The Queue: Chad

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!

One of these days, Chad and I will save the whole world. We’ll save all of Outland and we’ll make it really cool again. Or at least that’s what Chad tells me. I think Chad might be overestimating our importance just a little here. I was kind of bummed that last week’s livestream had so many difficulties that we had to call it, but hey, there’s always next week, right? For now, let’s answer some questions.

Khadgar was the man who originally took down the Dark Portal at the end of the Second War. He witnessed, first hand, what an invasion of orcs can do to the world — he was there for all of it. So honestly, it’s really not a far stretch at all to see Khadgar so invested in making sure that doesn’t happen again. His peculiar obsession with Gul’dan is a little odd, though, because the most interaction he ever had with Gul’dan was with Gul’dan’s skull, not the orc himself. So yes, that part is a little weird, but his desire to stop an orc invasion? That’s completely understandable.

I think the biggest thing that irritates me about the Shipyard right now is that your ships can be destroyed. When it takes forever to grind a ship up to epic quality, there is absolutely nothing fun about seeing all those hours of grinding away disappear in an instant. I think just changing it so that the ships have a chance to come back damaged might solve the issue. If a ship fails a mission, you cannot send it back out on another mission until it’s repaired. Make the repairs cost oil or garrison resources, make it something that takes an hour or two to complete like a work order or a regular garrison mission. Just giving us the option of repairing would give us another outlet for extra oil and resources, and remove the painful frustration of losing a ship.

Nope! It was definitely Nozdormu first. You can read about the formation of the Aspects in the novel Dawn of the Aspects.  It was originally a five-part ebook, but they’ve since released it in paperback. It tells the story of everything that original went down in Northrend, including Galakrond, that giant skeleton that’s sitting in Dragonblight. Tyr even makes an appearance. It’s a pretty good read!

They’re both giant threats to the world. But the Old Gods, we know what they want to do — sow chaos, bring about destruction, blah blah the usual end of the world situation. With the Infinite Dragonflight, it’s a case of them trying to re-write Azeroth’s history to suit their own purpose, and we don’t know exactly what that purpose is. They presumably are trying to make the world “better,” but better according to who’s vision, exactly? So while they both present a gigantic threat, I’m going to have to give the edge to the Infinite Dragonflight, just because we still don’t know exactly what they’re trying to accomplish, which makes them a wild card.

No — not to our knowledge, anyway. You did, however, remind me that I really liked Bearing an Hourglass. I liked most of that series in general, but the idea of living backwards was really interesting to me. So the closest thing we really have to anything like that is Nozdormu and the Bronze Dragonflight, mostly because they were able to flit in and out of various points in time seemingly at whim. That kind of existence makes it impossible to tell when these dragons were born, or when exactly their lives end, or what exactly happened in between those two points in time. When did Chromie come into existence? Was she born back during the War of the Ancients, or was she actually born several thousand years in our future, and made the choice to come back and live with us? We don’t know, and the Bronze Dragonflight isn’t telling — maybe they don’t even know anymore, given how much time travel they’ve done over their lifetime.

If the game ended? Really though, I think if they dropped all pretense of having any kind of story at all. It’s the story that tends to grab me with video games, above and beyond gameplay in some cases. If the game doesn’t have a story with it, then it’s got to have some really amazing gameplay and visuals to make up for that, as far as I’m concerned.

Alternatively, if I was hired to write for a game studio somewhere. Largely because I don’t know if I’d have the time to play.

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!