The Queue: Unfazed about being phased

My draenei warlock’s Succubus is just looking at her nails, not a care in the world. In her lane. Unbothered. Moisturized. Flourishing.

“Who cares about this ‘phase shift’ master has sent me through? I’m a demon; I’m used to being flung over the Twisting Nether and beyond, this is no different.

*yawns* maybe I could try that new Voidablack™ nail polish next time. How much does Xal pay those Void creatures to get her feet done?”

The upcoming expansion, Across the Timeways, looks like a ton of fun. Not only is the time travel / alternate possibilities theme fun by itself, but this expansion is actually much bolder than recent ones when it comes to what the cards can do and how powerful they are. A big complaint with the past few sets has been that the cards simply weren’t impactful enough — and therefore, not fun. Across the Timeways definitely seems to be fixing that.

The Rewind keyword made a big splash: for the first time ever we can actually “undo” an action in the game, reverting the game to a previous state and trying again. It’s awesome to consider the implications of what this enables from the tech side alone, let alone the gameplay effects.

But the Fabled keyword might be the real star of the show. What seemed like a pretty “basic” keyword — “these are Warcraft legends that auto-slot a few more cards in your deck, and the cards all play off each other” — ended up being a gold mine when it comes to theme and flavor. Each Fabled minion has a package that absolutely redefines how you play the game and try to win.

My two favorites are Garona Halforcen for Rogue and Timethief Rafaam for Warlock. Not necessarily because they’re super powerful, but because they’re very unique and fun.

Garona adds the King Llane card to your opponent’s deck. Whenever they draw King Llane, they have the option to play it (for three mana) in order to immediately shuffle him back into their deck, and draw another card — a tempo loss. But the thing is that they don’t want to hold it in their hands, because Garona herself, when played, HALVES their health if they’re holding King Llane. For the Rogue player, it’s a constant game of trying to get the opponent to draw him, as well as checking if he’s in their hand right now — many of the new cards allow the Rogue player to peek into the opponent’s hand (in a limited fashion), or even force them to draw a Legendary directly via The Kingslayers. It might not be the strongest archetype ever, but I gave it a try during Theorycrafting yesterday, and it’s super fun.

But the star of the expansion might be Timethief Rafaam, the only “Fabled+” card in the game. Fabled+ adds not a package of three, but a package of TEN cards to your deck (while also increasing your deck size to 40). They’re all different copies of Rafaam from alternate timelines: a Murloc Rafaam, a Warchief Rafaam, a Mindflayer Rafaam, and even a Green Rafaam — “Green” is a huge meme in the Hearthstone community, which has theorized about the “Green” keyword which would make your other cards green (and nothing else). The thing is that if you’re able to play every alternate Rafaam, when you play the original Timethief Rafaam, you destroy the enemy hero, winning the game. It looks like it’ll be very hard to actually accomplish that, and the Rafaams will be used more as a strong package that has a ton of synergy with itself, adding to your other game plans. But I’ll be damned if this doesn’t look like it’s one of the most fun cards ever made.

Yes, the various named instances you can choose are the neighborhoods. Each neighborhood is a collection of plots. Your neighborhood was Gold Oaks, and your plot was a number inside Gold Oaks (i.e., “Gold Oaks #12”).

If you want to change neighborhoods, you have to talk to the helpful NPC that gives you that list of named instances. As far as things are right now, there’s no cost associated with this; you can just keep changing until you find one that has the plot you want.

Founder’s Point for Alliance / Razorwind Shores for Horde are simply the names of the neighborhood zones (same name for everyone playing WoW anywhere at any point), not the name of the actual individual neighborhoods instances. Those are the things like “Free Bloom Haven” and “Dry Tusk Isle” on the list when you talk to the NPC.

Of course, things could still change, but since they already had that part up for a public test on the PTR, I find it a little unlikely it’ll change much!

I definitely think they should give access to more. The last time those Cartel Chips were in the game, I was severely disappointed with my limited options — so much that I dropped my plans to continue farming them, because I thought there was no point.

I understand the devs might have concerns about “powerful gear in vendors”, but those can be thought of as “catch-up” anyway. Hardcore players have already obtained those from cutting edge content, most likely — or, if they haven’t, it’s an opportunity to reduce their frustration as well. Given how WoW is designed these days — the gearing track changes that started in Dragonflight and were evolved in The War Within were fantastic — I see no reason to prevent a significant portion of the playerbase from getting access to the good stuff eventually (not at first).

I tend to agree, but your little side rant is precisely why I think Blizzard hasn’t done it yet. When you add coordinates like that, you’re working against world immersion; you’re working against your own game, in a sense. I have a feeling that the devs would prefer a more elegant and diegetic solution if possible.

Maybe they could have a system where each zone has in-game, built-in “landmarks”. “Entrance to the Crystal Cave.” “The big golden tree near Elftown.” “The fallen pillar by Lake Dreadmist.” And then you could point to those (even add an in-game pin to it that the player could follow, or perhaps a set of pins that takes the player through the landmarks, Traveling Salesman style.

Frankly, it all depends on how fun and well-implemented it is. If it’s like garrison invasions, I can’t say I’ll care much for it — those were fun for the first few times, but got repetitive and boring. I’d need something that adds a little more long-term engagement than that.

But I’m confident that Blizzard has learned a TON of lessons about engaging world events since WoD, and they’d make a system where each event feels distinct from the others, rewarding, and with variations. Under those premises, hell yeah: bring on the zombie siege.

And to answer the second part of your question, I think I wouldn’t bother to design special defenses, unless the game made it a point for me to do so — i.e., adding temporary “zombie defense” items I could easily use by accessing an “events” menu or something.

My gut feeling is to say “I can’t see why not.” I understand that there is value in limitations/exclusivity: people think “oh, it’s Hallow’s End, let’s use the opportunity to use our Hallow’s End stuff”, and that can actually compel a bigger number of people to use the stuff. But on the other hand, it’s just housing customization, and the point is to allow player expression. So although I’m a bit shaky on it, I’ll go with “sure, why not.”

This has been The Queue. 9 out of 10 Void creatures already prefer Voidablack Nail Polish™, but the Sayaad market is still largely unexplored. I’m presenting you with a major business opportunity here, folks. Take care, and have a good one!