The Queue: Absolutely, definitely hard at work

Yes, that’s it exactly, we are working, working very hard to accomplish things and definitely not sitting here watching a countdown to the next Dragon Age game. Nope, not me. I am way more responsible than that.

So let’s talk about Warcraft and its many microtransaction-related follies of the past day. This is the Queue.

At this point, I expect the time to buy was yesterday. After the Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur was announced, WoW token prices started rising, and I expect they’ll keep going up for a while as players trade in their gold for cash to buy this new mount. I expect demand will stay high for a while, until demand for the mount starts to fade — my guess is gold buyers will have at least a few days, maybe a week to take advantage of high prices. Brutosaur buyers, however, may wish to wait out the surge of activity and wait for prices to dip back down to normal. Though this Brutosaur is a time-limited mount, I expect it will be here for the duration of the anniversary event, which lasts until early January.

I suspect there would be a riot if Blizzard asked for $90 this month and then made it a Trading Post reward in two months. I could see something like this potentially happening on a longer time scale, but to do so quickly would just make the people who bought it unhappy while offering it up to people who didn’t care about it enough to pay money for (myself included).

I may not be the best one to comment on this mount as I am clearly not the target audience, but Blizzard has a lot of goodwill to lose and nothing to gain by putting this on the Trading Post. If it does eventually go that way, I wouldn’t expect it before a full 12 months have passed, but I feel like even then Blizzard may leave this as something special.

But they surprised me by releasing a $90 mount in the first place, so perhaps I’m misjudging here, too. We’ll see.

I expect the rotation is set and won’t change, but if it was added, with the number of brutosaurs I’ve seen in the wild it doesn’t seem like it be a problem for participants… certainly you would see more people with it than with the Spectral Tiger.

Grim Fandango. It’s not really scary — well, okay, some definitely scary things happen, and it’s set in the Land of the Dead, but it’s really a nicer place than you’d expect — but it is full of rich, delicious atmosphere. It’s a game built on noir vibes with heaping amount of goofiness on the side (Glottis does a lot of that), set in a hyper-stylized version of the afterlife.

The remaster does a good job of retaining its character while making it just that bit cleaner. Unlike some classic games, it’s still supported by modern platforms and the control scheme doesn’t feel awkward or out of date. It’s just as fun to play now as it was the first time.

I actually downloaded it the other day to replay, though it’s very optimistic of me to assume I’ll find the time. Still, it’s a good game year ’round.

And that, my friends, is all for today. Whether you have joined the brutosaur squad or not, I wish you a pleasant afternoon and a good weekend to follow. Take care of yourselves and I’ll see you again next week.