The Queue: Home Sweet Home

One thing I’ve discovered while hanging out in the alpha is that all the housing plots have their plusses and minuses. They’re all pretty great.

Except Plot 47, that one is awful.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and we’ll give you the answers even if they’re controversial.

It SNOWED at my house yesterday and I am completely floored. It lasted maybe 10 minutes, and it didn’t stick at all, but man. Rude and disrespectful, honestly.

Servers are supposed to go up around noon PST for the Midnight beta. There’s also a slightly longer than usual maintenance, which I’m assuming is going to be used for stuff like backing up current characters to be ported over to the beta, and making sure those servers are ready to go.

Considering how hot a ticket this is going to be, I’m likely only going to do a couple of the daily tasks I’ve been up to in our alpha coverage, and hopefully skedaddling before it gets too far into the evening and the servers go kablam.

Beta should contain just about everything at this point. There may be a few features or areas that are off-limits, or are briefly turned off, but it’s not like the alpha where they’re trying to lock everyone to one zone at a time.

Not everyone will be instantly granted access. Usually it rolls out in randomly drawn waves, and this is mostly due to stuff like server stability. We’ve all been there for an expansion launch, and while it makes sense to spin up additional clusters and instances and whatnot for a launch, it makes far more sense to let people in slowly and avoid that extra cost for a beta.

My gaming behavior in the alpha is very different from my gaming behavior most of the rest of the time. In alpha I almost always opt for Steady Flight instead of Skyriding because I can hover to take screenshots, for instance. I don’t usually like questing, because the writing in text is there, but most of the cinematics and those posed story beats aren’t, so you either miss chunks or get weird placeholder cinematics. I do engage a lot with stuff like gathering and pets, and I actively try to get myself or my hunter pets stuck in the terrain, just to say I’ve done my part.

I will say that, as someone who mains Blood Elf, the Eversong revamp is phenomenal. Saltheril’s Haven is my personal favorite. Though the one thing I really missed (and it’s likely that I perhaps did pass it over) is some kind of memorial or statue in the place outside Silvermoon to mark where the walls in the dead scar were repaired.

Another thing that I found incredibly fun, and I would urge everyone to take it for a spin when they get a chance, is the carriage/cart rides in both the Alliance and Horde player housing neighborhoods. They kinda loop around and show off the landscape, and it’s a very chill ambient vibe, with the sounds changing depending on where you are on the ride. I made a couple short videos for both Horde and Alliance for various platforms to showcase it.