The Queue: It’s been fun, but…

I have really enjoyed playing through the Dragon Isles, but I’m ready for something new. So it’s fortunate that it’s time to head to Khaz Algar and (maybe) forget about dragons for a little while. They’re great, but we’ve been mainlining dragon-themed content for two years, and a break will be nice.

So let’s talk about early access, what we’re playing, and just how launch day will (hopefully) go.

Anna also very kindly asked me this softball question this morning, but the answer hasn’t changed (at least I don’t think it has). I expect to start with my Evoker save any last minute change of heart, but alts are up in the air; I have a Mage, Warrior, Death Knight, and Monk I’ve all enjoyed playing, and all of them have some neat hero specs. My Paladin is going to wind up being sadly low on the list, I think, since I’m not enthusiastic about Retribution and don’t need to level it up for raiding.

I’m going to focus on leveling one at a time, because leveling a character to max gives your next character an XP boost to make this collection of alts easier to level. And since I’m not usually an alt person, but I have mixed feelings on what to main, I am in the odd position where I may be leveling a few characters out of the gate. I’m going to make the most out of these buffs!

We do indeed publish articles when we have updates or they become relevant again, like later today I will certainly be republishing our article about The War Within early access.

Food content is evergreen, so it doesn’t frequently fall into this category. Sometimes we dredge up something old-but-still-interesting like this on slow news days, but this week doesn’t really have many of those. Perhaps browsing our food category would help?

The prelaunch event goes right up until launch day on August 26, so you can keep leveling alts in it. As to whether you’ll be able to keep using it in early access to level mains… I’m actually not sure! I’ll report back tonight.

I am glad to finally be escaping the condescending Jewelcrafting trainer in Valdrakken. Bye, lady, I will not miss you.

Early access is all about leveling, because end-game content is all locked up until post-launch. You can run normal dungeons and low-tier delves, but higher level content won’t be available yet.

This means the only head start will be in levels; players in early access won’t be decked out in the best gear — they just have a head start on getting their characters ready to get good gear.

Dragonflight actually had a smooth launch — unless you were an unfortunate like me who didn’t get on the boat to the Dragon Isles at the first minute, because transport stopped working fairly shortly afterwards. I personally expect early access to go well, and if it doesn’t I expect it to be resolved relatively quickly. Blizzard has been doing a whole lot of WoW maintenance lately, and I suspect it’s all been in preparation for a smooth launch.

Two hours after, you’ll definitely be good as Blizzard will have had time to fix any early launch snafus.

And thank you for sticking with me Thursday afternoon. I hope you have a good day and enjoy tonight’s early access if you have it — and if you don’t, don’t worry, because you’re not missing out. It’s a good time to get any last minute alts leveled via Radiant Echoes and collect any transmog sets so you stroll into Khaz Algar looking your best.

I’ll see you there.

And because this week is all mixed up, please leave plenty of questions for Cory tomorrow. I guess that’s questions about bears? I’m not sure. Maybe I should start off with a softball: Hey, Cory, what are you leveling first in TWW?