The Queue: Bears all the way down

Initially I wasn’t going to buy any of the new Soulshapes that cost anima until I’d fully restored my Covenant doodads — the Queen’s Conservatory in particular seems borderline useless without more upgrades. However, when I found out I could be a bear, I bought that one instantly. I get to pal around with my best bud Rutherford as a bear! I’m sure Ursoc won’t mind that this is what I used his precious Anima for.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we pour one out for our bear friends as we answer them.

On the one hand, yeah, having NPCs tell us they’re super-ultra dead now is a little disconcerting. However, it used to be somewhat unclear what happened to your soul after life on Azeroth. Sure, we had spirits with unfinished business walking around, but the only real accounts of the afterlife beyond the worlds we knew was Sylvanas’ account of inky black nothingness and/or unspeakable torment. For all we knew, when we were stabbing Defias in Milly Osgood’s vineyard, they were gone, done, deadzo forever too — assuming they weren’t raised into unlife, or used in some weird ritual.

The day/night cycle is somewhat disrupted — this was discussed a bit during the beta cycle, because part of the reason time runs different in the Shadowlands is because that cycle is disrupted so it’s easier to lose track of time. It does seem like the lighting shifts somewhat from day to night, but that could just be me being annoyed at having to edit color values in screenshots.

I’ll also add that the weather events I’ve seen in the Shadowlands add a lot to the ambiance. The glitter rain in Ardenweald is gorgeous, and that weird dark fog in Maldraxxus is deeply unsettling. I haven’t seen the weather systems in Bastion or Revendreth yet, but I’m sure they’re just as appropriate.

🤷‍♀️

The viewership of live events, based on available metrics, is orders of magnitude lower on YouTube. Obviously. However, it’s tough to tell how “authentic” the stats on concurrent views are, both on Twitch and YouTube. One huge benefit of YouTube is, it’s extremely easy for them to store their VODs, and in a fashion where they’re both very searchable and bingeable. If you wanted to watch, say, the Shanghai Dragons’ first win, it’s easy to find on YouTube and impossible to find on Twitch, even though they were broadcasting exclusively to Twitch at the time, so any content they generate has a much longer life. Theoretically. That particular full-length video has a palty 22K views. Most people will just watch the highlight reels after the fact, cutting out the patter when they’re essentially waiting on, say, a reset after a successful D. Va stagger kill, or the time while a Hearthstone competitor is doing mental math and goes to the rope.

Basically, YouTube’s algorithm is great for finding old content and highlights, while Twitch is really great for stumbling on already-high CCV esports competitions while they’re happening. However, neither really has the infrastructure yet for doing what the other is doing well.

The other thing to take into account is the short-term benefit of a rumored $160 million paid to Blizzard by YouTube for the privilege over the next 3 years. However, compared to Twitch’s $90 million for 2 years, ehhhh.

Basically, with this move, Blizzard could’ve opened a whole new venue of expansion for a lot of streamers and viewers, but it looks like it may not be panning out. They’re locked in for at least two more years though, so we’ll see.

Yep! You get more! From stuff! That’s it, that’s the mechanic.

It sounds like I’m being glib, but no, really. You should be getting them from doing… a bunch of random stuff. They should be a drop from your emissary Callings boxes, from World Bosses, and from dungeon bosses — based on the link it seems mostly from the final bosses of each dungeon. I’d also assume we’ll see them drop from raid bosses — the venn diagram of people who are stepping into raids in week one and people don’t need extra Renown because they’re already caught up is more or less a circle.