The Queue: Falling under Hearthstone’s spell

Hearthstone isn’t always (at least not for me) good fun… I’m not particularly good at it and never make it very far if I try to play competitively. Still, I enjoy tuning in to watch Matticus talk about it and, oddly, I had a lot of trouble turning away from this week’s not-quite-endless Hearthstone turn. There was just something about the soothing rhythm of the ongoing barrage of Arcane Missiles that was hard to look away from.

But now that that’s come to an end, we can get back to the business of answering Queue questions.

All good (and questionably good) things must come to an end, including that insanely long Hearthstone turn. The final time count was just over 45 hours of arcane missile madness which was strangely hypnotic to watch… and we kind of miss now that it’s gone. What will we do with our spare time now?!

Unfortunately, most of these quests don’t appear in any order, making it impossible to know how far along you are in the series. There are 12 quests in the chain and only the last two are guaranteed to be in a set order. You can check out the whole list — and perhaps figure out how many you have left — on Wowhead.

Unfortunately, we don’t know what’s become of El’s. As commenters have mentioned, El has been MIA in-game and on Twitter for about as long as the site has been down, and though we’ve reached out to El we haven’t heard anything.

Sometimes real life gets in the way of our ongoing virtual adventures, and we hope that’s all that’s happened here. In the meanwhile, we’re all missing our favorite fishing resource — many of our writers wouldn’t be the virtual fishermen they are today without El’s help.

Personally, I think one of the best things about World of Warcraft is that there’s not much you feel compelled to do (even if raiding is certainly highly encouraged as part of progression). I’ve played the game as a hardcore, 40-hour-a-week raider. I’ve played the game as part of a more casual, 10-player raid group. I’ve played the game focused on PvP. Lately, I’m spending a lot of time focused on collecting pets, mounts, and achievements — and particularly advancing in the surprisingly challenging battle pet mini-game.

But I’d hardly say you’re alone in this, especially as Blizzard continues to put raiding at the forefront of story and gear progression. Still, the game now has more to do than ever if you don’t feel like raiding — though, for the most part, it’s less directed content like collecting, which could contribute to that listless feeling. That sort of gameplay isn’t for everyone… but then again, neither is raiding. For my part, when I’m feeling listless in game it’s usually a sign that it’s time to take a break and do something else for a while — whether that means changing what I’m up to in-game or spending some time catching up on my reading list or playing — gasp! — other games.

But it sounds like you’re on the right track to fixing your listlessness by pulling together a new raid group. Good luck!

There’s a good reason we don’t usually spend a lot of game time replaying old content — it’s simply not as rewarding as new content. After all, when was the last time you paid a visit to your Mists of Pandaria farm? And if you did pay a recent visit, just how much farming did you do? Probably none, unless you’d gone back to work on grinding out Mists cooking skills or reputation for achievements.

In part, this happens simply by making newer content an all-around better, with more relevant rewards of all types. However, nerfing old content can play a part, too. Though we can’t say for sure just what Blizzard will do with garrisons when the next expansion comes around, it wouldn’t be unheard of for them to nerf the return offered on garrison missions and work orders as a way to subtly encourage us not to stay in our garrisons forever… but they might also be hard at work on an even better take on garrisons for the future, something so great that we don’t won’t want to go back except for nostalgia purposes.

What we do know for sure that our garrisons are stuck on Draenor and Blizzard’s certain to give us a good reason to run to the next big thing when it comes along — we just don’t know how, exactly, they’ll do it yet.

That’s it for today, everyone! Check back tomorrow for more answers to your questions and, as always, keep questioning.