The Queue

Yesterday seems to have been a rather quiet day (or perhaps a rather busy day) for the Queue, with a somewhat limited number of questions for perusal, but I’m working with it.

Let’s get questioning (or commenting), Queue.

I’ve basically been singing I love Diablo 4 to the tune of Joan Jett and the Blackheart’s I love Rock and Roll. I do this while playing, you guessed it, Diablo 4. I have played a lot of ARPG’s over the years — Wolcen, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, Darksiders Genesis — and while I think Darksiders may be one of the best ARPG’s ever created, I still seem to be absolutely in love with Diablo 4.

Anyway, yeah, been playing a lot of D4 this week.

I like the Starseeker sisters, Aranna the Demon Hunter and Elise the Druid, a lot. We’ve already gotten several cameos by the elder sister in WoW — she’s even in the Delves area in Dornogal right now, as part of the Explorer’s League — but we’ve yet to see Aranna, the younger sister (who really resents Elise’s fame and success) make her WoW debut.

Given how many Hearthstone references WoW is getting lately — Babbling Book! Corridor Creeper! and more — I really hope Aranna shows up eventually to stir up some drama with the Explorer’s League, and Elise in particular.

Now, with or without extra Starseeker presence in our lives, let’s Queue, ladies and gentlemen!

This Queue was going to be about something else, but this morning as I walked out my front door, I was quite forcibly reminded that there is, in fact, a season in between Humid Swamp and Spooky Pumpkins Season. It is, in fact, currently Joro Spider season — though I guess that could be filed under Spooky Season.. I’ve been knocking down the little webs all summer, but now the survivors are back with a vengeance. And I thought I hated the winter doldrums.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we’ll give you some answers just as soon as we get off the phone with the UGA entomology department extension.

I guess the Emmys were last night, and Bears won a lot of awards?

This is good and proper.

While I argue whether or not my bear is more comedic or more dramatic, it’s time for — The Queue!

Nothing has ever gone wrong by making friends with a strange fish. Nothing at all.

I was going to open this Queue out talking about how Tyrannosaurus rex may have been even bigger than current fossils would indicate, but then I was playing my Lightforged Draenei Warrior and I noticed that every time Thrall and my Draenei were in the same cutscene he looked to be checking Thrall’s butt out. It’s strange to wonder if my character is staring too hard at someone’s butt.

I am admittedly a sucker for many things, and the new Grizzly Hills Packmaster Mount includes several enticing aspects that’ll likely make me crack open my wallet to purchase. For one thing I love bears (don’t get me wrong — yaks are very cool — but I’m a bigger fan of bears of the non-Chicago variety). For another, the Grummles on the Grand Expedition Yak have a tendency to annoy me because they only have about a half dozen lines they repeat frequently; this is the same reason I don’t use Ban Lu on my monk. Finally, who doesn’t love a bear mount?

Trivia time: Transmogrification was not one of the original services provided by the Grand Expedition Yak. What did it replace? Answer in the outro!

All that said if the Packmaster only lets you repair and doesn’t give you the ability to sell items then forget it, I need to clean my bags way more often than I need to repair or fix my transmog.

While I wait for other players to determine this info for me, let’s answer some questions!

I have a headcanon that intrepid explorer Brann Bronzebeard is also by necessity a polyglot. He is the first one to make contact with all these new races and factions we meet, so he quite painstakingly tries to preserve things like their place names and such so that the Champion can have a touchstone. Unfortunately, Brann isn’t so great with punctuation or sometimes even the precise spellings, so sometimes the maps and names will change over time. It’s kind of his YOLO nature that it’s important to just get it down first, and edit later if it’s important.

Anyway, just in case you’re having a time removing the apostrophe from Nerub-ar Palace (yes, it is now officially Nerub-ar Palace), you too can feel free to blame Brann.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we’ll scapegoat somebody into being an answer.

I’ve finally beaten the Echo of Lilith by myself! No super-powered characters taking pity on me and carrying me for seasonal completion — this victory was all mine!

I think that the Echo of Lilith is the hardest single fight in any Diablo game that isn’t just running a Greater Rift or Pit level 1000. Those are just artificial difficulties where you simply cannot output the damage necessary to kill things before you get flattened. Echo of Lilith on the other hand is all about dodging all of her nonsense, while also doing a bunch of damage to her quickly.

It does highlight the issues of the Diablo 4 difficulty where basically all of my deaths felt like she just one-shot me, and that’s not a fun way to lose. I want a knockdown drag-out fight where we’re both running on fumes at the end and I only narrowly squeak out a victory. I guess this will have to do until then though. With her defeat, I’m pretty much finished with Diablo 4‘s current season. Which is a nice feeling! I can pop on and kill some demons if the mood strikes, and not worry about it otherwise.

While I clean all of the demon blood off of my armor, it’s time for — The Queue!