The Queue

I’m not saying that telling someone to hug a hippo is attempted murder. But I am saying that it’s a very, very bad idea to actually follow that advice. I know you’ve all heard about how cute house hippos are, but they don’t actually exist and real hippos are considered one of the most dangerous animals in the world.

I’m honestly not surprised, considering that they can weigh up to four and a half to five tons and have tusks the size of railroad spikes. To put this in context, a hippo could body an Allosaurus, because it weighs almost twice as much as the biggest estimated sized Allosaurus specimen we have to date.

Please do not hug a hippo. It will kill you if you are lucky.

Somebody here gets to go to the zoo today and it is not me. I am extremely jealous, but despite that I am still here to write the Queue. Responsibility really is just the worst.

But let’s get to the questions.

So, it’s not what you think — I have a major problem with storage, but again, it’s not what you think. I have a Google Pixel phone, so I use it to take photos, like you do. But in this last generation, despite it being a major selling point of the phone, they’ve started charging me for storing the photos I take on my phone, and screenshots, and all the photos of birds I take for the Merlin app. This is also tied to my email, so now until I migrate and/or delete a bunch of stuff, I can’t receive emails. Well, I can from the Old Navy marketing department, but not my kids’ schools, apparently. And now I’m also getting messages that my OneDrive, which I use exclusively for my writing and backups, is also jammed with stuff. So many people didn’t configure their OneDrive to backup the stuff they wanted backed up and complained when stuff got deleted, so now Microsoft made it so it automatically backs up your Desktop and you can’t turn that off. The desktop is where I have folders where I shove things like one-off screenshots and memes, so now my writing is all slammed in there next to gifs I thought I’d deleted almost as soon as I used them — but not from the cloud.

Anyway, this is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and I’ll answer just as soon as I finish deleting this terabyte of memes I didn’t even want.

Happy Labor Day to you all!

I hope that you’re being treated well and have a minimum amount of bootarangs being thrown at you today, and all days.

While I go invest in some fresh bootarang insurance, it’s time for — The Queue!

This is King Krush, a big Devilsaur that can be found in Sholazar Basin. We should celebrate him, for some reason.

Welcome to The Queue, where everything is made up and the points don’t matter. The only thing that matters is answering your questions!

It’s the Queue. I fell asleep at an inopportune time, because the only thing more inconvenient than my usual insomnia is when it fails and I sleep exactly when I intended to be doing something else.

Let us do things and stuff. Also, everyone hug Lefty and keep Wade in your thoughts. He’s a good boy. Wade, I mean. I’m not presumptuous enough to assume Lefty is a good boy.

Hello, Queue! It’s been a really long week, but we’ve all struggled our way into another Wednesday (and another Queue). And I am arriving precisely on time, as I always do. But have you seen the size of these drinks?

Let’s get to some questions.

The expansion name Midnight is excellent because it’s rich with meaning — it implies and conjures the image of many different things, from colors to the doomsday clock. However, from an editorial point of view, I’m a little flummoxed because it feels like there should be so many more puns available to me with this name. And yet, it’s mostly just sloppy entendres so far.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions, and we’ll mid-write them for you. Is that anything?

Pizza is so great, I love pizza.

Is it the perfect food? Possibly. As long as you’re not gluten or lactose-intolerant, that is. I would put it up against any other food in a March Madness-style bracket any day and expect a top-four finish at least. The other things at the top are likely burritos, bread, and French fries. I’m willing to hear arguments about what you think is more deserving of a top slot, but they’d have to be Atticus Finch levels of convincing for me to change anything there in the final brackets.

While I eat another slice, it’s time for — The Queue!

When Phase Diving was first announced for patch 11.2 I figured it was going to be a sort of “Maw lite” with harder challenges and trickier navigation (no flying? in 2025?!?) but it turns out that Phase Diving not only isn’t that hard to deal with, it actually makes getting around K’aresh faster and easier. Don’t want to be phased anymore? Just click off the buff that puts in you the phase — even if you’re being dogpiled by elite mobs. Want to quickly get from Tavazesh to the Oasis? Dive into the phase and teleport over. Have a challenging treasure to get? Fly to it in normal space and quaff an Untethered Xy’bucha and you may even get an achievement for your “hard” work recovering it.

It’s like the dev team got through 90% of phase diving development and remembered that the vast majority of the playerbase hated the Maw and scrambled to remove the worst roadblocks. I’m not complaining, mind you, as the Forge knows I have precious little time to play as it is. There’s just a dissonance between the challenge that phase diving wants to be and the fact that it actually provides some quality of life benefits.

I do look good in translucent sparkly pink, at least. Speaking of phase diving …