The Queue: What’s up, fellow WoW enjoyers?

There sure is a lot going on right now all of a sudden, all of which I know the details of, because I definitely did not write this well in advance to be ready for an onslaught of news. Being prepared in advance does not sound at all like me.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we definitely know what the answers are gonna be?

Yep, that’s about the size of it. They spawn every 10 minutes or so on a fixed rotation, so you can have one of those rare finders set up (or just ask in chat). There isn’t a ton of time to do much else, except maybe pick up some lumber while you wait. I did a little fishing yesterday and almost missed an event. As someone in yesterday’s comments pointed out, if you don’t usually use Skyriding you can use that to zip across the zone pretty quickly too.

On the one hand, yes. I played Cairn when it was a demo, and it seemed relatively solid, though I will note that the gameplay seemed a little clunky for me. The art and writing was solid but I was already getting annoyed about having to caaaarefully move my hands during the demo. I’ll also add that my settings and setup are generally atypical so my experience may not reflect everyone’s. It’s still a good indie worth checking out, and I’ll almost certainly buy it later, but it wasn’t a Day 1 for me.

On the other hand, if I only have room in my heart for one game releasing today, it’s SPACE WARLORD BABY TRADING SIMULATOR. Xalavier Nelson Jr went the extra mile and had a baby as a bit to market it and everything!

And if I have a third hand that hand is a pink rhinestone shotgun in Don’t Stop Girlypop.

I’m going to point out that first of all, my dear sweet baby duckling, that you’re asking whether the third installment in a series is the first to use the ideas of a specific system in a game. So, flatly, no. No it isn’t. There are at least two others.

I will say that the actual dice rolling visual concept and gameplay is relatively unique among games, especially modern ones. Usually all the numbers just go brrr in the background and everything is done automatically, whether the actual is real time or turn-based. For me one of the most D&D-feeling games is the Elder Scrolls series, but particularly Morrowind. You don’t exactly roll the dice as such, but all the various stats and bars and how they improve (or not) translates very directly into things like force and hit rate. It also feels very punishing, because when you’re a lowbie, you’ll have like, a 50% hit rate, which in abstract sounds like a lot but in practice you can almost see the dice coming up with 2s and 5s as you whiff hit after hit and get slaughtered by a mudcrab.

I find that when I have a little break, I always feel way more burned out and bad when I get back to it. Part of it is re-establishing routine, which adds additional work since I have to think about each step as I do it, rather than having the whole thing just be mechanical. I also spend a lot of that break time overdoing the stuff I know I need to get done. I still — STILL! — have to bring a bunch of bins of Christmas crap to the basement, because I developed sciatica while I was in a frenzy of taking everything down and packing it up. Of course I did.

So have a coffee and hang in there.