The Queue: Birthday week

Today is my (step) dad’s birthday, and next Tuesday is my youngest brother’s birthday. In between those, we’ll be be having a family get-together to celebrate. I won’t lie, I’m looking forward to it. I have nice gifts for both of them, and I’m especially excited to see my brother’s reaction to his. I realize they’re not technically in the same calendar week, but they’re within seven days of each other, so I’m counting it as a birthday week.

But enough about that. It’s Queue time.

Oh, I’m definitely excited about it. If nothing else, I can’t wait to see how much heartbreak Aerith’s death in glorious high definition causes people. But I’m also excited because it’s a classic Final Fantasy game, and it holds a special place in my memory.

I haven’t tried the demo, but that’s because I haven’t had time. I may check out gameplay videos of it instead of playing for myself. I’m worried I won’t actually have time to play the full thing when it releases, but even still, I’m looking forward to it.

I guess it depends on the situation they’re in. Are they a raid encounter? A regular ol’ adventuring hero? An NPC out in the world?

Personally, I think I’d have to give it to either Moira or Roadhog. Both of them are good at dishing out the damage while still managing to heal themselves in the process. Moria can escape situations more easily, but Roadhog is a natural tank, so it really depends on the situation there.

Don’t get me wrong, Rein’s a good choice, but without his shield and fighting against a ranged opponent? What’s he going to do?

Burning Bridges for sure. I guess technically Daredevil can be a non-issue if you play perfectly, but the cost of messing up is much higher. I’ve found that Burning Bridges and Pained are the two easiest to deal with. Pained can be annoying in some situations (looking at you, Umbric) but overall, two Madnesses aren’t that bad if you know what to expect.

Boring answer, but nothing would. I’ve been a Forsaken Shadow Priest for too long. It’s who my character is. Nothing else feels right.

That said, I’d absolutely LOVE Arakkoa as a playable race. Not enough to change, but enough that I’d probably stop making all my Horde alts either Blood Elves or Forsaken.

So, Phil is referring to this tweet from the other day (and also my other brother, whose birthday is NOT coming up). For starters, I’m incredibly proud of him. Like, seriously, insanely proud. And also jealous. Holy h*ck, I wish I didn’t have college debt.

To answer the question, though, I feel like him as a rival would be an Alliance character, to start. That’s a bigger rival to me than anything else. In terms of a Shadow rival, probably a Holy Priest. So the WoW equivalent would probably be a Human Holy Priest.

That said, when it comes to academics, he’s always felt like a version of me that applied himself more. So a Void Elf Shadow Priest who kicks my butt on the meters would also be acceptable.

Given I don’t really play Alliance, no. But I’m happy someone’s helping them keep their death quota up after Teldrassil.

The tweet that provides this a SFW context is here, just to be clear. And the answer is Yogg. Yogg still remains one of my favorite encounters in all of WoW, both because I have a lot of nostalgia for it and because it was a genuinely good, challenging fight with variables players could alter.

But I also think that Yogg’s visions are cooler. They’re similar to N’Zoth’s, but they show off older events, take you to completely new places that aren’t just a different version of the room you’re already in, and ultimately reveal an astal-looking brain you don’t see anywhere else. It’s just cooler overall.

(Sorry, N’Zoth. It’s nothing personal.)

So there are a lot of questions there, but I think that the general answer is “No” — but only because you said “future” as the setting. Being in the future not only has the ability to “spoil” any major twists Blizz wants to occur in WoW, but it also has a subtle side effect of making it feel like what we’re doing in WoW doesn’t entirely matter, because we know what’s coming way down the line. It’s set in stone.

What I DO think could work is something set in the past — and this has already been something I’ve talked about as an ideal Warcraft 4. Sure, it doesn’t entirely solve the issue of knowing how things ultimately end, but it does mean that the two can coexist without WoW having to worry about changing its story to incorporate the future. Setting something in the past means we can explore more aspects of Azeroth’s history that we’ve never seen in a game, while also adding twists that may change our understanding of an existing narrative.

It would be really cool, in my opinion, and could help shed light on events we’ve only ever read about but never experienced. I’m still holding out hope for a Warcraft 4 set in the original Black Empire, to be honest.

That’s all for today! Ask a lot of questions and whatnot. You know, the usual.