The Queue: Clouds are the best

Welcome back 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!

You know, I didn’t think so at the beginning of beta, but Frostfire Ridge is actually really pretty. I don’t find it as visually appealing as say, Shadowmoon, but I don’t mind the snow as much, these days.

The val’kyr actually existed before the Lich King showed up — there are tales of the val’kyr that pre-date the Lich King’s arrival by a significant number of years. In these legends, the val’kyr were originally warrior maidens who served the warriors of the north in life, and chose to do so even after their death. How they accomplished this is never really said.

The implication is made that the nine val’kyr that were with Arthas, the ones who saved Sylvanas in the short story Edge of Night didn’t choose to serve the Lich King at all. They may in fact be those original val’kyr, as it’s stated that each was the greatest of her generation, implying the eldest of the nine was really, really old. And it’s entirely possible that Arthas discovered them, bound them to serve him, and then figured out a way to create more.

I’m not sure if we’ll see it or not. Warlords of Draenor consolidated Horde and Alliance auction houses primarily because there were servers that had unbalanced faction populations, so making items available to both factions helped balance that out. The next logical step in that chain would be to merge all the auction houses of a particular battlegroup, to help servers that just have low populations in general. However, I’m not really a programmer, nor do I have any experience running a server, but I imagine the sheer amount of work to make that actually function is kind of staggering. Not to mention I have no idea what doing that would do to server load. You can’t currently mail items cross-server, either, which is what a cross-realm auction house would essentially have to be able to do in order to function correctly.

Oh heck no. I don’t think we’re going to see any kind of language development at all out of Blizzard, unless they hire a few linguists dedicated to working on nothing but that. And while it’s an interesting project in theory, I don’t really see where it would benefit gameplay or story to the point that it’d be deemed necessary.

Good news — you’ll be able to transmog that weapon in patch 6.2!

As far as your question goes, oh man. My bank is full of stuff my character can never wear or use, but hangs on to for sentimental purposes. Quest rewards from NPCs who I really, really liked, or from quest chains that were really, really amazing, that kind of thing. Some things I keep because I think I’ll use them later, but I never do — they just sit in the bank. I am my inventory’s own worst enemy, I swear.

It’s difficult to answer that question, because of course I don’t have a crystal ball. However, when you’re dealing with an ongoing, perpetual story like World of Warcraft, you kind of have to keep dropping little threads of story here and there as you go. These little hanging plot threads aren’t just delightfully frustrating bits of mystery, they’re conveniently placed plot hooks that can be used or discarded as Blizzard sees fit. If there comes a point in story development where its determined that more needs to be done with Gilneas, they have a ton of leftover information from that zone to work with — they could safely bring in Crowley, for example, because nobody knows where he wandered off to after the events at the end of Silverpine, or what he chose to do next.

In the case of things like the faerie dragons in Tirisfal Glades, that’s one of those curious random events that may or may not actually have a purpose. But even in having no purpose at all, it manages to fill one by being so bizarre and out of the ordinary that people are still talking about it and trying to puzzle out the real meaning. It might have one in store, it might not — but it’s there for usage if needed. If it’s never needed, it’s still a cool random event that people will continue to try and figure out for years to come.

Designers and developers over at Blizzard tend to hop around a lot between titles. Samwise has had his fingers in just about every franchise they’ve got, to my knowledge — he’s the Senior Art Director at Blizzard. That’s Blizzard, not just World of Warcraft. A lot of the senior developers aren’t dedicated to one particular title, they kind of oversee them all and make sure each game looks, feels and plays like a Blizzard title.

That’s it for today’s Queue — if you have any questions you’d like to see answered, be sure to leave them in the comments below!