The Queue: Okay, I actually am supposed to be here today

I feel like I was just here, Queue. Like we just did this. Everything is just so familiar…

Well, happy Friday, Queue. Let’s answer some questions.

Yesterday I went over to Silvermoon City to take some screenshots of my Blood Elf in her natural habitat. It’s a city lost to time: one of the very few places left in Warcraft that you cannot fly, and a significant hike from just about anywhere else. (Though admittedly there is now a portal from Orgrimmar.)

The city has the strangest perhaps lighting in the game; it is constantly suffused by a warm golden glow. I love the vibe of the place, but even though Blood Elves have been in the game since since 2007, there isn’t a lot of Blood Elf architecture around, and there’s nowhere at all with that same golden glow.

I think I’d go chill by a fountain or under a tree and enjoy the warmth.

Would you like some bread? Because bread is delicious. Duolingo seems to have a fixation on bread-based conversations, but some of them are weird. No queiro was pan? Who says things like that? Duolingo, that’s who.

They’re all good dogs, Anna.

No auction house, no mailbox, no professions. Remix is a fairly streamlined version of World of Warcraft.

I stopped playing WoW for a while at the beginning of Cataclysm and came back mid-Pandaria, in which I gradually leveled up a new Alliance character — a Monk, because it was the age of Monks. That is to say I spent a lot of time not even in Pandaria, and I didn’t get to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms until after it was wrecked, because I was still working my way through questing, and I spent most of my time wandering the world solo; I didn’t do many dungeons, and I don’t think I did any raiding until Warlords of Draenor.

What I remember most is the Jade Serpent statue falling, right in the first zone. Blizzard had used phasing before, but never, in my mind, to this effect. Pandaria was a beautiful place, and we came in and immediately started destroying it.

I think Mists is a great expansion, but in many places the story is a hard one. Whether you play Alliance or Horde, very early on you find yourself killing unarmed members of the opposite faction or destroying enemy medical supplies, and there were times in these early quests where I found it difficult to continue. The NPCs around you are all riled by the Sha and are ready to burn Pandaria to the ground if it means defeating their enemies. It is a dark story, set in a beautiful place, which we are about to destroy, something that first really hits home when the Jade Serpent statue crumbles before you.

It is exceptionally weird in Diablo, because we’ve been playing it since 1997 as a single player or small party game. If we see another player in Diablo, it has always been because we’ve invited someone else to play with us. Now in Diablo 4 (or Diablo Immortal), there are people everywhere! Sanctuary is crowded with heroes!

It feels very weird indeed.

Nope! You’re safe from the risks of PVP (but no one is safe from the Sha).

It’s automatic, so you have nothing to worry about. It’s kind of nice, isn’t it, playing a game where all you have to do is play and not micromanage items falling into your inventory, isn’t it?

And that is all for today, my friends. I hope you are having a pleasant afternoon and a good weekend to come. I’ll see you on the flip side next week.