The Queue: Toss a Question To Your Watcher

I’ve had this song stuck in my head since I started writing this Queue and now you all have to suffer with me. Blame Cory, then toss a question to your Matt Rossi, your Watcher for tomorrow’s Queue.

I hope you’re all freakin happy.

I mean, it depends — how many more are going to be small and fluffy?

From a story perspective it makes sense to add tons more, from Hozen on up through our Nazjatar allies. I also like that the addition of Allied Races tend to resolve story lines, like what happened to the Nightborne after my Gnome personally fed them manafruit and liberated their city from the Legion, or how the Mechagnomes showed their gratitude to my Blood Elf for all those spare parts by joining her faction.

I understand why people want more and more of them, especially since there are several distinct applicable subraces in addition to all those random allies we’ve made which aren’t an option yet. In some ways I feel like Allied Races were a Pandora’s Box and we’re kinda just now realizing the breadth of what they’ve unleashed. Undead for nearly every race is on the table now, for one, and I’m sure somebody really wants to play as one of the Orcs raised by Sylvanas during the second Battle for the Undercity. With the Kul Tirans, we can look out for different body types from each race, too. Maybe a couple leaned over Elves to match Trolls and Orcs now standing up straight?

For me, I’m pretty well done. But I think we’re going to see lots, lots more.

I will say that House Flipper on PC is a super fun game which lets you can tailor each house to fit the needs of a particular buyer. The overall footprint of the house is set in stone — the bachelor student won’t move into the two-story 2400-sqft house no matter how spartan you make it. You can knock down interior walls and reconfigure so the family with three kids and a live-in grandma might be more enticed with several small bedrooms, while the newlyweds with their first baby on the way might like fewer larger rooms.

For me, one of the biggest downsides is the lack of modding or workshop modes, so you’re stuck with what you’ve got. Much like WoW transmog I always manage to just slightly mismatch things so the overall effect ends up clashing, when I could just barely make a tweak here or there in the workshop and make it work. They recently announced an upcoming DLC which will add more items, but not necessarily the ones I want.

That said, it’s not a mobile game you can play while you make dinner or sit with your toddler while he refuses to sleep. The market for mobile games like this isn’t great, I would guess because of how tough 3D manipulation is on phone hardware. I’ve seen a couple that start off pretty decent — like Design Home — but wind up being microtransaction nightmares, and most of those only let you choose, say, which rug of these handful of rugs would you like to place in this particular slot. The finishings are more luxe, but offer the same interactivity as a match three with a decoration theme like Lily’s Garden or Homescapes, and in the case of Design Home the curve of in-game currency generation basically forces you to buy after a handful of designs.

Bizarrely, the mobile game I’ve seen with the most robust decoration minigame is PewDiePie’s Tuber Simulator, though you have to sit through weeks of boring idle-style gameplay — and a whole lot of PewDiePie — to get to the point where you can decorate the room in a meaningful way. It makes sense in the context of a game intended to sim the life of a YouTuber on the rise, but if you’re looking for something to decorate, meh.

Heroes of the Storm has a whole bunch which are amazing, like the luchador chihuahua, but my favorite mount in any game tends to be one that does something like this:

It kinda depends on whether you’re a story player or a mechanics player, and what you want your overall role to be in the party. It seems like a no-brainer to make an Aasimar Cleric or Paladin for gameplay min-max reasons, but being a blessed being of light and goodness may not jive if all your friends are murderhobos. If you’re not sure what everyone else is playing, Genasi are easier to slot into most parties without a lot of literally holier-than-thou handwringing (unless you like that kind of thing, no judgement). Both can have a depth of backstory and character evolution to play through, but unless you’re the min-maxiest min-maxer, go with whichever speaks to you more.

I always liked the idea of a charismatic Aasimar with a bit of a Mean Girls-style edge. Maybe a Bard, adept at making you think that backhanded compliment was totally just a compliment with the Friends cantrip. A Druid constantly using Druidcraft to give people lovely flowers which are actually deeply insulting if you know Victorian flower language, though of course that would require a whole lot of research and a crib sheet. Even a Sorcerer in a party with a Wizard would be super fun with an Elle Woods, “what, like it’s hard?” hair flip every so often.

I generally like to make up the character I want to play first and then backtrack through the other stuff, even class.