The Queue: Everything’s normal here, completely normal

Totally normal day, totally normal Queue, nothing weird at all here. Everything is completely as expected.

Yes!

Well… no.

Well… maybe. Sort of.

In the forum thread about this bug — now nearly 1800 posts — Blizzard has explained that they need to work with Apple and Intel to solve the problem. And working with Apple and Intel probably means we’re in for a long wait.

However, this week, Blizzard rolled out a workaround — and yes, it’s a workaround that doesn’t involve installing Windows! Mac users can now set their particle density to “disabled,” which has stopped the crashing for a lot of players (including me!).

It also stops a lot of other things, like loot sparkles, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a “fix.” But the game runs smoothly at reasonable graphics settings without crashes, and that’s a big step forward. Hopefully at some point we’ll get the bug fixed in its entirety, but for now I’m pretty happy.

I’m a little overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to do. Assaults that take about an hour each. Horrific Visions that I can’t manage to complete. New factions to grind. Upgraded gear from World Quests and other day-to-day activities, meaning I ought to do them for a chance at gear. A reason to grind Azerite again (I hate grinding Azerite). New Essences. Corrupted gear… It’s a lot.

My Mistweaver has been struggling with it. Doing the assaults is slow, and she can’t complete Horrific Visions on her own. And because of the Mac crash bug, up until a couple of days ago, I couldn’t play group content because my client would crash non-stop.

So… frankly, a lot of my 8.3 time so far has been spent leveling alts. And now we’re three weeks in and I can only just now play unfettered and I feel really behind.

My doggos, Abigail and Isabel, are sisters. When I went to pick them out from their litter, Isabel was the first of the pups who approached me and let me pet her. Which is funny, because over the long term, Isabel has proven to be the shy one. She likes to follow her humans around, and if a stranger approaches, she makes sure I’m between her and the potential source of danger. If I’m going to get a package off the front porch, she’ll follow me, but not walk past the threshold — instead she’ll crane her neck out to peek around, while keeping the bulk of herself behind my legs.

You know, in case of danger.

It’s strange to see how completely different these two turned out, even coming from the same litter and growing up in the same household. Isabel is shy while Abby is bold. Isabel wants you to stay in sight at all times while Abby is really only interested in you if you have food. Isabel likes playing with toys while Abby ignores them.

They’re both such oddballs.

First, you’re asking the wrong person.

I think the reason I’ve never been good at making gold is because it requires research. There are always some items that are in demand and worth crafting, collecting, or just scooping up from the auction house when prices are low. But to know that, you have to compile data, and though there are addons to help with this, I’ve still never been very good at it.

My best attempts, however, have involved hanging on to everything I pick up and checking it on the auction house before I toss it out to an everyday vendor. Cloth, crafting materials, and transmog are all things you’ll just run into by playing, and if you put them on the auction house at market rate, you’ll walk away with some gold.

As to what’s market rate… well, that’s where addons come in. TSM is the one everyone talks about, but it’s too complicated to me. Which is probably why I’m usually broke.

I was definitely rooting for Limit this run. They were so fired up to win this one, and it was a catching kind of enthusiasm. When the race started, I would flip back and forth between Method and Limit, but as it continued I found myself watching Limit stream more and Method stream less. It was great that you could switch between watching with commentators and watching Max’s stream, which had live Limit comms, which really gave you an in-the-thick-of-things perspective.

Limit wanted to win this so badly, and it was heckin’ fun to watch them finally do it.

Ack! That sounds like an awful lot of work.

I really haven’t thought about DMing here or anywhere else, because it seems like quite the mountain to climb. Not only do you have to know the game and its rules, but you have to know the world, the setting, the characters and NPCs, and all of the stories about all of them. It seems like so much to keep track of, and doing it all on the fly to create a fun, compelling story?

Good DMs (like Rossi) have all my respect, because I don’t know if I could make that work.

Presumably, they’ll be gone forever… until they appear again under a new name. Maybe they’ll be Hero Points this time around! Who knows!

Valor, like the currency systems that have come before and since, is an idea that keeps going in and out of style, but I don’t think it will ever die. But will they be “valor” points?

Probably not, so I’m sorry, but your current catalog of Valor is likely to depreciate significantly in value.

That’s all I have for today, everyone. Thanks for being patient with me and have a great Friday.