The Queue: Rushing through Summer

Can you believe that we’re already so far into July?! It’s rude! Things need to slow down a bit and let us enjoy the weather.

Although it’s been pretty toasty out around here, so maybe it’s ok if we keep moving pretty quickly. Anything to get us closer to the best month, October. Things can slow down then!

While I try and invent a freeze ray, it’s time for — The Queue!

Oh, most definitely they could.

Y’know if they wanted to.

The thing is they probably don’t want to, as sad as it might be for us poor suckers who didn’t play for that single week back in Burning Crusade to get our Arcanite Ripper the original way or have lots of gold to buy it off of the BMAH whenever it shows up. The fear of missing out, or FOMO, is a powerful motivator to keep people playing Warcraft all the time, even if you’ve got a mountain of unplayed games from the most recent Steam sale.

Most of these things you’ve missed out on are status symbol-type objects. You don’t have Mists of Pandaria Challenge Mode gear so you’re not as cool as the guy who had a good group back in 2013 to get them.

Which I feel isn’t a great motivator anymore. What winds up happening now isn’t a new player seeing a cool set of Paladin armor, asking how the player got it, and going and getting it themselves, thereby playing the game longer. It’s that player asking how they can get that cool Paladin armor, and then being told that they’d have to go back in time a decade and play the game then and it’s impossible to earn now.

Sure it might light a fire under the person’s butt to never miss another reward, but it could just as well be discouraging and have the player not spend as much time in Azeroth — which would be sad.

I used to be in the camp that said if you missed it tough luck, but now I realize that’s silly and it’s just video game pixels. Let people collect them if they want them!

Not a chance. There is way too much Old God tied up in that little island for trivial things like the flow of time to work properly. Maybe not enough that you’ll have the Bronze Dragonflight moving into your neighborhood, but certainly enough to give it that otherworldly charm that we love so much.

It’s always nighttime, new attractions roll out so slowly, they’re still super excited about getting archaeology fragments, and the bands both play a set every half hour and never are late. That last one alone should prove that time is wobbly! Musicians are notoriously late for things all the time.

You’ll get them on the 23rd with the prepatch! You can see all of our information about Warbands here — but for that first day, there’ll be a slight delay in the 20-minute range as your account gets squooshed together. This could mean that things get a little shaky on Warcraft’s servers on patch day, but nothing we haven’t dealt with before.

Remember when the original Mechano-chopper in Warcraft didn’t have any fall damage because it was a passenger mount and they didn’t want you to be able to kill your friend riding shotgun? Good times!

I haven’t found anything recently, but I did write a piece about this many moons ago! Celeste (A game about climbing a mountain) developer Maddy Thorson wrote a thread on Twitter about how they put their fingers on the scale to help make the game feel good to play, even if that meant that things got a little easier for the player.

In the Queue all are one?

Have you lost weight recently, you look great by the way, maybe that’s it? Are you maybe doing something different with your hair? Whatever it is, you should keep it up as it’s clearly working for you.

Bacardi has been putting up with the hot hot heat to bring you the best in loot possible as we get closer to the end of ReMists and Dragonflight. It can be hard if you’re stuck wearing a fur coat, so make sure to leave him extra treats as a thank you for all of his hard work.

Today’s Anna Red Earworm™: Guns Gold Girls

Have an excellent day everyone, Anna is on vacation so make sure that you send good travel vibes her way — and leave lots of good questions for Red tomorrow!