The Queue

In between leveling various characters in Shadowlands, I’m playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, my second favorite AC game (and a close close second at that) wherein I do things like conquer parts of England and also yell at squirrels. Well, I get into flyting contests with squirrels, which is a kind of Viking argument where we take turns insulting each other in rhyme. This is me as Odin up against Ratatosk the Squirrel god.

Yes, this really happens.

I want more rap battles with squirrels in WoW, I think. Considering that one of my favorite NPC’s this expansion is a squirrel, or at least a ghost that now looks like one, I feel like this should be doable.

Shout out to the people hanging out on their Longbois near the mailbox in Oribos. While Kevin is adorable and Choofa is my new best friend, y’all living the dream of being an actual NPC in the middle of town are really making this expansion worth playing.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we take a short break from the endless cycle of AHing and fishing to answer.

I knew bears liked to climb things, but this is ridiculous! How did he even get up there? How will he get down?! How can this be!

While I figure that out, it’s time for — The Queue.

The Maw is a very dreary place, but I think I’m workin’ it over here.

I’ve said it before — if not here, somewhere — but no game does in-game events like Fortnite does. This week, we got the Devourer of Worlds event, which put players up against Galactus, who could probably fit the entire Battle Royale island in the palm of his hand. It put players in the driver’s seat of the Battle Bus (the thing you drop from at the start of the match) for the first time ever, and it felt like a mix of Star Fox and Star Wars (Fox Wars? Star Star? It’s hard to make this portmanteau work…).

In any case, it was fantastic and the post-event cinematic confirmed that the game is a simulation of some kind, which is always fun. I wish more gaming companies would do events like Fortnite does.

But enough about that. We’re here to Queue.

Why can’t we just admit it?

Why can’t we just admit it?

We won’t give pause until the blood is flowing.

I need to watch things die from a good safe distance.

Vicariously I live while the whole world dies.

You all feel the same so…

This is the Queue and I’m listening to my Shadowlands playlist. This song feels very Maldraxxus-y.

Hey guys, guess which Covenant I picked.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions, and we’re finally in our natural habitat so we don’t mind taking a while to sit down and answer.

Maldraxxus is a very gross zone full of gross things — and I love it very much. I love every gloopy puddle of ooze, every disgustingly pockmarked hill, the slimes, the skeletons, the things that are both slime *and* skeleton, the cute little blood-sucking beasty that hatched from this hairy egg I found, just everything about it. I especially love the ultra-gross skinning nodes, giant warts. Whoever thought those up is a genius and they probably aren’t being paid enough.

I didn’t think I’d like it that much just hearing about it and poking around on the beta, but it’s grown on me — maybe even literally in some cases. It wasn’t enough to tempt me away from my friends the Venthyr, but it was close! Much closer than I would’ve thought. There hasn’t been a zone this polarizing in a long time, or at least one that I can remember. Just reading a lot of the comments from Friday there are a lot of people who don’t share my love of the gross stuff.

While I go play with the oozes, it’s time for — the Queue.

Okay, so here’s the thing — I’m not saying it’s bad, or poorly designed, it’s clearly an excellent zone. But all the Wow, Maldraxxus is awesome hype had me really thinking I might love it, but then I got there, and it’s just slime and crap everywhere and corpses littering the ground and a lot of it grosses me out or turns my stomach. I’m also never a fan of ruthless Darwinism and while I appreciate the idea of Maldraxxus as the home of the Shadowlands’ defense force, it’s not really getting past all the stuff I’m not fond of.

Still, I’m level 57 now. Maybe I’ll start playing one of my alts on nights my wife is occupied. Don’t think I’ll ever join the Necrolords, though. Just on an aesthetic level, it’s not my bag.

So yeah, my wife and I finally got to run around in Bastion and even got some Maldraxxus in last night, and we’re both level 55 heading towards the final stretch. Leveling definitely feels less painful this time around, which I think is an excellent thing — I expect when I get to my alts, I might just level them through the questing again, it’s been fun.

Some actual lines from our time playing together include “She’s awfully proud of her job as Death’s mall cop” and “Who would ever want to come here? No one. No one wants to come here, but we’re stuck here so we might as well make the best of the blasted, undead choked hellscape.”