-pruning.

I really like the general idea of the Follower Missions, but it’s really tough to find a balance between making them incredibly overpowered so they feel mandatory like they were in Warlords, and having them be laughably useless like they are now. This was especially elucidated when I switched from playing Alliance to Horde and I had to jump on a frickin wyvern to get to the stupid table.

Separate rant: why did they make both Boralus and Zuldazar so awful to navigate without flying?

I do like the idea of the table, especially for people like me with a billion alts they never play, and it definitely makes sense from a development rewards standpoint. Every time you log in those forgotten fools, you get that little serotonin hit from free stuff! Isn’t it a good feeling to revisit these alts? But for me, it’s gone from “yay free stuff” to “I have to go on the stupid boat now, ugh.”

I feel like Legion was a decent balance, however in no small part due to the app. I didn’t have to go to my Class Hall, I could just visit via the app, but resources were much more dependent on my getting in the world and playing than they were in Warlords. I could get a couple days without too much fuss but then I’d have to go out hunting rares and doing wizard chores. If it does come back, I hope it’s dialed back a bit into Legion numbers.

There’s no official answer on this, as far as I can tell, but a lot of people speculate that this is the case. That would certainly be a reason for Sylvanas to break the mechanics of death, assuming she ever cared about the Forsaken — though really, if she knew that was their eventual fate, wouldn’t it be kinder to stop raising them? Yes, the faction would die out in that case but wouldn’t that be better than continuing to doom people who had no choice in their raising?

In the Edge of Night short story, it seems less like Sylvanas felt motherly toward them, and more like when there’s a sticky, shrieking toddler on a plane. Yeah, the kid can’t help it but come on, and if you had a lollipop to hand them that kid would be your best friend until the flight was over. Sylvanas gave them a lollipop in the guise of their freedom and now she’s responsible for them — but she’s on her way to Cabo and when she gets there, sayonara, kiddos.

As a parent with a penchant for daquiris, I don’t entirely blame her. You do you, Queen.

Yes. YES. yes.

To me this is the biggest sticking point in doing Island Expeditions. As a DPS player I’d like to queue for them while I’m on my way to go do dailies in the middle of an LFR queue, but instead I’m stuck at that one dude. It’s so inefficient.

The thing is, I can usually piece together why certain design decisions are made, even though I disagree with them. In the case of the Mission Table, just giving people stuff is a bit generous and they’re trying to slowly dial in how generous to be, maybe with an overcorrection at this point. I don’t like where that design decision went, but I can see why they did it. I can’t think of a reason beyond maybe some kind of long-forgotten coding wormhole nightmare that they’re making me queue from a specific point for Island Expeditions. The only thing I can see maybe being plausible is an RP immersion thing… but then LFG is a thing, and dungeons are much more closely tied to a specific locale. I can jump on a dingy in every zone in Battle for Azeroth so it wouldn’t exactly break RP to have a slightly larger pirate ship pull up with a “get in loser, we’re going Expeditioning.”

The two of them had a lot of fun during Tangled, getting into and out of a lot of scrapes, but that was mostly due to the fact that nobody knew who either of them were. Flynn had warrants, but they could never get his nose right so they were mostly unknowns. Being a princess means Rapunzel can’t just hide anymore. She does have some experience with kingdoms and resource management, but something tells me their main role would be boosting morale.

There is one extremely seedy bar in Arendelle which had a couple months of rollicking live entertainment, with a dude sulking in the corner the whole time. Over time, as word spread, it got less dangerous as more people spread the word that the princess — no not that one — was singing her heart out with all comers. After all, everyone has a dream, even if that dream is to make things slightly less snowy.