Phil Xavier

Every single run of The Pit in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred has your character, worried about some unknown marauder supposedly following them, cursing the place for it (no matter which place it is) — but the encounter with this mysterious assailant never actually happens. I don’t get it, man. Since people recently discovered the Secret Cow Level in Diablo 4, maybe the next secret they should devote themselves to is how to find this elusive character who always follows you in The Pit, but never actually shows their face.

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where you ask as questions and we answer them because that’s what “Q&A” means, I think. Right? Right. I mean, I *hope* I’m right about this; otherwise I’ve been doing this column all wrong.

We have a very old Hearthstone Tavern Brawl returning this week: the Shadow Towers were last seen ten years ago!

I am greatly enjoying my Warlock in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred. Not only is the class really fun to play, she’s very photogenic. I guess one thing you learn early on in Warlock School is that it’s not enough to constantly battle corruption while pursuing infinite demonic power; you have to look really cool while doing it.

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where we ride a demonic doggo into battle while dragging our enemies in fire chains behind us, and then we incinerate them. Feels good, man.

Hearthstone has changed things up for the Year of the Scarab: gone are the mini-sets for each expansion, and to replace them we're getting twelve class sets, released four at a time.

I’m confused: It’s not my usual Queue day! Turmoil! Chaos! Shadowfiends and Lightspawns living together, Mass Hysteria! What is this…?

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where sometimes IRL stuff gets in the way of our plans, and we have to swap Queues momentarily, to hopefully return to our normal schedule next week.

Meanwhile… questions!

One of the most fun Tavern Brawls in Hearthstone, Dual Class Deckbuilding, returns this week.

With the release of the Lord of Hatred expansion, Diablo 4 finally has a Loot Filter system, like many of its biggest competitors already have.

This is Mistress Nagmara, a barmaid at the Grim Guzzler tavern in Shadowforge City, Blackrock Mountain (home of the Dark Iron Dwarves). In WoW, she used to start and end a quest that has since been removed from the game, making her a rare Succubus character that players could interact with. In Hearthstone, she’s just been added as both a Warlock skin and a bartender in Battlegrounds. She’s my current bartender of choice, in fact. I really like her voice lines. She’s very good at her job of encouraging you in a way that sounds much more “friendly barmaid” than “saucy succubus,” to be honest.

Also, “Nagmara” is an anagram of “anagram.”

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where sometimes we like to highlight random things because we just think they’re neat.

I had only played the first two seasons of Diablo 4 before I took a long break from the game, and I just returned to the brand-new world of Lord of Hatred expansion, with all of the changes and additions that the game has gotten since launch.

The recently-released patch 12.0.5 for World of Warcraft added a nice new feature for Dracthyr Evokers: Battle Visage lets them remain in Visage form during combat, only briefly shifting to their Dracthyr forms during certain specific abilities, and then immediately shifting back.