The Queue: Twelfth Night

It’s been twelve nights since we started the whole social distancing thing, and since that’s my favorite Shakespeare play it seems a good a reason as any to celebrate! Unfortunately there aren’t any movie versions I’m fond of — there was one in the 90’s starring Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia, but it’s uneven at best. One of the best versions I’ve seen was nominated for a Tony, featuring Helen Hunt as Viola and Paul Rudd in a purple loincloth as Orsino, but aside from the showings on PBS I’m not sure the proshot was ever released. Header photo is unrelated.

This is The Queue, where we ask you As and you give us Qs, or maybe it’s the other way around.

Well that depends on when Shadowlands beta drops!

I’m definitely working on getting my Vulpera Rogue up to speed but I don’t really have — or want — a full army of alts. I will say that the way leveling has been designed and redesigned it’s entirely possible that, even though I started it in the mid-30s, she won’t be able to complete both Stranglethorn Vales by the time she hits 58 and hecks off to Hellfire Peninsula. As such, it’s SO fast I thought about leveling a couple Break Glass In Case Ofs, like possibly a Shaman just in case Mistweavers suck again next expansion. We’ll see how much buff we have by the time my Rogue hits cap!

I lowkey hope there aren’t any. Hang with me for a sec, especially since a lot of this is mostly conjecture based on past expansions. We don’t know a whole lot about the mechanics just yet.

It looks like we’ll be able to swap Covenants mid-stream, but it will be ‘costly.’ I’d bet this is whatever Shadowlands currency — maybe Anima? — plus maybe gold, plus a huge rep hit. It looks like we’ll get either stepped rewards from rep — which would suck, but would be doable over the course of the whole expansion — or objective-related ones for certain appearances, a la the Artifact Weapon appearances. I cannot tell you how bummed I’m going to be if the really big silvery Kyrian wings are linked to Mythic+ dungeons the same way as that gorgeous purple version of Thas’dorah was.

Now, let’s think about what happens if a pet is that M+ reward. That means I’d have to maintain at minimum four alts at a high enough level that somebody will be willing to take me — I should probably rethink my strategy of rerolling healers, though of course the most covetable pet could be from PVP in which case I should rethink not rolling a fleet of Demon Hunters — not that that would actually help me.

Unless Shadowlands is the most alt-friendly expansion to ever drop, it’s going to be an extremely steep ask to people in nearly every niche. Of course, that leaves us with the issue of how you do dole out the pets. I’d suggest something like the cross-faction rep pets from BfA, which take fungible currency and may be a little secret-seeking, but are relatively easy to unlock with just a single casual alt.

There’s a suspicious roughly two week long hole in the Anaheim Convention Center calendar from October 15-30th, which contains the weekends of the 17th-18th and 24th-25th. Smart money would be on the 24th-25th, because then they’d have plenty of time to put everything up and break it down. The 17th-18th would give them just a day to set up all those sets and demo stations, which would be a stretch. We don’t typically hear about BlizzCon tickets going on sale until about a week before they do, and last year they went on sale in May, so we’re well within that window.

However, of course, now there are other considerations to be made. My niece and nephew had the entire rest of their school year cancelled yesterday, while the governor of my state has elected to go with a more lackadaisical approach, leaving things open to the school districts to decide. We have no way of knowing whether this thing will stretch into the summer or fall, and we don’t know how things will shake out if the federal government directs people to behave “normally” while the states or counties — or the WHO — order lockdowns to continue.

I would expect from BlizzCon that, if tickets go on sale, they do so with a big fat disclaimer that the purchaser claims all liability in the case of a cancellation. Though the rumor is that Blizzard loses money from holding BlizzCon, they would presumably want to defray that loss in the case of an outright cancellation. Whoever they get to play the closing concert, all the voice actors and hosts, and all the general events staff will want to be paid, and blocking off BlizzCon weekend to other work means that either Blizzard pays them, you do, or they eat the loss themselves. Guess which is the most likely scenario.

If nothing else, hopefully this means less stories about stinky people and Con Flu this year.

Ann Wilson. Any song. I’m not singing with her, I’m just letting her do her thing.

Come on, it’s ANN PIRATE GHOSTING WILSON.

How well a hair mask will work depends a lot on your existing hair texture and how well you’re treating it otherwise. The purpose of a hair mask is to strengthen your strands before the damage happens. You can’t actually repair damaged hair so if your ends are splitting you’ll need to get a trim. Personally, I tend to have damaged hair and flyaways around my temples, because I do silly things like pulling it into a high bun because it’s kind of Lord of the Flies in my house right now.

A decent all-around mask is, if you have one to spare, beat a whole egg with a tbspish of olive oil until it’s fully incorporated, then let it sit on your clean hair for at least 30 mins. It’s important to rinse with cold water — I do this in the sink — and then I usually follow up with a little bit of my regular conditioner (Organix coconut milk) so I don’t smell like an omelet.

I main support so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I haven’t tried Echo myself, because of the forementioned dire chaos of my house right now, but she looks like an overpowered pain in the pirate ghost.

Though I’m glad they removed the running away bit and the combat efficacy, I kinda miss the constant happy face reminder to feed my pet. I can still do it, and every so often when I have random stacks of crappy food I’ll give some to Rutherford because he eats garbage, but it just isn’t the same.

I’m not at all cutting edge anymore, so yes, yes, incredibly yes. There’s so much old content to do for pets and transmog in this expansion alone it’s overwhelming, and that’s before going back to all the raids from previous expansions for stuff I still want. I only did two Order Halls in full so far. Most of my Garrisons have a building slot or two languishing, but I feel slightly guilty for not keeping up with them because the herbs and ore still sell bizarrely well on the Auction House. Hell, I still don’t have Draenor Pathfinder, because grinding the cats in Tanaan is the pits even at max level (but it’s about to be even worse, so I should really get on that).

On the other hand, part of the reason I have such a backlog is because, unlike when I first started playing, I have other stuff going on. Real life notwithstanding, I also have other games I want to play in the much more limited free time I have. Having so much stuff in one game is great for people who only want to play that one game, but it’s getting more and more onerous to keep up at baseline, let alone go do all that other junk. And I recognize completely that a “featureless” expansion isn’t really appealing to the single-game players, and that the overwhelmed feeling is more than a little intentional. But it would be nice if I could go all-in on a different game for a while.