The Queue: Let’s retire to a pumpkin farm

We’ve been in the hero business for a while now… but maybe it’s time to stop, take a break, and grow some pumpkins.

…no? Well, we can still dream.

Since the announcement, I’ve watched the Onyxia wipe animation several times, so I’m completely ready to go.

In reality, though, I haven’t really been feeling Hearthstone’s constructed modes lately. I’ve been playing a lot of Battlegrounds and working my way through the Book of Mercenaries single-player content, which I think has been extremely well-done. But deck-building feels tedious, so I don’t feel terribly hyped about new card releases.

But, as always, the Hearthstone team has knocked it out of the park with theming. We have Onyxia singing and plenty of cards referencing “the good old days” of vanilla Onyxia raids… and the many, many whelps we all died to. It seems like a fun set, but that’s all I’ve got here.

I’m seeing a theme here. And actually I think I’m pretty prepared for 9.2, also. My only real goal pre-patch was to get Ahead of the Curve for Sanctum of Domination, which my guild managed to do a few weeks ago. (Finally!)

So what’s left to do? I already know I’m going to run into some gear problems — my Holy Legendary is currently crafted in a set piece slot, so I’ll need to switch it at some point, which means crafting a new Legendary and leveling it up (ouch). I’m also going to need to craft another Retribution Legendary for a second Legendary, since I currently have the class Legendary equipped. But I’m (unsurprisingly) not super enthusiastic about that and I definitely don’t have the gold to afford it, so my plan is to ignore it until I can’t ignore it anymore. And being that I don’t know how often I’ll be on DPS vs healing, it’s hard to say where it’s going to be best to invest.

I suppose the above does suggest I’m not fully prepared… but I am as prepared as I’m going to be. My attention span only takes me so far when it comes to pre-patch prep. There’s always more you could do… but is it really that important? Is it going to help me have more fun? Probably not, and it’s all stuff I can do just as well later. So I’ll jump on February 22 and I’ll probably enjoy it. I always like new content… but I get bored easily, and 9.1 has gotten stale, so onward to patch day!

I’m afraid I’m on the side of leaving things open for interpretation. Answering every question, tying up every possible loose end eliminates any remaining mystery, and starts to read a bit like a dry history text, pointing out facts one by one.

Whatever the medium, I think a good story should make us want more stories, and that means leaving a bit of mystery. Maybe you want to know what happens next, after the main narrative. Maybe you want to know what happens to a side character. Maybe you just want to explore the world. But a good story should leave a few questions unanswered, something for you to think about, something to spawn more stories.

But this can be taken too far, too. Sometimes a story will cut off in the middle and make you wait for a sequel to find out what’s happening — and setting up for a sequel (and future profits) seems increasingly common lately. Marvel movies are a good example here, because every movie sets up another movie or teases a new character, and after a while it just gets ridiculous. Can we just have a good story instead of having a story that sets up the next 37 stories? (And then having to watch all 37 stories to understand what’s happening?) Mass Effect Andromeda is another example — the narrative just stops right when it seems to be digging into the big questions, and it blatantly leaves giant gaps for a sequel… one that never got made. That’s just not a good story.

And while I think you need some mysteries, you can definitely have too many mysteries. Some shows seem to aim to be so unpredictable, so surprising, that they’re just a pell-mell mix of things that happen — and I think some shows go this way intentionally to spark fan discussion that will get everyone talking and may even go viral. I feel like Loers were st was the progenitor of this type of storytelling, though I’m sure it wasn’t the first. It just kept being so strange that it seemed like the writers were pulling plot elements out of a random generator, and letting viewers come up with how they fit together. That can be fun — particularly the social aspect of talking about it and coming up with theories — but I think it loses its shine pretty quickly.

A good story needs to be a complete story. It needs to make a certain amount of sense, at least within its own story logic. It needs to be satisfying. But it also needs to leave some open questions, to get you thinking about the next story. That’s a fine line, though, and plenty of pieces of entertainment don’t walk it very well.

I actually think Horizon Zero Dawn, which I’m playing through right now, is a great example of this. It builds a vast world full of interesting characters, and even though the main narrative is a complete story of Aloy’s journey of self-discovery (and saving the world), you want more stories. You get to the end and you’ve played a complete story, but you want to know what happens next. What’s going on with all of those AIs? What will happen to the Nora after they’ve been allowed to wander past their Sacred Land? And why robot t-rexes?? The story leaves all sorts of gaps for more questions and more stories, but it’s still a full, satisfying story on its own.

I’ve watched the first three episodes, but fallen behind. I think the animation style is just fantastic, really beautiful, really well-done. But the show does get off to a slow start, I think.The fist two episodes are a shaky introduction that feels very generic fantasy, trying to summarize a massive game to get you to the story, but it just didn’t work for me. The third is where it really gets going, but I haven’t watched beyond it yet. The show is also trying to fit a lot in these little 25 minute episodes, and they feel cramped, squished, like they would have been better given a whole hour to stretch out in.

I’m not sure quite what I expected, but this wasn’t it. It’s fine — and considering my personal dislike for Campaign 1, that’s a pretty positive reaction — but after those first three episodes I wasn’t running to watch the next batch. I’ll get around to it eventually, but I’m not sure when

Absolutely. It could be like Stardew Valley, where we’re out here growing pumpkins in Elwynn or raising pigs in Durotar. We can chill, decorate our homes and farms, chat at the local tavern, and just enjoy hanging out in Azeroth, with the downtime we very rarely get to have in game.

I think the quiet moments like this are exactly what’s missing in WoW, which is so focused on big adventures and increasingly more improbable bad guys that we never just sit still for a while. And sometimes sitting still would be nice. There’s definitely space for something like this, a fun, relaxing little game where Azeroth is a peaceful place because of the work of our heroes, and we can just spend time exploring, or baking bread, or growing pumpkins, or whatever else pleases us.

We could all use a chill game like that in our lives, I think.

And Roxxii’s reign of terror continues! I am definitely not prepared for the Super Bowl. I know the Super Bowl is happening this weekend, and that’s all I know about it. And I’m not Googling it to find out more, because then the machinery of the internet will get the idea that I’m interested in knowing about football, and I’ll never get away from it.

Just leave me in peace, to enjoy the quiet away from this one thing!

And that’s all for now. If you’re into the Super Bowl, I hope you enjoy it very much (but I am going to be doing something else), and if you don’t I hope you have something you love planned for the weekend too. Be sure to pet your pets and hug your loved ones, and I’ll see you back here next week.