The Queue: The Curse

Any community that’s been around as long as we have will have some degree of associated lore. Some of it is tidbits about the people themselves — how Cory loves the muppets, or how Mitch is Mitch. But there are some aspects that are a little more intangible. One of those is broadly classed as The Site Curse. This usually manifests in having the Queue break in weird technical ways, but is also associated in some way with the people, and how news just seem to always happen when we’re all indisposed in some way. For instance, I planned a trip to London thinking I was safe, and oops, those are the same dates Diablo 4 dropped their first expansion. Sorry! I’ll try to be less cursed next time.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions, and we’ll hopefully supply some answers, assuming the column saves properly.

I’m going to say no.

If I say “nah no way 11.1 announcement today,” given the relationship I have with whatever it is that haunts this site, it is likely in the next few hours such a thing will, indeed, come to pass. So, nah, no 11.1 announcement today, or really anytime in the near future. I stake my reputation on it. And for good measure, I’m going to find something to do at New Queue Time where I need to be invested and completely off the internet, because all announcements happen when I’m doing something else.

(You’re welcome).

It’s very tough to find definitive sourcing for things like this, so take this with a grain or two of salt.

According to the Wowhead you have to be at least level 60 to obtain the Heartbreaker, as of patch 10.2.5 in Dragonflight — so, not exactly ancient history.

This is reflected in both the listing for the Heart Shaped Box — the once-daily reward for killing the holiday boss — in a red warning directly below the item box, as well as Wowhead’s guide to the holiday itself.

I’ve been unable to find an official source (as in, a Blizzard rep specifically saying it), but they usually don’t divulge that kind of information in a concrete way. Like, when they posted about the drop rate on the Heartbreaker “increasing.” Given the drop rates, it’s going to be impossible to prove by experimentation and repetition, too. So, at minimum, definitely use that first-of-the-day boost on a character that’s at least level 60.

Love ’em. The gorier and weirder the better. I love how it can be used as an allegory — most of the most thoughtful, enduring narratives and subnarratives I’ve seen in gaming come from games I’d broadly class as horror — and I love it even when it’s gross slasher fun. In fact, I’d bet that my adoration of the survival genre sprang largely from survival horror and the last-man-standing versions of that genre in particular.

However, some of the additional tropes that frequently pop up really weird me out. Like, in 7 Days to Die, there is a jiggle-physics-ed out Stripper zombie. And I’m currently playing Sons of the Forest, wherein a kind mutant who used to be named Virginia with three legs and three arms wears a leotard which is see-through when it rains. I understand that there’s something inherently hedonistic about this level of violence, but it really takes me out of the catharsis of beating zombies to death with a 9-iron when I’m being asked to want to smooch the zombie, too.

Not to yuck anybody’s yum, but the actual splattering violent gore isn’t the disturbing part about that scenario.

So, an oddity of Steam is that, whenever the client is open, it clocks that as playtime. When you’re screwing with settings, if you boot it up and go to grab a snack while it’s on the main menu, if you pause it and walk away to use the bathroom or do laundry (or if you can’t find a save point so you pause it for a lengthy period of time), that all counts toward your playing metrics on Steam. I’d say that’s probably a more likely explanation for it, as opposed to you just dying a lot.

I will say I kinda wonder if game devs want to find a way to check on me, because I’ll frequently pause and just go to bed or whatever to keep my spot, to the extent that it looks like I’m playing for 20+ hours a day. They’re probably used to that, though.