The Queue: The hero we need

While he doesn’t cut a particularly dashing figure, it’s clear that the great investigator Murloc Holmes is the hero we need right now. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Murloc Holmes ought to be wandering around Revendreth, questioning Dredgers in mrgls and grmrgls, following footprints, and interrogating suspicious passers-by (namely us). I want to see him sit down for tea with Theotar and I want to talk him into coming to the Ember Court. I have never wanted anything to be added to WoW so badly.

Come on, Blizzard, this would be great and you know it.

My guild also zoomed through Normal Fated Nathria this week. I was concerned that Fated raids were going to be too hard, that we wouldn’t be able to clear them during the week they’re available, but this has doesn’t seem to be the case at all. The Fated mechanics were all easy to handle without a notable increase in difficulty. We wiped once on Huntsman purely because we’d completely forgotten the mechanics, twice to trash, and one shot everything else. The run was a breeze, even though the ilevel it drops includes a few items that would even be upgrades for me.

I’m not complaining, though. It’s been a long year, and it’s kind of nice to have something to do that isn’t a big mind-bending challenge.

Two powerful women who know what they want and go get it? They’d absolutely get along… as long as neither of them got in the way of the other’s goals. If they did, things might get messy. But other than that, I think they’d get along famously, much to the chagrin of everyone around them who would constantly be just a little bit anxious about what the two of them were up to.

The most recent mystery game I played through was a point-and-click style adventure called Backbone, which transitioned from a seemingly simple mystery to big time what the hell about halfway through. It was a wild ride. I’ve recently started two others you might consider mystery games: Escape Academy, which is about puzzling your way out of various escape rooms, and Chinatown Detective Agency, which is a straight-up mystery.

What’s interesting about all of these games is they aren’t games I went looking for, and they probably aren’t games I would have bought: They were all on Xbox Game Pass, and I stumbled into them and thought they sounded interesting. While I don’t like having one more monthly subscription fee, I really like how I frequently just stumble into games I enjoy. I haven’t made a whole lot of progress on either of those last two titles, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far.

I am not big on prepurchasing games. I’m not taking any particular stand against Blizzard in particular or big companies begging for money in general, but it just doesn’t make sense to me to drop a bunch of money down for something I can’t play. It’s not as though it’s limited quantity and might sell out, so I’ll buy it closer to launch day. If it had bonuses I’d use right now, I would go ahead and buy it, but I don’t have any particular need of a boost and the cosmetic items can wait. I don’t have a huge gaming budget, so it doesn’t make sense for me to pre-order titles well in advance.

I love Murder at Castle Nathria. It is the best Hearthstone expansion ever.

Also I haven’t played it much yet.

But the theme is just so magnificent, I can’t not love it. I splurged for the Battle Pass, so I have a diamond Murloc Holmes card and I’ve always thought diamond cards — which are a sparkly diamond color with fully animated character art — were kind of silly, but I can happily just sit there and watch Murloc Holmes peer left and right, then stare straight ahead through his magnifying glass. The theming of this expansion is just magnificent, the art is great, and it seems to posit some interesting deck ideas, like a Deathrattle Druid and the Imp Warlock. I’ve seen lots of new sorts of decks floating around, and there’s a lot off interesting stuff. I’m planning on trying out a Priest deck built around Identity Theft, that’s all about stealing cards and causing chaos.

However, I usually get a slow start on expansions, and it’s been a bit of a busy week. I need to take some time to sit down and browse my card collection and deck lists to find where they meet. All I’ve done so far is play some Battlegrounds (in which I am not very impressed by Togwaggle, though he apparently rates well) and I ran the Tavern Brawl a few times to finish a class quest. Not precisely heavy involvement in the expansion there.

One thing I’m kind of sad about, though: this expansion has such a cool story concept, but they aren’t going to roll out any single-player adventures with it. I mourn the loss of what I imagine would have been many hilarious encounters between Murloc Holmes and all of the suspects in Castle Nathria.

Come on, Team 5, it would be (as Lord Stavros in the Council of Blood puts it) simply delicious.

That’s all for today my friends. I hope you have a lovely, relaxing weekend ahead of you. Remember to pet your pets and tell your loved ones you love them, because life is too hard and too short not to. Thanks for reading, everybody, and take care of yourselves.