The Queue: Long live the Queen
@CoryjTaylor
It’s Victoria Day for us up in Canada (and maybe elsewhere around the world) and we get the whole day off! That just goes to show you how much I really wanted to be here, and not that I wrote this Queue on Sunday evening or anything…
While you all definitely believe me, it’s time for — The Queue.
When you have a Q4tQ in your head all day and then it’s 7pm and you forget what it was.
Oh boy, I hope you remember what it was — we always need questions!
What did you think of the Battle of Dazar’alor raid in BfA, and did you like the faction swap mechanic?
I really liked Battle for Dazar’alor. It was the perfect length, no one fight felt like a chore, and there was some good tank mechanics to deal with. Jaina was a little tough, especially that first run off of the boat with the fog. But overall very satisfying to finally beat.
It does explain in hindsight some of the Dazar’alor city design decisions. The city as a whole would probably have been better if it didn’t also have to have a raid go through it. But I’m also a sucker for when they make dungeons and raids actual 1:1 locations that players can walk around in. Which we might’ve gotten to do with Shattrath if they’d ever put that raid out in Warlords…
The faction change mechanic was a good way to do some neat storytelling. Anytime we get to hang out with an unreliable narrator is a win in my book. I can understand the mechanical complaints behind losing access to racial abilities and portals at the end of the raid. So maybe they should’ve just used illusionary appearances instead of making us the opposite faction for real.
I will say though that it really needed skips forward. With it being split up into three sections it would’ve been really nice if there was a go right to the Opulence fight and the Gnome fight.
Q4tQ: What happens to the OWL once Overwatch 2 comes out? Will Blizzard switch everyone to the new format? Will there be separate leagues?
The Overwatch League will more than likely move on to the new format. From everything they’ve said they’re planning to have just one online PVP section, so whether you have Overwatch 1 or 2 you’ll all still be playing against each other. So it’d make sense for the OWL to be what that. You don’t want any potential recruits to have to learn a whole new style of play once they go pro. Aside from how any player has to learn how to play differently when they hit the big leagues.
Q4tQ: Does Galdwynn really exist?
Do any of us? Do I? What is the nature of existence — I think therefore I am? Maybe I’m the only real person and the rest of you are just figments of my imagination… although if that was the case I’d like to think that I could come up with a more fantastical setting for all of this to take place. Maybe if I concentrate really hard I can be writing the Queue from the back of a giant space whale!
Nope… still just in my room with my computer.
How much Anima do you get running LFR these days?
A bunch!
It’s eight bosses that drop three tokens, and a pair of bosses who drop five tokens. So my napkin math says that’s 34 tokens. So a brand new character who has just reached max level and the item level to queue into LFR will be receiving 1190 Anima for a full clear of Castle Nathria. All of that is modified of course by the upgrades to your Covenant sanctum. If you had those you’d get an extra token per boss.
Question for the Blizzard Watch – Just listened to Episode 320: In reference to adding a new class, the issue that Joe and Matt concluded was that lore wasn’t the issue but rather gameplay mechanics (specifically balancing 36 specs already in game). Yet in the very next question, Matt expands on how he would like stances (for warriors) to be brought back. Isn’t that a bit of a conflict? Stance swapping would increase the balance roles of up to 3 specs into multiple more specs: Damage/Tanking profile of a player who can switch between Defensive and Gladiator stances versus the player who just remains in Defensive stance all the time.
Also isn’t there a skill issue as well? If players (in vanilla classic and BC classic) are using macros to swap stances to use abilities, how much of that kind of knowledge is available to regular players? Wouldn’t that push the bar of mastery up for new players?
Isn’t the extensive use of macros one of the reasons why we don’t see combat bonuses granted from professions? (For reference, engineering glove enchant + pots + CDs -> DPS rotation).
So then how much “prior knowledge” should players be expected to have in WoW? Where should the standard be set at? Is it something blizzard should set via leveling/in-game tutorials? Or something defined by the community à la guides on wowhead/icy veins or class discords?
I don’t miss the age of Professions having combat bonuses. In Mists of Pandaria, my Enhancement Shaman had Herbalism which was a haste cooldown at the time. My fight start was a jumbled mess of ten buttons that had to be pushed in a specific order between pre-pot, wolves, Ascendance, Fire Elemental, Bloodlust, Herbalism, and whatever normal attacks I was working in between all of those. That’s too much man!
But more to your point, there’s a fairly gently learning curve in Warcraft no matter which version you’re playing. For a bunch of players, they’ll never get to a point where they need to know every little thing about their rotation or macro abilities together to swap the stances in combat. They’ll miss GCD’s and push buttons in weird orders, or spend time rage capped or mana starved. Which is fine! They’re there to have fun, and not learn the nitty-gritty or do high-end raiding/PVP.
That’s where we (and all of the other community sources) come in. Blizzard can help guide players through their leveling by offering abilities in certain orders, and talents in certain orders so that they have a chance to play with them and learn how they work, but beyond offering the starting area tutorial Exile’s Reach and laying out the order in which you get things they’re pretty hands-off.
When those players decide they want to learn more they have all of the resources at their disposal to take that further. I don’t know that including a bunch of late-game tutorials in Warcraft would be able to accomplish the same thing. Many players will have turned off tutorials by that point, or at the very least treat any helpful pop-up as something to just click away from to get back to whatever it is that they were doing.
Today’s Anna Earworm™: Killer Queen
Have a good Victoria Day if you’re celebrating it and if you’re not, enjoy your long weekend next weekend!
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