The Queue: Early mornings and long days

Hello and happy Wednesday!

Let’s just dive right in today.

Hey, Arthonos, you’re pretty awesome.

There might be a leaderboard somewhere, but we (in Blizzard Watch Discord) typically share it just as a thing to share, talk about, and bond over. It’s genuinely nice to see when others struggle with a word like you do or, conversely, it’s awesome to see how often someone else gets 1- or 2-guess answers.

I’d look at both Wildstar and FFXIV for how player housing can be done well. But the short version is… no, absolutely not. Please no, don’t make it like the garrison.

The garrison had a lot of problems that made it exactly the opposite kind of housing players actually wanted:

• It could only be in one location, in one zone. The OG pitch for garrisons back at BlizzCon actually had players choosing which Warlords zone they’d have their garrison in. Then it became MUCH more tied to the story and we got the Horde/Alliance “hubs” that we did.
• You didn’t actually have freedom to place within your garrison. Sure, you could place three large buildings or whatever and move them around one of a few locations but… nope, that’s not just telling us to draw within the lines, it’s telling us there’s nothing outside the lines at all for us ever.
• It was tied to the story rather than just… there. This is actually the same issue, weirdly enough, that Allied Races fall (or fell?) into for a while. Blizz didn’t want to just let us have, say, Eredar skins for Draenei; it had to be a questline that explained in perfect detail why that customization now exists in game. Or at least, that’s what I’d felt before Dragonflight. Now, it’s pretty clear that we can just get those new customizations without a need to explain every bit of it. Garrisons should’ve followed that and let it just be an extension of our character, not an extension of their story.

Of course, there’s a lot more, and I’m sure I’ve opened the floodgates here, but yes. There’s a lot that player housing could be, and it’s not at all like what garrisons were.

I remember playing through HZD + FW a year or two ago, and I had the same exact thoughts entering Frozen Wilds content. The snow especially is what impressed me. I definitely spent more than a few clippable moments’ worth of running in circles just to watch the snow respond to Aloy’s movement.

If you don’t have addons, voice chat is almost a must. If you don’t have voice chat, addons are almost a must. If you have neither, you look for the blue hair and pray.

Seriously, the blue hair is what I’ve been looking for — without addons! — and it’s what’s kept me alive. But Morchie was the hardest fight for us that first night, and I would love to see a little more time before the cast finished, or something a little more obvious visually to differentiate them, even if it meant Fake-Morchie grew in size during the final second while the real one stayed small.

One way or another, it feels a little TOO punishing right now, even if you can spot blue hair quickly.

So, “definitive” is a bit of a stretch. We saw the Enemy Infiltration book in Shadowlands that hinted at a Light-infused Nathrezim being an infiltrator. Of course, the book also mentioned that the Nathrezim, “…remain wary, though. Since [Void lords] are observant of multiple outcomes, it is conceivable they could anticipate [the Nathrezim] coming.”

Who first approached Lothraxion because he saw a specific destiny in store for him? Locus-Walker.

So there’s a lot here that is both open to interpretation and open to betrayals. But it’s all written this way because that’s what Blizz likes to do with this sort of thing. There’s probably a plan they have for Lothraxion, and at one point, it may have involved that book.

Is that still the plan? Maybe! But it could also be completely not the plan now, and this is referring to someone else.

ps we don’t talk about the Vindicaar.

That’s our Queue for today! I hope you all have a lovely Wednesday and leave lots of questions for tomorrow’s writer.