The Queue: Trick or Treat?
That’s right, friendos, it’s Spooky Splatfest Season, and this weekend’s extra-long Splatfest is all about tricking. Or treating. It depends on which side you choose. This time — just like I did two years ago — I’m going with Team Trick. If we lose again, I’m gonna be so Yogg-dang peeved.
Okay, so I won’t be all that mad. Splatfests are fun, and these surprise bonus ones after the “final” Splatfest are always a… um… treat. Anyhow, let’s Queue as we think about our choices.
Xerianne: Do you think this is where Sylvanas finally gets to “die” by becoming the jailor? Do you think nah she comes out just as she went in?
rjagoda: Will this be the expansion where Sylvanas is dealt with and her story is done, or will she continue to play a part in the future? Feel free to speculate.
A few people pointed out that Uther’s whole “soul splint into two parts” thing has opened the door to “killing” (or merging) the evil half of Sylvanas’ soul with the good half, which would keep her around, explain her genocidal tendencies, and prevent her from doing similarly genocidal things later on. To be honest, I’m not sure I love that. Sylvanas has certainly never been the moral high ground, but she also didn’t get evil-evil until far more recently. Unless the times she saw “only darkness” involved her soul secretly splitting, I don’t know if that idea works with her characterization since Warcraft 3. Sure, she was angry at Arthas the way Uther was — but she was still never “I don’t care about anyone else” to the degree she is now.
The other thing I can see Blizz doing is making her the new Jailer. “THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A JAILOR” is cheesy, but it’s full circle and also fitting since she fought so long to kill Arthas who, for a long time, was considered the Jailor of the Damned.
What I want — but not what I think we’ll get, to be clear — is Sylvanas being resurrected at the end of the expansion, thanks to Calia and the Naaru. Sylvanas feels the weight of everything she’s done. She feels pain and regret, and she vows to the leaders of Azeroth to fix things and do right now that she’s whole. She — and all the other leaders — feel hope that things will finally change and she’ll redeem herself. …And then Tyrande kills her for good. She kills hope — something Sylvanas tried so hard to do but never could.
This would give players the opportunity to still fight and defeat Sylvanas, it would canonically make her suffer emotionally for all she’s done, and it would still give Tyrande the killing blow she (let’s face it, rightfully) deserves. You all know I love Sylvanas and would hate to see her gone, but from a story angle, she has done A LOT of bad things and doesn’t really deserve redemption, even if it’s within her grasp. I feel like the above would be a good end to her story without giving us the Chekhov’s Gun of another Jailer, the way we all knew Bolvar would eventually return after he took over being Lich King.
Do you listen to your own music or the ambient music when playing WoW?
It completely varies! When I’m leveling through an expansion for the first time (on both live and beta), I go in-game sound all the way. I like the immersion. I also tend to have sound on during raids. But when I’m doing solo/dungeon content I’ve done tons of times before? Usually the game’s muted and I’m listening to music or watching YouTube or something on a different screen.
Every so often, I’ll be in the mood to re-immerse myself in the game, though, just for the hell of it. For instance, I’ve recently been leveling a new DK through Warlords content, and because I like Spires so much, I try to play it at night (when the skybox is to die for) and with the sound and everything on. I just really like that zone, and having the game music on helps me feel really immersed in the world, which is a really cool feeling!
Queue, if you had to pick one of these setups for four characters, which would you pick, and why?
a) 2 Miners, 1 Herbalist, 1 Enchanter
b) 1 Miner, 2 Herbalists, 1 Enchanter
c) 1 Miner, 1 Herbalist, 2 Enchanters
I’d go with (c) because the idea of two Enchanters/Enchantresses seems cool. Go magic!
My formerly 110 (now 45) Druid has done every expansion as part of leveling up. Can he go back and do them again in Chromie time or am I stuck, once more, doing BFA to get him to 50?
I did a bit of testing, and although Chromie will offer to let you use Chromie Time, you’re not actually getting the same intro as someone who’s never done that expansion. You get a quick quest to take you to the expansion’s content (usually via portal in SW/Org) and that’s it. Quests don’t reset or anything like that.
That said, someone in the comments smartly pointed out that you can technically use Party Sync to go back and do that sort of content with a buddy.
I’ll try this one again.
Q4TQ: I was trying to complete old raid tier quests from BFA to get them out of the quest log and the experience is awful. You can spend hours in a queue only to join a group that is still missing key members like tanks and healers to wait even longer. How would you incentivize players to run the LFRs of outdated content?
