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The QueueSep 11, 2017 12:00 pm CT

The Queue: I am not Adam

Surprise! It’s me! I’m filling in for Jovan, who was supposed to fill in for Adam. There are a lot more comments to sift through when you have a full weekend’s worth of ’em, lemme tell you — although fairly close to the same amount of questions, go figure!

Anyhow, I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! I saw It last night and was very happy with the film. I mean, as happy as one can be when confronted with a killer clown monster thing but still. Worth checking out if you can stand horror films. What did you all do this weekend?

The above image comes courtesy of Gorquen: “Today’s Fanart Friday contribution is inspired by those moments when you find yourself (frequently during holiday events) on public transportation next to a member (or members) of the other faction.
Should I emote at them? If I target them, does that count as a hostile action? Should we just continue to awkwardly ignore one another? Why won’t this tram go faster?”

Though I like Galdwynn’s take on it: “RC and Mitch share a subway car.”


DRINDAAR_LIGHTKEEPER WANTS US ALL TO DO THE RIGHT THING:

When it comes to giving our player characters more agency in the story I am reminded of that one Forsaken quest-line where you can either bash in buried humans’ heads with a shovel or use the shovel to dig them out of the ground and free them. (and to a lesser extent the quest where you can torture a quillboar prisoner or offer him food). I wish there was more of this. Like a lot more. Let us decide how we go about completing certain quests. Are we ruthless and goal-oriented? Are we kind and heroic? Let us shape our characters a bit more and let npc’s and stories reflect that, even if just a little bit.

I’ve always been a fan of this approach to questing. The problem WoW faces is that the choice you make ultimately has to be very limited in how it affects anything going forward. Whether you do the right thing or “do the right thing” when it comes to those buried people and their very smashable heads doesn’t ultimately matter. You turn in the quest at the end and move on.

There are different situations like choosing between Aldor and Scryer back in BC that also give you some agency but, again, it ultimately doesn’t make a huge difference. The only real difference we have currently is Horde or Alliance questing, which is still pretty similar in new expansion content.

That said, I’m all for a paradigm shift. Give Horde and Alliance completely different quest zones. Give us more content that branches in exclusive ways depending on your choices — sure, it might mean fewer quests for an individual character, but it also means more replayability and the chance to tell meaningful, unique stories. Obviously these couldn’t really be part of the larger story, since we need a single narrative, but smaller stories are what make this a world anyhow.

A final idea I think could be interesting is turning morality into something that is reflected in your character, a la the scars in Mass Effect 2 shining bright and red for Renegades. It could be tied to daily/world quests so you could always shift the pendulum in the other direction if you wanted, and it could affect the way NPCs see your character. I dunno, I really like the idea of branching content, and I think WoW could get some very good mileage out of it.


DILLENE HAS A GREAT IDEA FOR SOME HILARIOUS MISADVENTURES:

Rossi should absolutely make Mitch his transcriptionist.

You’ve been hired to transcribe Rossi’s words into text. You can use this opportunity to be a great, caring friend, or you can take “creative liberty” and see what sorts of hijinx it leads to. Do the right thing.


LOTHARFOX HAS A GREAT QUESTION WITH UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES:

Imagination time: Let’s say that through the use of magic, clothing could be anything, throwing out the laws of physics. So someone could wear liquid silver, that moved and flowed with them, like fabric, but was actually the metal, and never dripped away. Or someone wore light and shadows, showing off parts of their body with a glow, other parts always out of sight, and wasn’t reliant on an actual light source. Or, armor that was made of wind and fire, pushing attacks away, and hurting attackers who got too close, but did not hurt the wearer.

What kinds of clothing/armor can you come up with?

{PB} Man, I am soooo not creative enough to make full use of this fantasy clothing technology, but it’s the sort of thing with a hell of a lot of potential. I… well, I’m trying to come up with ideas, and the first (and currently only) thing in my head is, “It should have coffee somehow involved so you can drink coffee whenever you want.”

I think maybe I’d like to have some sort of background/aura effect that looked like a collapsing star or cosmos sort of thing. As for clothing itself… sure, let’s make it out of shadows, with purple flames to accent joints and junk.

Okay, I definitely needed more time to think this one over. There’s just a lot you could do with it… I’d love to hear y’all’s ideas.


MARK AND I HAD THE EXACT SAME QUESTION:

How did everyone feel about Aggramar? He is supposed to be the size, nay bigger than, a planet and he was barely bigger than the temple. Now, some of you may say, well he obviously has the power to shrink down in size, he’s a titan! But I remind you of why the Titans created Keepers in the first place, they knew they couldn’t fight the Old Gods or else they would destroy the planet due to their size, so they must not have had the ability to shrink. So why is he so small? Really hope we don’t meet Sargareas and he’s this tiny being.

