The Queue: Missing vacation

Can you believe that work made me work last week? The nerve! What’s worse? They’ll continue to make me work this week!

The jerks.

While I try really hard to find some buried treasure to retire with, it’s time for our daily question-and-answer column — The Queue!

I’ve been back! I was back before it started; I’m still waiting for it to get exciting.

The problem with the more recent Race to World First events is that without a week to do Heroic, the guilds just spend so very much time running Heroic splits before they do Mythic. This time, they’ve even done some Mythic splits and Normal splits! I get it, you need the good gear, and you want the best chance possible to win — splits are just so not exciting, though. I wanna see guilds slamming their faces into brick walls of bosses that they may or may not mathematically be able to beat. That eventual triumph over the robo crab was all the sweeter for having killed them for so long. I want to see the top guilds inching forward, percent by percent, in a foot race to the finish line.

That’s the only way to have stakes early on in the race; otherwise we get what happened Sunday. Liquid finally (finally!) got into Mythic, and they killed the first three bosses in a total of nine pulls. The third boss took seven pulls, and they one-shot the first two. Hooray! We have progress, and maybe now we’ll see the race getting deeper into the temple and get to laugh as they fall apart due to some bonkers Mythic ability overlap. Except that wasn’t going to be the case; Liquid went on and started doing Mythic splits and killed the third boss again. Yawn.

I want the race to feel fun and exciting from the kickoff, and this, uh, isn’t it.

The same goes for teams going dark at the end of their night. Just show off the funky strats. Chances are you’ve all got roughly the same idea; let’s just let it all hang out. The time for planning is during intermissions and before you get going. If you’re pulling in the raid, let’s see it. I know that there are strategic reasons for not doing this, but I’m talking from a purely viewer standpoint. It doesn’t make for good TV.

Bacardi doesn’t condone sports betting. He’s a fine, upstanding cat and doesn’t like what all of these online sportsbooks have done to people watching the game. Weird Al recently talked about turning down a performance because the money made him feel icky, and he didn’t need that at this point in his career, so why can’t all these top-tier athletes, like Connor McDavid, make the same decision when it comes to endorsing sports gambling? The thing that literally destroyed athletes’ careers? He can’t be hurting for money. I know he took a pretty low payout to stay in Edmonton, but c’mon, he’s got other endorsements.

But probably the Jaguars. I mean, it’s right there in the name. No way he’d bet on the Panthers, not after what they’ve done.

Hey, I’d take that! Of course, with my luck, it would be a smash hit with both audiences and critics alike, win a bunch of awards, look like a visual feast for the ages, and then take forever to release a second season and not quite hit the same highs as the first season. Only for it to be announced that it won’t be returning for a third season, but they’re still committed to telling stories in the universe. Maybe. Eventually.

Lookin at you, Arcane.

I just need the animation industrial complex at Blizzard to lurch painfully, fitfully, into gear so that the wheels are turning. I don’t care what universe we get, just as long as something starts coming out that we can point to and say, “See! It works!!”

Of course, I am also putting a lot of assumptions on whatever winds up coming out to be good. A crazy thought, I know.

Gone are the days of video game scarcity; there’s always something else out there to play. I don’t need a game to inflate its length by requiring hours of grinding or a slow walk from point A to B. I’m all for some modern improvements to games, as long as the spirit of the game remains intact. I would also like for the game to have an option in it to turn off all modern conveniences so that the purists can choose to play it how it originally was. Turning modern quality-of-life options off should also not be required for an achievement; just make it another option in the menu. That way, someone won’t feel obligated to do it for completion’s sake; they can choose to engage with it if they want the experience and for no other reason.

Today’s Bacardi is sitting pretty on my lap, watching TV, and fully charged to give you the best loot you can get. Just look at those eyes glowing. Surely this week you’ll get some extra shiny weapons in your vault to take your game to the next level. I guar-an-tee it.

IF you don’t get something shiny, just take it up with… oh, I don’t know — Red. He said you guys look like jerks!

Would you rather

Sleep in a comfortable hammock for the next year

Or

Sleep in a comfortable water bed for the next year

Today’s Anna Earworm™: Coconut

I hope you all have a wonderful week that’s full of exciting happenings. You can help my fellow Queue writers with that by leaving them lots of questions for their Queues.