The Queue: It’s Queue happy hour!

I’m just going to quote my favorite wizard here. The Queue is never late, nor is it early: it arrives precisely when it means to. (At least for certain values of “means to.”)

It just went back online, alongside the new campaign, so you can hop in and check it out right now.

While WoW does suffer from its content droughts, Legion has been packed with things to do (so much so that I haven’t even kept up despite being subscribed). Depending on exactly when you left, you may have patch 7.1, 7.1.5, and 7.2 to catch up on — with 7.2.5 on the horizon. That would give you:

• More Suramar quests and story
• More class hall quests and story
• Our (triumphant?) return to the Broken Shore
• New raids Trial of Valor, Nighthold, and Tomb of Sargeras
• New dungeons Karazhan, Cathedral of Eternal Night
• New Brawler’s Guild
• Crazy PVP brawls that throw away the rules, like Warsong Scramble
• Pet battle dungeons!

Even if you don’t stay subscribed, I say that’s definitely worth $15.

The biggest problem with gearing up alts right now seems to be that “just hit 110” hurdle. When the game world scales up to 110, it’s a pretty significant power jump for everyone except you. Squishier classes really struggle until you can get some gear.

But it’s also a great time to gear up alts. Legion Assaults can boost your ilevel to a healthy 850, which is more than enough to prevent you from struggling through anything else in the game. They do require a three-person scenario to finish up, but it’s pretty minimal group content. If you’re up for a little more grouping, hitting up the group finder for world bosses can net you ilevel 890 gear — and, at least in my experience, downing these bosses is fairly low hassle even without an organized group.

If you don’t want to group at all, though, your class hall gear set starts at ilevel 810 (and goes up to 870), crafted gear starts at ilevel 835 . (and goes up to 875), and world quest gear can go up to ilevel 855. You just have to get over that level 110 hump… which requires a bit of perseverance and usually a few deaths.

Blizzard’s goal with micro-holidays was to make them completely non-essential, so no one felt forced to log on and participate… but I really find myself wishing they were just a little more rewarding.  (Which is to say… rewarding at all.) It would be fun to have some token of your time in the holiday, even if it were a tiny one. As it is, half of the micro-holidays I seem to just forget about entirely.

There has to be a happy medium between “this is so awesome that if I don’t do it the game is punishing me” and “this is so optional there’s hardly any point in doing it.” It doesn’t feel like micro-holidays quite have that balance… at least not yet.

This really fits in with the class identity angle Blizzard has been pushing in Legion, but to be honest, I’m just glad to see the armory dusted off and looking better. I just wonder what happens next expansion when we presumably leave our class halls behind on the Broken Isles. Will we be heading back to racial identity? Faction identity? Something else entirely?

But that’s venturing off-topic. New armory rates a thumbs up from me, art and all the rest.

Sorry about that one, Queuevians. Alex was all set to write the Queue this morning, but his internet went out which left us sans Queue. I, your humble writer, stepped in but have been writing at a slug-like pace (I’m going to blame the fact that my skull is being held together by glue right now).

I hope you enjoy this belated afternoon Queue. If you usually read the Queue with your morning coffee, you have my official permission to declare this Morning 2.0 and get some more coffee. (Or, for those of you in the US, you could also catch Frappuccino Happy Hour at Starbucks. I recommend S’mores with a cookie straw for your sugar/caffeine fix.)

As always, please pile on the questions — I’ll be back tomorrow with my favorite Shadow Priest, Mitch, to answer more questions!