#you can't just drop this shit on us in a fucking rumor engine

[feyd-rautha-apologist]

HUH???? GW what the fuck???

[winterspiderpurrs]

The phone rang twice before it was picked up.

" Hey Punk. This isn't the normal Sunday catch up.... can't wait til lunch tomorrow? What do you need?"

Steve laughs, he was folding some laundry and had his cell phone sitting on the coffee table with his ear buds in.

" Hey Buck, can't a guy call you up with out needing something?"

" Not in my line of business but I also know you Rogers. If it couldn't wait a day...."

" Yeah your right...err... well I met someone... and I don't wanna look them up in the system.. and wondered if you could see what you can find out? "

Bucky laughed " Ooh and here I thought this was serious. What makes you think you need to look them up? It's easy work but seems odd for you to ask"

Steve chuckles a little nervously " He seems... no he is adorable. Very sweet and just... a touch to good to be true. And I saw him getting into an extremely fancy black car after the gym one time."

" shit. Okay what's there name, any other details you can give before I go to my sources?"

" he is an Columbia University student. He is so smart. Only 21 and working on his doctors I think he said something about bio engineering? His name is Peter Parke"

" Meet me at our spot. Now. Drop and hurry."

The line ends and Steve stares over at the phone for a moment before rushing to grab his keys, wallet, gun and his baseball cap. He slips on his jacket and heads out of his apartment. He is only about 5 blocks away from their meet up spot. The old apartment complex they grew up in. The downstairs has 24hr dinner. His mom used to wait tables there before she passed.

Bucky was already there waiting in the far back corner. Two coffees sitting on the table.

" Buck. What's going on- you"

Bucky leans across the table moving his phone into view " is that him? Take a good look and I need you to be 100% sure Steve"

Staring at Bucky before looking at the phone. It was clear in the photo was the smiling face of Peter Parker.

" Yes that Pe-"

" Don't say his name out."

Now the two childhood friends are just staring at each other. Bucky puts his phone away before whipping his hand across his face in frustration. He sighs looking up at the ceiling then back to Steve.

" How did you meet. And be clear with me Steve. Did he bump into, did he engage the initial meet, dropped something and you picked it up, waiting for you to open a door, let you move ahead of him in line."

Steve frowns " No he didn't. I've seen him for a while at the gym in passing. And after we last hung out you said I should put myself out there.... so I approached him. Honestly I wasn't sure if it was gonna work. But I asked him to join me for lunch at the place next to the gym. ... he said I wasn't his type but we had a good lunch. And we have been meeting the past couple of weeks at the gym and having a lunch..."

Sighing Bucky takes a big swig of coffee. " You know the man I work for Steve. Thankfully you keep out of our business and we keep out of yours. But.... the kid.... he is a kitten amongst wolves. He is my bosses son. And he probably already knows about you and have you being watched. Thankfully you haven't made big enough moves on bambino for him to show up at your door"

Peter Parker, cute adorable flirty but shy nerd, son of rumored mob boss Tony Stark. Owner of Stark Industries. And here Steve was, FBI agent.

" Fuck Bucky.... are you gonna get in trouble for meeting me here then? What should I do?"

" First.... I'm going to have kitten tell me how he feels if he wants to be serious with you. Then we are going to approach Stark about courting his kid"

" I care sbout him Buck. But how could... the dad let me date his kid?"

" Steve. Your straight lace. You have rules and morals. You would Never hurt him. When you care your all in, til the end no matter what it takes. He knows that about you. Your the perfect person for his son.... also looks good to the public."

" Okay. But I don't even have his phone number.. we just meet at the gym. Won't see him til Monday."

Bucky nods before pulling his phone back out, couple of clicks then he is holding it up to his ear.

" HI Jamie! I miss you! You never check in on me anymore how are you?"

Steve blinks and looks hard at Bucky who is currently fighting a small blush from rising. Well... now Steve might know who Peter's type was. Interesting.

[swampgallows]

What do you think... When will WoW end? Story telling and game play wise. Sure it makes a lot of cash for blizz but it can't go on for another decade can it?

