The Queue: A beautiful angel from above

Mitch: I found a header. FEAR MY WEAPONS!

Liz: Your weirdo mismatched weapons?

Mitch: Oh, you already had a header.

Liz: I was using one from Jil WHO WILL BE SUPER DISAPPOINTED PROBABLY but that’s fine.

That settled (ish), on to the Queue.

Mitch: Generally speaking, I’m going to play the second Legion activates and level as fast as I can. It’s sort of a tradition for me since Wrath and I love the mad dash to level cap. I’m one of those crazy people who ignores sleep and healthy eating for the sake of the ritual. And I love it. Specifically, though? This whole “zone scales to you” thing is going to throw me for a loop. For the sake of leveling, I’ll probably pick whichever zone you can get through fastest. I kind of liked Highmountain and it seemed easy enough, so probably I’ll head there.

Liz: I’m pretty sure you’re being insanely optimistic in thinking the servers will be remotely stable on launch day Chrth and Mitch. But my answer would be anywhere but Stormheim. I assume they’ll fix it before launch, but I have done the intro scenario approximately a million times now and it has bugged out approximately 999,999 times. Never again.

Mitch: Under the Summary page on your account that lists every game you have, it would be under the World of Warcraft heading as a PTR… which is a bit confusing. But I believe the beta is listed as “WOW4” or “WOW3” or something. You can usually tell it apart from the actual PTR because the PTR will be “WOW1.”

Liz: Anne has WOW6.

Mitch: Yeah, numbering is weird. Pretty sure anything that’s not “WOW1” is the beta.

Liz: If you’re at a computer, you can also check the launcher. It will show an option for Legion alpha (or at least that’s what it’s doing now). If you see it, start downloading — the client’s over 30GB.

Update: Apparently this isn’t always true — WoW3 can be the normal PTR. Don’t trust anything or anyone ever. (Except maybe the launcher.)

Liz: This week’s Tavern Brawl is the best.

Mitch: I am not exactly varied when it comes to Hearthstone — I basically am playing for the first time in a few years — so I went with a Priest deck. I started with Mind Blast and Lightwell… get an army of Lightwells that can usually outheal any cards your opponent has and then spam Mind Blasts when you have enough.

Liz: I gave that a go but it felt slow. I had a Shaman deck using Evolve with totems (and any other card you want) which was ridiculous and fun but not a guaranteed winner. Mage with Mana Wyrm and Unstable Portal was fun for similar reasons — you wind up with a board full of crazy random minions! Warrior deck with Frothing Berserker and Ravaging Ghoul is great. Whirlwind can work instead of the ghoul, but ghoul gives you an extra minion to attack with. I also ran into a Druid playing Innervate and Yogg-Saron. The match was completely hilarious, though Yogg wound up killing him.

Mitch: Matches go nice and quick and it’s sort of like seeing what 2s comp works in WoW except with way more options and it’s not unfun when you get totally out-comp’d.

Mitch: I… that’s actually a good question. Seasons in PVP certainly exist, and they kind of exist in PVE with raid tiers, but the game could probably benefit from a seasonal activity that players could do solo. However, I’m not sure if leveling is the solution. Part of what makes Diablo’s seasonal leveling so fun is that you can do it stupidly fast and pull insane amounts of mobs all at once. Without a major rework, that doesn’t seem like it would work in WoW. But I’m still keen on the idea of solo seasons in the game.

Liz: I don’t know — leveling in WoW is pretty fast. Different, but still fast. Hardcore characters in wow could be fun too.

Mitch: Iron Man mode is something I’ve wanted for ages. It’s fun to see players come up with that sort of thing themselves, but it would be cool to see an official version.

Liz: The interesting thing about seasons in Diablo is that it’s a reason for people to jump back into the game to play. There’s a huge social element to it. Just imagine hundreds of players back in leveling zones, running dungeons… It’d be a really fun experience.

Mitch: Just look at that glorious header. That right there is a Demon Hunter with an axe in one hand and a sword in the other and he is fierce.

Liz: Uh huh.