The Queue: Harrumph! >:(

Look, I said I’d have fun no matter who won this year’s Splatoween Splatfest — and I did! — but I’m still a bit salty that, despite its pretty dominant lead in popularity, Team Trick lost once again. Also, Pearl and Marina swapping their black/white outfits was simple but fantastic and I am all about goth Pearl. Anyhow, those are the only results we’ll be discussing today.

Everything else? It’s all coming up Queue.

Well when you put it like that, it does sound silly. But you’re just not using your full toolkit!

My personal preference is Misery so I open with VT/SW:P all at once. I quickly cast MB (which, thanks to latency hits after the enemy has only barely moved), then I do Mind Flay. That usually gives me plenty of time.

But! You can also Mind Bomb/Psychic Horror/Fear and run, or Shadowfiend/Mind Bender + Fade to give yourself some room. Really, Fade + anything else is an underrated gem for getting creatures off you and giving yourself some room. If you’re feeling really adventurous, go Surrender to Madness so you can Mind Flay on the move and laugh at them as they try to catch up.

Oh, I’m absolutely going to do everything I can to unlock the full transmog set. It may not be my first priority, but I’m definitely going to make it a goal. Worst case, I do it in 10.0 much more easily :P

Either way you spin it, I’d probably be a Blood Elf. In a super alternate reality, I’d main a Blood Elf Demon Hunter, because Demon Hunters are just hecka fun. But if we’re sticking with Priest, it’d… probably still be a Blood Elf. Maybe now that we have Zandalari, they’d be in play, but honestly, I REALLY like Forsaken. Most of my Horde characters are Forsaken, with a small smattering of Blood Elves.

The cynic in me says it was a simple cost/benefit analysis and it’s no longer something worth supporting. The optimist in me says Blizzard saw the effect multi-boxers farming herbs/minerals or one-shotting people in world PVP was having on the rest of the game and decided it was getting out of hand, so they took the (potential) hit to subscriber numbers for the sake of a better experience overall for players.

Especially after inflation was made even more apparent by the Longboi mount’s existence, it seems like Blizzard may have realized it needed to be curtailed.

You actually stole my answer here. I’m incredibly fascinated by the Dreadlord lore implications we’ve already seen (spoiler warning on that link).

It’s much less likely, but I’d also love to see an explanation for why we see spirits on Azeroth and why they never mention the Shadowlands. Uther, I can maaaaaybe see if we follow the whole “soul split in two” thing. But what about all the other ghosts? Why have none of them warned us about, say, [REDACTED] attacking the realms of the dead? And why can they visit other realms/planes as though they’re living a second life, but (in most cases) apparently decide not to spend time with their loved ones? Does being in the Shadowlands change who you are?

It’s a very large can of worms once you start getting into the minutiae of it all, and I’d be impressed if there were a blanket way to explain every instance of spirits we’ve seen. (But I don’t think we’ll get that.)

It’s always tricky deciding if I want more of this sort of thing. Xal’atath becoming an Old God — or returning in general — would likely not end well for her, and I’d hate to have to face her as an encounter in any form.

That said, her story feels far from complete. Blizzard has managed to surprise in the past, but if — and that’s a big if — we end up going into the “cosmological war” in patch 10.0, I’d love to see the Void resurrect all the Old Gods at once in its war against the Light (and maybe the Shadowlands?). That would also be the perfect place for Xal’atath to show up again. But maybe she remembers what players have done for her. Maybe she becomes our source of knowledge for how to dismantle the Old Gods (and/or the Light) for good. Why? I haven’t figured that out yet! But I’m sure she’d have her reasons.

Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of described Xal’atath becoming Sylvanas 2.0 (before everything in BFA happened). I think I’d be okay with that, as long as we don’t end up killing her. I suppose the alternative could be that she does a lot of the same scheming that Sylvanas does, but in her efforts to help us fight the Old Gods/the Light, she ends up sacrificing herself. I might be okay with that. I really just don’t want to go down the “Ah, heck, now we gotta kill her!” route.

Practically speaking, I don’t know how well full bones would work with armor. But I’m all for it!

In fact, one of my (admittedly few) issues with the new Forsaken customization options is that the skin/some bone/lotsa bone options aren’t really as exciting as they could be. Let me pick and choose where my bones show. Maybe I want one leg to be decrepit and the other to be pristine. Maybe my right arm is pure bone! I think there’s a lot more that could be done with the bone options for Forsaken, though I’m over the moist moon already with what we’ve gotten overall.

I’m almost positive we will, though maybe not new ones. As mentioned above, I think we could easily see Azeroth’s four (or five, if you count G’huun) being resurrected.

But you’re also right in that there are potentially a lot more Old Gods out there on other planets (heck, we’ve seen fully Void’d planets in Star Augur Etraeus’ fight, and they seemed pretty tentacle-y). I’m… honestly not sure how they’d come to us, though, and Azeroth seems to be a Big Deal™, more so than any other planet.

What I’m trying to say is, I can either see the four we know being resurrected and coming back stronger than before, or the Void somehow manifests an entire army of Old Gods as part of a great cosmological war. I prefer sticking with the four we have. The last thing I want is for the Old Gods to become the Daleks of WoW — initially, one is a terrifyingly unstoppable force of death but somehow we eventually end up with thousands of them that we still manage to defeat.

That’s it for today! Thanks for asking lots of questions yesterday — y’all were extra good about it this week, and it’s much appreciated.

Please extend the same courtesy (and continued lack of political talk) to tomorrow’s Queue writer. Until then, have a great week!