The Queue: I’m a Birdwatcher

It’s Friday, the race for world first is going (slowly), and the community figured out how to get Quackers the Terrible to spawn so I was able to snap a S.E.L.F.I.E. and earn the “Birdwatcher” title. Having thus completed my one goal for the Dragonflight expansion, it’s time to log out of the game, uninstall it, and answer some questions while my PC reclaims disk space.

This is actually a pretty easy one: it’s because Grim Batol is a dwarven city to begin with. I presume that the original question asked by Eno has the implication that the dungeon in question would be “cleaned up” and livable afterwards, so why not repopulate Grim Batol to its former glory?

I actually don’t know what the current canon is for Grim Batol, so maybe this has already happened.

2008. No really, that’s the when I started playing during Wrath of the Lich King and rolled my first toon, a Dwarf hunter.

Prior to that I wasn’t hugely into Dwarves. The Dwarves in The Hobbit are kinda jerks and Gimli in the Lord of the Rings books is pretty bland. While John Rhys-Davies’ portrayal of Gimli in the films was a step up, he still came nowhere close to my favorite character: Aragorn.

Hunter archetypes have always been my choice in gaming, whether it’s my favorite D&D character as a kid (a Human Ranger named “Bullseye” — gimme a break, I was like 11) or the character I chose when playing Gauntlet (Valkyrie). There was zero chance I wasn’t going to play a Hunter when I started playing World of Warcraft, but when it came time to create one I had a dilemma: the Human Hunter wasn’t an option yet. I wanted an Alliance toon because I didn’t really understand the whole Horde vs Alliance relationship yet and felt more inclined to roll a “good” character. I’ve always felt Elves are overrated so that really left me with one choice: Dwarf.

Leveling through the Khaz Modan zones I fell in love with the portrayal of Dwarves in Azeroth and while there are other races I love almost as much — Highmountain Tauren are a close second — the story of the Dwarves is ultimately what I come back for.

Ancient Pandaren Woodcutter. I’m not sure what character is going to get it, but I’ve always loved the flavor text of this item so I have to incorporate it somehow.

I actually don’t, for a few reasons. First off, they’re not all that difficult (with one exception that I’ll talk about below); it only takes a small handful of players to actually complete the events and I suspect that unless the server you’re on is dead there will be enough other players with alts to help out — and even if the server is dead, there’s always groupfinder. By the time patch 10.1 rolls around they may become sparse (depending on what new content comes) but natural gear progression should make it easier for fewer players. It also helps that they’re on a known schedule as that draws more players to the event naturally.

Elemental storms look like a candidate for problems, but I strongly suspect that the ilvl of the gear you can purchase with the Elemental Overflow currency will increase alongside the gear progression of the expansion so players will always be looking to participate in the storms.

The Obsidian Citadel is what I’m most worried about because the density of elite mobs is painful for solo players or small groups. Currently there are a lot of groups farming it but since it seems to be gear drop-oriented I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be prevalent. Fortunately you should have plenty of time to get your main to True Friend status with both of them on your main for accountwide rewards, while alts should only need to worry about getting “Fang” (rank 3 of reputation) to unlock some cosmetics if your main character can’t. I personally am not making any plans for my alts to grind for the necklace or cloak that are available at Friend and True Friend respectively because I feel that’ll be too much effort for too little gain.

This may come as a surprise to most folks, but BlizzardWatch is actually a haven for procrastinators and deadline enthusiasts. Crunch-writing the Queue is a fix none of us can live without!

But seriously, it typically comes down to how many questions were already asked; if there were a lot of questions asked during the day (the queue comments or in our Discord!), there’s no need for a writer to beg for more. Which is a roundabout way of saying make sure you ask plenty of questions for Cory!

I like it when the world first race stretches to the 3rd week because I find that has the most drama. When it ends the first week I feel the tension has never ratcheted up as high as it could. Getting to the 2nd week starts the chatter about whether the raid can be cleared before next reset which puts the onus on EU and KR/CN guilds to beat the final boss of the raid before NA gets another reset. Then when it gets to the third week it becomes a strategy game: do NA guilds go straight back into Mythic in the hopes of clearing it before EU gets their next round, or do they start off with heroic splits with the extra time? Of course, this is dependent on reaching the final boss before the end of the 2nd week; if that doesn’t happen the thrill of the third week isn’t really there.

Past that the drama gets boring, especially as guilds need to pull back their raiding hours due to work, school, etc. So TL, DR: Optimal RWF is won within 48 hours of the start of the third week.

I have declared 2023 the Year of the Backlog in an attempt to finally put a dent in the number of unplayed games on my shelf putting paranoid guilty thoughts in my head. That said, I’m not a robot and there are several games I’m looking forward to in 2023 (even if I don’t get/play them right away). In no specific order:

Fire Emblem Engage

Octopath Traveler 2

Slay the Princess

Final Fantasy XVI

Horizon Forbidden West DLC

As for what I’m enjoying now, I don’t want to spoil this week’s WRUP but I will say I’m looking forward to playing as a Red Panda that can nap on monsters.

That’s it for the Friday queue. I hope everyone has a fantasmariffic weekend. Get some rest, drink some extra water, and if the weather permits, go outside and look at some birds or visit a zoo like I plan on doing.