The Queue: Thrall dislikes Noblegarden

Welcome to The Queue, the Q&A column for all things Blizzard related. If you have a question for the Queue, leave a comment and you may see it answered tomorrow!

A true Warchief would never partner with bunnies. Speaking of which, don’t forget that Noblegarden ends tomorrow — if you haven’t picked up the new Mystical Spring Bouquet, you might want to get that done!

It’s not so much a matter of leaving out as it is … I want to say leaving behind? But it’s not quite that, either. Usually what happens with an expansion is that the features that are popular, or the technology that is really useful, is re-purposed in some way and designed to serve a different purpose. We got a flying dungeon in Wrath, we got an underwater zone that used the same kind of three-dimensional design in Cataclysm. We got the farm in Mists, we got garrisons in Warlords. Likely we’ll see something in the next expansion that utilizes this expansion’s most useful technology without being a duplicate of what we’ve already seen. What that is, I have absolutely no idea!

As for Apexis dailies, I suspect we’ll see yet another new currency of some sort introduced next expansion, and methods of obtaining that currency. Will there be dailies? Probably, along with a host of other methods to obtain them, just like we’ve got this time around.

Here’s the thing — for me, it’s not really so much about turning him into a “good guy.” We’ve got plenty of those in the Horde already it seems. Right now, as it stands, Vol’jin is sitting pretty as the Horde’s Warchief, but he’s in stasis of sorts while we deal with other problems. What we have to ask ourselves is what exactly has he been doing while we’ve been gone? Everyone seems to like Vol’jin, with the possible exception of Sylvanas, but Sylvanas has always been a notoriously shady character.

But Vol’jin has no purpose. In fact, he’s sitting in pretty much the same spot that Thrall was when the Horde was established — a hero to everyone, the mighty Warchief that freed them all from what seemed to be servitude. The Horde may not have been slaves by any stretch of the imagination, and they certainly weren’t imprisoned in internment camps, but Vol’jin and his rebels rallied the Horde in much the same way as Thrall, and brought down a tyrant in much the same way as Thrall.

Problem: Immediately after that, Thrall became a stagnant character without any real purpose. No real foil or counter for his line of thinking. Garrosh filled that role and filled it exceptionally well, but he’s gone now — and I am slightly concerned that without any kind of dissenting voice to serve as counterpoint to Vol’jin, he’s going to end up stagnating in much the same way. Do I want Grommash to become a mirror image of his son? No. But the Horde needs some kind of direction, and Grommash might actually serve well in that spot as far as providing some guidance for where the Horde should go. If he ends up butting heads with Vol’jin every now and again in the process, so be it — it would still be some kind of action for Vol’jin to be taking, rather than assuming a purely reactive, somewhat listless role.

And it would be kind of interesting to see Grommash grow in a way that he was never allowed in the original timeline, to show an actual interest in learning about what happened in this alternate reality, to want to understand the ways in which the Horde altered and changed in a manner that his son never quite seemed to latch onto. I think seeing Grom visit his own grave would hit particularly hard.

Thrall and Aggra are a distinct possibility. I mean if we end up cleaning the world of the Burning Legion, it’s pretty much orc paradise, and what better place for them to raise their children than with their grandparents? I don’t know if Thrall’s quite ready to take that much of a step back from the Horde, however. But there are several older orcs from Azeroth that I could see taking an interest in returning to their home world to live out their retirement years — Saurfang, for one.

I could also see Lieutenant Thorn staying behind, for her own personal reasons. Maybe with a small delegation of Alliance ambassadors to the draenei.

Nope! It’s gone now, you can take as much time saving the world from unspeakable destruction as you’d like.

That’s an excellent question. DC Unlimited was producing them for the longest time, but I think the only real figure-variety toys that have been introduced lately are the Cute-But-Deadly figures. Those are charming enough I suppose, but I don’t find them anywhere near as appealing as the old action figure lines. I imagine as with all things merchandise-related it has something to do with how well the figures were selling, and whether or not it was financially feasible to continue the line, not to mention whether or not the companies that were licensed to create the figures still wanted to create them. Any number of factors, really — but I do wish they’d come back and come out with a new line!

Funny you should say “dream” — I’d like to see an Emerald Dream expansion. I know they’ve said it’s not possible, but I still think it would be a legitimately amazing expansion. The fun part about doing anything in the Emerald Dream is that you can theoretically do anything — which means things like raids and boss encounters could be really, really insane.

One idea kicking around in my head was the thought of actually weaving together old encounters to create an entirely new one. Visions of the past, kind of like the thing I wanted to see in Trial of the Champion with Paletress but didn’t actually get. So consider this: you’re in a room with a corrupt, Nightmare-infested dragon that breathes toxic gas at your raid, and suddenly the room vanishes, replaced by any one of the however many raid encounters we’ve seen over the past ten years. But there’s a trick to it — not everyone in the raid is seeing the same encounter. Half the raid is staring down C’thun, the other half is looking at Kil’jaeden. Both encounters must be completed with the same strategies as originally expected, but there are elements thrown in where the actions of the C’thun side of the raid affect what’s going on in with Kil’jaeden, and the actions taking place in Kil’jaeden are affecting what’s going on in C’thun.

Sort of like what you deal with in Sunwell Plateau with Kalecgos, but on a much larger scale. And while all of this is going on, the raid can actually see each other.

Oh, and on Mythic? Yeah, on Mythic the raid is split into thirds.

Basically I really like disorienting raid encounters that seem to distort reality. I’m weird like that.

I didn’t know it was TableTop day! I think I honestly have to go with Uno, not because the game is particularly innovative, but because I have so many memories of playing that game with my family on holidays. If there was one thing we could count on every Thanksgiving, it was that the Uno decks would make an appearance, games would be played for hours, and by the end of it my uncle would be thoroughly fed up with every single last one of us for ganging up on him with as many Draw Four cards as possible.

A close second would be GURPS, only because we came up with some of the craziest campaigns when I was a kid.

That’s it for Sunday’s edition of The Queue — be sure to leave your questions in the comments for tomorrow!