The Queue: Still Here

Next Monday I complete my fiftieth trip around the sun. This now makes me eligible to use the local senior center or to join the AARP. I of course will do neither of these things (unless the senior center offers a mountain dulcimer course again); to quote the late great Jimmy Buffett a second time this intro: I’m growing older but not up.

I keep going back and forth as to whether I should consider it a big deal; heck knows society and party stores want me to, but I also know they do so out of glee that I’m “over the hill” — but I like to think I’m still climbing. Still, it’d be weird to let it pass by with no comment or introspection, so I’m just going to motivate myself with League of Legends songs and Dylan Thomas poems.

While I do everything I can to rage against the dying of the light, let’s answer some questions!

I’ve played it a little bit, but frankly didn’t get very far in it because I came to realize I wasn’t a big fan of Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing-style games. That said I did pick it up because of the positive response to it, so if you’re a fan of Stardew Valley then it’s easily worth the $5.

It is totally worth redoing the Dread Wastes questing regardless of the reward. Best zone in the expansion easily; even besides the awesomeness of the Klaxxi the two side quest hubs have some excellent emotional storytelling. With the accelerated rep rate in ReMists you don’t even have to worry about dailies or such to unlock all the tiers of questing in Klaxxi’vess either so you can do it straight through.

Gender-swapping Joker in Persona 5 Royal is definitely an intriguing possibility for the reason you mention but also for some of the other dynamics that could come into play. What if the event that precipitates the game was you getting arrested for defending yourself against a sexual assault instead of coming to the aid of someone else? That would make your actions in the first palace resonate more (as well as give you quite the motivation to get involved).

That said, I have another character that I would choose first: Kratos in God of War (the newer games, not the original trilogy). I’m not going to go into details because of spoilers, but one of the most important dynamics in the series would be upended extensively if you played a mother instead of a father, and I’m not talking about the boy either — in fact, it would be hilarious if a fem!Kratos treated Atreus exactly the same.

The Janthir Wilds expansion for Guild Wars 2 is at the top of my list; heck, it might even be above The War Within — if I wasn’t a writer for this site I might not even have bothered logging in to TWW until after I completed the Janthir Wilds quest line. As it stands now I may have time to get my new player housing set up (player housing! in an MMO! for everybody!) and the first map done before I have to head to Khaz Algar.

Other than that, though, August doesn’t have much that appeals to me. Star Wars Outlaws is something I’d consider if I thought I’d have any time to play it, but since I won’t I’ll wait until it goes on sale or I just forget about it entirely.

August is MMO month.

The lifeless stone ring, of course! Since running the event helps you assemble the materials needed for the new heirloom ring, it makes the most sense to get it first.

I recognize that’s a lame answer but I’ll be honest — nothing really appeals to me this time. While a void recolor of the Argus armor is interesting, I was never a fan of the original to begin with. Some of the weapon skins are nice but there’s nothing there I think I would ever use (we didn’t even get a bow). The mounts and pets are fine I guess, but the Azerite coloration I feel looks better as an enchant/glow effect than as a translucent skin replacement.

To be honest I’m grateful that the rewards aren’t particularly compelling for me — I still have a lot to do before the expansion releases. Speaking of what I need to do …

With Warbanks finally operational I was able to begin the process of deleting characters after I scraped their meager savings from their resurrected bodies. I joked about being bloodthirsty about the whole thing, but the reality is that I only undeleted these three dozen or so characters for this purpose, there was never an intention to actually play them again. If Warbands hadn’t been implemented, they never would’ve been back around for me to kill off.

That leaves me with about 25 characters still remaining on my roster, but I am definitely not going to play all of them — and I may even do another round of culling before TWW releases (although it’d only be a few more characters thrown to the scrap pile). In terms of what I’m actually going to play during the expansion there’s probably only a handful of toons I’ll end up leveling, with my Dwarf Hunter being my main the whole time. I’m nowhere close to quitting the game (see earlier comment about writing for this site) but I’m definitely pulling back my playtime more just to have time to play other games.

Ugh, don’t remind me. After the last couple weeks of rain and seasonable temperatures we’re going back into the low-90s (F)/mid-30s (C) for the foreseeable future. I’ve been ready for autumn for two months now but it’s taking its sweet time getting here.

They are weekly quests but more importantly they can be done on each of your characters so if you’re unlike me and want to collect as much as you can from the event you’ll want to cycle through your alts.

Fools and queue writers (he says, hoping this answer doesn’t break it).

That’s all the time and space we have to answer questions this week. Please stay comfortable and hydrated and be sure to be good to yourself when you can. Also, leave plenty of questions for Matt tomorrow!