The most I can imagine is that they might make a “WoW 2″ type deal. I’m sure on the programming side of things they’d be elated to finally work with a more modern engine, but on the customer side of things I’m not sure how the transfer would work (or how much of the playerbase would be willing to go quietly, as it were, considering how long Nostalrius existed before Blizz caved and made official Classic servers). On that note though, it could be a long con to transfer WoW and all of its xpacs to a platform not unlike Classic: a fusion of the current Chromie timetravel leveling and Classic’s preserved-server partitions per xpac (like rumored BC servers, WotLK servers, etc. all the way up to whatever precedes “WoW 2″). 

From a story perspective, I can’t imagine WoW having any more or less grandiose of a conclusion than our last few xpacs. Our character’s individual power level and influence has increased so exponentially with the severity and depth of the threats that pretty much every single development in WoW seems like the end of the world. Like, Illidan was a threat definitely, but it wasn’t like... the end of the world. Maybe I’m forgetting some shit but I feel like up until Cataclysm, Azeroth hadn’t been threatened on a global level since the War of the Ancients when the Well of Eternity fucking exploded.

Like, don’t get me wrong, the Scourge and the Lich King were/are definitely a threat, as is the Burning Legion. But we as player characters weren’t “the champion” shouldering the recovery and preservation of the entire planet on our shoulders facing off against a global, cosmic threat. The Burning Legion is bad, but as long as we cut them off at the source, Azeroth was okay. And since Burning Crusade took place mostly in Outland, an already-ruined ex-planet, Azeroth itself was fairly chill. WotLK was a little more dire, but if we could put a stop to the Lich King, then we could handle the Scourge. Worst case scenario it might destroy all of the “lesser races” on Azeroth (and, considering our character is one, not a very cool outcome) but the Dragonflights kinda had their shit together with it and probably could’ve torched Arthas if it came down to it. Actually, I’m not so sure about that one, and the most I know about the Wyrmrest Accord is that it’s the server I play on. Feel free to correct me in the notes as to why dragons couldn’t light up the Lich King like a birthday cake (cough paging dragon expert Void cough cough).

But with Cataclysm/Deathwing it was like... okay our entire planet can be, and has been, severely fucked up. This goes beyond what mortal races can handle. It’s not just sword and shield stuff anymore; we have to directly ask for the help of these greater beings. MoP was a short return to the more domestic side of things until some flat-assed yam guy dropped a nuke and dug up a heart. 

i know I’m WAY off topic and I’ve talked about it before but dropping the nuke on Theramore is, to me, a very distinct moment when WoW jumped the shark. It changed the tonal storytelling of WoW, the kind of warfare we can expect in WoW (see: iron horde, azerite weapons), the enormity of the war and our actions, etc. From that point we have ramped up to where we are now, which is that we’re going into the afterlife to repair the machinations of death itself. Like, that’s a long, long, long fucking way from “please pick me some cactus apples and I’ll teach you my recipe”. 

The stakes have become so high by the end of every xpac that I think any “end” to WoW would have to, in comparison, be incredibly humble and tame to leave any significant impact. And while I imagine that would upset people a lot, I don’t really know what more you can ask for beyond “the dead are at peace, the living are at peace, the world is at peace”. And, like, maybe half of an allusion to still-brewing rivalries so the eternal battle between Alliance and Horde rages on, or something? That would be a letdown in its own right I think but it could be good sequel fodder. And if they made that sequel, they could very easily transfer the faction war onto a new planet, further in time with new places, new races, new classes, new skills, so on and so forth, discovering and developing another corner of what is potentially an endless Warcraft universe.

Especially considering our impact on the Burning Legion and soon Shadowlands, which spans timeways and planets and much more beyond Azeroth specifically, it only makes sense that other planets or peoples might be aware of what’s going on in Azeroth. For all we know, it could be a great opportunity to pull a reset and have us start back at the beginning, wide-eyed adventurers discovering everything again for the first time.

tl;dr if Blizz really wanted to, they could pull a Pokemon and have the same song and dance further in the future on a different planet in-game with a different client and engine irl, and hopefully find a way to transfer a bunch of your shit to the new game a la Pokemon Bank.