The Queue: A fierce look for Friday

The end of the week is upon us again. We have survived another round of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with only Friday left. We can make it to the weekend; it’s just a few hours a day.

See above. I think their casting animations are great, in large part due to their expressive faces. Just look at her! That’s a gnome who is fully focused. Determined. There is nothing she can’t accomplish, and you’d better get out of her way.

WoW needs armor dyes. You know it, I know it, we all know it. It’s a feature that would take a lot of work, because WoW is a (nearly) 19 year old game that was never designed for that kind of thing. You’d need to look back on existing armor models and set which are affected by dyes and how. Diablo does this very well because it was designed to — WoW would have to retcon it in, which would be a big task.

But because I think of WoW as basically an extremely complicated game of dress up, I think the effort would be worth it.

And Diablo 4 could steal more of WoW’s boss encounters. Sure, Diablo 4 already has a lot of great boss encounters that seem to take a lot of inspiration from WoW. But once you hit Diablo 4’s endgame, those neat encounters almost entirely stop. The most interesting fights in D4 are take place during the story campaign, with complicated mechanics that may well force you to rethink your spec, strategy, and how you approach the game. When I first reached the Vhenard encounter I had to rethink everything, because it was a multi-phase encounter with a limited arena space and things to dodge, as well as multiple waves of enemies with different abilities. It was fun to figure out, and it took some effort to accomplish.

But you do it once and then it’s done. Most of D4’s encounters are like this. You finish the campaign, you finish the Strongholds, and what’s left is a rotating cast of four world bosses (interesting fights, but all the same) and Nightmare Dungeons which have boss encounters that repeat (hello, Blood Bishop, didn’t I just see you in a dungeon on the other side of Sanctuary?) and have relatively simple mechanics.

D4 could use a way to repeat these interesting encounters, particularly at higher difficulties, like WoW’s raids. And dungeons could be made more unique, with a wider variety of boss encounters and mechanics to keep them interesting. As it stands, this gameplay gets repetitive — which is a shame, because the Diablo team is clearly capable of designing interesting and varied encounters — that design simply hasn’t been evenly applied throughout the game.

I think Diablo and WoW have spent a long time trading features back and forth… but both games could do more, borrowing and iterating on each others’ best features.

Kalcheus, my friend, look around you. The Dragon Isles is packed with fascinating people, old and new, including my (other) friend Fiona, chilling in the Waking Shores.

I refuse to ask for questions, so we shall all despair of the cursed Friday Queue and its low question-to-conversation ratio.

Is there just something weird about Thursdays? There must just be something weird about Thursdays.

Q4Cory: what’s David Bowie’s best song and why is it Life on Mars?

I will also accept anything from Labyrinth, which I do not think is his best work but I also love unconditionally.

And that’s all, my friends. And my other friends. And my other other friends. It’s friends all the way down. Good luck getting through the last bit of the week and enjoy your weekend.

Take care everyone and I’ll see you back here next week.