The Queue: Today is the day we talk about fashion

Happy Friday, everyone. Time for some low-key conversation about light topics and definitely not about taking the game apart and putting it back together. Let’s get queuing.

I feel like some gates are, perhaps, good. Matt wrote about this a while ago about how WoW is an endless leveling treadmill — and that isn’t always a bad thing. Having gates and grinds gives us something to do, something to accomplish at end game even beyond leveling to max and killing a bunch of things. In Classic, there is no grind, and everything there is to know about raids and dungeons and leveling is already known, so players can zoom forward, completely unimpeded.

There has to be some kind of happy medium between an endless grind and no grind at all. In vanilla the grind was wholly gear. In Shadowlands it feels like there are a hundred things to grind in order to make any progress on anything. That feels quite tedious.

I’m not sure where the answer is, but it’s somewhere between there and here.

I love it. Bicycles for everyone. Maybe unicycles? Maybe tricycles? Whatever the number of wheels, I’m into it.

The S Tier for helms is Rhinestone Sunglasses, Bronze-Tinted Sunglasses, any of those crowns from Opulence (or Shadowlands Jewelcrafters), flower crowns from the Lunar Festival, thank of the game’s monocles (what’s classier than a monocle?), and the top hat.

I’m pretty sure that is for sure it, no room for correction.

Hey! Turns out we wrote a post about just this!

Basically this is a good time to start, because Hearthstone has recently added a “core” set of cards that everyone gets without having to open packs and collect cards. All you need to do to get the core set is level up the different Hearthstone classes, which you can do entirely in PVE modes. Just log in and head over to practice mode to get a feel for the game. I think the basics are pretty, well, basic. All of your cards have a certain mana cost, and you have a certain amount of mana that increases each turn. Spell effects and minion abilities are explained on the cards, and you can get details if you mouseover them. So read, play, and figure out as you go is what I’d recommend. Then try out whatever other modes appeal to you.

You can check out Tavern Brawls — which sometimes require no deck building at all, like this week — and Battlegrounds — which never require any deck building because you build as you go. You can complete a lot of quests in Brawls and Battlegrounds, and quests grant XP that give you gold which you can use to buy more cards or cosmetics like card backs and hero skins.

I personally think Battlegrounds are really fun, and they have a particularly low barrier to entry. I felt like it was pretty intuitive to pick up and learn, even though its mechanics are quite different from standard Hearthstone.

Anyway, give it a whirl. All you have to lose is time.

The only reason I’ve logged on all week is to play with transmog. It’s great!

Once again, I hope you’re all having a good Friday and are heading into a weekend full of good games, good friends, and very good doggos. I’ll see you back here next week.