The Queue: Wanna go sledding?

The snow just disappeared here. It wasn’t a particularly rough winter, but it was long, and the snow kept coming back, so now that it’s properly gone, wanna go sledding?

We saw Sledding Game randomly scrolling in the Xbox app, and it’s a cute little friend game with terrible physics and minigames. It’s not deeper than watching a pudgy little frog with a funny hat drink hot chocolate on a ski lift, but that’s the charm.

So while I go down the mountain again, it’s time for our daily question and answer column — The Queue!

I want it to be a brand new hero class. While yeah, Death Knights are already pretty close to it, they have their own things going on, and Necromancer should stand alone. Let’s see a class that comes to raising the dead from a different angle. Lean into the temporary curse playstyle of the Diablo Necromancer, and lots of offensive spells using bone and blood-based magic. I’d also want there to be a more targeted Raise Dead spell that lets you raise a dead NPC to fight for you, similar to Priest Mind Control, so you could have some gameplay around choosing which target to kill first. If your group killed a healer first, you’ll raise a healer. If your group kills the guy with the really gnarly AOE spell, you get that guy and his spell.

A mail-wearing caster would make sense, since the Diablo Necro does look like they’re wearing some tougher armor most of the time. That could just be all those big bone plates skewing things, though. It would also give the developers the excuse to add a proper Scythe weapon type and let Warriors, Death Knights, Druids, and Necromancers use it. Sorry, Paladins, it just doesn’t quite line up with your whole vibe.

I like the Warlocks. Anything that lets me summon giant, teethy demon maws to gnaw on my foes is a good time in my book. I say that Warlock is more fun, but that’s not to say that Paladin isn’t fun. The shield spamming angelic leaping force of nature is a great way to lay waste to hordes of demons.

In fact, I think that Diablo 4 has only ever missed with one of its classes, and that’s Rogue. I don’t know what it takes for Rogue to be fun, but I haven’t found it. Maybe someday I’ll level a Rogue and get my achievement for all of the original characters maxed, but it’s not this season!

No thank you after a Lay on Hands?! Time for you to lay on hands in a different way to show your displeasure.

This is just a sign of how far we’ve all fallen in our virtual manners. The time was you’d get a nice message for even just a quick Mark of the Wild as you ran by. Eventually, that turned into a “tks” and don’t even get me started on abbreviating a thank you message. To not even get a quick three-character message after saving a corpse run? You’d be justified in burning down a house. No jury would convict!

I don’t think you’re overthinking it. There is something to be said for a giant open world to run your characters around in. Knowing that just over that mountain lies a whole new biome full of different critters ready to meet you has a certain sense of grandiosity that doesn’t come across when you have to travel back through a hub city’s portal room to get to them.

Sometimes that doesn’t make sense for the story being told, especially with the underground or extraplanetary nature of some of these zones that we’re tackling, but that just means that it’s more important to have a good base experience before you start getting weird with things. Zaralek Caverns and the Emerald Dream didn’t exist until after we’d fully explored the regular Dragon Isles. Plus, the caverns were still just a flight down a winding tunnel away!

I do think, without any other information, that it feels like The Last Titan will have this same problem. We’ll be spread out over the whole of Azeroth, tackling things, rather than having a new continent/island/planar hub to cover. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another Cataclysm-style refresh of a bunch of zones. How else do you sell the epic scale of the culmination of 20+ years of Warcraft?

By shaking things across the whole world, of course.

Today’s Bacardi is going hard on his favorite treats, so he’ll be in a super good mood for your weekly Vaults. He’s also been dabbling a little bit in giving out build-defining legendaries and uniques in Diablo, so if you get one of those, make sure to say thank you to him.

Would you rather?

Work in a store that has a store pet who keeps you company all day, like a book store cat

Or

Work somewhere with a high amount of pet traffic, like a restaurant with a patio near a park.

Today’s Anna Earworm™: 3am

The Oilers sadly didn’t make it through to the next round of the playoffs, so I guess I have to support the Montreal Canadiens now. Which is a weird feeling. Make sure to help keep Anna’s day weird feeling free by leaving her lots of questions for tomorrow.