The Queue: I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you

I’ve been staring at my laptop screen, trying to come up with an intro for a little while now… but I’m blanking on something clever or unique to say. So, in lieu of an intro, here’s a quote from BoJack Horseman, which has surprised me in both its depth and its cleverness:

“Fool me once, shame on you, but teach a man to fool me and I’ll be fooled for the rest of my life.”

Next week will mark two weeks of Garrosh, but more importantly, it will mark Gamescom. I suspect that’s when we’ll see a new hero announced. After that, we’ll probably see that hero on the PTR. And then one week later (September 5), we’ll see that hero live.

So you have a bit more time, but hopefully you can at least get hyped starting next week. I know I’ve been saying it for months now, but I’m very hopeful Kel’Thuzad will be our next hero. Not only do a few leaks purport this, but he’d be the perfect reveal for an event like Gamescom.

{PB} I’m mildly conflicted, because the size of Argus makes it look like there’s going to be a lot of unexplored territory. Don’t get me wrong, even a brief romp around the PTR makes it clear that this is a massive landmass being added, especially for a patch. But I’m not sure — legitimately not sure, because I haven’t explored it all — if we’ll ever see all of that stuff in person. I’m pretty sure that “big lake of demonic wee-wee” is actually the exposed core of the planet, the green stuff is Fel energy erupting from the planet, the grey stuff are land masses, and the wispy stuff is… I don’t know, actually.

But again, I want to emphasize it’s a very mild conflict here. I’m always going to want to see more of the Warcraft universe than we get, just like I’m always going to wish I could set foot on Mars in my lifetime — it’s fun exploring, and it’s fun to see it all.

It’s really hard to know what’s coming “next” with WoW right now because Blizzard has planted so many lore seeds in Legion, it feels like we could have half a dozen expansions spun off from this one. I do think the level-112 thing is telling, and it would be weird to have the Chromie scenario plopped into Legion as suddenly as it was without having payoff while it’s still mostly fresh in players’ minds. In the past, I might have dismissed it as something that won’t get addressed for two or three expansions, but it certainly feels like Blizzard knows what they’re doing with the story this time around — I think they learned a lot about dangling or unfinished plots from Warlords.

They’ve made parts of it easier. Drops from Emerald Nightmare are guaranteed and that whole part can usually be completed in 1-2 lockouts. As far as I know, the chance to get more than 1 drop per boss isn’t higher on different difficulties, since that would mean people would hold out on running LFR. The Mythic dungeon portion requiring 80 Soul Fragments was cut in half a while back, too. Personally, it’s not something I have the patience for on alts, but it has been made easier since launch.

I actually had to look around my video game collection to see what games might qualify for this, and, well… I guess I haven’t really switched in a game. If it’s a fighting game, I’ll try out different characters, but I usually settle on one and make it my “main.” With something like StarCraft, I settled on Protoss and rarely try others. I played a Warlock at the start of WoW, but switched to Shadow before the end of Vanilla and haven’t changed since. I’m actually fairly consistent in that mindset — once I figure out what I like, it’s hard to want to change.

1. I don’t think they’ll stop. They can always dole pets out across raid tiers instead of expansions if they need to spread it out.
2. We actually have a purchasable Toy that gives those back to Shadow. Though I do wish Blizz had leaned into the raven theme more heavily.
3. RUFF RUFF! (Adorable little scamp with prize for its loving owner. 13/10 good pupper.)

That’s all for today! As usual, discuss random things and make it hard for Liz to find questions leave plenty of questions for Liz!