The Queue: Let’s write the Queue before 3am!

I really tried to get the Queue written before 3am, but as usual, it didn’t work out. This is probably why every time I write the Queue I just feel tired. It’s a pavlovian response.

Also it’s past 3am (for me), so I’d better get to answering these questions.

Gnome, of course. Gnomes are the most hilarious Death Knights, running around with swords as tall as they are.

I am very aware of the siren song of Classic. I’m always tempted to pick it up and play, to get that nostalgia hit and try to relive the old days. But really, the old days are gone and won’t come again. The friends I used to play with aren’t there anymore, and I believe that WoW really is the friends you made along the way: without them, it’s not the same game. Without them, sometimes it’s barely a game at all.

So I have Wrath Classic installed, and I have been tempted to jump in and play, find groups, see how it goes. But I don’t have the kind of free time I had when I originally playing Wrath, and I can’t figure out how I’d can practically play Classic and still do everything else. In short, I haven’t been playing Classic.

But all they had to do was wave a cool collectable in front of me and I am there for it. Playing through the Death Knight Starting experience isn’t too much effort, and it will let me just dip my toe into the nostalgia of it all without losing every hour of the day to it.

Hopefully.

I hadn’t previously considered this, but yes, absolutely. I think revisiting old content — within reason — can be really fun, and we’ve seen Blizzard do things like this before.

And now that I think about it, both of the examples that come to mind are from Warlords of Draenor. When Blizzard added the Jukebox to the Garrison, we could collect music all over the world. Admittedly, I didn’t care enough about it to go all over the world, but Music Rolls were scattered all over the place: in major cities, in old dungeons, hidden in items that you might randomly stumble across anywhere. The expansion also added the Field Photographer achievement, which required us to travel the world and take photos in specific places with our S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera, an adventure that I quite enjoyed. It was fun to run around and try to snap great selfies 0n every continent.

As I said, exploring and revisiting older areas of the game can be fun, and offering cosmetic dragon appearances in older content seems completely in the realm of possibility. It gives players a reason to explore and do something a little different, while earning rewards that are relevant to the current gam — but don’t provide a power-up or anything of real value. They just look cool, and indicate you’ve spent some time tracking the appearance down.

This could be a particularly interesting way to subtly encourage players to revisit old dragon-filled zones or dungeons and enjoy some good old fashioned dragonslaying fun. And/or refresh their knowledge of Dragonflight-relevant story elements.

Either way, this sounds fun. Let’s do it!

Note: I have no real power to make this happen.

The thing I like most is definitely talent trees. They aren’t perfect, and I’m not too thrilled with my own right now, but I enjoy the system, the ability to make weird builds, to pick and choose what you want. I know, we’re shoehorned into a lot of directions, but.I still like the system — and I’m hopeful we’ll all find at a happy balance in these talents.

But that didn’t really surprise me. I enjoyed our old school talent trees and don’t like modern talent trees very much, so of course I like them.

What’s really surprised me is the UI updates. WoW’s current UI really shows its age: it’s bulky and inflexible, without any kind of customization. The updates may not do every single thing our current addons do, but it’s a full overhaul. It’s both more and nicer than I expected, and every change is one that I think the game really needed.

You may not have much time to use it, but it’s actually not very hard to get. As you play through Zereth Mortis — which I recommend, because it’s a fun zone. As you play through it, you’ll wind up picking up gear you can convert to tier pieces, as well as the currency you need to convert them. (You’ll get there faster if you run some LFR, but you don’t have to.) So if you want to, there’s no reason not to work on collecting some tier, even if you don’t wind up using it for very long.

But, no, Blizzard has not given us any suggestion that the Creation Catalyst is going away with the expansion, so my guess is that it will stick around. That means once you level up in Dragonflight, it will almost certainly be a breeze to do this stuff and you could go back and collect transmog… because really, transmog is the true endgame.

And that’s all for now, folks. Take care of yourself and have a good weekend — I’ll catch you back here next week.