The Queue: Anybody mind if I lie down right here?

After trick or treating and BlizzCon and everything else I find myself in need of a grocery trip with a mountain of laundry to do. Can I get a vacation from my weekend consumed by candy and video games, please?

Here are some questions you had which I tried to answer. If you need me, I’ll be at the basecamp of Mount Washmore trying to take a nap.

In various panels, the devs have assured us that the level squish won’t really interfere with transmog runs at max level, but they haven’t disclosed what that will mean in practice. Maybe a toggle when you enter, to ensure you don’t want an at-level challenge, a la Herald of the Titans?

In a similar vein, I have several old toons I use to farm older content — level 80s I last messed with in earnest a decade ago can blow through Molten Core just about as quickly as a level 120 can, let alone some of the lowbie dungeons. It remains to be seen how this will affect that variety of transmog runs.

All we know is it totally won’t affect transmog, for sure, but we have no idea what the mechanic to ensure that will look like.

Her now-apparent goal since she made a pact with The Jailer (the timing of which is somewhat in question, may be as early as Cataclysm, may be as late as that discussion with Helya in Legion), was to kill as many people as possible in order to funnel their souls into The Maw.

Empowering The Maw with souls in this way granted Sylvanas more and more power. The goal of burning down Teldrassil, we now know, was twofold. She wanted to cause enough damage that the Horde and Alliance would both be furious with each other, essentially forever, and she wanted each and every soul she could get in the meantime. The soul of every child and priestess she had burned alive also went to Ultra Hell, which made her more and more powerful so, you know, win-win for her.

This empowerment, and that odd magic Thalyssra and Bwonsamdi commented on, is what enabled her to kill Saurfang — and steal his soul for The Maw as well. His incredibly powerful, heroic soul may have been exactly the tipping point she needed to be able to rend the Helm of Domination asunder with her bare hands.

When 8.3 drops, Mechagon will have an LFG-able Heroic version for exactly this reason. It’s a little frustrating to not be able to unlock Mechagnomes the instant 8.3 drops, but doing one lousy dungeon after the fact isn’t too terrible. Of course, your LFG queue is probably going to be pretty ridiculous if you’re a DPS player, so it well may be!

Everyone. Literally everyone.

This expansion arc has been tough to get my mind around due to the sheer scale of it, honestly. Every idiot NPC who died mid-quest, or we had to kill at some point, has the possibility of return here. Every boss, every traitor, every wisp, every class trainer who has died is in the Shadowlands somewhere.

There are people I hope we see happily ensconced in a Covenant, but we have a chance to re-interact with everyone who’s died in the Warcraft universe. They made a joke about Mankrik’s Wife, and that’s about the size of it… think of the NPCs who died in The Cleft of Shadow in Siege of Orgrimmar, or Camp Taurajo. Heck, the burning of Teldrassil alone would stock the entire expansion in potion sellers and Innkeepers (assuming they weren’t in Mega Hell, which they’re supposed to be). Amber Kearnen, everyone killed by the Mana Bomb in Theramore, Orkus, Baros Alexton, Milhouse Manastorm, Edwin VanCleef, Arluin, Leza Dawnchaser, Crusader Bridenbrad, Thersa Windsong, Runas, maybe even Vindicator Maraad. It’s overwhelming.

I am really curious about people who were ghosts in our world though like Admiral Taylor, who is still probably in my barn on Draenor, or everyone in Karazhan (especially the ghosts I killed).

Don’t call it a comeback.

We had several people come in as ‘ringers’ for BlizzCon, including Allison. She’s agreed to continue to write pieces for us here and there, and we couldn’t be happier. Literally, because I was crying laughing editing her M+ “guide” from yesterday. You saw one of our new hires Crow Tomkus just before the con, and you may have also noticed our other new hire sprinkled through our coverage. Liz Patt is an expert in all things Diablo and was understandably incredibly busy all weekend.

I’m not sure if we’re going to write a formal post to welcome them or not, but if we do, just like, be cool and act surprised ok?

uh. um.

That’s a tough one.

huh.

Probably wait til 8.3 and make a Vupera.

I don’t think there’s a “too late” to announce things per se, but it seems like they felt they had enough to announce the new titles now. It doesn’t seem rushed to me.

I do think they were held over a barrel with Diablo 4. It’s likely after the near-riots of BlizzCon 2018 the “leaks” immediately following were from the PR department. Based on what we’ve seen, they have a super solid vertical slice to play, and a cohesive sense of what the game is going to be in an overarching sense — super difficult, super disgusting, super Diablo. It did seem ready to show, but they definitely could have waited, had they not had to semi-announce it via press channels last year.

Overwatch and Overwatch 2 is a weird situation in general because, well, I don’t want to go out on a limb and say they renamed DLC a sequel because the team has explicitly said there would never be maps or heroes tied to a DLC, so I’m not going to say that.