The Queue: Let’s goooooo (take a nap)

I never realized that adulthood was just a series of thinking about the next time you would get to take a nap, but here we are.

Let’s talk Warcraft. And maybe some other stuff.

Absolutely. It does a great job of capturing the feeling of Fallout (though be aware that a lot of characters seem to have the Bloody Mess perk). It doesn’t follow any existing Fallout stories, but that’s a good thing, I think, because the show can tell its own.

There is a subset of nerds that is unhappy with the show for supposed departures from canon, but I think some people forget that the series itself is not consistent on facts, and it’s full of unreliable narrators. That’s part of what makes the world interesting: the history is long lost and we’re all just picking up the pieces. There aren’t a lot of characters in the Fallout universe who know how and why the world got to where it is, and even those who know something have their own perspectives and biases. Fallout is full of hints and suggestions as to what happened, but not many hard facts, and the show doesn’t feel inconsistent with the rest of the universe.

Well. I really enjoyed it, so take what you will from that.

Gosh I hope so, because I really want to see the Earthen take on Winter Veil trees. Would it be a tree-shaped rock with inset gems? I would love to see some creative new takes on these holidays, and frankly an expansion is the perfect time for it. Let’s see how people in other places look on these holidays, with different decor and new quests. I think it would be great.

However, I’m going to set my expectations a little more moderately. Holidays usually do show up in new continents, but frequently they look, well, a lot like they look on other contents, reusing existing assets and decorations. I think when doing holiday revamps, Blizzard will want to make something accessible to everybody, which means updating the original content on Azeroth and, if they add something to Khaz Algar it will most likely be a breadcrumb quest leading us back to Orgrimmar or Stormwind to see whatever was new.

But Azeroth’s traditions tend to follow us wherever we go. Certainly the Arathi would have some of the same holidays. I think we’ll be seeing holiday decor in at least parts of Khaz Algar, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything too exciting.

I really enjoy Battlegrounds Duos! It adds a whole new level of strategy where you’re thinking not only of your board, but also theirs, passing useful cards to help them build a board while they pass you cards to help you build a board. It can be really fun.

However, it depends on your partner. Hearthstone offers very few tools to communicate with your partner: you can ping the board with an an X, a check, a question mark, or a portal (indicating pass), but that’s it. These pings require a three-finger tap on iOS devices and it took me a while to figure out how to do them. And even once I figured out how to communicate, other people communicate… well, inconsistently. Or play inconsistently. I was playing yesterday with a Madam Goya, whose hero power lets her pass cards to a Duos partner at a discount. Turn one, she passed me a card, but then didn’t have the resources to play her own. Turn two, another pass, again no resources to play a card on her board. Maybe my partner had a plan I couldn’t figure out.

And that’s the problem. Hearthstone is a game with limited communication, and it’s made this new game mode that’s reliant on two players working together to win. You can’t do it by mind reading, but the game offers scant other tools — and the ones it does offer, like the pings, are never explained anywhere in game. You just have to figure it out.

It’s fun, and sometimes you’ll land in a game where you’re exactly on the same wavelength as your partner, and you’ll wish there was a ping to say “you’re the best, thank you.”

But there isn’t.

I’m going to stick with the Niffen for a while, myself. I very much ignored this reputation when it first went live: finally, a grind that didn’t offer any rewards I cared about so I did not have to do it! More fool me.

Except now there’s Taivan to care about, so I’ll take whatever bonuses I can get to finish the Niffen rep grind. After that I can worry about the Emerald Dream rep grind…

Thank you everyone for reading. I hope you have a lovely afternoon and a very relaxing weekend and are not beset by the horrors of pollen in the outer world. I’ll see you back here next week!