The Queue: I like video games

I really do.

Let’s get into that sweet Queue Q&Aing.

I mean, it would likely be either my Draenei or Dwarf Warriors. It’s gonna be a Warrior.

I am not in charge of this site, and so, any answer I’d give you would just be my opinion. As of now I know of no plans to change this site’s direction in any way. But, if we were to make a change that large, frankly, I’d argue for becoming a general nerd news site, broadening what we currently call ‘off-topic’ posts and covering other games, other media, and so on.

I think there are other sites that cover other MMO’s to the point where a focus on just those would end up diluting us, but a more Joystiq (RIP) style website would be a good direction for us, if we ever decided to go that route. But that’s just my opinion.

MMO’s I play off and on include TESO, Neverwinter and Star Wars TOR. I do not play the Final Fantasy ones, but I’m sure someone does. I certainly feel like our staff could cover other MMO’s if we were to decide to.

I mean, on the one hand, I’m glad you’re having fun in FFXIV.

But on the other hand, I mean, if not for WoW I’d literally be dead right now. So it’s hard for me to really think of its fans as toxic. There are certainly issues in the fandom, and I agree that the faction conflict and emphasis on it are not helping with those problems, but in the end I really don’t think the WoW community is that much worse than any other game. It’s just bigger, and has more people who once played but moved on in it.

People who no longer play WoW, or preferred the game at ‘insert the moment they remember the most fondly’ are a big part of the WoW community, and as we’ve seen, their nostalgia has a big influence on the direction of the discourse. And this is amplified and in many cases weaponized by people who profit from discord (the state of emotional antagonism and conflict, not the application that lets you talk to people) and who deliberately take the most negative stance possible on purpose.

This isn’t unique to WoW, either. I’m a big fan of the new direction of Assassin’s Creed games, and so, I’ve seen a lot of toxicity from AC grognards who absolutely hate anything RPG in that series, who want the lore to always only be about the Assassin/Templar conflict, who basically never respond favorably to anything that deviates from the Ezio games.  But those voices, while shrill and dominating places like YouTube, are completely in the minority. The new games have all sold well and are still selling — Odyssey came out in 2018 and is still selling copies in 2021, for example.

People often hate change and react negatively to it out of reflex, and unfortunately, Blizzard hasn’t always succeeded in presenting those changes. Look at the Diablo Immortal eruption at BlizzCon 2018, and how off the mark it ended up being — Blizzard misjudged how people would react, but at the same time, much of that reaction was completely histrionic.

In my actual experience playing WoW, there are absolutely people I don’t like that I’ve encountered. It’s not perfect. But I’ve also made a lot of friends, had a lot of fun, and generally I have a lot of goodwill towards people in the community. Even outside of the whole helped me not die thing.

Insert itonlyagamewhyyouhavetobemad.gif here.

Okay, here’s the thing — I don’t watch TV. I play video games. Occasionally I’ll watch a movie, but that’s easier to do — set aside a couple of hours and watch it, and then you’re done. The closest I’ve come to actually watching a TV show was when the Snyder cut came out and I watched that, and I enjoyed it.

But I haven’t seen any of the Disney+ series. I haven’t seen The Mandalorian, I haven’t seen WandaVision, and I haven’t seen the recent Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes show. I have, however, had every single aspect of these shows ruthlessly hurled at my face every second I forget to look away from Twitter for 2/3rds of a second, and so I’ve ended up absorbing plot information by osmosis.

So far I’m intrigued by the general direction they’re going in. But I haven’t actually seen them yet, except for the last episode of Bucky and Sam’s adventure, which I thought was pretty good but of course I felt like I really would have been better off if I’d seen the other episodes.

But, I mean, you discussed your playthrough of AC Odyssey and the 435 hours you spent playing it. Now imagine playing it with New Game + six times. And finishing all of the DLC when you did. It’s kind of hard to do that kind of thing and watch a lot of TV.

Okay, that’s the Queue for this week. See y’all when I see you. Try to put some questions in here for Mitch.