Comic #794: Is this an Upgrade? (Patreon)

This comic went through a lot of rivisions. My original version was only 4 or 5 panels, no rhyming. Keydar was simming a new piece of loot using an abacus and chalkboards. In the final panel you see him standing next to Nyte with a soon to be expired loot roll window up, he says "NEED!" and Nyte says, "God I hate you". As much as I liked that idea, I scrapped it when I remembered that loot rolls are completely gone in all end game content.

The second version had the same punchline but had no rhyming, and was a lot shorter. I was struggling with how to reveal the expired timer in the final panel. I thought about showing the tooltip with the 2 hour timer on it in the first panel, and then revealing it had expired in the last panel. However, I'm pretty sure 90% of my readers would have seen the punchline coming.

I started to realize that I needed a ton of exposition, and I couldn't figure out how to include it without the comic being clunky. Rhyming can be a good way to force exposition where it feels natural. The downside is it takes FOREVER to write. Getting the rhymes is only half the challenge. I find getting the meter right just as hard.

I borrowed the theme from comic #557 (Have you seen my legendary), and gave it a bit of a storybook feel.

I wanted that final panel to animate the countdown really badly, but the gif would have to loop, and the timer would be constantly resenting. In the end I decided to just have it sit at zero.

Also, because I know people will mention this, I did consider having the punchline be that Keydar's new ring had too high of an ilvl and thus he couldn't trade it. In the end I decided the timer version was better, because it had the added irony of being caused by his simming. It also reminded me a bit of comic #576.

One last thing regarding panel #3: I can't remember how simming was done in Wrath. My memory tells me it was still done on spreadsheets and could be calculated somewhat more easily, but I could be wrong. In the end I just found the rhyme really funny so I kept it.