The Queue: Queue’s been blown to pieces

What can I say, I love a running gag.

Still playing Cyberpunk 2077. I have discovered the joys of a good baseball bat with bolts in.

Yes. It is indeed morning as I type this Queue.

I felt this way with the Mage Tower, although had I known they were going to make the appearances transmogable, I’d have actually done it. In general, Blizzard sometimes gets a little overzealous with the difficulty on things like KSM — it’s an achievement, it’s not supposed to be you can only do this if you and four other people devote your lives to it levels of hard.

And with needing both Fortified and Tyrannical, everything’s got more health and does more damage, so it’s just gonna be a slog for Tanks and Healers. I am not looking forward to that, let me be frank. It’s not the end of the world, but I hope they roll this back or lower it to just needing to do one of the two.

Honestly? I didn’t expect a BlizzCon this year.

First off, I think they likely don’t have a ton to announce. We know we’re not getting anything but Diablo Immortal in 2021, and I have no idea how far along Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2 are at this point. It feels unlikely we’ll see either of those games before late 2022, and I don’t think there will be a lot we didn’t see at BlizzConline to showcase.

Secondly, there’s a lot of work to put on a convention, and they would have had to announce things like ticket sales and so on by now — it’s late May, with June arriving next Tuesday. The more radio silence on the subject of the con, the less likely I thought we’d be looking at one. I’m sure the idea of COVID affected their decision making, because while vaccination is going well, it’s not over yet and taking an extra year off would definitely be the prudent move.

I find it disappointing but completely understandable.

Not physical ones, no. I tend to mostly remember things, and occasionally forget them and rediscover the same thing like sixteen times.

Technically dinosaurs and other fossils fall under paleontology, not archaeology. Archaeology is human history and human prehistory — human remains, human structures, that kind of thing. Paleontology is fossil animals and plants. And sometimes fossil fungi or even fossil unicellular stuff. Basically, if it’s human, it’s archaeology, and if it isn’t, it’s paleontology. If we ever find an alien spaceship it would presumably be xenology.

Anyway, yes, there have been some cool dino discoveries published recently. Just this month they found a potentially new species of sauropod in Australia, although they still don’t actually know what it is. That’s pretty cool. I’m sure COVID had an impact on the field, but remember, there’s a lot of dinosaur material in museums and university collections that hasn’t been analyzed yet, so new discoveries are likely to continue regardless.

I would absolutely make Class Skins a completely cosmetic feature, because I believe strongly that with the constant resetting of character power at the end of every expansion, cosmetic rewards and systems are the only enduring accomplishments possible in World of Warcraft. The only effort that you expend that has lasting, permanent results at this point is unlocking things like transmog appearances, allied races, and so on. Borrowed power systems don’t last, gear gets replaced, talents and abilities get added and removed.

Only things like battle pets, mounts and transmog appearances last. They are permanent. So I would make Class Skins be a completely cosmetic reward because that’s the only lasting kind of accomplishment in World of Warcraft.

As for the faction divide, I would leave it intact in terms of the game’s story. If Jaina and Thrall can be friends despite the faction divide, as they seem to be now, then why can’t a Draenei and a Tauren pal around? Players are exceptional characters, so let people have friendships across the faction divide. I wouldn’t make it part of the game’s story at all, any more than I would make transmog a huge part of the game’s story. Just let people group with their friends. In terms of gameplay, link it to battletags and real id friends and call it a day.

Well, they took Lord Soth out (hopefully he’ll appear in a Dragonlance book if they do one) and Sithicus is gone, so I guess I’ll go with Har’Akir, because I loved The Mummy (the Brendan Fraser one) and I’m down for some Egyptian adventuring.

The real Mitch was the friends you made along the way.

Literally, the horrible monstrosities you’re cobbling together in your basements to follow his dark will. Those friends are the real Mitch, as they will provide him with his loathsome apotheosis. Soon he will clutch at the night with a thousand, thousand maws.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. Be good, y’all. Ask Liz a lot of questions.