The Queue: I love Diablo 3

I just love this game sometimes. For all the flaws you might list, one thing is clear — Diablo 3 does not care if I build and spec my character entirely around simply spinning my way through every single demon I see until they’re all dead. Indeed, it welcomes this activity. It loves it. And this is why I love Diablo 3.

I mean, I try other builds. Right now one of my Barbarians is rocking a Seismic Slam build using full Immortal King for the permanent Ancients and a Fury of the Vanished Peak. I don’t quite have enough pieces of the Might of the Earth set yet to focus on that, but once I do, I’m sure Seismic Slam damage will be delightful. But still, I love my Whirlwind build.

Actually, I got so impatient that I went and farmed up the Might of the Earth pants and went full Earthquake/Seismic Slam on my recently leveled Barbarian because why not? And yes, it’s delightful. I happened to get a pair of Bracers of Destruction out of a GR, and my word it’s lovely. Things evaporate. Does this mean I’ll abandon my Whirlwind build? No, it just means I have a reason to play two different Barbarians.

Like I needed one.

Sometimes I think the entire game should be cross-faction at this point.

I rolled my first Horde character in 2004, when the Horde was scrappy underdogs trying to scrape out a living in a hostile land and come to terms with their past. As a result, wherever the story goes, I have lots of friends Horde side — I’ve raided Horde, I’ve mained Horde for entire expansions. Whatever my feelings about the current story, I know Horde players are pretty much the same as Alliance players and I enjoy playing with my friends.

One of my dearest hopes for Battle for Azeroth is that, at the end of this expansion, we finally end the faction conflict storyline. I don’t know how to do that in a satisfying manner — have the two factions sign an armistice, convert PVP into ‘War Games’ put on by the two factions or even uncouple it entirely from faction so that any player can attack any other player at any time, I have no idea. But I’d love it if, at the very least, you could do things like run dungeons, raids and so on with your friends no matter what faction they were.

I don’t expect one, no. But who knows? I feel like Battle for Azeroth has put everything up in the air and the next expansion might well have a full on Cataclysm style redesign of the world, with the Horde in control of Kalimdor and the Alliance holding the Eastern Kingdoms. But that feels kind of crazy to me. What happens to Horde bases like Hammerfall or Grom’gol if the Alliance holds the entire EK? Do we see the Horde take over Feralas?

If things go back to ‘normal’ with the Night Elves taking back their territory in Kalimdor and the Forsaken returning to the Undercity, I would definitely not expect a Mag’har city in Ashenvale. But perhaps this is the new status quo. I honestly have no idea.

If they go that route, I could see the Forsaken converting the burned corpse of Teldrassil into some kind of gallows tree city while the Kaldorei Druids transform the Undercity into a newly verdant home for themselves and the Worgen, who’d finally get to reclaim Gilneas. So maybe it would be just as well. I don’t know. I’d definitely miss all those zones I leveled in as a Night Elf.

Divine Speed is a pure movement speed buff. I don’t see any reason it should reset fall distance.

Well, if you remember it let me know. And if you did remember it and I missed it, I apologize.

We don’t know.

As an example, the first generation of Nephalem (the ones born directly from Inarius and his Angelic followers and Lilith and her Demons) are known today as the Ancients. There may have been thousands of them, but we only really know about a few, such as Bul-Kathos, Vasily, Rathma and Esu. Also, to make it even harder, Vasily is also known as Fiacla-Gear and Rathma was originally named Linarian.

We know that Bul-Kathos was still alive as of the Sin War, and he actually fought Uldyssian, who was of a much later generation of Nephalem (and who later sacrificed himself to reset the Worldstone and drain his generation of Nephalem of their powers… a feat now made impossible by the Worldstone’s destruction). We know almost nothing of Esu, and while Rathma and Fiacla-Gear are not currently present in the world, no one knows where or if they lie dead.

Despite what Tyrael said, the truth is, we don’t actually know if a fully empowered Nephalem actually has to die or not. But none of the generation of Nephalem that fought alongside Uldyssian during the Sin War (his followers, called the Edryem, all lost their Nephalem powers and their memories when the Worldstone was reset by Uldyssian’s sacrifice save his brother Mendeln, who taught the Priests of Rathma as Kalan) survive to the modern age. This is because Uldyssian’s sacrifice stole their powers and erased their memories of the Sin War. They would have died long ago.

At present, the only Nephalem we really know exist are the ones who are playable in Diablo 3.

First off, I’d peg the likelihood of there being any Diablo news at all at either convention to be extremely, astonishingly, vanishingly small. Just because I desperately want them to announce Diablo 4 doesn’t mean I expect one. I do not. If there is any kind of Diablo news I’d bet on it being a mobile game of some kind, possibly akin to Heroes of Dragon Age or Fallout Shelter. Something tangential to the franchise.

But, if they’re going to do a Diablo 4 announcement, I feel like they’d be fairly likely to do a tease at Gamescom and then do a bigger reveal at BlizzCon.

But again, I really don’t expect anything.

Okay, that’s the Queue for this Friday. See y’all next week.