The Queue: you have to be nice to me

because it’s my birthday. It’s literally illegal to be mean to me at any other time but it’s ultra illegal to be mean to me today.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions, and if one of those questions is about my age you are definitely going to jail.

If Priest wasn’t already available for all races, this would be the expansion for that, obviously. I think we’ll see Paladins go this expansion, for sure.

I do wonder about the reverse, though, and let a race be everything (other than Evokers). This would seem like the expansion where very motivated Blood Elves are going to throw everything at the Xal’atath problem to solve it, and they’d have the assistance of nearly everyone on Azeroth to gain new skills. The only classes Blood Elves don’t have are Druid and Shaman, both of which make it slightly less likely due to the extra custom art involved. It might seem unfair in a faction balance sense, but I’d rather open the door and make it possible than make sure the balance sheet tallies, personally.

I’m gonna urge Liz to not read this, but if somebody’s getting got in Midnight it’s gonna be either Liadrin or Lorthemar or both. Considering this is the midpoint of a three-act arc we’re almost certainly going to lose the Sunwell as well.

Writing fiction is a really tough thing because you have to give some amount and element of foreshadowing to your reader, or else it feels like you’ve blindsided them, but also you can’t make it so telegraphed that it’s predictable. Maybe Sylvanas just gets hit by a bus one day. But as a narrative that would be very unsatisfying. Getting hit by a bus in Mean Girls works, because it’s foreshadowed several times throughout the movie — but it’s still surprising when it happens.

There’s also the fact that these events should be earned. If someone were to die in a story, you want that to come about for a reason. Weirdly, I recently saw this concept explained incredibly well by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. In general terms, you want your narrative to be strung together by “therefore” and “but,” not “and then.”

I could say that maybe, I don’t know, let’s say Cairne or Jaina dies this expansion. That would seem like a waste of either of those two characters’ general arcs. Sure, there’s the idea that random things happen to people all the time. There are several ends Sylvanas could eventually come to that would be satisfying (and there are those that would argue that any end would be fine, just DO IT already), but her getting hit by a bus would be an “and then.” It removes agency from her actions and divorces her motivations from the narrative. But Sylvanas sacrificing herself to try to stop the void would be fine, because she had all those arcs about not sacrificing herself for anyone or anything, “but” then her time spent in penance would make a sacrifice for the greater good on her part a “therefore.” Whereas Cairne doing the same thing — despite it being inarguably more in his character to do so — would be an “and then.”

Though, as I’ve said before, my ultimate hope for Sylvanas is to just molder away in the ruin of Windrunner Spire, forgotten and alone forever.

In order to claim your plot and get decorating, you do have to have Midnight in some form. Even the cheapest expansion will get you access to your house. But even if you’re really patient and wait for Midnight to fully release, you will not get access to Player Housing without the Midnight license.

However, if you’re really strapped for now and a little patient, you can start collecting decor items without the Midnight license. All those “hey go visit your Garrison or whatever” items are prime for collection without Midnight. You just can’t actually use them to decorate.

Nope. My strict rule is to wait until after my birthday for any and all things festive.

I will admit I’ve already brought a couple bins up from the basement because we’re already getting into the holiday parades and whatnot, and so we need some pieces of flair to wear. But other than that, nope.

I’ll also admit that I’m a little less stressed about the bright line before the season in part because I wait til the twelfth day of christmas — aka three king’s day, aka epiphany — to even think about taking everything down.