The Queue is not haunted (maybe)

Today’s Queue is definitely not haunted. I’m going to go into this with positive, definitely not haunted vibes, so there will definitely not be any hauntings. Mhm. Definitely not.

So let’s get to the questions.

I think The Great Dark Beyond expansion looks really neat! I was frankly not excited about the summer vacation themed expansion we’ve just zoomed past; the theme seemed generic and the new features just weren’t that thrilling. A handful of drink cards? A few new locations? The features felt recycled. Even the Tourist cards, which allowed you to build cross-class decks, were so limited as to seem unexciting right off the bat.

It was fine. Completely adequate.

The Great Dark Beyond, however, goes all in on outer space. The new keyword is Starship, which lets you build your own mega-minion out of other minions you play throughout the game. No matter what kind of Starship cards we wind up with, that’s a neat option: do you keep playing Starship cards and hold on summoning your Starship until it’s super powerful? Or do you play a handful of Starship cards and put it on the board for early push? I think this will result in interesting, unique strategies for every deck.

It also has a strong theme; we’re following the Draenei as they flee Argus, sailing through space looking for a new home. There’s a new minion type, Draenei, and of course a new Velen legendary, which will trigger the Battlecries and Deathrattles of every Draenei card you’ve played this game, a kind of Shudderwock 2.0. There’s also a new Archimonde legendary, that of course summons a whole host of demons for Warlocks.

Perils in Paradise didn’t have a lot of Warcraft flavor. It wasn’t even “our favorite Warcraft heroes go on vacation,” it was “a bunch of random characters go on vacation.” While the themes Blizzard develops for these games don’t show up a lot in gameplay, they’re fun, bringing us Warcraft characters in a new context and creating a core concept for cards to play into. That’s something Perils in Paradise didn’t deliver on. I’m glad The Great Dark Beyond is such a strong push on the Warcraft theme. Hearthstone is at its best as a crazy Warcraft AU.

It’s a hard choice, but definitely Yogg-tastic Tasties.

Hit! It’s an interesting new content branch, and I hope Blizzard keeps iterating on it — though frankly even this initial version is very good, with a range of unique locations and challenges. The balance and scaling is still weird, and it works better in a small group than as purely solo content, I think. But it does present an interesting challenge to play when you’re tired of world quests, don’t feel like running a dungeon pug, and it’s not raid night. I like them. (Except when they’re underwater.)

Good! We’re about half-way through heroic but struggling on Ovi’nax and getting through the eggs consistently. I’ve been enjoying the fights, which feel interesting and challenging without having a pile of 30 different new mechanics to keep up with. There are a lot of mechanics that seem familiar, things we saw in Dragonflight (or even earlier), now in new contexts, with extras peppered in here and there.

It does, however, feel like we’re progressing extremely quickly to be halfway through heroic this early in the tier. Though the later fights amp up the difficulty, it still feels like we’ve zoomed along.

It’s interesting to watch others frantic searching, but I am not keen on doing the searching myself. I calmly await the discovery of the Cow Level.

I actually haven’t gotten a lot of play time in on the expansion yet. First was the late launch, then the day after the launch the game was laggy to the point of being nearly unplayable for me, with serious rubber banding, and it crashed on the first cutscene and sent me back to Gea Kul. Eh. I haven’t found the time to go back, but I’m going to try to make some time today.

But it looks to be everything I enjoyed about the original Diablo 4 campaign, with new places to explore, a new campaign story, and fresh Diablo lore. I’m excited to keep playing (and if I’m going to get dragged into a Diablo Lore Watch this weekend I’m going to have to hurry it up, but I may leave the boys to talk about it by themselves).

As to gameplay, frankly, Diablo 4 is in the best state it’s ever been. This expansion launch was pretty much a re-launch of the original game; so many of the mechanics have been overhauled that it would barely be recognizable. Extra difficulty levels provide consistent challenge as you level, the reduced level cap makes it feel like it isn’t an impossible grind to ever hit max

Usually I give up and go back and play a favorite game I’ve played a hundred times already. Right now it’s Dragon Age Inquisition, but frankly I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even played it this week. The horror!

That’s all, friends! Take care, have a good weekend, and get out before the ghosts show up.