The Queue: It’s Friday and I need some sleep

It’s been a long week and I’m sure we could all use a nap by now.

But what about players who don’t have an interrupt? What would they do?

Honestly, we could say this about any ability in game. There were important abilities we all hadn’t figured out at some point or another. Like the time in Mists when I had been playing a Monk for a while, and someone asked me to CC and I didn’t realize I had a CC. Not my most impressive moment.

Really, a skill training course wouldn’t be a bad idea. Maybe not a required training course, but something that could teach people the ropes if they wanted to learn. Honestly… the Mage Tower sort of did that on a very high level. It forced you to properly use every one of your abilities, and I learned a bunch trying to complete it. Think of it as a Mage Tower for newbies: exactly the same as the Mage Tower but instead of mobs it’s wooden training dummies and painted sets.

It could be fun and educational!

This is basically a full-fledged expansion idea, barely any work required! Take this setup and then follow up with literally every haunted house trope you can think of. No need to pick and choose, just add all of them. Fill every role with our favorite characters, living, dead, or other. Khadgar! Or maybe it’s evil Khadgar or clone Khadgar or ghost Khadgar. Is it a scary illusion? Is it your mind playing tricks on you? Have we finally pushed him past his limits and he’s decided to trap us on this haunted moon? Who knows!

Things have been so serious lately, so dark. Let’s embrace the weird, the ridiculous, and the wonderful all tangled together with a haunted moon goddess. Throw out the rulebook and just go.

One of the reasons I enjoy Hearthstone’s story — such as it is — is because it doesn’t follow any rules but its own. In Hearthstone, Gadgatzen is a city of warring fantasy gangsters. Dalaran has been literally, physically stolen by a villainous cabal. And Reno Jackson, uhm, exists. Throwing out the rulebook and not taking anything seriously can be fun.

So sure. Let’s do a whole moon mission of goofiness. We’ve got this.

Well, I am running a D&D game tonight with Matt, Ted, Andrew, Christian, and Liz P. The campaign so far has been consistently unexpected, but also consistently a good time.

Which segues into the next question…

So I’ve never actually run a game before, and I only managed to stumble into this one because I wanted to play something but someone has to DM. When I volunteered, a whole group jumped in to play, so now I find myself running a weekly game with a group of extremely funny, extremely creative people who exist just to ruin my plans. But I’m learning to roll with it.

Matt’s character, in particular, tends to try to make peace with anyone they encounter. Most recently, they saved three (out of four) treasure hunters who attacked the party, knocking them out instead of killing them. Then the party got together and talked about whether or not to let these people go — and they decided these bandits could go about their business as long as they stayed out of the way.

This became a problem because both parties were visiting an abandoned town that may be haunted, and I found myself with three more NPCs to deal with. But they presented an opportunity, too, because I got to show them being freaked out by the maybe haunted elements of the maybe haunted town, rather than shoving maybe haunted things at the players and telling them that they’re scared. It’s made the whole setup a lot better.

I guess I’m most surprised by how easy it is to just roll with it. I’m a planner by nature, but it’s fun to embrace the unexpected sometimes.

I think I’d prefer to see us finish him off this expansion. While I can see the potential of such a character in an ongoing role, WoW expansions tend to be relatively self-contained outside of major lore figures, so I don’t think it’s likely this storyline will continue. But if it did, just imagine chasing the Jailer all across time and space, hoping each time that our next leap will be the leap home that we’ll uncover the mystery. It could be like a Caverns of Time expansion, with the Jailer leading us on a chase cross time and space as he tries to accomplish his devious goals.

But I think we’ll probably deal with him this expansion

I think every patch is a good time to come back into the game, really. Each patch brings a bunch of new stories and new things to do — by jumping back in for a new patch and then jumping out again, you get to skip the boring periods in between where there’s nothing new to do.

Much of patch 9.1 has played out, and if you subscribed right now it would probably take you a few weeks to get through the new content (depending on how much you want to engage). There’s a new main quest chain, a new dungeon, a new raid, a new zone, and two new factions — patch 9.1 has a little of everything.

But there are plenty of people who haven’t enjoyed patch 9.1’s story, which still leave a lot of things unresolved. If you like stories with a neatly tied up ending, you may want to hold off and come back next patch. It really all depends on what you’re looking for out of the game.

And that’s all I have for now, friends. I hope you’ve been having a good Friday so far, and that the rest of your Friday is good as well. Take the time to pet your pets, tell your loved ones that you love them, and get lost in a video game or a book. It’s been a long week, so try to carve out some time to relax.

I’ll see you back here next week, everybody!