The Queue: Time’s Winged Chariot

But at my back I always hear/
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;/
And yonder all before us lie/
Deserts of vast eternity./
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

Yeah, turns out instead of being a Kree Supersoldier, Marvell was a British poet who, like a lot of other poets since poetry started, was really concerned that he should be having sex right now because we could die at any moment so it really makes sense to get all your boning in up front as much as possible.

Okay, so he did other stuff too like write things directly addressing Oliver Cromwell and convincing Charles II to not execute John Milton once Chuck was back on the English throne. But his poetical version of we’re all gonna die anyway, let’s get it on while we still can has always stuck with me as the classiest frat bro come on I’ve ever seen.

In Diablo 2, you tended to see people either devote themselves to a shapeshifter build or go raw damage caster — I played a Werebear Mauler build, for example — and not so much dropping into or out of forms. Either you went for a form and used it as much as you could, or you didn’t. I haven’t played one in D2R yet, so I am not 100% that this is still the case.

In Diablo 4, I believe you can kind of cast the way you mention, by deciding on the fly if you want to use a werebear attack or cast a spell or what have you. But it’s been a few years since the 2019 demo and I haven’t stayed on top of the Druid changes. That’s why I’m kind of sad there won’t be Druids in the early access.

Here are a few that I wish I’d heard back in 2005:

• Be patient with yourself. You’ve literally never done this before.
• Dying is not failure.
• Be patient with everyone else, too. You don’t know what’s going on with them — maybe they flubbed that easily anticipated mechanic and died because they’re running on fumes from a hard day at work, or because they sneezed, or their mouse batteries ran out. Focus on yourself and what you’re doing.
• This is supposed to be fun. You’re playing a game, so give yourself permission to have fun and roll with the silliness.
• Get a focus interrupt macro. Trust me. If you don’t have an interrupt, then ignore this one.

It’s 2023. WoW turns 19 this year.

There is no reason that there should be race/class restrictions in a game in 2023, much less one that is 19 years old and still chugging along.  I know I’m exactly one of the people who used to say things like A Tauren would never make a pact with demons and get all offended but you know what? With age comes wisdom in addition to all the extreme body pains and aches, and I now realize that World of Warcraft is a game, I play games to have fun, and telling people they can’t play that Draenei Warlock or Tauren Warlock or what have you just isn’t cool.

You could make a case for the Dracthyr because the race is the class, I dunno, I still don’t like it and don’t see a compelling reason to do it. Let everyone play whatever they want, whether it’s a Gnome or Night Elf Paladin, an Orc Druid, a Human Demon Hunter, it’s time already. Would I play all possible combos? No, I would not. So I don’t have to, and that’s me sorted out then and the people who want to summon the Holy Light on their Troll can and we’re all happy.

Yup. Just Venus and Jupiter. That’s all it is. Whatever you think you saw, whoever tells you otherwise, it’s just Venus and Jupiter.

Please don’t look into this any further.

I have several problems with replacing gear with skill.

First up, there’s a great deal of skill involved in choosing the exact right gear set up and knowing all the proper information about your class and spec in order to maximize your gear’s impact on your character’s performance in game. I’m not sure ripping that out of the game by the roots is healthy for the game. I mean, imagine if you took gear progression out of WoW Classic? The game wouldn’t even be recognizably WoW anymore.

But more importantly, I get hives whenever I see a skill vs. gear discussion because the word skill is often used to mean something that doesn’t take into account the diversity of player skill sets and how many games do not understand that some things are less ‘skill’ and more ‘ability’ based. As a disabled player, there are a lot of times I’m playing a video game and I know exactly what to do to beat an encounter but I simply cannot execute it beyond a certain point because it requires visual acuity or reflexes not slowed by age and neuropathy. Making a ‘skill’ gate in WoW, or any other game, basically means you’re telling your disabled players that they can just stop trying to progress and leave the game to younger or less hindered players.

Now, WoW is 19 years old this year, and if you played it in Vanilla, you are at a minimum approaching 30. If you were in college, you’re almost 40 at best and probably pushing towards 50 at this point. With age comes increasing physical deterioration — even if you’re in amazing shape, run every day, do a full and challenging workout or what have you, your body simply declines as you age.

So telling the aging playerbase of World of Warcraft that we’re going to switch the game’s focus from being able to outgear/overpower encounters with raw force and now we’re switching to what will likely be the easiest for non disabled players who can react the fastest (because 9 times out of 10, ‘skill’ in a video game means ‘twitch reflexes’ ultimately) will not only serve to increase the whole ‘get gud’ mentality after a dungeon wipe, but it will serve to isolate and penalize those players who simply can’t do what they once could physically even though they understand the game and how to play it better than ever.

This doesn’t mean there’s no benefit to introducing certain elements to palliate the whole “I can’t get my 4 piece to drop” elements of the game, which is why I generally like things like the ability to swap gear into tier or the Great Vault. But such a drastic change to how WoW plays would, in my opinion, not be good for the game as a whole.

Okay that’s the Queue for today. Take care everyone.