The Queue: Anthropomorphic Dinosaurs

Look, someone asked. It’s totally in bounds.

Not only would I play one, I wrote one back in the early 2000’s called Lords of the Scale, based on a campaign I’d run a while before. At the time D&D 3rd Edition had just come out, and Sean K. Reynolds had just posted stats for the various dinosaur races for Faerun in Dragon magazine – I combined them with Lizardfolk, Troglodytes, Kobolds and other reptilian races in D&D and tweaked their names and origins to make them various semi-humanoid version of famous dinosaurs/archosaurs. (Lizardfolk, if I remember correctly, were essentially sapient crocodilians, while Kobolds were Troodon.)

The game was set on the shores of the shallow seas that covered most of central and western North America at the time. Re-occurring enemies including the Illithids as descendents of the ancient Ammonites and undead Trilobites. Maybe someday I’ll dig out my Lords of the Scale notes, update it (a lot of them would have feathers based on current understanding) and make it available as a PDF or something.

Basically, if you do the quests in the Blasted Lands, the character you’re playing gets told on arrival in the zone that the Iron Horde is invading, that Zaela’s with them, and so on. Between Thrall, Maraad and Khadgar we get what we know about the situation, and it seems fairly clear that Maraad and Thrall get what they know from Khadgar. How does Khadgar know? Well, that’s a good question…

Also, to answer your leveling question, right now it’s probably Fury.

A shield, no. A sword, yes. I took several years of sword training. Mostly just kendo. Technically I’ve used a shinai many times, a bokken less often, and an actual live blade less than four or five times (and that more than twenty years ago). I also took a few fencing classes, but I was never very serious about it.

I also know how to use a Danish or Huscarl Axe. Funny story, that one.

Let me tell you, World of Warcraft does not in any way put across how tired you can get swinging a big weapon around. There’s a reason that military classes throughout history tended to start training very young and keep it up all their lives. Check out William Marshal for what I mean – he was 72 when he died, and he was still fighting up until a year or so before that.

Based on my experience with followers like Tormmok and the Gorian Empire in Draenor, I’d like ogres as another dual-faction race – Horde ogres come from the ones already affiliated with the Horde on our Azeroth, Alliance races are defectors from the Gorian Empire who have a hard time distinguishing between Hordes, and blame the Iron Horde for the fall of their Empire and death of their Imperator. (That’s just one idea, both faction ogres could be disaffected Gorians I suppose). Ogres could get a racial that allows them to make their chest armor slot invisible (same as helmets and capes for others) and would have warriors, shamans, mages, warlocks, priests and rogues. There’s an ogre rogue follower, so yeah, rogues. Sneaky ogres.

I would also like saurok as a playable race. Yes, they’re basically dinosaur people. Why wouldn’t I want that? (See the first question and answer of this Queue for details.)

Honestly, I’m not arrogant enough to assume I know what Blizzard has learned about anything. I think it’s pretty apparent that this expansion could have used a few more dailies (not the daily explosion of Mists, but not the paucity we got this time, either) and that while it’s cool that they’re using scenario tech to give us cool quest experiences like when we help Yrel become an Exarch, it still would have been nice to have something like scenarios for DPS players to queue up for and do. The Garrison has a lot of use this expansion, and that’s great – you can do Invasions, you can do the Apexis daily, you can run the Garrison Campaign – but I think having put in something like the Scenario Room as an option for players who liked having on demand content (even if it was repetitive) could have been a nice move.

But the only real test of what Blizzard’s learned from each expansion is the next one.

They’re not tameable. Unless they are. Look, you’re the hunter, you tell me.

Yeah, I’d play even more Diablo III than I do now, I suppose, and I’d wonder what happened at Blizzard to make them make such a stupid decision. Unless they removed warriors to replace them with two classes, one a sword and board plate wearing juggernaut that was protection/gladiator/some third spec that used a 2h and shield and another that was basically a maniac smashing everything with big weapons.

Yes, I’m basically saying replace warriors with Crusaders and Barbarians from D3.

It’s certainly possible – I mean, we can get them from the kills in raids and from missions now, perhaps they’ll add more missions or do something else, like add them to all raids the way they did in Mists.

And that’s the Queue for today. Sorry I went nuts about dinosaurs up there, but man, I really love dinosaurs.