The Queue: That’s no bunny….

Welcome to Friday, everyone! We made it through another week of challenges, confusion, and exhaustion. It’s only midday and I’m already ready for a nap.

So let’s get this show on the road. Let’s Queue.

This is a rumor that seems to pop up every few years… and I think it keeps popping up precisely because it’s a pretty reasonable idea. While the Anaheim Convention Center is able to support crowds of the size BlizzCon brings in, it is a crowd. Hotels fill up as soon as the convention is announced, at double their regular rate. You’ll wait an hour to eat at IHOP. The Marriott lobby will be so full you can’t walk through it. Moving to a larger venue isn’t a bad idea.

And if the convention is moving, Las Vegas has a lot of things going for it. Firstly, the Las Vegas Convention Center has 3.2 million square feet of space (compared to Anaheim’s 1.8 million) and there are 100,000 hotel rooms within three miles of it. And for people who don’t want to walk or drive, a monorail connects the convention center to hotels on the Strip. When the convention is done for the day, there’s a practically infinite amount of food and entertainment options — the convention center isn’t next door to Disneyland, which is admittedly a big disappointment, but there’s a hell of a lot to do in Vegas even if you aren’t into drinking and gambling. The place is a spectacle.

But perhaps the biggest thing Vegas would have going for it is that BlizzCon isn’t big enough to tip the scales of city tourism. BlizzCon would not mean you’re paying double or triple for food and hotels because everyone’s jacked up their rates for the crowd. There are tons of hotel options and you’ll be able to find something decent, nearby, and affordable. And you almost certainly won’t spend an hour in line to get into IHOP. (For one, I don’t know if there is an IHOP on the strip, but for another the area is awash with restaurants.)

It would be a different vibe, but I don’t necessarily think it would be a bad one. Both Anaheim and Vegas are tourist towns, with the space to support convention and travelers, but going to Vegas keeps you out of the mess of Los Angeles traffic and the nightmare that is flying to LAX. (I know, I know, the smart folks fly into SNA, but it’s impossible to get direct flights to SNA.) And I think we’d all be interested into going somewhere with cheaper flights and cheaper hotels.

I think the biggest problem with this rumor is… will there even be a BlizzCon this year? I honestly don’t know. Big gaming conventions seem to be on the decline, and I wonder if Microsoft will be interested in continuing BlizzCon. If it isn’t, well, the discussion of where becomes a little more academic. Though, hey, we could always hold our own BlizzCon.

I am Plunderstorming and doing quite poorly! I am incredibly, very bad at this game mode! Thanks, I hate it!

But I am attempting to grind up the Renown track so I can really nail the pirate look (and also get extra tendies to buy everything in the Trading Post). I focus on PVE objectives, avoid other players, and, actually that can be fun. Exploring the map, hiding, realizing there’s a chest in this corner I hadn’t seen before… that’s fun. But if I see another player I’m going to die. If I land somewhere and there’s another player there, I’m going to die immediately, also without making progress. I’m not sure why I’m so bad at this but I am entirely incapable of killing other players. (I’ve killed a couple, but it was by freak accident.) I focus on PVE and try to avoid others for long enough to do the quest, and in so doing have been making slow and steady progress. I’m at Renown 13 with the goal of doing a Renown (maybe two) a day, depending on how I feel about it. If I’m jumping in and dying a lot, I burn out quickly, but if I get some matches where I can live and wander around and collect plunder, I enjoy those.

As to the Diablo 4 season, I’m about half-way through the battle pass but I’ve kind of bailed on it. Unlike others, I don’t really have a problem with Diablo 4 right now, but it’s one thing on a list of many, many things to do. Also with all of the changes announced for season 4, I’m kind of down on playing now. I want to jump in with all of those loot changes!

Honestly, I thought patch 10.2.6 wasn’t going to be pirates. I thought it was a misdirect. Holly said something about 10.2.6 being something the community had speculated about, and I thought we were going to get some neat lore and story that would be an unexpected surprise. Instead we got… this.

Admittedly, a pirate-themed free-for-all PVP battleground was not on my bingo card for WoW this year, but it wasn’t the kind of surprise I had expected.

So I’ve lowered my expectations. Pandamonium is definitely going to be about pandas. Maybe it’s Plunderstorm, but with pandas? I know Holly said this week that there were things coming for PVErs, so maybe I shouldn’t be so salty. Blizzard calls it “Timerunning Pandamonium,” so it seems likely that we’ll be getting a Timewalking-style event that involves Mists of Pandaria. I’ve heard Challenge Mode time walking floated, and that would be interesting as I didn’t participate the first time around. But what if it were like a speed Timewalking? Instead of standard Mists Timewalking, maybe this is about finishing all five Mists Timewalking dungeons in an hour, or something like that.

However, I’ve thoroughly proven that I’m bad at guessing these. What do you think?

The triceratops is the best dinosaur. It has three horns and a very fashionable neck frill.

Thank you. I will not be taking further questions at this time.

And that’s all for this Friday, folks. Take care of yourself, eat some chocolate (if that’s your thing), and have a good weekend. I’ll see you on the other side!