The Queue: This is not a Queue about Diablo

Really, why would you even think that?

It will have both a story mode and a PVP mode, but yesterday’s event was all about PVP. They hadn’t really talked about PVP until now, so it was due some attention — whether you’re into PVP or not, it’s a big part of Overwatch. However, a story mode is still happening for everyone out there who isn’t into PVP (myself included).

First off, if you went through the Draenei starting zone without bitterly fighting to tag every quest mob and pick up every quest item, spending a half hour running around in circles and being beaten constantly to tags until you hated all WoW players, you are not getting the true TBC experience. These new starting zones, I think, are still the best starting zones in the game, but sharding wasn’t a thing back then, which could make popular zones quite miserable.

I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Games ought to be fun and this is one of the places where it really wasn’t. I’m happy to see Classic development going from #NoChanges to #SomeChanges. The frustrations of the original don’t have to be part of the experience today. Games should be fun, and removing barriers to play can be a big help there.

To your second point, it would be fantastic if Exodar and Silvermoon could be highly populated cities. Both of them are visually stunning in a way that none of the other capitals manage to match, even 14 years later. But they both have a fatal flaw: they’re on the opposite content of their main faction hubs (and thus many of the main faction quests) You could teleport from Silvermoon to Undercity and then catch a zeppelin to Orgrimmar, or take a boat from Bloodmyst Isle to Teldrassil and then another boat to Stormwind. Convenience counts. Travel time eats into play time. These cities, despite their beauty, were never destined to be proper hubs. Sad.

I’ve been told that “Spam 🌲 this 🌲 to 🌲 kill 🌲 Daddy 🌲D 🌲” is a good one.

Yes and no.

Intellectually, it seems unreasonable and superstitious.

Practically, when I am alone in the dark and hear an inexplicable noise, I’m pretty sure it’s a ghost.

I don’t have any inside knowledge, but honestly, I think it was amicable. Though I’m not sure there’s a “good” way to handle the departure of a well-known and well-liked community figure, but I think this was about as good as it gets.

Jeff went out with a fairly understated goodbye, but one that felt like he wrote it. No corporate formality or doublespeak. He didn’t make a thing of it and there wasn’t any fanfare. But instead of taking that as a sign of bad blood behind the scenes, I think it suggests an amicable departure. He didn’t slam the door and leave, and corporate didn’t kick him out without a word. It suggests he went out on his own terms.

And being understated is good for the future of the community. Because he left without fanfare or fuss, further lionizing himself to the community, he dedicated a full sentence in his four-sentence goodbye to praising Blizzard’s staff and the Overwatch development team. He quietly passed the torch and made an effort to assure players that they were still in good hands.

Jeff certainly could have been unhappy with plenty of things at Activision-Blizzard, and they may have led to his departure. (I, personally, think that after that many years at a single company, you just get tired and want new challenges.) But I don’t get the impression that the departure was anything but amicable.

My highest are in the mid-30s and lately I seem to have stopped getting XP missions, which has made it a real slog. (It was already slow, but now it’s even slower.) I’ve started just sending every champion on anima or pet charm or reputation missions, whatever happens to be available, to get a few hundred XP at a time. But even at my level they need several thousand, and each mission takes the better part of a day. It’s slow going.

I think the mission table is in pretty dire need of improvements. Different factions are still wildly unbalanced, the leveling process is slow and cumbersome, and the system just doesn’t nail the fun of an autobattler, which is what it seemed intended to be. I’ve been playing a lot of Hearthstone Battlegrounds lately, and somehow the mission table managed to avoid including every that makes games like that fun.

But out of everything in Shadowlands, I suspect this isn’t high on the priority list. The fact that we haven’t heard about it after the patch has been on the PTR for this long suggests that changes are unlikely. And it’s been quite a long time since we’ve had any balance passes or bug fixes for missions.

I don’t want to say that the feature has been abandoned — it really seemed like the team had a great idea here that just maybe didn’t get the amount of attention it needed, and improving it just isn’t at the top of anyone’s priority list.

A map? An atlas? A globe?

Mini Tyrael, by a wide order of magnitude.

And that’s all for now, friends. I hope you all have a most wonderful Friday and a pleasant, relaxing weekend. (And that you come play Mass Effect with me, because I can never have too many people to talk about Mass Effect with.) So pet your dogs, tell your loved ones that you love them, and off you go into a lovely (hopefully) weekend.