The Queue: The definitive guide (to?)

How definitive are we? Well, that’s up to debate, but I’m pretty sure we’re pretty definitive.

Anduin is a man badly in need of a puppy to look after. (No bets on who’s looking after who.) It’s hard to see Thrall with anything but a wolf. (Are we talking a housepet? Maybe it’s a small wolf.) I think Alleria would be a cat person. Xal’atath doesn’t seem like a pet person, so it would have to be a very independent pet. A smart pet. Maybe a crow.

There you have it, the definitive guide to pets in The War Within.

I am tentatively excited. I don’t like to get too excited about things in advance, because that inevitably leads to disappointment, and I have some concerns about how Battlegrounds Duos will play.

Mainly: it’s a two-player cooperative mode in a game with extremely limited communication. We’ve seen how cooperative modes can work out in certain Tavern Brawls, which is to say they can work if both players know what they’re doing or it can very much not work. And recently in WoW we’ve seen Plunderstorm with duo and trio queues that match you with random players who may have very different ideas about how to play the game. (You want to finish the quest and collect some plunder, they want to run face-first into other players, neither of you win.)

Part of the challenge of the game will be figuring out how to work with a partner when you can’t clearly communicate. And that could be an interesting challenge… or it could be a massive frustration. I don’t know yet… but I’m interested to see how this plays out.

And either way, I’m excited about the next Battleground season, with 50 new minions and some changes to existing warbands, I’m eager to see what’s new and jump in. Battlegrounds is possibly my favorite mode in any Blizzard game, and I’m always interested in seeing new twists on gameplay.

I’m gonna miss quests, though. Again.

I can say these are not two specs I play much. I have a balance druid, which I am very bad at and have thought about trying feral as a more straightforward alternative in which I just claw things a lot. I know that my feral druid friend isn’t thrilled with Wildstalker but my Resto druid friend likes the idea. I kind of like the feral options because they are largely passive, supplementing the existing playstyle and I am (as previously established) not a very good druid, so I don’t know that I need further complication — but either way, I think it’s very wait and see to know what specs will be like in the next expansion.

So, really, I have to leave this one to y’all druids. How are you feeling about the new talents coming in the War Within? How are you feeling about your damage-dealing specs right now? Good, bad, indifferent?

(In which I hope this is what you were asking about, even though I didn’t really answer it either way.)

My raid leader has called this a “victory lap” season, and I suppose that’s what it is. We’ll run Awakened raids at the difficulty we need to collect the latest loot, but we aren’t going to stress ourselves out over it. It’s a victory lap that’s winding down the expansion and all there is to do is go with the flow and enjoy it.

I think it’s kind of silly, and kind of unimportant, and so kind of silly again for being so strict over something so unimportant.

For those who don’t know, Noblegarden has a new toy you can earn: a duck disguiser. But when you get the toy, you have to pick a color of duck to disguise yourself as, and that is all your duck disguiser will let you change into in the future, though there’s a menu that suggests you can pick color when activating the disguise. You can complete the quest on multiple characters to earn multiple colors… but each color is locked to the character that earned it.

This is apparently working as intended: if you want to get all six colors, you’ll have to spend six years doing the quest to do so. The reward is hardly game-breaking: it’s just a cute little toy. But requiring this level of commitment for a toy that is just a fun little thing seems needless.

And that’s all for today, my friends. I hope you are all well and have a relaxing weekend, perhaps with a favorite video game (or two). I would like to find the time to dig into Baldur’s Gate some more, but chances are I’ll wind up doing housework and spend my gaming time keeping up with Plunderstorm — so hopefully your weekend is more relaxing than that.

Take care and I’ll see you next week.