The Queue: I have no idea what I’m doing

My guild has been working (without much success) on Herald of the Titans, and really I blame myself because I made the terrible mistake to play a Paladin. Not that there’s anything wrong with Paladins. I have played with some very excellent Paladins. I’m just not one of them.

But enough about me. How are you today?

No.

The math is pretty simple here: the Wetlands is a level 20 zone. The maximum level you can be in the WoW Classic stress test is 5, and chances are you won’t be when you start the trek from the safety of Menethil Harbor. Just walking down the road will pull aggro far and wide, so you will find yourself running, dying, corpse running, and repeating. The bulk of your progress will likely be made while you are dead, by running as far past your corpse as possible to rez. When you rezed, you would live for a few more steps and start again.

I would budget at least an hour to make it across the zone like this, but the bigger time investment will be in the crippling self doubt that follows, as you ask yourself why am I doing this? while you wait for the rez timer to be up.

Benediction.

I played and raided as a Warlock most of vanilla, and rolled a Priest alt for a change of pace — but as it turned out, I really loved playing a healing Priest. But my Warlock was the geared raiding character at the time, and while my Priest managed to go on a Molten Core farm run or two, I never got the Eye of Divinity drop to start the quest. It wasn’t removed after vanilla, but I never went back and got it when it was still available, and here I am.

In WoW Classic I have a new opportunity to join in the weekly war for the Eye drop. Since I will be playing a Dwarf Priest, I think I have already put myself in a position to be everyone’s favorite healer, so I should have plenty of opportunities for Molten Core runs (and Molten Core wipes).II

I think it’s a fantastic idea. When an expansion launches, creative players find all kinds of crazy card combinations that were probably never anticipated. And when some of them turn out to be insanely overpowered, Blizzard nerfs cards to keep one card or one deck from dominating play.

But just as there are cards that take off and become incredibly powerful in play, there are some cards that never take off and remain collecting cobwebs. If the goal is balance, it makes sense that some cards would need to be improved to find their place in the game, just as other cards need to be nerfed.

The huge influx of cards that comes with an expansion is always exciting. For a while the whole game is in flux. When you start a match, you could run into anything. There’s no meta yet: everyone is figuring things out and trying new deck builds.

But then you have four months until the next expansion during which the game is relatively static. Every card combination has been tried and experimented with, and you see near carbon copies of the same decks every time you play.

Nerfs change what you see a little, as players try to patch up holes nerfs may have punched in their decks. But I think buffs may change the game more, particularly since Blizzard made a point of buffing two cards for each class. These are relatively small changes, but they’re still big enough that they could make new card combinations (and even decks) viable. I’m curious to see how this shakes up play.

Absolutely!

The animal forms would be magnificent. Kittens, bear cubs, baby moonkin with giant eyes…

This isn’t just a good idea, it’s the best idea.

I know that Malkil pointed out this guide from Wowhead, but I always just go to the barbershop and swap hair colors, jump out of the barber’s chair and shapeshift, jump back in the barber’s chair and swap hair colors, and then repeat until I’ve found the one I want.

Customization. There was this fun ability to decorate for holidays and put up guild banners and pick the race of guards that defended your garrison. I don’t think Blizzard went far enough, but there were a few neat things that made the place feel more yours.

Garrisons weren’t perfect, but we’ve since abandoned the idea of having a space of our own. As Azeroth grows, it feels increasingly important to have something beyond our inventory space that’s ours, and garrisons gave us that. But since we left Draenor, Blizzard hasn’t looked back. We have similar gameplay systems, with the mission table and the construction of outposts, but we’ve lost the heart of garrisons: a customizable space that was yours.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Blizzard will revisit player housing in the future, but… I’m not going to hold my breath.

And that is all the time we have for today, readers. I wish you luck in today’s stress test/corpse run, and will see you back here next week.