Phil Xavier

This week's Tavern Brawl on Hearthstone is a Brawliseum (the "normal" one, not the super-expensive Heroic one) with a twist: you'll be using cards from two classes at the same time.

The Cooldown Manager is an in-game tool to help players track their ability cooldowns, buffs, and debuffs, replicating functionality that has usually been provided by addons such as WeakAuras and TellMeWhen.

This week's Hearthstone Tavern Brawl celebrates its past World Champions.

We have a pretty good idea of where an important chunk of future WoW lore is heading, because the seeds started being planted a few years ago, and they’re still being planted now with Turalyon, Xe’ra, the Mag’har allied race, the Arathi empire, etc. The Light is being set up as an antagonistic force — one that we may or may not face as a direct threat in a future expansion, but I’d say we almost certainly will.

In one of those seeds, we’ve got an account from the Mag’har orcs that the forces of the Light have grown despotic in Alternate Draenor, and this group called the Lightbound, led by High Exarch Yrel, has had them flee that dying world, since they were being forced into a non-choice of submission or death. This made a lot of people suspect that Yrel — a pretty well-liked character overall — is being setup to return to the story in the future no longer as a hero, but as a villain.

I say: Blizzard, leave Yrel alone.

You’ve done the “good guy gone bad” story beat so many times by now. Arthas. Garrosh. Kael’thas. Sylvanas. Heck, even Neltharion into Deathwing, or Illidan flip-flopping between “good” or “bad” depending on your perspective. We get it, you enjoy showing how even heroes can become corrupted or distorted by ideals, by fanaticism, by losing sight of what truly matters, etc.

You’ve told that story. Many times. We get it. We got the message.

You don’t need to tell it yet again with Yrel.

Let Yrel be a force of reason within the Light, the Paladins, lest we start seeing them all as fanatical zealots not worth trusting. Let her be someone who sees how fanatical some of her peers are becoming, and opposes them from within. Let the stories of the Lightbound be over-exaggerated or misunderstood by the Mag’har — just their unreliable account.

Or, just leave her alone. Let her chill on some beach sipping mojitos with Velen or whatever.

#SaveYrel

Cricket is a sport I know nothing about. I assume it features a ball, and some sort of bat (the wooden stick kind, not the animal, although the latter would surely make for an even more interesting game). I can only imagine it has mind-warping rules, space-bending plays, and the audience watches it with the same vim they would watch fields of wheat that somehow turn into black-and-white birds and fly away.

This is The Queue, where we sometimes provide answers to things we know, and other times to things we’re clueless about (such as cricket). Read on, and don’t stop believing.

This pretty great Jamiroquai song from 1996 is about the unchecked advance of technology as a whole, but maybe it fits into more specific themes as well.

It’s a bop, and the video is still very much worth a watch.

You know the drill, this is The Queue! Let’s do it.

A new Hearthstone expansion, Across the Timeways, has just been released, and with it comes a brand-new "recipe" Brawl: you pick a class and the game provides you with the latest deck recipe from that class, so you can immediately play against someone.

As we all know, in Hearthstone, man plans, and Yogg laughs, but with the new Across the Timeways expansion, we might just have a tiny little bit more control over fate: we have some really fun cards and a new keyword that lets us alter outcomes we don't like -- at least once.

By now it's becoming a tradition: a new Hearthstone expansion is about to be released — this time, Across the Timeways, on November 4 — and we're getting a pre-release Tavern Brawl to test the cards in advance.

My draenei warlock’s Succubus is just looking at her nails, not a care in the world. In her lane. Unbothered. Moisturized. Flourishing.

“Who cares about this ‘phase shift’ master has sent me through? I’m a demon; I’m used to being flung over the Twisting Nether and beyond, this is no different.

*yawns* maybe I could try that new Voidablack™ nail polish next time. How much does Xal pay those Void creatures to get her feet done?”