The Queue: A very good kitty <3
The good boi you see above is Rowie (R”ow”-ie not R”oh”-ie). My family got this cat when I was barely in junior high, and he had his 18th birthday just last December. Even though he was technically our second cat, he was the first one that I really bonded with. He’d been really attached to my sister, so after she passed, it was really humbling to see how much he clearly had missed me every time I was able to come home from college for a few days. He’s kept me company through many a gaming session, and he’s the cat that made me realize just how chatty and personable cats can be.
Unfortunately — and you may have guessed this by now — we just found out we’re going to have to say goodbye to him very soon. I could probably write a whole post on him, but to spare you any further sadness, I’ll just say this: He’s been a very good kitty, and I’m going to really miss him <3
Anyhow, last week’s outlook of “it can only get better” is not holding up too well. Let’s distract ourselves with a Queue.
Did they absolutely have to have Trial of Style take place during new patch week? C’mon. New stuff to get, 9 new themes, and we have less time than ever to do it! Meanies.
Yeah, it’s hard to avoid it nowadays, but Blizzard really manages to overload its community with lots and lots of things to do all at once.
I really wish Trial of Style happened once per month — or, heck, I’ll settle for every quarter. But twice per year? Ugh. Celebrate fierceness always, Blizz, come on.
Q4tQ: During an interview for D4, Blizz said they are fine with certain classes feeling unbalanced during leveling, as long as they feel balanced at end game. Anyone else refreshed to hear them say this?
Someone else said it, but it depends on what side of unbalanced they fall on. If they’re balanced at endgame, I think it’s fine for them to be a little underpowered while leveling for the sake of actually feeling progression. But it’s also Diablo — if you’re too underpowered compared to another class, you sort of lose the “kill everything” element of the series that’s so fun.
And while it’s fun to feel super OP while leveling, I think ultimately it feels worse if you go from OP to simply “balanced.” It’s never fun to level up and progress but somehow feel less powerful. (WoW has this issue a lot at expansion launches, and it’s still something I don’t always love.)
It’s all situational though. At the end of the day, if it still feels fun, let there be some variance along the way to balance.
QftQ: We see the different Aspects, and their favored magics being tied into certain kinds of environments.
With the Green Flight, there’s the connection to the Emerald Dream, and the environment is always shown to be not only fertile and alive, but also rather inviting. The Bronze Flight tends to be found in Desert environments, in places, where erosion has taken over, and all that is left is the coarse, rough and irritating sand, that gets everywhere. The Black Flight is very much tied to the Earth, but not so much to a fertile soil, but instead, to a hard stone, flowing with lava. The Red Flight is also found in places, where there is life, but instead of the green leaves of spring, you see the red of autumn.
How does the icy environment the Blue Flight usually is found in correlate to their affinity to Arcane Magic?
Obviously it’s because the colors match really well.
But for real, I’m not sure I have a definitive answer. If you look at your examples, you could argue that the Blue Flight is the winter to Red’s autumn and Green’s spring, but that kinda leaves out summer (unless you really wanna stretch it with dessert = sand and sand = beach lol).
That said, there’s also an argument to be made that cold and ice are representative of the Blue Flight’s penchant for both solitude/quiet discovery and order/calmness.
Again, I don’t know if there’s a definitive answer here, but I think it’s more about the Blue Flight’s icier beginnings which led to their connection to the Arcane more so than their specific connection to the Arcane in a vacuum. Also, again, the colors match well.
How is Tagar related to Baine (since they are both Bloodhoof)? Is Tagar next in line?
I had to ask good ol’ Matt Rossi for some help here, and the details… are sparse. He’s a Bloodhoof but he’s not Cairne’s son (or Baine’s brother), and he’s been second-in-command in the past. We don’t know his specific relation to the Bloodhoof leaders, but it’s safe to assume that he reasonably would have a solid claim to replacing Baine if for any reason that had to happen.
So the D4 beta weekend coming up… I have not purchased the game yet, and I am still very much on the fence about it. (I don’t like the idea of a mmo-ish Diablo). But I thought I would at least see it, before I give a final judgement.
Can I access the beta? And how?
It should be available to pre-download via the Launcher. In fact… “The Diablo 4 Open Beta preload launches on Wednesday 22 March at 9am PDT”
So with any luck, you’ll already have downloaded/be downloading this when this post is live!
That’s The Queue for this week. Go spend some time with your pets.
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