The Queue: I’ve seen some stuff

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!

This poor chicken in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. This poor, sad, bewildered little chicken got to play his guitar as the world burned behind him. He’s seen some things. And he’s never leaving that little table again. Ever.

Common quality armor. The non-green items that vendors in starting areas sell, the ones with no stats at all? Some of those items would make great filler pieces for piecemeal sets. Plus it would give people an actual reason to go purchase those items again, because with the quest revamp in Cataclysm, people get more than enough green gear leveling that they don’t even need to look at the armor these poor merchants sell. Or rather, don’t sell. Because nobody really needs or wants it right now.

There are two bosses in particular I’m going to make note of, here, because they both say stuff that may or may not answer your question. In Karazhan we’ve got Prince Malchezaar, the eredar follower of the Burning Legion. You fight him in Netherspace, which indicates he’s somewhere out in the Twisting Nether. During the encounter, he says “All realities, all dimensions are open to me,” which pretty clearly indicates that he spans the existence of all realities while he’s parked there in the Twisting Nether.

The other boss is Harbinger Skyriss in Arcatraz, a qiraji entity that is a faithful servant of the Old Gods. During his encounter, he says “I bear allegiance to powers untouched by time, unmoved by fate,” and “We span the universe, as countless as stars!” Upon his death, he says “I am merely one of … infinite multitudes.”

In both of these cases, it’s kind of hinted at but never confirmed that both Burning Legion and the Old Gods kind of transcend time and reality in ways that we simply cannot fathom. Ordinarily, I would say that it is one demon or one Old God that simply exists and straddles the lines between realities, able to move between them. But then we’ve got the peculiar puzzle of Archimode — he was dead in our timeline. He’s not dead in this one. So there has to be two Archimondes, right? Not necessarily — because we didn’t just jump across realities, we went back in time while we were doing so, to a point before Archimonde’s death. So it’s entirely possible that yes, this is “our” Archimonde, before he went to Azeroth and subsequently detonated.

Now as to your last question — this could in fact defeat the purpose of future storylines, except that this was a monumental task that took the powers of the Vision of Time to make happen — and the motives of Garrosh Hellscream to firmly set in motion. The Vision of Time is nowhere to be found, but Kairoz, the dragon that could use it, is dead. He’s ceased to be. We can port back and forth between our Azeroth, and that Draenor, but it was established that this wasn’t really an easy thing to do.

So honestly, once everything dies down and we get around to heading home, I don’t see us “going back,” story-wise. When we are done with Draenor, we are done with it, and we will leave it where it needs to be — in the past, in its alternate version of reality, and out of our meddling hands. And I doubt that anyone is going to be too keen on the idea of doing any more time/reality traveling anytime soon.

They aren’t completely wiped out — there are still some survivors. But it looks like at least some of them went with Wrathion at the end of Cataclysm and became Blacktalon Agents and Watchers. Zazzo Twinklefingers, a Ravenholdt-affliated gnome during the Fangs of the Father quest chain, can be seen sometimes in the Valley of the Four Winds, checking out the water from the Vale of Eternal Blossoms for Wrathion. So I wouldn’t call Ravenhold wiped out, no. There may very well be Ravenholdt agents out there, we just haven’t seen them because … well, you know. Rogues. Sneaky, right?

You know what? That’s what I’d rather see over a new class. New weapon types. Give us duel pistols, give us whips and flails, give us morning stars and heck, give us throwing daggers and axes back again. Of course, this could be because I play an assassination rogue and I am getting really, really, really bored of this whole ‘just daggers’ aesthetic thing.

Definitely World of Warcraft. They usually announce WoW expansions every other year, so I’m expecting we’ll see something at this year’s BlizzCon absolutely. I’m really hoping we’ll see something Diablo related, but I don’t know if we’ll see another expansion announcement or not. I’m pretty sure we’ll see plenty more on Overwatch, some new heroes, maybe even a beta date if we don’t have one by that point in time.

I don’t think there is a measurement that can correctly convey exactly how excited I am to see this film released and on the big screen. The preview we got to see at BlizzCon was absolutely breathtaking. I don’t quite have the words to describe what it was like to see Stormwind suddenly … real, in a way I’ve never quite been able to picture in my head. Everything looked real. I mean, you think an orc looks surprisingly lifelike in a cinematic, but when you compare it to the film footage, it’s just … there is a visual difference between the two in which the brain makes the leap right on across the uncanny valley and straight into “I can plausibly accept that a creature like this could actually exist in real life.”

It is downright bizarre.

As for the lore, well yes I’m excited for that, too. But I don’t expect an exact representation of what we’ve experienced so far with Warcraft‘s history. Because what makes for a cool video game doesn’t always make for a cool two, two and a half hour movie. What seems like a sweeping epic over the course of several months worth of play just slows to a crawl when put on the screen. So yeah, there are likely going to be tweaks, additions, some shuffling around just to make the film pleasing on an all-around level, and I’m okay with that. And I can’t wait to see it — the fact that they had enough faith in the movie to push it back to a summer release says a lot about the studio’s faith in how well this film was made, and how well it’s going to do.

That’s it for today’s Queue — be sure to leave plenty of questions in the comments for tomorrow’s edition!