The Queue

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments!

I finally got around to hitting level 100 with my Shaman alt. This time around, I did things a little differently. I finished every quest, found every treasure and did every extra mission in Shadowmoon Valley, and when I was done with that, I started flying around and finding treasures everywhere else. Between the treasure-finding XP (with rested bonus), XP missions from my garrison mission table, and collecting both herbs and ore from my mine and herb garden, it was a relatively painless process, and I have…every other zone on Draenor to complete for extra gold at my leisure. I can’t say it was easier, but the process definitely lent itself far more to watching Netflix on the second monitor while flying around.

I’m starting to think that Warlords of Draenor scratched my Draenei itch so completely that I may need to play Tauren as my main in Warlords. I tanked on a Prot Warrior for our Alpha stream this week and I had a good time with it, even if it feels like Prot desperately needs an on-demand self heal (at present it lacks one) and a bit more bite in terms of offense. The Artifact quest for Prot got a little harder with the most recent set of changes — I basically had to spec Second Wind and spend a lot of time stunning everything with Shockwave and running away until Second Wind healed me up.

But this isn’t a Warrior post, so let’s talk about your questions. Spoiler warning is in full effect. Also, please don’t talk about the new Star Wars movie. Some folks are really excited to see it, let’s not wreck that for them.

Tauren are awesome.

Another bright and beautiful day has dawned over the Queue, which means that, yes, it is time for a new round of Q&A. (And also for some slight, very slight obsessing over the new Sugar Plum Sylvanas skin.)

So let’s dive right in, shall we?

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments!

So far Highmountain is my favorite zone in the Alpha. I’m having fun there, and the scenery is gorgeous. With the draw distance turned up, you can really see it, too.

This is The Queue. We answer your question. We may have spoilers for Legion here, depending on what questions we’re asked.

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments!

It’s Sunday! It’s the Queue! It’s me again! You guys know the story.

I’m listening to Vicarious off of Tool’s 10,000 Days album.

It’s Sunday but I’ll append a ‘not work safe’ warning on that video because, well, some folks work on Sunday. Also, as always, be warned that there might be Legion spoilers this time out. But hopefully no Star Wars spoilers.

Okay, so it’s clearly a little too interested in that corpse there. But it’s still adorable!

It’s the Queue. We talk about Blizzard games. There may be spoilers for Legion. I’m listening to Synchronicity II from the album Synchronicity by the Police, or as I like to call them, Stewart Copeland‘s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. (The man was an amazing drummer.)

And now, your questions and my answers.

Anyone around here like Therapy? — the band, not the psychological treatment. I mean, good on you if you like that one, but I was talking about the band. They’re one of my favorites, and I recommend you check them out.

Nothing to do with The Queue, just a band I like.

Anyway, your questions, I try and answer. Spoiler alert for Legion.

When I first started playing games, the major in-game maps as we know them now just didn’t exist. If there were maps at all, they were likely to be physical things that came in a game box, vaguely describing the game world in paper or (for fancier games) cloth. So how did I find my way around? I made my own maps with graph paper and as-neat-as-I-could-manage handwriting. How old-school is that?

I still have, tucked away in my desk, whole notebooks of game maps, particularly MUDs for which the graph paper method worked particularly well. Perhaps I’m spoiled these days, though, because not only do I expect maps in the games themselves, I expect good maps… and  WoW‘s just don’t meet my expectations. But whether you care about maps or not, read on for answers to your questions.