The Queue: Surprise!

Hello, dear readers! Didn’t expect to see me today? Well, that’s on you. Editors show up where and when they want, where and when they are least expected.

Let’s Queue.

Considering Dragonflight had zero new Allied Races (unless you count Dracthyr there), I don’t think there’s any requirement to have any set number per expansion. We haven’t had new Allied Races since Battle for Azeroth.

So… a Nerubian Allied Race may be wishful thinking. I don’t think Blizzard is setting any particular goals here.

But keep wishful thinking. You never know what might happen. But just because we’re getting one (or two) races doesn’t mean we’ll get three (or four).

The big problem with Dragonriding, start to finish, is that it is simply not accessible to a portion of people. I, personally, can Dragonride but am very bad at it, and I know many people who can’t due to motion sickness or other issues. Blizzard has added some features to help with these things, and I applaud them for continuing to add new accessibility features to the game, but with Dragonriding it hasn’t been a sure-fire fix for everyone (or even most people).

And I think the core problem is that Dragonriding was designed without accessibility in mind, and so it is a very cool, very fun feature that a lot of people simply can’t use… and the game offers no alternative, because it was built as such a core feature. I recall, pre-release, asking the developers about accessibility with Dragonriding and being told they’re open to feedback and that people should ask for feature ideas that would help, but it didn’t seem like they inherently had a plan to make it accessible for people with motion sickness or physical or visual disabilities that make it difficult to control a dragon. Yes, you can ride along with someone else, but it requires someone else.

I can understand the reasons Blizzard doesn’t want to add flying at the beginning of an expansion. They want you to engage and explore rather than flying over everything. However, here they’re adding flying from the beginning but it’s the kind of flying that not everyone can do. I think it needs to be all or nothing — if Blizzard doesn’t want us flying from the start, don’t have flying from the start. But if we have flying from the start, we should have flying from the start. Yes, there are ways standard flight is more convenient, like for getting out of the fray and hovering to wait for spawns or nodes. But the cost of not having standard flying available is having a set of people who cannot play the game, and I don’t think it’s worth the cost. If flying is available, let people fly.

I have wondered this myself. I have a couple of alts on live that I’d like to level, but it’s much faster and more convenient to level in ReMists. But it’s a tough choice: one of them was my long-time Monk main, and I don’t want to abandon the character and start over. I’m going to have to level it in live, and thus either I’m not going to do it because I’m spending my time in ReMists or I’m not making progress in ReMists to play this other character. (Most likely I won’t get it leveled.)

I also have a Vulpera Fury Warrior I’ve really enjoyed leveling, and I leveled it into the low 60s the old fashioned way (by playing the game). It’s close to max level, but it might actually be faster to reroll in ReMists than to get those last levels.

So I don’t have an answer for you, but it’s a tough choice. It would be nice if Blizzard offered a one-time transfer into ReMists for higher level (but not max level) characters, though I can see that opening up all kinds of problems with gear.

However, if your concern is leveling quickly, and you’re under level 60… it’s probably worth rerolling; it will likely be faster.

On one hand, I think this would be really neat! I would like a special transmog for reporting 1000 typos (and I would find them). Maybe a neat hat?

On the other hand, no matter what the reward was, people would dive in and min-max the heck out of it, finding the most efficient way to report the most things and thus collect rewards. They would spam report, report non-existent problems, do whatever they needed to do. If it was time-based, you’d have people figuring out the best way to get the rewards with the least effort.

And while all that was happening, half of the community would be up in arms because they’re now required to beta test the game to get these rewards, while others would deride Blizzard for laying off QA staff and replacing them with volunteers.

So I think it would be neat to get some kind of little reward, but if it was anything of any value, you would wind up with people trying to game the system in ways that wouldn’t help devs find or fix bugs. And if it was a tiny thing of very tiny value, it’s not much of a carrot to encourage people to test. I don’t think this one would help anyone, and it might hurt.

I think it’s extremely unlikely. I feel like this is a catch-up mechanism for people who didn’t jump in immediately and zoom through the levels (like me). You need a heck of a lot of bronze to buy all of the rewards, and considering the bronze is also used to upgrade gear so you can play more effectively (and thus earn more rewards), it’s tough to get it all. This will make earning these looks more achievable for more people.

It’s a good thing, but I don’t think it’s a precursor to Blizzard adding more rewards.

And that’s all for now my friends. I hope you are having a pleasant Thursday, and make it to the end of the week unharmed. Weeks are tough, and Thursdays are tough, so I wish you luck.