The Queue: Goodbye, 2020, and happy Queue Year!
I had the option of handing this Queue off to another writer. It’s a holiday, after all, and my gracious coworkers/bosses are kind enough to recognize that it’s okay to take holidays off. But the last Queue of not only the year, but of 2020 specifically? I had to write that.
So, please join me as we say [REDACTED] to 2020 with a Queuestravaganza!
Q4tMitchQueue: how does it feel to be writing not just the last Queue of the year, but the last Queue of 2020?
Honestly, I love seeing which holiday Queues I luck out with writing. Whether it be the 4th of July, a birthday, or something else, it’s always exciting to get a holiday Queue. I’m not sure why, but holiday Queues are ones I almost never skip out on, even if I’m writing them like 30 minutes before they should go live (cough cough).
So yeah, I’m excited about it. It feels like an honor, but not one I rigged to get. It just fell into my lap, and I’m gonna make the most of it.
QtfQ: What are the quadrants of the Venn diagram that you prefer for a role-playing campaign, as a player or a GM? For example, for the games I run: Heroic – Whimsy – Slapstick – Horror. Y’all?
Oooooh, I like this question. Mostly because I don’t have an immediate answer. Well, not a complete answer anyhow. Horror and Sci-Fi are definitely at the top — I’m thinking some of the scarier/darker levels of Mass Effect here. The other two though?…
High Fantasy is a good one, though harder to fit into Horror/Sci-Fi. It’s not quite as quantifiable, but I do love campaigns with small-yet-intimate moments.
Oh, and I’ve never DMd, so this is technically as a player… but I’d *love* to create a campaign around these facets all the same.
As a Necrolord, I sometimes have Marz accompany me as I run through Shadowlands doing World Quests, Callings, and such. 90% of the time this bloated idiot stands on top of whatever it is I’m trying to loot, he stands directly in front of me when I’m trying to change targets thereby blocking my view. I often want to /stab him in the head.
Are all or any of the other “helpers” from other covenants as annoying as he is?
Well, I can’t speak for the other Covenants, but I will say you might be able to get around this sort of thing with a Loot-A-Rang, a toy like the Corgi Goggles, or uhh… careful positioning, tank-style.
Another QftQ: What good luck foods will you be eating Friday? I will be frying up hog jowl and heating up some blackeyed peas. You?
I haven’t thought this far ahead, but if the local diner is open, I absolutely love their skillets. Get me some well-done hash browns, sautéed veggies, cheese, and eggs (+ toast) and I am a happy lad.
If they’re not open, uhhh… well, I guess I’ll see where tonight’s shenanigans take me. I may end up getting blasted and ordering a lot of delivery, in which case, leftovers, baybeeeee!
So, Timewalking is now for 50+ only. GG
Yeah, I did notice this when it rolled around, and I’m not sure it’s the right choice. Given the new leveling, I think you can technically join some Wrath dungeons at a low level — apologies, I don’t quite know the level ranges for Chromie Time yet — but I also do understand not wanting players with like 2 abilities to join max-level players queueing with all abilities + Covenant abilities.
Of course, FFXIV will down-scale players so they *lose* abilities if they’re queuing for lower dungeons. I wouldn’t hate it if WoW scaled players up for the sake of giving everyone abilities, but I can see how that would overwhelm newbies.
In the end, I get why the minimum level was raised, but I think there’s a better solution for it. Make it a minimum of 35 to queue and/or up-scale players so they have their full toolkit. Do something so Timewalking doesn’t just become “alternative Shadowlands dungeons.”
Cynical QftQ: What function, exactly, do the Kyrian serve? It’s quite obvious that all dead souls are automatically pulled into the gravity of Oribis in order to get “sorted.” Even though they are not now.
Given this is coming from the perspective of a Necrolord, I’m pretty sure Kyrian are supposed to take souls from their original planes to the Shadowlands/Oribos. Yeah, the souls get sucked into Mawribos right now, but before that happened, souls would, uhh… I guess just hang out until a Kyrian showed up?
