The Queue: For the love of the game

Yes, of course I made several barely-considered but inexpensive purchases for the current Steam sale. I am not made of stone, here. And yes, of course, since the start of the current Steam sale I have added more than double the number of games to my wishlist as I have impulsively purchased. And so shall the sun rise again in the morning.

This is The Queue, our daily column where it seems like you have questions but you already have the answers you want me to give. So.

Dalaran, and it’s not even close.

All the small changes we see from era to era have always been so charming, but going back in time to this particular point is even better. The fact that it’s just surrounded by woods and construction is so weird, and yet, that’s what it was (sort of) supposed to be from the start, is so neat. There are small touches throughout the whole city, from the Horde sector just being the orphanage, but Breanni’s is still as it always was. Dalaran has always been one of my favorite spots in WoW and I had major feels just getting to go there for the first time.

Addons are allowed in the beta, and will be allowed in Forever going forward.

However, when I’m in a Blizzard alpha or beta, I attempt to go as close to the base install as possible. I feel this helps the devs the most, since I usually don’t know if an error is being thrown because of something they did, or something an addon did. It can also alter what I view to be the baseline experience. The reason I added in the descriptions for the dig sites in the massive Last Architect quests guide is because I didn’t have access to coordinates without an addon. I’m glad that I included both. I’m not sure I would have bothered if I had a coordinates addon installed initially.

I find my approach to gaming is similar to my approach to writing fiction. Get started, keep going, keep going anyway, no it’s fine, just write it down, mark this section with capital Xs so it catches your eye, keep going, it’s FINE, it’s fine. And then fix it all in post.

What kind of freshwater fish would be in this river in this region at this time of year? What would the average temperature at this time be? Are they travelling east to west to get there, and then also east to west to go back to the first location? Do I need a map or a spreadsheet? I should probably rename this character. Did I make an incorrect assumption early on and now I need to double back to the beginning just to get this one little thing done, and then I can go back to where I was? Does it even matter?

Honestly I think I want to play a Priest because that’s my OG but leveling was such a bear. I also worry about getting into PUGs without a group finder tool. Meh. I’ll figure it out later.

I love the general idea of last names but I’m finding the justification, that they added them because of megaservers, to be inadequate at best. There are going to be so many freaking people all jammed into these servers, and as usual, the demand is going to be so much higher than this solution provides for. While yes, technically with the extra number of characters there are extra combinations, and a lot of them, but so many people are planning on using the names they’ve had for their characters for literally over twenty years. We’re all assuming that, lol, Arthas and Legolas and Raistlin are all going to be taken instantly, but I would also wager that someone who’s been calling their gnome Tinkzi for 20 years in-game and mentally (or with an addon) added the surname Boltspark is going to be jazzed about adding an umlaut or whatever to any of those.

Forever has seemed so popular that I don’t think any combo you have your heart set on is a sure thing.