The Queue

Can you believe that it’s almost Halloween? By this time next week, all of the candy will be on sale and Jack-o-lanterns will be extinguished. We better make the most of it, before that other holiday rears its head and you can’t go into a store without hearing carols.

While I go put up some spooky decorations, it’s time for — The Queue.

It’s almost the weekend, and I am ready for a nap or ten. But while I wait for my weekend nap time, let’s Queue.

I promise the title is actually relevant — but even if not, who doesn’t love a good #ThrowbackThursday to remind them of one of everyone’s favorite lines in the game?!…No?

Okay, fine. In that case, I guess all we have left to do…

…is Queue.

In honor of my wife’s birthday, I wanted to tell a little story.

I didn’t play Warcraft 3 at the time, and had absolutely no interest in World of Warcraft when I heard it was coming out. MMO’s sounded ridiculous to me — I have pretty strong social anxiety and the idea of playing a game at the same time as other human beings just didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. Julian, a girl I knew primarily online, and I talked about it but it wasn’t until she came to visit and actually used my computer to play the game (she was in the beta) and showed me how to play it that I started to get interested. And even then, playing a Paladin on her account, I ended up getting yelled at to heal a Deadmines run. I did not want to heal, and so, I did not enjoy that group.

But after Julian went back up to Canada, WoW became how we kept in touch. It was our instant messaging, our shared activity (I would tank and she would DPS, we ranged across Azeroth’s many dungeons)  and our evenings would often end with the two of us sitting on the dock in Menethil Harbor chatting. Once she came back down to Seattle, we settled into a groove playing in a raid guild together, which is what led to pretty much the past fifteen years of us being married.

And so many of our shared memories have involved video games — both of us yelling treasure goblin and screaming around a level in Diablo 3 trying to kill the pesky things, innumerable dungeon runs and raids together, allowing myself to be dragged along on yet another attempt to tame something I’ve never heard of, so much of it I might never have done if not for her. In a real way, without Julian, I wouldn’t be working here, I certainly wouldn’t have ever played WoW, and my life would be utterly different now. I love you, Julian. Thank you.

You know, in looking through our internal media kit to honor Cory on his birthday, I started wondering if a theme emerged, along the lines of orangish-brown bears. Probably not.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we’ll supply the answers — in glorious transmog, naturally.

It’s the Muppet Queue!

Welcome to the Queue, which is still not about Star Trek but might be about the Muppets.

Queue!

I’m as surprised as you guys! I mean, I literally didn’t want to play it, I just did it because our beloved EiC Liz Harper made the point that I should probably give it a shot if we were going to talk about it during the podcast. And then I did play it, and… I kind of liked it? I mean, it didn’t become an obsession or anything, but I enjoyed the experience and I felt like this is what the Garrison mission table should have been — not just selecting characters and sending them off to fight, but actually controlling them, choosing how they attack and what tactics they use.

I mean, it’s not particularly deep, but I’m not even past level 7 yet, so we’ll see how it feels once I get better at it. Regardless, I actually had fun playing it and I’m not adverse to continuing to play it.

Oh, and I’m listening to L7’s Pretend We’re Dead as part of my I’m awake at 4 am and I need music to function playlist. It’s also got Wolves Without Teeth by Of Monsters and Men on there, which is pretty dang good, you should try that out.

There are several things I’m disappointed never made it into WoW. Among those, felt the keenest, is the fact that we’ll never have a Corgis Unleashed expansion after all.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we’re going to talk about how we were totally going have quivers before we answer.

Seriously, remember those?