The Queue: Never give up, never surrender

I had another in the whole line of “haha you thought it was a Mitch queue, but it’s actually a Cory Queue! Fooled you again” posts all planned out when Mitch asked me to take over his Queue today, but then I ran some Mythic+ runs and got the most down to the wire run that I’ll ever probably get — and it’s all I can think about.

We were in a Halls of Atonement and bopping along. It was our last run of the evening so we were playing a little more carefree than usual, just having a good time and making a few easy mistakes, missing interruptions, standing next to the Spiteful fiends — things like that. Nothing too terrible, we were still pretty sure that we were going to make the timer, but it was going to be more of a long shot with each tiny mistake. After the third boss though there were less than four minutes left on the timer. It would’ve been really easy to give up and say that there was no possibility of timing it, but we still kept pushing and wound up finishing the run on time!

Now when I say on time normally I mean “oh yeah, we finished that on time, we had like three minutes left over.” This time it was more “we finished on time, couldn’t have finished it more on time.” Our final time for the run was 31:59.902/32:00!!

The clock in-game had already switched to the red angry 00:00 remaining! I still can’t believe that we came that close. It literally must’ve come down to one person getting a lucky critical in the last tenth of a second. So next time you’re running something: keep at it — you might just get the photo finish to end all photo finishes.

While I take a few deep breaths, it’s time for — The Queue.

It would be really cool if every week had one of the Timewalking brackets active. When/if they add Legion that’d still be six expansions worth of Timewalking before it reset, and it’d really help me to build out my raid transmogs, if there was a quest each week that offered a piece of raid gear.

As for the rest, I’d like to see more ranks of the Covenant buildings, or maybe a new building that each Covenant could build for the Sanctum. Maybe Blizzard could make it a new Mage Tower thing, where the higher rank you’ve built you could get more fights and rewards, or cheaper entries. New ranks for the unique Covenant feature would be nice too. More events and party guests for Ember Courts, more rewards and seeds to plant in the Queen’s Conservatory, more pieces to stick onto your Abominations, and more memories to fight on the Path of Ascension.

Maybe have something where the Covenants travel around to the other zones in the Shadowlands and set up a little shop to help rebuild some of the havoc that’s been going on. Maldraxxus could go help set things right in Bastion, Revendreth could bring Anima to Ardenweald, the Kyrians could work with the Avowed to help souls move on from the past, Ardenweald could organize hunts in Bastion. Things like that, show the Covenants working together to build a better Shadowlands while we’re waiting for the next piece we need to chase Zovaal.

I’ve done it almost every week on my main, and once on my brand new Mage. The Bear wants the reputation with Death’s Advance, and the Mage wants that Anima.

It is much easier as a well-geared Bear than as a Mage. I can pretty much pull 50% worth of enemies and AOE them all down in three to four minutes. Sometimes other people help and it goes faster, but I’m never in any fear of dying. Every day I’m glad I chose to become a tank back in Legion. One good trick has been to pull the things around the World Boss on Tuesday. You can sometimes catch people who just finished it and are looking to pick up some easy kills for themselves.

For my Mage, I’ll just take advantage of the group finder and with five people it goes pretty quickly too. The 500 Anima has really been helping to build up my Kyrian Covenant hall. He’s gotten all buildings to rank two, so the Anima has almost started to speed up a bit, and I’m gonna get around to actually trying out their Path of Ascension for reals any day now.

You’re right! We really otter do something about that!

I am fully on board.

I will be the best Old God-worshipping lamb in the history of Old God-worshipping lambs. When this comes out expect me to not shut up about how many villagers I’ve sacrificed in order to gain power, and just what happened to the ones who refused to go with the flow.

So I’m cheating because I once gave this question to Mitch and he answered but only briefly, and only in the Staff chat. Since this is one of his Queues, and I also love the Old Gods I figured I could throw in a question from myself, and as a bonus now you get two answers!

Mitch: Dang, that’s a tough one. They’ve given me so much. Life, hope, power, love, infinity, void, despair, hopelessness, love…

Cory: I don’t even know when it happened. I wasn’t exactly a fan of the Horror genre until suddenly I was. It was a subtle change over time, much like falling deeper into the madness of an Old God. Now I can’t get enough of the stuff. I think my first exposure to them as a concept (at least the first I can remember) was probably the first Hellboy movie, which spiraled out from there into the Hellboy comics and C’thulu mythos stuff.

Now the easiest way to get me interested in something is to have an ancient being pulling the strings who will probably offer you a deal. Maybe you get something good out of the deal, maybe you get a bunch of extra eyeballs and tentacles where you didn’t have them before. It could go either way. Cosmic otherworldly forces operating towards their own unknowable ends are kind of comforting in a nihilistic way. At the end of the day, nothing you do matters because the Screaming Black Goat with seven eyes will awaken soon to devour the world.

All I know is that I just love it when things get Weird™.

I’ve really been digging it.

As much fun as it was to watch Samuel Jackson beat up [Redacted] who was voiced by their actor from the movies, [Redacted], I felt bad for this week’s episode though. It’s hard to come after Captain Carter: Professional Nazi Puncher, and one of our last times getting to hear Chadwick Boseman play T’challa.

I’ve always loved the alternate universe/multiverse story setups though. Since we don’t spend any real time in them they can play it as fast and loose as they want. Which in hindsight I guess is why I was a little disappointed in the Warlords of Draenor overall story. We could’ve gotten some truly big swings and changes, and instead, we mostly got the same kind of story. Imagine if someone had gone back and armed the Sporeggar with the technology to build giant mushroom-based mechs and explosives. Now that would’ve been a wild time!

Today’s Anna Liz Earworm™: The Final Countdown

I’m back! I saw that you all left Anna lots of questions, so I hope that you’ve been getting nothing but the fanciest of drops. If you want that sort of good Karma to continue through the weekend, make sure to leave lots for Liz too!