The Last Warcraft Wednesday? – The Climb #901

Wednesday 11th August 2021

Today was Warcraft Wednesday and it felt a bit of an odd one. Warcraft has been a strange place of late. For many people, including myself, Warcraft is a bit of a safe haven. It’s a place where I go when I’ve had a stressful day and just want to forget the world. But with all the news about mistreatment of staff at the studio, it has somehow impacted the game.

Whilst there are those who’ve left the game based on their decision not to give money to the studio, there are others who have left because the game feels tainted. I know that feeling. I love this game and yet, I found myself asking if supporting it and the remaining devs was the right thing to do. It was only after reading tweets from a number of those devs who suffered under the abuses of the studio, asking people to stay, that I decided it was okay to keep playing.

Even so I’ve only been keeping my raiding character up to date.

There’s something in the virtual air. We’ve all seen friends leave the game, some for principles, some because their once safe space doesn’t feel so safe anymore. I can appreciate that.

Today I unlocked the last covenant campaign quest. I was a little shocked by this. I felt I still had loads to do. These lore heavy and extensive quest chains have been some of the best things in the latest patch, and now we’re at the end. In typical fashion, everything is left open ended looking forwards to the future, but it feels like an end.

We still have loads of work to do on the raid, but this is typically the time that a lot of players log off, leaving the game until such time as a new patch gets released.

It just all feels… so sad.

This is probably why I’ve been enjoying Minecraft instead. I suck at the game – which is saying something when there’s not really any game so to speak of. My buildings are a bit crap and all I’ve seemed to do is mine dirt to create my farm. Everything has been started and nothing is finished.

I took advantage of an offer to get a realm for free for a month. We’ll probably be bored by the end of it. But what was originally myself and my brother, is now myself and a few friends. We all have dedicated areas spreading off in different directions, allow us near infinite space to create. It’s fun logging on and seeing what they’ve created.

But they’re all building automated farms and mining rare resources, and I’m farming dirt.

On the plus side, I’ve found you can play the game really really easily on an iPad, so I did a lot of dirt clearing on the Support Bubble sofa whilst watching TV.

At some point I’ll be bored of Minecraft at which time, Warcraft will hopefully feel a warmer place. But if not, perhaps we’ll have to have Minecraft Mondays instead of Warcraft Wednesdays?