The Queue: Here be dragons

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and sometimes we have some answers but sometimes the questions are just out there, man.

Blizzard has made a push for including these and I think it’s a little bit weird. I forget when they started doing it, but I remember having several “is this a thing now, that they’re doing?” discussions. Even as someone who thrives on SEO, I don’t think I could name any of them this expansion other than Curse of Ula’tek off the top of my head.

Yes.

It’s weird because Blizzard was so known for like, grimdark edgelord stuff going back in the day. With Diablo it’s inescapable just on the setting. Demons, heaven and hell, possession, soulstones, gore, worms. Even the innocuous stuff is gross and awful. With StarCraft they’re clearly leaning back into those roots, and though the scifi core means people could have plot armor, very few people or entities actually do (basically just Raynor).

But having a grim setting is a double edged sword. If everyone is dead or dying, and the stakes are therefore impossibly high, then everything we’re doing is meaningless and inconsequential. If everyone dies, why do I care about these people?

They did that a few times with the Warcraft universe early on. The Culling of Stratholme and Arthas’s heel turn felt consequential because it was one of very few, and the whole thing is kind of catalyzed as a single event. They turned away from the hyperbolic violence in WoW and I feel the story is better for it. Killing your bestie in the Death Knight starting area felt bad. Runas’s death felt awful. And while some people, particularly in our social media comments, bewail the fact that everything is a carebear paradise now, I feel like the few times they actually do kill someone it stands out, rather than just being one death in a sea of them.

Except Arthas. Please stop bringing his ass back from the dead.

First of all, I just have to compliment the person who made this cute drawing of a frog who is apparently a quite skilled professional chef for the Steam Cooking Fest 2026 promo banner.

Venba, which is literally less than 4 USD right now. It is such a beautiful narrative about home and culture, and how food can contribute both to feeling included and feeling alone. The art and sound design makes all the food phenomenal and feel familiar even if you, like, me, grew up in an aspics and raisins culture rather than the less violently depressing one portrayed in the game.

Creature Kitchen doesn’t have a particularly steep discount, but it’s still just over $6. The whole premise is that you’re a person who lives in the woods trying to attract vermin by feeding it its favorite food, and honestly, goals.

Good Pizza, Great Pizza is $5. I’ve played it a bit on mobile, and it’s an older game, but it has a unique hidden strength. It was recommended to me not as a fun game per se, though it is decent, but the localization and translation is excellent, and it offers a fairly wide array of languages, making it a great choice for someone who is just beyond a baseline “the boy eats the cheese” level of learning, et je peux l’apprécier.

Liz H. is Lizdormi because she tends to have a relatively tenuous, fleeting grasp on the time it currently is. She will plan in advance and have everything set, but oh wait, that was all due tomorrow? Oops.

Liz Patt is Lizagosa because she tends to be a little quiet but when she shows her stuff she’s a freakin magician. Kalchegos, too (though technically he isn’t on the staff anymore).

Coryius is a green because he’s Canadian and they’re obviously all Nature dragons.

Some of our writers have defaults because their names sound odd otherwise. I think Eric would make a good Green but Ericius? Bleh. Phil doesn’t have any good options. I do feel like it’s kind of a major limitation of dragonkind to only have this set of themes. They were cooking with Time and Magic, but Life and Nature has significant overlap, as does Nature and Earth — Earth of course being “the bad one” so I’m not naming people that.

Personally, I would be Annastrazsa because I like wearing too much jewelry and running around in my underpants.

Oh, and Red is a Red. His name is Red. It’s fine.