The Queue: Escapism

The issue I’m finding with escapism in times of crisis is that, for me, it tends to make the tough things tougher to start when I actually get around to doing them. But for now, I’m a faerie princess floating around a mystical blue landscape. It’s cool, I don’t have to order school supplies for de facto homeschool until after I stop glittering, which will be never. Ah, Ardenweald.

This is The Queue, where you ask me questions and I definitely don’t put off answering them until the very last minute.

Nope!

The previous pre patches generally gave us around a month of leadtime before the expansion, so it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ve got at least a couple months to play around your corruption effects.

I have stuff for tostadas with sweet potato fries, peanut noodles with tofu, and lasagna rolls, but if I’m too exhausted I always have a frozen pizza or two as a fallback option. Since quarantine, I’ve been making a concerted effort to do more meal planning and prep, with the whole ‘cut up cucumbers in the fridge for snacks’ and stuff when I have the energy and decent fallbacks when I don’t. Doing the thing when I have the energy to make it easier for when I don’t has been really crucial to maintaining my sanity these days, and making sure the kids have a vegetable every so often too.

I’ll probably just end up making frozen pizza.

Pet battles? Pet battles.

I do wish they had an event that covered more — or even dare I say it, all — reps, and that may be a good bet. Double drop chances on either old raids or current content dungeons would also be nice and not exactly gamebreaking, especially for transmog runs.

I’d love to see something that specifically works well with older content, because at this point in the expansion cycle I’m usually focused on prepping for next expansion and going back to complete stuff in older expansions I’d always intended to get around to. Grinding out the coins to get the box for that marmot in Shieldwall, for instance, or finishing Balance of Power. I’m not sure how you design around ‘random crap I never really got around to,’ but then hey, that’s why I’m a game journalist and not a game developer.

They’ve been implemented, but they’re a little tough to cover, both from a general writing standpoint and a “how do I game the algorithm” clicks standpoint. We’ve started Ardenweald together on the WoW Wednesday stream, and so far, it’s honestly one of my favorite questlines to date, but there’s no good way to talk about it without just saying the spoiler, and the spoiler alone sounds lackluster while the quest itself is delightful.

Also, they’re incredibly long — as well they should be, since they’re intended to last us a while. But as such, I was careful to say we started it on the WoW Wednesday stream. Though we do get derailed by things like getting characters ‘beta trapped,’ and also whenever I see something cute, we still haven’t reached the Night Warrior thread we wrote about last week. I try to go three hours every stream night, and though I do read important quest texts aloud in silly voices, it looks like this quest line is a pretty lengthy process to play through.

I’m of two minds when it comes to Jellycat. On the one hand, Jellycat is adorable and I would die for it. Its little transparent body is so cool, and such a triumph of how far video game graphics have come. It’s incredibly unique, and I love it.

On the other hand, it’s probably gonna be Maldraxxus-related, so nah.

That’s a good bet. They have been consistent in providing their quarterly progress updates, but since Virtual BlizzCon likely won’t happen until spring due to the logistics of it all, I think Gamescom may give us a glimpse of more gore, worms, decay, and blood.

Where the pirate ghost is Diablo Immortal though?