The Queue: What time is it? Showtime!

Showtime as in “write the Queue” time.

We’ve seen some interesting… and annoying… light mechanics before, such as Vault of the Wardens, where you had to carry a light as you were heading towards the last encounter, and during the Cordana fight you had to use the Light of Elune to find her avatars and kill them, as well as display rows of spirits to dodge. It was a tricky one that required coordination.

I think if Blizzard adds an additional light mechanic, it should be one easily accessible by all classes. You could theme it in some way per class — as you say, perhaps Paladins could wield a the Light itself — but make it so no one is left out. Non magical classes could pick up torches or enchanted items that glow — surely Khadgar would offer us something in exchange for a few apexis crystals.

Whatever the specific mechanics, whether you need light to navigate, whether you need light to dodge things, or whether you need light to simply push back the creeping darkness and avoid damage (or do more damage yourself), it needs to be accessible to groups of all compositions, which means every class needs a way to do it.

Bring the player, not the class, right? While I am not sure I like the idea of more darkness mechanics, the best design here will be to make this as open as possible. Preferably so I don’t have to deal with lighting my own path.

WoW is less a game and more of a very complicated social network. With dragons. And swords. And dragons wielding swords.

Which is to say as long as my friends were there, I’d be there. WoW is such a massive game it’s hard to run out of things to do. There’s always another achievement to hunt, a new transmog to get, another alt to play. The game is 20 years old and there are still people who prefer to play the Classic experience. Even if the game stopped getting major updates, people would still be here, and that means I’d still be here.

Let’s look at Diablo 2 as a Blizzard comparison. The game was originally released in 2000, and the servers are still online, with ladder seasons continuing to update. Even though Diablo 2: Resurrected launched in 2021, the original Diablo 2 remains online and playable, with ladder seasons that reset on a schedule so players can continually compete for the top spot on the leaderboards.

If WoW were going into maintenance mode, I think we’d see something similar to what we see in Diablo 2, with some kind of cycle of minor content, such as new PVP and Mythic+ seasons that mixed up previous rewards and events and offered them again. Perhaps even a Fated raids style system — or even a Season of Discovery style system — that remixed things a bit so there was still new-ish content, even though there isn’t any new content.

Regardless, I think Blizzard will keep the lights on for as long as players are interested in playing. We’ve seen them do it before with other games, and I don’t think WoW would be any different.

Breakfast sandwiches, hands down. I mean, pizza is great but give me sausage and bacon and cheese and eggs on toast or in a croissant or smushed between some pancakes… yum. I could eat breakfast sandwiches all day every day.

Snow is very pretty, as long as you are safely inside when it is falling (and don’t need to go out any time soon).

Shoveling snow really cuts down on the enthusiasm, though, and it’s less pretty once it’s in a slightly muddy pile from clearing the driveway. All in all I’ll give seasons a 3/5 rating. Nice, but needs improvement. (Would anyone like to come by and shovel snow for me?)

Kiss Anduin, marry Jaina, kill Genn.

I will not be taking further questions at this time, but I am curious as to everyone else’s answers.

And that’s all for today, my friends. I hope you’ve had a good week and even if you didn’t I hope you have a good weekend. Hopefully we’ll all make some time to chill out and catch up on our sleep debt.

But for now, that’s the Queue. I’ll see you next week.