The Queue: Never could get the hang of Thursdays

Thursdays are an enigma that I have yet to solve, and I don’t think today’s looking much better either. But Thursday is here, and we cannot ignore it, only accept it.

This is the Queue, our daily Q&A column where we talk about Warcraft and just about everything else. Welcome.

That’s a tough one, particularly since there’s so much Midnight content that I still haven’t done. The expansion is huge, and while I’ve done the main story quest and the post-launch story quests, I have only finished Sojourner — doing all side quests — in one zone, Eversong. But perhaps that’s what I like most: the massive scope of these zones. They’re full of interesting stories and side quests, and even a month in I’m feeling like I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. But I’ve also really been enjoying the Delves and how much gearing I can do on my own outside of raid night or Mythic+. Midnight Delves have a great mix of settings and stories (though it also has The Grudge Pit, so it’s a mixed bag). Housing, of course, is a great feature that touches practically everything in the game, but it was released so early that it barely feels like it’s a Midnight feature, because I was playing with it more before the expansion launched than I am right now.

As to dislikes, I’m not personally very engaged by the main quest, but I also think it’s typical for all of the side stories and set dressing of an expansion to be more exciting than the main story. So, back to side quests for me.

I can’t tell you Blizzard’s thinking, but in general crests are designed to give a slow and steady progression track that doesn’t encourage you to spend a thousand hours grinding content to get every crest you need. Blizzard does some protecting players from themselves, so none of us feel like we have to do that kind of grind — because if we could, some of us would, and it would leave the people who can’t put in a thousand hours behind the curve.

But at the same time it is still very frustrating to hit your head against the wall of the crest cap. I myself capped champion crests for the week after what felt like five minutes of gameplay on Tuesday, which makes doing anything else this week somewhat unrewarding. And in the meantime, I’m stacking up on veteran and adventurer crests that are overflow from my max champion crests… and that I equally can’t do anything with, because I’ve maxed my gear from those tiers and can’t convert them to champion for use.

I think it’s a good gameplay philosophy to slow things down and prevent players from collecting everything immediately, but it sure does feel punishing sometimes.

I’m afraid there is not. Player Housing is a Midnight expansion feature, and you cannot acquire, build, or decorate your home until you’ve bought the expansion. If you subscribe and jump back into the game, you will be able to collect things for your future house, but not make or decorate a home.

Maybe next expansion, Player Housing will become a baseline feature — Blizzard has said that it’s evergreen content they aren’t going to get rid of after this expansion — but I wouldn’t count on that happening this expansion.

I absolutely think old crafted transmog should be more accessible, because there are some fantastic looks you can craft… but the requirements for spark gear are usually pretty high. Like crests, sparks act as a way to slow down gearing early in an expansion, preventing players from crafting a mountain of high level gear on day one. But once it’s an expansion old, this is much less important. I wonder if PVP is a snag here, as removing sparks may pose a balance problem for level-locked characters who stick to certain level brackets for PVP and could gear up very quickly, or otherwise become powerful in unintended ways with infinite access to crafting.

Perhaps there’s a middle ground, like adding profession recipes sans sparks that are simply cosmetic versions of the same item and removing the spark cost, while keeping the spark cost for actual gear.

Bloodhoof Village. It’s quieter there than many of the hotspots, and you can run a nice loop around the place without being bothered.

On Alliance side I always wind up collecting eggs in Goldshire, even though it is the worst place to collect eggs and will make you hate every player around you. So, really, it’s better for my mental health to log on to a Horde character and go to Bloodhoof Village.

Hey, I’ve spent the whole expansion so far pretending to be a paladin. I would say that no one’s noticed except for the fact that the guards in Silvermoon don’t let me forget that I’m a death knight and thus unwelcome in their city.

That’s all for today everyone. Take care and I’ll see you back here next week!