It's time to take to the stars in search of interplanetary adventure as Tavern Watch plays Starfinder's newly-released second edition.

Hot on the heels of the Indie Game Awards nominations are the nominations for the 2025 Game Awards.

We have a pretty good idea of where an important chunk of future WoW lore is heading, because the seeds started being planted a few years ago, and they’re still being planted now with Turalyon, Xe’ra, the Mag’har allied race, the Arathi empire, etc. The Light is being set up as an antagonistic force — one that we may or may not face as a direct threat in a future expansion, but I’d say we almost certainly will.

In one of those seeds, we’ve got an account from the Mag’har orcs that the forces of the Light have grown despotic in Alternate Draenor, and this group called the Lightbound, led by High Exarch Yrel, has had them flee that dying world, since they were being forced into a non-choice of submission or death. This made a lot of people suspect that Yrel — a pretty well-liked character overall — is being setup to return to the story in the future no longer as a hero, but as a villain.

I say: Blizzard, leave Yrel alone.

You’ve done the “good guy gone bad” story beat so many times by now. Arthas. Garrosh. Kael’thas. Sylvanas. Heck, even Neltharion into Deathwing, or Illidan flip-flopping between “good” or “bad” depending on your perspective. We get it, you enjoy showing how even heroes can become corrupted or distorted by ideals, by fanaticism, by losing sight of what truly matters, etc.

You’ve told that story. Many times. We get it. We got the message.

You don’t need to tell it yet again with Yrel.

Let Yrel be a force of reason within the Light, the Paladins, lest we start seeing them all as fanatical zealots not worth trusting. Let her be someone who sees how fanatical some of her peers are becoming, and opposes them from within. Let the stories of the Lightbound be over-exaggerated or misunderstood by the Mag’har — just their unreliable account.

Or, just leave her alone. Let her chill on some beach sipping mojitos with Velen or whatever.

#SaveYrel

We're one week farther into 2025 which means we're one week closer to Player Housing, which hits early access on December 2.

When Player Housing Early Access goes live on December 2, one of the many things we'll have the ability to do is harvest the lumber required to craft decor items.

Cricket is a sport I know nothing about. I assume it features a ball, and some sort of bat (the wooden stick kind, not the animal, although the latter would surely make for an even more interesting game). I can only imagine it has mind-warping rules, space-bending plays, and the audience watches it with the same vim they would watch fields of wheat that somehow turn into black-and-white birds and fly away.

This is The Queue, where we sometimes provide answers to things we know, and other times to things we’re clueless about (such as cricket). Read on, and don’t stop believing.

We start off the show this week talking about WoW Classic, namely that Burning Crusade Anniversary realms were announced and are coming in January, perhaps concurrentish with the release of Midnight.

With Player Housing just around the corner — early access launches with patch 11.2.7 on December 2 — players are stocking up on materials across several expansions to prepare to decorate their perfect home.

As we enter this stretch of the year, a season when sanity and a quick little escape are hard to come by, I'm going to recommend you pre-emptively pick up Cloud Gardens.

Because it took the anti-capitalist message of the first game and not only magnified it, but also threw in anti-colonialism, totalitarian regimes, and how the good intentions of someone do not serve to protect people from people who will use their creations with bad intentions. And I’m about half way through the game.

I honestly don’t know where this game will end up in the whole ‘game of the year’ list I’m composing in my head f0r no good reason, but it’s already ahead of Expedition 33.