The Queue: This is fine

Gentle readers, I dearly wanted this to be a triumphant picture of a bear next to a downed Eranog. However Mythic difficulty proved to be a bit out of our reach the first night we attempted it. I’m sure that the next time we go in we’ll be able to break the line of elementals that spelled our doom but tonight was not that night…

While I try and find more gear with fire resist on it, it’s time for — the Queue.

So when I saw this prompt the last game I had played was Fall Guys. I’m happy that I don’t have to dodge undead or demons or killer aliens/robots/humans/animals in it, but I’m also not looking forward to a year full of obstacle courses and racing.

I think I could do a month, maybe even three months of it, but a full year of getting battered around by giant mallets, falling into the great empty nothingness, and climbing race courses before the slime reaches you? That’s too much man!

I’m sure I could eke out a nice existence in World of Warcraft though. Stormwind seems to need a clerk in its cheese shop sometimes and I do love cheese!

I’m putting my fake virtual money firmly on when the holiday launches in-game. Sure, I could go back and research when the previous mounts became available, which would give me a firmer idea of when that is, but sometimes it’s better to just go with your gut and say damn the torpedos past year mount release dates!

I haven’t joined a pug keystone/raid in so long. Some of that is of course that I have my own circles of friends and guildmates to do content with, but even with alt characters outside of normal runs I just won’t do it.

I’ve seen too many groups get derailed by the pettiest nonsense. I’m not willing to roll the dice on what amounts to a 50/50 shot of getting a good competent group and a group that won’t know how the Spiteful mechanic actually works.

I know that I mitigate some of that by being a tank, but even still it’s not worth the psychic damage I could take by dealing with a bad group. I have little enough gaming time as it is, I don’t want to spend it needlessly frustrating myself.

It’s the classic case of Blizzard fixing a problem, making everyone happy, and then fixing it too far and nobody is happy.

The past problem was of course that personal loot wasn’t entirely great for organized groups. They wanted to be able to get the original Master Looter (Boss dies, and one person decides who gets what loot from the boss) or at the very least be able to freely trade any piece of gear that dropped on Personal Loot.

So what happened? Everyone gets group loot — but you can freely trade any piece of gear! That solves your problems, right?

Well except after an expansion of Personal Loot, you’re right, it doesn’t feel great to go back to the group loot method of loot distribution. Which is super interesting to me! See nothing about Group Loot is that fundamentally different from Personal Loot — assuming of course that everything is working properly in regards to the system not giving two of the same item to someone and a raid not seeing bows for no Hunters.

It’s just that the roll for who gets the item is out in the open instead of behind the scenes. Which makes a huge difference! Now you’re rolling against your friends and guildmates instead of the boss. In the old Personal Loot you’d kill a boss and all the members of the raid would do a behind-the-scenes roll and the top rollers there would get a piece of loot. Which was nice because it made the villain into the faceless algorithm that just didn’t quite give you loot.

Now, however, it’s that Feral Druid who keeps doing better on /rolls than you and stealing the Kurog weapon from you. So you have a very real face and name to point to and rage against for your lack of fancy loot. You don’t deserve that polearm over them for any reason, but they already got the Normal difficulty one over you, and you still don’t have it at all for transmog and you really want it, and oh boy are you seething quietly (or not so quietly) now.

The amount of loot hasn’t changed at all, it’s just more on us for who gets it — which leads to this extra friction.

Personally, I hope we see a return to Personal Loot soon because it was nicer blaming the program for my lack of loot rather than guildies.

I’m not saying that Liz isn’t a Time Lord. She did manage to correctly predict four different things this past week.

But Matt is far too open-minded to be any sort of Astartes from Warhammer 40k, even an Astartes from the Salamanders chapter.

I will gladly accept the role of Bard though. Both of my parents are musicians so they’ll be happy that I have such a musical talent despite not sticking with my piano lessons or being able to sing on key. When asked I’ll always say that the only instrument that I can play is the radio which I’m sure pains them greatly.

Sometimes it takes 0.00002 seconds to pop and that’s far too long! I have a short attention span!

More likely I’m busy fishing or killing a rare or going to a World Quest and I wasn’t quite ready to actually go into the dungeon so I’m trying to finish whatever I’m doing before hitting accept. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t…

Today’s Anna Earworm™: Spice Up Your Life

Have a great Monday everyone! Did you know that you can make your Monday better by leaving Anna with lots of questions for tomorrow? It’s true, just give it a try!