The Queue: Experience from previous content, armor sets, and cheese

Let’s jump into another Queue today!

If you have any questions for us and your fellow fans about Blizzard games, please feel free to leave them in the comments section and we’ll try to answer them in future editions.

For those wondering what BSide is talking about, the expansion experience penalty is the severe reduction in XP from previous expansion quests that are under your current level. For example, if you’re level 62, you’re expected to be in Outlands messing around, not over in an old-world zone; so those old world zone quests are programmed to give next to nothing in terms of XP at that point. And when you’re 72, you should be in Northrend, and not in Area 52, so Area 52 quests won’t really give you anything then. It’s a rolling system that encourages players to move ahead in expansion content, and not just sit around clearing zones.

Now that’s how it works right now… should it continue to work like that? Yuck! I hate it honestly. I think it forces you to play the game a certain way, instead of giving you the option to play the game how you’d like. Personally when I’m playing MMOs I like to be a completionist, especially early on. Every main quest, every side quest, etc… they all get finished off and only then do I move on to the next zone. This tends to give me a slight leg up towards the late game in leveling, and I use that to my advantage to get a little careless in terms of pulls and moving quickly through good parts of the story (you know, those quests where you just can’t get enough of them).

So I agree with BSide, it’s time to do away with the expansion experience penalty.

I actually think Blizzard does a pretty amazing job of including historical armor in the game; their expansions have tended to touch on different themes, and they use that as an ability to introduce some diversity. For instance, I would have answered this question with including the Terra-Cotta Warrior look, however Mists took care of that.

I’m a really big fan of the saga of Drizzt Do’urden, and there’s characters in there that I have mental pictures of from years of being engaged in the series. The assassian garb of Artemis Entreri is pictured in my mind as a hardened leather outfit with pockets and uses unseen; and I think Blizzard did a great job of producing that in the Rogue Tier 9 look.

At some point I’d like to see some updated grand, majestic, and shiny medieval gear again. It’s been a bit since we’ve seen true and proper knight and sorcerer gear; something simple yet powerful. Of course there’s plenty of stuff in the old world and scattered in expansions here and there, but I think it’s about time for another round with update graphics (polygons, to use a term thrown around much to much) and style.

I was always intending on answering this today, and for some reason just skipped over the Saturday part. So you’re getting it on Sunday instead. Now with that said…

My wife and I are pretty huge cheese nerds. We have an absolutely amazing Wine, Cheese, and Deli shop right in our area called Surdyk’s. Their alcohol selection is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and they have an entire room lined with cheese and other fine foods. They employ and army of cheesemongers — I’m not even kidding; they’re not jokes either, they know their stuff and are always willing to let you try anything. The place is never empty too, people are always in there.

So, we have been sampling cheeses a lot lately. The first paring I’d suggest is any hard and aged swiss from Wisconsin and a glass of white. You can eat a whole brick by yourself if you’re not careful (and down the entire bottle); but sometimes that’s exactly what you need on a Sunday afternoon.

The second paring I’d suggest is a bit more complicated. Find a creamy bree, some sourdough bread, some golden apples, and lingonberries. Layer it all in this order: bread, apples, bree, lingonberries — be sure you use only a dab of the lingonberries, it doesn’t need to be much. A merlot is a great wine to pair with this, you want something that’s tasty but isn’t going to overpower the flavors present in the food. For a mixed drink I’d recommend a gin martini made with top-shelf ingredients; lesser gin will give you an aftertaste, and you want your palette to be mostly clear.

The key with the bree dish is finding good creamy bree. That can be a challenge, as most grocery stores and shops only have the standard “it goes with anything” bree.  The kind you want is going to start falling off the knife as soon as you lift your slice away from the bree wheel. When it does that you’ll know it’s creamy enough.

If you can’t find lingonberries an acceptable substitute would be true strawberry preserves. You want some seeds and clumps of berries in this. Without that you’re not going to get a good ratio of bree-to-fruit. And before everyones comments on it — no, don’t put honey on this. The sugar from the apple is enough.