The Queue: Not a squid or a kid

This month’s Splatfest was a special one — it was the one-year anniversary Splatfest! As such, Nintendo decided to have squids face off against the game’s newest playable characters: octopuses. When I say “newest playable,” I mean you normally need to have the Octo Expansion to play as an octoling. For the Splatfest, however, anyone on the side of octopuses got to play as one!

Given looks are everything in life, I went with the side of the octopuses. Their hairstyles are just so much cooler. Sadly, despite being the more popular side, squids won the overall contest thanks to actual wins. Ah well, it was a super cool and fun Splatfest — and I haven’t even mentioned the Shifty Station this time around (it was so good, you guys).

But enough of that. Let’s Queue.

I like having a bit of a surprise, but I agree that the Heritage Armor incentive has already overstayed its welcome. Rather than spoil us, I’d rather they just change how you earn Heritage Armor — or start newer Allied Races at 110 or something. Leveling from 20 to 120 is too much of a grind for the reward. And trust me, I really like the reward.

“Worth it” is all relative. Is it reasonably in your budget to purchase a new rig? Or would you be stretching funds thin by doing so? Similarly, are you set on a gaming laptop, or are desktops an option?

I ask that last question because desktops — some, at least — are more easily upgraded later down the line. So if you encounter issues in the future, rather than burning an entire PC’s worth of funds, you could spend half that to upgrade, say, the GPU or the CPU and motherboard. If you’re going to spend the cash on a new device anyhow, you also want to consider how long you want it to last and how much you want to be able to keep it going after its “normal” shelf life.

If you have the funds and if you’re not super worried about needing to upgrade down the line, it’s probably worth it. BFA will up the graphics requirements yet again, and you’ll start to notice your rig’s age more and more. That said, double check to make sure your current issue is actually something that can’t be fixed with new drivers or by removing some startup program or another.

No, it’s not too late in theory. You can speed it up with heirlooms (obviously) and also with the 300% experience potions. They’re hard to find, but they make a zone like Gorgrond grant you 5+ levels if do 99% of all the the bonus objectives — but save 1 kill or something — and then pop the elixir before finishing every single one of them.

Now, from my perspective, which is admittedly not an alt-heavy one, I try not to level anything this close to an expansion release because I don’t want to burn out on leveling right before I’m going to need to be doing it.

Also it’s Tuesday now.

Realistically, I was surprised Knaifu let us drain the power from Sargeras’ sword and burn her out in the process. In acquiring Xal’atath, you literally watch her abandon her old master and turn on him when he wasn’t sufficient enough for her. The fact that she doesn’t do that now tells me she wanted this to happen. Which means she’s probably just waiting until the right moment to come back — though I don’t think it’ll be with us, the players. And I’m okay with that — as long as Knaifu is happy, I can be happy for her.

The alternative is that it’s just bad writing and Knaifu is uncharacteristically gone forever.

No, we were not promised anything more than this by Blizz. I had been hopeful that Knaifu would at least say something when we decided to drain the power, but she did not. We got pretty much exactly what Blizz said we would, but not all of us got what we hoped we’d get. Blizz leaving things to “you’ll drain the sword, it’ll burn out your Artifacts” got people thinking of their own ways this would happen, which led to speculation that Blizz had bigger plans than they did. It happens.

Eh, to be honest, I kind of hope it doesn’t. I want the sea shanty to be Jaina’s thing. Sylvanas has Lament of the Highborne in-game in its best context. That said, a slowed-down version played as the intro/outro music wouldn’t be too bad — really, I just don’t want it to be a focal point of the short. It would lead to people comparing it with Jaina’s short, but not for the right reasons.

Hoo boy. Okay, here we go:

1. So far, Warbringers. And I suspect it’ll stay that way since we have Sylvanas and Azshara coming up. That’s not to say I didn’t like Harbingers — Gul’dan’s was especially good! — but I’m all for badass ladies being badass ladies. Especially if it means we get a song.
   1. Bonus: Prognosticators.
2. Nathanos tames the dog, they become bffls.
3. T’PAARTOS!!!
   1. Jk, Nathanos.
4. Liz’s favorite snack, unless meat.
5. Alleria. By so, so wide a margin.
6. Gara.
7. Kingslayer Orkus — hot damn, that quest chain still gets to me.
8. Azshara
9. Rapunzel disguised as naked Solid Snake disguised as Norman Reedus, featuring Guillermo Del Toro as the voice of Kiefer Sutherland (written by Hideo Kojima).

I hope y’all’re happy with yourselves! Personally, doing so many 2BEs has used up all my energy and left me a bit cold. I think I’ma go start a bonfire to warm myself up.