This is the first thing that jumped to my mind when I saw him back from the PTR datamining, and I asked Anne as soon as she’d seen it for herself. While I don’t think the answer is 100% confirmed, the most likely explanation is that this is just an avatar for Aggramar, like the Avatar of Sargeras in Tomb. Because, really, if we were ever to fight a Titan at their usual size, we’d have like… a whole raid that was just the Titan itself. Like Spine of Deathwing amped up to 11 and also hopefully less frustrating.

Captain Cakewalk the Wub-Druid shared this and I MUST HAVE IT NOW!!!
(Edit: You guys rock! Twitter and Twitch links.)

FUZZYBUNNY, I HAVE BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS:

Anne is implying cryptically on Twitter that she thinks she knows what the next expansion is about.

Sorry, this was actually her just getting excited about the possibilities that began to float in her head while writing today’s KYL (out early!) — and trust me, there are a lot of potential implications. But the next expansion is still a mystery.


KALCHEUS HIGHMOUNTAIN GETS META:

Q4TQ: Are you going for the Argus Meta that rewards the title “the Lightbringer”?

I’m sure I’ll chase it down eventually for the sake of getting the achievement… but I don’t really care about the title. It’s a fine title, but it doesn’t, y’know, fit the whole “Shadow Priest using Void magic on a regular basis” thing.


STYLISTSHUANNA HATES YOUR IDEAS AND THINKS YOU SHOULD FIGHT OVER IT IN THE COMMENTS (PROBABLY):

QftQ: We’ve been talking for years about playable naga or ethereals or ogres or vrykuls, so!

What current NPC race in World of Warcraft would you NOT like to see as a playable race?*

– – –
*: If anyone says pandaren, I’ll have Nomi the Dreadlord roast your soul over fel fire – and you know what that means!

There are probably a lot that I wouldn’t want to see, but I’ll limit it to things that potentially could be playable (i.e., dragons are out because armor). With that in mind, I wouldn’t really care to see Troggs and Gnolls playable. I feel like they’d end up being the target of a lot of “haha, short and dumb” jokes, and even if not, they’re not exactly anything I’d be interested in getting a serious backstory for.

Are there any other realistic races that wouldn’t work? Those are the first two to jump to mind, and looking at a list of Humanoid races, I think I can add Harpies to the list. If you’re gonna give us a winged race to play, make it Arakkoa.


CORHIANNE MAKES ME WISH I COULD DESIGN WOW TOYS:

Q4tQ: What do you think of the idea of a purchaseable consumable (or a toy) with a relatively long cooldown and/or reasonably high cost that allows you to capture two pets in one pet battle?

I would kill for something like this, but I think it would have to have some sort of caveat to it in order to not trivialize encounters. After all, the best trap right now has something like a 35% chance to catch the pet, increasing by 30% or so each time. If the Toy or whatever item it might be followed these rules, you could catch two pets with ease and then take out the third without much challenge. And too long of a cooldown would probably not end up being all that fun — Do I use it on this battle? Or do I save it in case there’s something better? Crap, I messed up! Now I have to wait. Boo.

So yeah, I like the idea, but I think it would have to cost Pet Charms or something and have a medium-length cooldown while also having its own capture rate before Blizzard would consider this sort of thing.


CYPHER HAS A GOOD QUESTION ABOUT EVERYONE’S FAVORITE STAR-CHILD:

QftQ: So, as I was questing on Argus with Illidan (ugh), I noticed that he’s actually wielding the Twin Blades of Azzinoth again. So…how’d he get them back? It doesn’t seem like something we’d just hand over, “child of prophecy” or not.

Oddly enough, there are a few instances of Illidan using the Twinblades of the Deceiver with the Challenge appearance, so the canon is a little murky. And, really, even if he were using the Twinblades… that still pretty much causes the same issue of ownership.

My guess is, canonically, players never looted them at the end of the Black Temple. In the flashback cinematic, we see that Maiev froze Illidan after we defeated him. And given all other Demon Hunters that were frozen had their weapons waiting by their frozen green prison things, I’m going to assume Illidan’s were kept… somewhere. Perhaps it’s best to not think too hard on this one.

Aaaaand, that’s Monday. I won’t be here tomorrow, but I might be here Wednesday. Maybe. Who knows! What a wild week.

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