I’m not sure I necessarily agree with what I’m about to say, but you could turn old LFRs into Timewalking/scaling experiences so that players at max-level (and in various brackets before max) could experience any number of LFR raids as though they were being played at-level. On top of that, offer that one bonus satchel thing for under-filled roles.
The better option, however, would be to offer solo/scenario-style queues where you could experience the raid with either a small premade party or a group of NPCs. There’s a lot more that would need to go into making that sort of thing work, but it’s still a fun thought-starter and something I know more than one person here is a fan of.
Do u have any gameplay regrets that u still feel the echos of each day? Not necessarily u still regret it, but your game experience is still effected by it
I started diablo 3 before battlenet integration, i thought it would be more like baldurs gate and have more choices, so i thought whether caster based or melee based id make a gish character so when asked to make a username i picked DivineBard. Suprise, there was not anything that i could even pretend was like the character i wanted. I love the name of my battletag and get comments on it all the time. But im always reminded of the fun i thought id have i never got cus diablo wasnt the game i thought it was.
Other examples might be like….playing a sequel before first game and ruining the story for u, or maybe u picked the wrong faction or race and found out much later if u picked a different one earlier u would have loved the game more
For starters, you CAN always change your Battle Tag if you’d like. I’m pretty sure accounts made before a certain date even got a free change. (I know you said you loved your Battle Tag, but I figured I’d point it out in case anyone else was in a similar sitch.)
As for your actual question… I’m almost definitely forgetting things, but I regret not keeping up more with Kingdom Hearts games. I played the first two, then I jumped into the Gameboy Advance game, and then a bunch of “side” games I probably didn’t even have time to play came out for systems I didn’t have, and by the time Kingdom Hearts 3 came out, I felt so far behind on the lore I still haven’t played it.
Sure, it’s only the third numbered game in the series and I waited like 15 years for it or something silly… but I got so behind on the non-main-series games that I can’t play the main-series finale (?) without feeling like I’m way out of the loop. I can obviously go back and catch up, but it’s a lot more daunting now, and I’m an adult with much less free time than I had when I was 11. (In a similar vein, I’m really sad I didn’t keep up with Critical Role once Season 2 started. I was maybe 3 weeks behind at one point, but then I got even more behind… and more behind… and more behind… and now I’m so far behind that it would literally take like 18+ days of watch time to be caught up and oof. That’s not really feasible.)
What’s the most interesting costume you’ve worn for Halloween? Mine was a WW2 skeleton fighter pilot with glowing red eyes that I put together myself.
There’s a solid chance I’m forgetting something, but I think the Arrow costume I wore a few years back is probably my most “hardcore” costume. That one actually came from a cosplay agency, and I ended up buying a starter bow to go with it. I realize that’s not altogether too exciting, but ah well.
Oh! I guess I also dressed as Steve from Stranger Things in his Scoops Ahoy outfit during BlizzCon last year. The costume wasn’t necessarily interesting in its own write, but walking around Con Before the Storm and taking pics/signing things while wearing a ridiculous sailor’s outfit was a real time.
The word on the street is that Shadowlands may be delayed longer into next year (like next summer). Because Blizzard wants to redesign the Covenant system and add a lot more content to the Maw. If they do that do you think they should release the Zombie invasion now or lager?
I don’t know what streets you’ve been on, but I haven’t heard any of these rumblings. That’s not to say they couldn’t happen, but in a time when Blizz is already losing long-time company veterans, Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 are still a ways off, and people have been ready to leave BFA for months… a delay to next summer is just financially not something I can see anyone approving, especially when they can easily add more Maw content in a quick 9.1 or 9.0.5 patch or something.
I mean, maybe they push it back to January or February or something, but summer? No way.
To humor you, though, releasing the zombie invasion now would upset too many players if the expansion were really that far off. You’d either have a short amount of content so far removed from launch that it was forgotten by the time the expansion launches, or you’d have months of zombies disrupting everyone’s gameplay. I don’t mean to poo-poo your question or anything, but if Blizz really wants to change Covenants or add more to the Maw, they’ll do it — after the expansion lanches.
That’s all for today! Remember Rossi is taking over for tomorrow’s Queue, so please ask lots of questions and don’t let my answers throw the comments into a tizzy.
Oh, and I hope you all have an amazing remainder of October and a very Happy Splatoween!
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