The Queue: Handle it!

Life, like an immense crowd of dragon whelps, can be pretty overwhelming. But like clockwork, the Queue has returned.

I’ve been playing WoW for 16 years and writing about it for nearly as long. During that time the game has always ebbed and flowed. When there’s a new expansion or a new patch, people flood in to check out the new content. And as people finish that content and get tired of doing the same thing over and over, they wander off to do something else.

Shadowlands has been out for six months now without any notable new content. No matter how enthusiastic you are about what’s available, it’s going to get a little old after six months. It’s not remotely surprising to me that people are going off to do other things — including playing FFXIV.

But people getting bored and trying other games doesn’t mean WoW is dead. It means people want something new and exciting. There’s always a big appeal to the novelty of the newest, shiniest thing, and right now that’s just not WoW. Heck, the only thing I logged in for over the past week was a normal alt raid of Nathria which I did purely for the relatively easy anima. (Well, that and hanging out with my guild. If any of them ask, tell them that’s why.) I don’t have plans to log on until our next raid because I feel like I’ve done everything that interests me — and I have other things that I’m more interested in right now.

That doesn’t mean I’m quitting WoW, and it doesn’t mean everyone else is quitting WoW either. The game has always had low points when fewer players have been logging on regularly, but that’s never meant it was over. I’ll be playing a lot more when 9.1 comes out, and a lot of other people will too. It’s just the natural ebb and flow of the thing.

It’s not the top of my to-do list but it’s on it somewhere. I’m catching up on Critical Role right now. I haven’t watched the latest Marvel shows. I still have to finish my Mass Effect playthrough. I have some crafting projects I’m (theoretically) working on. My schedule is so packed.

Well. Maybe not packed, exactly, but In the Heights is on the list. It seems like it’s an upbeat drama, which is not typically my thing, but Lin-Manuel Miranda writes smart stuff and I’m certainly going to give it a watch while it’s streaming. But there’s also a lot of other stuff on my list, so I don’t know when I’ll get to it.

Summer Game Fest didn’t particularly thrill me. It highlighted a bunch of big games that, in large part, felt the same. Tiny Tina’s was the most interesting announcement by a long shot, but as I’m not a Borderlands fan so my own excitement is middle of the road.

However, I thought practically everything from Day of the Devs, which immediately followed after the Summer Game Fest opening stream, was entirely games that were unique, different, and exciting. I think Road 96 is the one I’m most likely to play, because I find the story and the choices intriguing. I love a game with an interesting story full of choices that change things. But Vokabulantis was for sure the prettiest. That stop motion style is fully my aesthetic and it looks wild in a video game context. However it sounds like it’s a long ways out, so I’m not going to get myself too excited about it.

But we still have a long list of game events coming up over the next few days. There’s plenty of time for excitement yet.

It’s no contest for least favorite: that’s Private Stock, the Xy’mox achievement. It required a decent amount of coordination and good teleportation portal placement. It was probably the most annoying one to get — a mistake meant you had to wipe and start over. Bleh.

Also I just don’t like the Xy’mox fight. I might dislike it even more than I like the Denathrius fight, which is saying something. There’s just a lot going on, I have trouble telling apart the dozens of different white colored abilities happening (somehow even more so than Denathrius’ all-red color scheme), and I can literally never get that bit where he sucks you into the middle of the room part right. Really, I’m terrible. This fight annoys the heck out of me.

My favorite achievement is Feed Me, Seymour!, the Stone Legion Generals achievement. It has both the best name of the achievements and it’s also just kind of cute. You pick flowers and then you feed them anima. It’s just nice. We’re in a place that’s not very nice, and it’s kind of pleasant to just have something nice that happens.

But none of the Nathria achievements are as good as Lactose Intolerant in Eternal Palace. Possibly no achievement will ever be as good as Lactose Intolerant.

I’m looking forward to all things new. I want to see continuing story, and we haven’t had any in a long time. So I’m eager to take the next step with our Covenants and invade the Maw. I’m also pretty excited about a new raid because I’ve spent so much time in Nathria and I’m real tired of it.

I’m not looking forward to collecting all of these extra levels of Renown, but I’ll get there eventually.

Lucky for you, Night Fae seems to be a top recommendation for all Druid specs. Each Covenant has different abilities — including a class and spec specific ability — which can change up your playstyle in different ways. Some Covenants have abilities that can be game changing at high levels, but if you don’t play higher end content, that’s not even a consideration — go with the Covenant that sounds the most fun and don’t worry about it.

But you have a chance to test drive all of the Covenant abilities before you choose a Covenant to join. As you play through the Shadowlands story, you’ll be given the abilities of each Covenant while you play through that Covenant’s story. By the time you get to the end, you’ll have tested out every Covenant’s abilities and you’ll have a feel for which ones you like most.

So you’ve got this. Go, play, and see what feels good to you.

And that’s (mostly) it for the Queue today — but I had one more question. I’m not going to try to answer (because I haven’t been able to come up with a good answer yet), but I think it might make for fun discussion:

What D&D class would each of the faction leaders play? (you can choose one or the other if there's too many) Not what D&D class they would BE if directly translated over, what D&D class they would WANT to play.

— Rades 🐉 (@_Rades) June 11, 2021

So many choices. I just don’t know, so I’m throwing it off to you all to decide.

But that’s really all for the Queue today. I hope you all have a very pleasant Friday and a good weekend to follow. Take care of yourselves, folks.