The Queue: Onetwothree four five

Oh, are we counting here? Then we’re going to count the best way there is to count: with pinball.

We are sure. File names and descriptions for the promo art mention her by name, even though Blizzard has dropped her defining characteristics in the redesign — which I personally think makes it a bad redesign. You need to hang on to something for visual continuity, and so you don’t get a significant portion of the player base (myself included) saying “who’s that?”

She doesn’t look bad; she just bears no resemblance to Alleria beside the fact that she’s a light-haired elf.

I have to second Jalamenos here. The Mass Effect 2 Suicide Mission theme goes hard and is very evocative. I like the whole soundtrack of the three games, but this is just great. It’s an inexorable anthem of victory.

Iron Zur’s Dragon Age music is also great, but Mass Effect holds a special place in my heart.

You are indeed correct. There is no longer any need to maintain alts purely for transmog: play for fun, not to meet any kind of archaic standards.

I’d say I’m more excited for what’s next — there’s a lot of new content coming, and even though there’s a beta it isn’t the same as diving in with your main and really exploring every inch of the place.

But there’s some nostalgia for sure. There’s a lot of things I haven’t done, and at this point probably won’t. I’m mostly working on earning bronze in Remix and leveling up some alts while I wibble on what I want to do in The War Within. That probably won’t let me finish all of this stuff for Taivan. I was never really enthusiastic about that long to-do list, so here we are, end of the expansion and I haven’t finished this massive meta-achievement.

Uhm, maybe next expansion?

Right now I have my Paladin and a handful of characters I’m leveling or thinking about playing more, so I don’t think this is really a fixed list of favorites for me. It’s kind of my active list, I suppose.

Since I’m not raid healing in The War Within, I’m really at a loss for what I’m playing. Sorry, Jil, I just don’t enjoy Retribution Paladin, which has been my problem ever since Blizzard implemented dual spec support and every healer was expected to also play a DPS spec during downtime. All I wanted to do was holy shock things in the face while laughing at mobs who couldn’t outdamage my healing but kept trying and ended up killing themselves via retribution aura, a playstyle which went from impractical but not uncommon to just plain impractical as abilities were stripped away and increasingly made single-spec-specific. Frankly it was Shadowlands before my Paladin ever specced Retribution, as I always leveled and soloed as Holy. You could do it; it was just sluggish.  Everyone loves Retribution right now, but I’ve never had fun with it when I’ve needed to play it in raids, and it’s not getting a sea change in The War Within. It feels like my raid group is about to be a third Retribution Paladins, and all I know for sure is that I’m not going to be one of them. (Also, man, who wants to be the DPS class with a half dozen others of the same spec out-DPSing you? I can’t take that kind of pressure!)

I’m not someone who really plays alts; I typically stick to one character and do just a bit dabbling beyond it. So I’ve been poking into different things, and my Warband screen rather reflects my general uncertainty and malaise right now. My Monk, which I played as a main from Mists to BFA, probably belongs there too, but I’m finishing leveling the Evoker and I’m going to finish leveling the Warrior now that pre-patch has landed, so they’re there and the Monk isn’t. The Mage has been very fun to level in Remix, but I’ve yet to untangle it post-patch.

So my screen is really my main plus a few things I’ve been playing lately; not quite as meaningful as Blizzard may have intended it to be.

I think the Dark Iron Hunter and Dark Iron Shaman are going to team up and beat those Dwarves. They just have great hair, and that gives them the confidence they need to succeed in any situation.

Dwarves are fine. I have nothing against Dwarves. But Dark Iron Dwarves have  hair that is literally on fire. How is anyone going to beat that? They can’t.

And that’s all I have for you today, friends. Enjoy your Friday and be merry! Tomorrow the weekend arrives.