The Queue: Sleepy puppy

I’ve played my way through the Diablo 4 beta and gotten the achievement so I can have my very own sleepy puppy accessory once the game launches. Those clever jerks knew just what would get me to spend more time in the beta past the first few levels, and it’s apparently cute wolf-themed apparel. Good thing they didn’t have some sort of bear-themed things or I would’ve had to call in sick to work this weekend.

Before I jump back into the beta and do just a few more side quests, it’s time for — The Queue!

My weekend went pretty well actually. I got to do a fun job at my day job, and then it was spending a bunch of time in Diablo! 

I’m pretty impressed by the new Diablo. The spells and effects feel impactful in a nice visceral way. There’s more than a bunch of stuff to do while leveling. I like the variety and difference between dungeons, strongholds, and cellars. They each offer different content sizes, and I can see saying, ” Oh, I only have time for a quick dungeon or three cellars once the game launches.

I’m really looking forward to getting my paws on the Druid class and getting a more melee-focused experience. I got a Sorceror up to 25 and had a bunch of fun shooting lightning at people and conjuring a giant flaming snake, but what I was really wanting to do was hit things with my bear hands.

One thing that I did notice was that all of the enemies feel like things we saw in Diablo 3 so far. I know that there’s a lot of game left, but I was hoping to see some more truly ugly guys near the beginning.

What if Wrathion was really playing 6D Chess and this is what he really wanted by a unified Azeroth?!

Ok so that’s unlikely, but it would still be nice to go back and fix up a few of the places. Especially if that ties into us getting a housing system and working together to make fun little Warcraft suburbs.

We could finally deal with those things that we’ve been too busy to really handle, Elemental Incursions, Quillboar making a mess out of things, semi-feral Undead and Worgen roaming around the Eastern Kingdoms — the list goes on!

I do see it as being maybe a bit too spread out similar to Cataclysm, but I’m sure that since we’ll all be able to Dragonride our way around the old world that we should be ok on that front.

That sounds like a totally calculated kind of kill that you definitely had all along! Congrats!

If it makes you feel better that’s basically how I felt going into Heroic Raszageth for the first night. We pulled and almost instantly fell over to the first set of mechanics.

But! It did get better.

It just felt like re-learning the Normal fight. All of the same pain points were there, just a little more painful since it was Heroic. Keep at it and you’ll all be riding cool new Protodrake-forms and shooting slightly nerfed bows in no time!

Liking dragon racing isn’t a problem in my eyes — those are definitely my favorite world quests to go back to these days!

I hope that we get more expanded courses as the expansion goes on! I’d like to see them add some new routes or multiple laps into some of them to really make the courses feel large and race-like.

Maybe the Warcraft devs in charge of them could even go really wild and give us a reason to use the Bronze rewind ability in a race! I almost used it once on one of the courses that have a really tricky ending where you have to land back in a gazebo. Unfortunately, I’d gotten too far away from the snap-back point and it had despawned during the race.

Rude.

Now admittedly it’s been a hot minute since I played my Shaman, but I do remember not liking Ascendance either. Especially after they got rid of the best part of the Enhancement Ascendance — the giant lightning you shot out of your hands! It was a very nice UNLIMITED POWAH kind of moment and the wind gust fart hands never quite lived up to that afterward.

We’re also really far out from the Cataclysm-style ascended people, it would’ve been cool to see it get a visual facelift to be more similar to what we see the Primalists doing. Why don’t Enhance Shaman get to ride around in the middle of an air elemental like Dathea in Vault of the Incarnates?

Sure we’ve seen sleepy puppy backpacks, but what about sleepy Bacardi? Well here he is for all of your good luck needs! Be careful though, he looks kind of like a prawn this week, and you wouldn’t want your luck to be shrimpy…

I don’t make the luck rules, I just provide the cute cat.

Today’s Anna Earworm™: Howl

Have a great Monday everyone, don’t forget to leave lots of questions for Anna tomorrow! I’ll see you next week — but until then make sure you give your pets extra treats for me!