The Queue: More than a little amused

I’ll be heading out of town for a concert this weekend and, suffice it to say, I’m pretty excited. Frankly, I’m expecting tears at some point or another.

But that’s this weekend and right now is right now. And right now is…

The Queue.

I think (or maybe hope really strong) that we’ll see more of that in the next expansion, once Dracthyr have had more time to explore Azeroth (and beyond) outside of the Dragon Isles. I would LOVE to see Visage forms come into play more.

… so long as it doesn’t become a reused trope of “Ah ha! I was a dragon all along!” That would get old fast.

Well, the hope is that it makes for a better, more enriching gameplay experience, right? I haven’t kept up much since the original demo at BlizzCon 2019, but it DID feel cool to see a bunch of other players help me beat up what basically felt like a World Boss. And the rest of the time, I never felt like their (limited) presence disturbed the game.

Now, is that actually why Blizz opted to make it more MMO-like? No clue! There are plenty of reasons to be cynical about the choice, but with how much of a solo experience WoW can be nowadays, I’m not all that concerned with the change. (Where my concerns will come into play is the long-term monetization plan.)

I highly doubt we’ll see official private servers. And the ones you do see definitely won’t be official (or officially recommended).

Well, up until Shadowlands… I didn’t really. Sure, there were times when I slowed down how often I played, but I never really stepped away and unsubbed, especially not for a whole patch at a time.

Then Shadowlands happened and I realized it was okay for the game not to be for me right then and there, and I enjoyed a heckuva lot of FromSoftware games. That said, my WoW breaks coincide most with the times when my friends aren’t playing — especially nowadays. I used to be more of the “log on and solo grind” type for those occasions, but I spend that time instead playing other games or doing other hobbies lately.

So to answer your question directly: Not very often, but I’ve gotten better about not being feast-or-famine about how I approach WoW; with Shadowlands as an exception, usually a couple months because I’ve run out of new things to do and am waiting on a patch.

I’m one of the folks who wanted Shadowmoon Burial Grounds in Season 4 of Shadowlands, so I’m very happy to see it back. It definitely gets the top spot. I don’t know what to make of this fact, but I think all of the Dragonflight dungeons rank lower (in terms of fun) than the non-Dragonflight ones do this season.

But at the bottom of that list is either Ruby Life Pools or Algeth’ar Academy. Ruby feels a little too unforgiving — especially for the amount of freaking trees in the way — and Academy is one I just cannot seem to get the hang of.

As for tips on pushing, the Premade Groups Filter addon has been amazing for helping find groups (paired with the raider.io addon, it’s even better). If you know the dungeons and can avoid dying, I prefer to filter based on a range of io scores between mine and, like, a couple hundred higher. I know I’ll be working with folks who at least have my experience and I don’t feel like I’m being carried because, well, it’s a relatively small range and I am still pulling my weight.

That’s just me though. It’s a slow climb, but as long as you get groups who are skilled-n-chilled enough (i.e., okay with not timing if it comes to it), you’ll push your rating up faster than you realize and have some nice Valor to keep your gear moving with you.

To my knowledge, there is not. There’s a monthly cap… but I think you can just kind of keep getting 1,000 each month and letting them accrue. For now, at least. It is only the first month, after all, and Blizz is likely going to monitor purchasing habits closely.

I don’t actually roleplay as my character all that often, though I still have a pretty solid headcanon that could easily expand into roleplay! It’s just one of those things where, outside of not being on an RP server, there aren’t too many opportunities to really get into my WoW character like that.

Probably the closest I get to roleplaying my character is when the game gives us choices — then Fizzl the character enjoys doing something gleefully horrible and chaotic while Mitch the person laughs in-character (while knowing it’s an awful thing he would never actually do IRL).

That’s all for me! I hope you have a lovely day/week/weekend, and please leave lots of questions for tomorrow’s writer!