The Queue: Disturbing Gnomeface
@MatthewWRossi
Okay, we’re doing the Queue. This week has just been execrable for me, and I’m just looking to get through it and out the other side. So let’s get to the Q&A of the Queue.
Before we do, though, seriously why do gnomes make that face? That is a disturbing face.
After three days, I just wanted to post to give a big thumbs up to Blizzard on the environmental design of Tanaan. I think it’s the most immersive zone they’ve ever designed – the atmosphere has been brilliant so far.
Some brutal encounters, but that’s okay. I kinda like that not everything is a piece of cake.
I don’t know that I’d say it was the most immersive zone ever, but it has so far been exactly what I’ve hoped for – a zone that gets me out of the garrison and has a lot of things to do, a lot of things for me to do. I don’t like everything in this zone – I kind of feel like the Saberon area is weak, not as much fun as some of the other bits – but overall I’m liking it quite a bit.
Really, one of the things I really enjoy is seeing how the place is and isn’t like what I remember from BC. Riding down the road towards Hellfire Citadel creates such a feeling of nostalgia, but the place simply isn’t the Hellfire I remember at all. You really get a sense of how the place has been messed up by Gul’dan – it’s a weird combination of BC era Hellfire Peninsula and Shadowmoon Valley with the Tanaan leveling experience.
We’ll see how I feel about it a month or two down the road, but right now I’m enjoying it.
Q4TQ: When will it be okay to start loudly complaining about the Hellfire cinematic?
If you want to stand around and yell about the cinematic, who’s going to stop you? Be as loud as you want. On the website, we’d like it if you didn’t spoil it for others.
I was standing in Lion’s Watch in TJ when all of a sudden I see fel meteors falling from the sky. I then remembered that the same thing used to happen in Outland while at Honor Hold. I opened my map and saw that Lion’s Watch seems to be in the same place as Honor Hold.
Keep in mind, Honor Hold was built before Outland was Outland, and so it would make sense that they’d keep selecting the same spot to serve as a forward base against Hellfire Citadel. It’s in the same place because that’s a good place to build it, essentially.
Of course we know it’s in the same place because it’s a callback, but it makes sense in game as well. Khadgar was there when we built Honor Hold as well after all.
People can hit level 68 by the middle of BC. That means they end up skipping half of the expansion zones. You can literally go Hellfire Peninsula to Zangarmarsh to Nagrand and you’re done with the entire expansion. People are as likely to go back and run the three Warlords raids as they are any other raid for xmog gear, so I’m not seeing why you’re arguing for this expansion being the most skipped. BC is absolutely the most skipped expansion by a huge margin.
People are going to skip Warlords max level content, like they do every other expansion. Are people going to run garrison missions at level 110 or whatever max level is next time out? Probably not. I can’t remember the last time I went to the Twilight Highlands and ground rep with the dwarves or Dragonmaw, either.
QFTQ: Assuming Garrisons are here to stay for future expansions, do you think our current garrisons will be magically transported to whatever new land we find ourselves in? Or will we have to start from scratch?
We’re not going to have our garrison in the next expansion. It’ll still be there on Draenor, you likely will always be able to hearth back to it with the Garrison Hearthstone, but it won’t be relevant to the next expansion. Blizzard has already said this multiple times. They’ll probably do something with the tech that they’ve developed for the garrison – I’d love it if we had something like the Skybreaker or Orgrim’s Hammer as our mobile command platform exploring the skies of a new world, for example – but it won’t be the garrison as we currently know it.
Nothing really to add here just wanted to say “Yay! Master Plan is back! Finally I can bear to do garrison missions again without slamming my head into my desk in frustration at just how bad the default Blizzard UI is!”
There. That’s me done.
I don’t use Master Plan and I find garrison missions to be fine. Especially now that I can space bar my way through them instead of watching the chest open over and over again. That’s default now.
I don’t get why I’d need an addon for garrison missions. They’re rock simple.
You know, I’ve seen comments to the effect of “This whole expansion almost seems like just a convoluted way to bring Gul’dan back.”
That made me think of something. Anyone else remember a tweet from Chris Metzen a few years ago, asking “If you could bring one major Warcraft lore character back from the dead, who would it be?”
Combined with what we know now about them thinking multiple expansions ahead at any given point, it just…kind of makes me think.
Since I don’t want to discuss spoilers on the end cinematic in The Queue, I’ll just say that several figures are ‘alive’ at the end of this raid that could have interesting consequences moving forward.
One thing that I keep wondering about is, we’re thirty or so years in the past of this Draenor. Assuming it isn’t blown up at the end of the expansion, what if the next expansion takes us back to our time, and we have contact with a Draenor that’s moved forward thirty years from these events? What if this was all a convoluted way to bring Draenor back?
Okay, that’s the Queue for today. I’ll see y’all next week.
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Something I was thinking about, when content is no longer “relevant” there is usually still reason to go back to it. People who aren’t raiders will run old raids. Do quests to get tmog loot, or toys/fun things, or even to see the story. Scenarios, old LFRs for loot or to see them. One might even go do the farm to get the rep up with the different people. Even when you can go in and faceroll the content, it has fun.
With WoD, I could see someone going back, in later xpacs, to get the inn and see what it’s like to have followers. Would anyone go back and do missions? Is there anything there that will have playable value in future xpacs? The naval missions have heirloom rings and a mount or two, so maybe those. I assume they’ll take away/nerf gold missions. It’s not exactly a fun experience, or content to see. I suspect this will be the most skipped-over, out of date content in WoW’s history.