The Queue: We’re almost definitely all mad here

Somehow, every day seems to be Friday and also it’s never Friday. How does that even work??

I suppose it doesn’t matter, because today is definitely Friday. Or at least I’m writing the Queue, so I’m going to say it’s Friday and in so doing make it true.

So happy Friday, Queue!

Adding big ethical questions to games can add interesting story complications, but… I don’t think it works in WoW because we don’t really have choices.

Blizzard tried to give us a moral choice in BFA, letting Horde players choose between supporting Sylvanas and supporting Saurfang. This gave you some special dialog and a unique epilogue to the war campaign, but your actions had no impact either way: the story was that Sylvanas would leave and that’s that. And we’ve been told that the choice to support Sylvanas might come up as a line of dialog in Shadowlands, but nothing more.

If we were given the choice to doom another world to save Azeroth, the choice would be made for us, months or even years in advance, by Blizzard. The game has a unified narrative for all players, so this world is either destroyed or it isn’t. Our in-game actions won’t have any affect on what happens, which means it wouldn’t have any weight, making it another of gaming’s “Press F to pay respects” moments.

I’m not the biggest fan of WoW’s story. I enjoy parts of the story — epic quest chains, rad cinematics — but I don’t always enjoy the story.

I’ve learned to live with that and to log on to have fun playing with my friends regardless. If I hadn’t done that, I would have skipped out on Mists (playing Horde through Mists was sometimes nauseating because of the things you had to do) and BFA (I find this entire war ridiculous and have no interest in participating). Most of this plays into that lack of choice we just talked about — to play the game I have to participate in things I find objectionable.

So I ignore it and focus on gameplay, and the story moments I do enjoy. There are always worthwhile moments… but if I focused on overall story elements that I found repugnant, I wouldn’t be playing the game right now.

Thanks Jay. I was trying to forget the crops of people, but you’ve brought it right back to the front of my mind.

What would a crop of souls even look like? Are we thinking it would be something like an orchard, with little glowing orbs of souls hanging from the trees to be plucked? Do souls literally grow on trees?

This is frankly getting into some complicated moral questions that I just don’t have answers to.

Raiding heroic (with AotC), and I’m only at 82. I just don’t see the need to spend any more time grinding it, so I get more levels as I get more levels.

Sure, if I really wanted to unlock every possible iota of power, I could continue to get stat boosts by leveling my neck. But I don’t care about these improvements enough to make a grind of it. And they’re marginal enough that the average player probably won’t need or notice the benefit of its ilevel boost — at least not without grabbing a lot of extra levels on it.

I want an elephant mount. I know, I know, there are Elekks, but they were added in 2007 and their models show it. It’s time for a new round of elephants!

And while we’re doing that, we can make them fly. Everything else can fly, so why not elephants?

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.

The mail and plate sets were actually revealed weeks ago and I have to say they seem to be the weaker options on the tier. Cloth and leather have this very stylized gothic feel, whereas mail and plate seem much more generic.

Just compare the cloth set to the plate set and come to your own conclusions.

Cloth:

Plate:

Maybe it’s just me.

And that’s all I’ve got for today folks. I’m sure it’s been a long week for everyone, so TGIF. Have a nice relaxing weekend, everybody.