Think of Kyrian like Charon ferrying souls. Before you pay the coin (your soul), you don’t get ferried. When you do, Charon/Kyrian take you to your afterlife. In the Kyrians’ case, you have one more step (the Arbiter) before you’re ultimately sent, but the Kyrian still ferry you. (Also, I apologize to mythology or Hades buffs if I totally botched that comparison, but it made sense to me 😬)
Q4tQ: What’s your favourite (SL) World Quest?
Mine’s Spore Losers. Eliminating baddies with two puffs of spores and rallying shrooms to rebellion whilst also being a shroom, what’s not to love? And those battle cries! :D
Runner-up: Anything that has NPCs say hilarious things. A lot of that’s in Revendreth. And one of the boggarts at the Ardenweald play said: “Have you even read the source material?” today, which I thought was hilarious.
Also runner-up: Anything Marasmius sets. My all-time favourite shroom.
I have a very bad answer for this, but I’m getting really tired of World Quests, so I haven’t been doing a ton. I enjoy the one where you have to run around the Theatre of Pain lighting fires because it always feels run to just run fast, and it’s a very painless experience.
I really, really want to like World Quests more, but oof. This is the third expansion in a row we’ve had them, and while they were an amazing innovation in Legion, they’ve gotten kinda stale to me now. It’s hard to motivate myself to do all of them, unfortunately, so I don’t have a ton of experience with all of the Shadowlands WQs.
So I’ve got about 92k gold on my main when I started playing again, where does that sit in terms of current wealth?
I have no clue. I feel like the wealth disparity in the game is massive. I went into the expansion with maybe 60-70k and I’m up to ~120k now? But I also haven’t spent a ton of gold on legendaries yet (because I don’t have the memory for my BIS), which will set me back quite a bit.
Bottom line, if you can afford what you want to buy with 92k, I wouldn’t worry too much about where you sit! …But you’re also definitely far from the top end. Welcome to gold in WoW!
Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention technically being able to buy gold with real money via the WoW Token. If you’re not spending all your money on HDMI Convertors, that’s a real easy way to get rich quick.
Question for the Queue, hopefully not too late:
This week’s pvp quests in Oribos are for the arena. I want to finally try and learn to play arenas, after some disastrous attempts to dip my toe in in the past. However, searching the internet, it is very hard to find basic information on some of the most basic things I should know, such as recommended ilevel before starting. Can anyone recommend a resource for getting going with the absolutely most basic information, and how to move forward from there?
It’s not amazing advice or anything, but Googling “[spec] [class] PVP Shadowlands” will likely come up with your best results. Of course, Wowhead and Icy Veins both have solid starters for PVP, and I do recommend checking them!
Honestly, I recommend just kind of diving into either random BGs or Skirmishes and seeing what feels right for you. If you’re really trying to push ranked PVP, yeah, you may want some more tailored advice — but for getting back into it, just go in to some more casual PVP and see what works for you. Sometimes, the “best” builds just don’t mesh with your playstyle. Again, I know that’s not an amazing answer, but hopefully it assuages some fears! I haven’t looked too deeply into what’s “right” for PVP in Shadowlands, but I’ve still been doing a heck of a lot of it without too much trouble :)
What is the soulless anima construct race of Maldraxxus? Bastion has the stewards, Revendreth has the dredgers, and Ardenweald has those faerie people. But I can’t think of something for Maldraxxus. At first I thought the constructs but they are made out of people.
Maybe the soulless race of Maldraxxus… is us!
Okay but honestly, I don’t have an answer here, but I will say, this is another situation that makes me think Maldraxxus is the best zone. No soulless constructs for us! Just the regular kinds, made of body parts and top hats.
That’s all for The Queue in 2020! It’s been… a year. But from the bottom of my heart — and Jovan’s — I hope you all have a happy New Year, and may your 2021 be infinitely better than this year has been.
Cheers! <3
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