The Queue: It’s Friday the 13th (again)

Would you believe it’s already Friday the 13th again!? It was Friday the 13th just a month ago! I admit that I hadn’t had enough time to recharge my spook batteries yet! So this is gonna be a considerably less spooky affair than last time.

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where the witches are tired, man. They’re sleeping. Do witches sleep? I think witches sleep, but I’m honestly not sure.

I think Endeavors are a system that has a lot of potential, but that potential hasn’t been fully realized yet.

I really like the fact that it tracks your activities as you’re out there doing whatever you want to do, much like the Trading Post. You might be working on some quests or achievements, and suddenly you get some endeavor progress. Systems like that are very nice.

I also like that you get currency that you can then spend on a vendor, with a rotating display of stuff. Much better than fixed activities with fixed rewards. Players are simply incentivized to play the game in whichever way they want to play, and get the rewards they’re interested in.

And I like that the system has multiple levels of involvement. If you want to do more, go to your Neighborhood and do more stuff, as much as you want (to some extent). It doesn’t feel forced or aggressive. Housing is supposed to be a relaxed activity, and endeavors follow suit.

Finally, I like that it’s largely self-contained. Players who aren’t interested in doing housing or collecting decor can basically ignore endeavors, in a pretty painless way.

That said, while I haven’t engaged in the system too much myself, I did hear the complaints about diminishing returns, with some players starting to game the system, figuring out the best way to do it, when is it worth it to engage or not engage at all, etc. So I definitely think Blizzard should make a system that is considerably more transparent, and doesn’t make people feel like they “shouldn’t be playing.” That’s a big no-no in my book, and a current failure of the system.

I’m okay with progress being separate, because the Alliance and Horde houses are largely separated, and any work done on one won’t reflect on the other anyway. But at the same time, it’s extremely weird that some XP is shared (the one tied to collecting decor), and some isn’t (the one tied to endeavors). Once again: it’s a simple matter of a system that is not transparent, that players can’t easily figure out.

But it’s the first iteration of the housing system, and neighborhoods, and decor, and endeavors. Blizzard is surely learning several lessons, and I expect future major patches to improve things. They did get some things wrong, for sure, but overall, with what few complaints the community has, I think housing has been extremely well done for the most part.

At the moment, no. Works just for trying to improve your own time for bragging rights, I guess?

However, there’s the distinct possibility that Blizzard could use this in the future. I could see something like “increased rewards if you’re under X minutes.” Though, honestly, that’s not a direction I want them to go into. We already have plenty of timed pressure on systems like Mythic+. Let Prey be a more casual affair for the solo player, and let the difficulty come from performing well against the actual Prey enemy, rather than degenerating into strategies to optimize your time (i.e., “ignore this type of activity, do that one instead since it’s faster,” which is not what the mode is supposed to be about).

Something like that. It’s this new system being introduced called The Voidforge, which will allow us to obtain Voidcores, of two types. On of them, Nebulous Voidcores, can be spent to roll for extra loot. Also from the 12.0.5 PTR patch notes:

Upon defeating a Midnight Season 1 raid boss or completing a Mythic+ Dungeon, Bountiful Delve, or Prey Hunt on Nightmare difficulty, players may choose to spend their Nebulous Voidcores to receive a random item appropriate for their Loot Specialization from that activity. After receiving an item in this way, it is removed from that loot pool until all eligible items have been obtained on a per-difficulty basis.

Decimus will offer Nebulous Voidcores to the player in exchange for a choice of valuable resources including gold, Voidlight Marl, and Veteran Dawncrests.

The total number of Nebulous Voidcores available to a character increases by two every week for the remainder of the season. Due to the smaller loot pools and the exceptional power of raid items, these rewards will require two Nebulous Voidcores upon defeating a raid boss. Other endgame content, such as Mythic+, will cost only one.

So yeah! We’ll be able to slowly accrue this new item, and choose to spend it to roll for loot, though we’re rolling on a fixed list of loot and once we get an item from that list, it’s removed to ensure we won’t get duplicates from that same loot source! Seems like a pretty good new system that serves as both gearing and catch-up mechanism.

It’s hard to say precisely because Nintendo tends to reveal their best stuff on their own Nintendo Directs. I don’t think that’s changing. So I’d actually bet on the boring stuff.

And I’d be extremely happy about a new Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave trailer! But I’m not expecting it or anything.

I just wanted to take a moment to talk about this, because it’s the exact development for Dracthyr Evoker that I’ve been wanting for a while now.

Many Dracthyr Evoker players have been annoyed by the fact that they can’t properly display their armor — not even their own class sets! The community does have some hope that Blizzard will allow Dracthyr to show off their armor in dragon form one day. But while that doesn’t happen, they might be able to, at least, play in Battle Visage so that they can show off their mog even in combat, switching to dragon only for specific abilities.

However, the most exciting part about this development for me is the fact that the Evoker class will no longer be fully tied to the dragon form — which could maybe open the way for Evokers of other races!

We already have one class that turns into a different form for some of its attacks: the Demon Hunter becomes a special demon form during attacks like Eye Beam, and their big cooldown, Metamorphosis. Based on how Blizzard describes Battle Visage, the Evoker that picks it will be much the same, turning into a dragon for specific attacks that require dragon anatomy, and immediately morphing back to their humanoid form.

Which means that, suddenly, my dream of playing a Nightborne Evoker could be realized. It’s true that Evokers of a non-Dracthyr race wouldn’t have the entire dragon form to customize, but much like with the Demon Hunter’s temporary demon form, the Evoker could also have a temporary “arcane illusion” in the shape of a dracthyr, or something like that, to allow them to perform their special moves.

A man can dream. I’ve wanted Blizzard to implement something like this for quite some time, and I really hope this Battle Visage is a step towards them opening up the Evoker class to other races one day!

This has been The Queue, non-spooky Friday the 13th edition. Look, we don’t always have to scare everyone. Give tranquility a chance!