The Queue: Naga, Murlocs, and Pirates — oh my!

Which would you rather have — one 6/6 orca or six 1/1 otters? This is the difficult question that the new Hearthstone card Flipper Friends asks you, and I admit I don’t know if I’d prefer to have the friendship of this happy, smiling orca or these happy, smiling otters.

But since I can’t answer that question, let me try to answer yours.

I actually haven’t played very much constructed yet, unless you count diving into this week’s Tavern Brawl — which I definitely recommend for anyone interested in the expansion, because it gives you a chance to try out new expansion text recipes.

But even without really diving in, I just love the theme of it, though. Cards that “sink” to the bottom of your deck, that you can then dredge up again. Giant sea monsters. A whole underwater world inhabited by Naga and Murlocs, aquatic monsters and underwater machines. Hearthstone manages to really paint a picture of an underwater world full of interesting creatures —  a colorful and somewhat silly world where you’d like to spend some time exploring. It reminds me of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan in that way, fleshing out part of the Warcraft universe in a way World of Warcraft couldn’t. Hearthstone is at its most fun when it embraces its own weird world, its slightly warped mirror version of Azeroth where colors are more saturated and everyone smiles more often. Even the orcas.

Gameplay-wise, I think it has some really interesting new mechanics and I look forward to seeing how they play out over the next year. I haven’t figured out what deck to build with the cards I have, and it’s early enough that I don’t want to craft anything, so I may be waiting a while to play any constructed. For now I’ll enjoy checking out the Tavern Brawl, running Battlegrounds, and playing Mercenaries now and then.

One of the real failings in WoW is the lack of wing transmog. Blizzard should get on this problem immediately. Diablo 3 has tons of wing transmog options, so clearly Blizzard knows that wings are a popular option. There’s a lesson to be learned here: if you have the option to transmog wings, transmog wings. I have the Kyrian wings and they’re great, but they’re just one pair of wings. We need more. And if we happen to be getting some kind of dragon-themed something in the future, well, why not dragon wings? It’s the obvious choice!

Anyway, this answer just comes down to the fact that I love transmog, and I like having all kinds of different, cool looks. Getting dragon wings would make for more potentially cool looks, which means I am all for it.

When I have trouble with aching hands, there are usually a few different culprits:

1. I am just clicking too fast, as though clicking faster will make things cast faster when the GCD is in effect. You can only use your abilities so quickly, and if you’re anything like me you may be clicking faster than need be and causing your hands extra strain.
2. You are frequently hitting hotkeys that are awkwardly placed, causing your hands to move in ways they don’t like.
3. I have my hands positioned wrong on the keyboard. Sometimes if I shift my laptop around or move my chair, I’ll be out of a good position and won’t notice until my wrists start hurting.

While I do find this a lot more common with some classes/specs than others — it’s never been a problem for me when I’m healing, for example — I think a big part of it is the ergonomics of your setup and your keybindings. Your desk and chair need to be at an appropriate height to where you can sit comfortably with you arms resting naturally on the desk, not reaching up or down. Your wrists should be relatively straight, not angled up or down. Your back should be straight, rather than hunching forward over your keyboard. Even a tiny ergonomics problem can have a big impact, so you want to be sure you have everything set up in a comfortable spot before you sit down!

MoveWoW makes a good point, too, about how accessories can help. A keypad like the Razor they link could make it easier to reach your most common buttons, without putting extra strain on your hands. A gaming mouse — basically just a mouse with extra buttons to make it easier to hit your most-used spell hotkeys — is another helpful options. These aren’t must-haves (and can be pricy), but they can help.

Finally, take a look at your button layout. Are any of your hotkeys on keys that are awkward to reach? If so, you want to be sure that your most common abilities are on hotkeys you can easily reach. Is a button you find yourself reaching for difficult to reach? move it to somewhere it will be easier to reach. Make a serious effort on making all of your common keys easy to get to. It definitely makes a difference.

And after all of that, maybe some stretches or exercises that can help loosen up your hands when they’re stiff? I’ve never found stretching to really help me, but it might help you.

There’s a balance that needs to be found here. If players can do everything in their homes, they may never leave to go out into the world. We saw this in Warlords of Draenor, where you could even gather herbs and ore right inside your Garrison. There was simply no reason to wander around, and the world felt a bit emptier because of that.

I think Matthew Rossi has a great idea about this, which I’ve heard him talk about on the podcast: tie housing into efforts to rebuild different parts of Azeroth, and have quests that let you help reconstruct your new “home.” We saw something like this with the Garrison, which we upgraded step by step, but this would be a larger community effort — and your home would only be a small part of the area you’re rebuilding. We can build and upgrade our own homes, but our homes are part of a larger space, and we can walk out — and we have reasons to walk out — and be part of the community. Again, a balance.

What Blizzard started with Garrisons, I think they’ve hit a good spot for with Covenant Halls, which provide lots of useful features, but are also an active community made up of members of your Covenant, which you build, upgrade, and improve by progressing the story and handing over Anima. Perhaps a future housing community might look similar, with a community center that we all work together to upgrade or maintain, with houses we can put our own creative flair on.

I don’t necessarily think housing itself needs a reason. Sure, a house would be a convenient place to put useful expansion features, but overcrowding it will just make going outside less appealing. And for players who love customization, they won’t need a gameplay reason to make the most of their player housing. Just think: how much time have you spent in the game collecting transmog? Costumes for Pepe? Hats for Pocopoc? Mounts? Battle pets? Very little of that is necessary for gameplay, but we still do it and enjoy it. And that’s the thing with housing: if you enjoy it, you’re going to really enjoy it. And if you don’t, well, it’s a little feature off to the side. But not everything in the game needs a reason. Not everything needs to provide obvious gameplay value. For all “serious” gamers might scoff, playing dress-up via transmog can be the entire game. Housing could just be a fun system, and that’s enough. The game doesn’t need to force us to visit our homes, because we’re g0ing to go there anyway. Someone needs to hang those new curtains and make sure the rug lines up properly.

If you build it, they will come.

It’s awful! I’d rather be napping. I’d almost always rather be napping.

And with that, I’m calling this Queue done. Maybe I’ll even go take a nap. As always, have a good afternoon and a good weekend. Pet your pets and tell your loved ones you love them, because it’s Friday, and what other reason do you need?

Take care, Queue, and I’ll see you again next week.