The Queue: New Horizons

I’m sure a few of you out there understand how excited I am for this game, but man… I am so freaking excited for this game. I even managed to snag myself a pre-order of the Special Edition Switch, which… well, that’s very much not my usual M.O. for a console I already own, even if I am able to sell it. March 20 cannot get here faster.

While we wait, though, why not have a Queue?

Best? Either a TV show or a novel, depending on a number of factors. But realistically, a TV show won’t happen, so a novel would be the best to convey this sort of story and provide context and a look inside the minds of the characters.

That said, I’d love to see more in the style of the Warbringers shorts or really any other animated medium. The cost (both in terms of money and time) would be such that they’d probably have to be very succinct and focused compared to a book, but hey, I like when Blizzard does this sort of thing. The key for me would be having several of them. I guess what I’m asking for is a sort of miniseries that looks super pretty.

I absolutely love them! There are a few encounters that are annoying, like the one enemy who drains Sanity and is immune to Psychic Horror, but Horrific Visions are honestly my favorite part of the patch, and I really, REALLY wish I could run them way more. I hate that they’re the BFA equivalent to Mage Towers but they’re limited to a few times per week. I don’t care if we don’t get rewards; I just want to be able to run them and hone my skills while I figure out the perfect strategy.

I have a whole host of issues in that regard, really — but the simple answer to your question is that I’m loving them on my Shadow Priest.

I think it’s cool, though I wish there were more to it. Shadow Priests get Void-y and sprout tentacles the longer they’re in Voidform (or at least, that’s how it used to work), and just having a constant effect on your character feels like a missed opportunity to really bring more of the Corruption theme into the world. Floating eyeballs, tentacles sprouting, or any number of additional/different visuals would be awesome in my book.

That said, I also realize it can cause issues for people with sensitive eyes, so I’d be perfectly fine if they added a toggle in graphics settings for them. They don’t bother me, so I’d still like to see them on a player even if that player personally turns the effects off, y’know?

I feel like the weekly Timewalking quest was very worth doing last week, but outside of that, I like the scaling to be semi-limited. Now, it feels odd to see WQs reward 445 gear but Invasions award 370 gear, don’t get me wrong. But I’d rather it feel weird than it feel obligatory. I’ve been gearing my Demon Hunter up a bit thanks to the scaling, but I already feel like I have a lot to do to take advantage of it all. Frankly, I don’t want another thing to add to the list.

That said, I don’t know how much faster it would be to add more to the list of things that reward higher level gear. Yeah, it might be a little faster, but in the long term, I don’t think engagement would change drastically.

Once upon a time, I might have. For one, Hearthstone isn’t something I’ve ever really used to make assumptions about WoW, because it’s just kind of all over the place. Sometimes it feels like it might be in line with WoW, then it goes off and does something crazy. As for WoW, Blizzard has so many dangling plots right now that I think whatever comes after Shadowlands could be anything.

If anything, I think the dragon plots in WoW signify that Blizz has a story for them on their radar. It’s not something that’s been dropped or forgotten completely. But when they pick it up? That’s anyone’s guess.

I’m a little sad, mostly because I like when the game has something extra for higher difficulties (especially Mythic) and it’s cool knowing there’s more out there that I may be able to experience down the line. Now, that doesn’t mean I like lore bombs like Cho’gall in Highmaul to happen in Mythic only — but something like the extra phase in the Archimonde fight in Hellfire was certainly cool.

But hey, I’m not gonna lose sleep over it, and I certainly hope no one else does either.

I totally understand this, and I honestly have burned myself out on dailies already. I was doing them on 1 (sometimes 2) characters each day for a little while, and it quickly wore me down. So you know what I did? Stopped doing dailies on 1-2 characters every day and just did them when I felt like it. I know that having a subscription creates a sort-of sense of obligation to play the game, but if you can get past that, it’s a lot healthier to just play when you actually want to play.

So no, you’re not alone in feeling burned out. I don’t think 8.3 added enough content to last very long, and the part they did add that’s repeatable and challenging (Horrific Visions) is limited behind doing the stuff that will likely burn you out. I really wish we had more unique things to do, but given I don’t have a ton of ideas for how to pull that off, I can’t blame Blizz for not reinventing the wheel with every patch.

Much as I’d like to give this to “guild killer” Vael because of how many wipes he caused back in Vanilla, I have to give it to Broxigar. Dude’s a legend and could probably slice Vael in half.

That’s all for today! Please be extra nice to Liz and leave lots of questions for her. See y’all next week and also in the comments!