The Queue: Novels, iLevels, legendaries, and more

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments and we may choose it for tomorrow’s edition!

I doubt we’ll see a shutdown anytime soon. Even if WoW lost the majority of its subscribers, MMOs have run on total shoestrings before. F2P is a more likely outcome, and in that case, F2P MMOs often have “value added” features to encourage people to spend cash since there’s no subscription fee. Tokens could probably be put towards things like faction transfers, race changes, level 60 boosts, or items like pets, mounts, or cosmetic armor.

The iLevel cap for followers is 675, not 660. The set pieces that automatically raise them to 615/630/645 are no longer useful to you and can be safely vendored, but keep (or use) the ones that give 3/6/9 to armor/weapons. Get all of your followers to 675, and once you’ve done that, follower gear is no longer anything but free gold.

I’m going to be honest: I stopped caring about the legendary questchain and I’m unlikely to complete it no matter what catchup mechanisms they add. I went through the tedium of collecting abrogator stones and elemental tablets, grinding those things out for an eternity through LFR, garrison missions, work orders, and so forth, and by the time I completed any given step of that questchain I more or less forgot about the storyline and thus stopped caring. I reached the point where I needed to get Blackhand’s hand, killed Blackhand, and somehow forgot to loot the hand off of him. I looted something else from him — some epic whatever — but not the hand. How? Who knows. In any case, I went all the way to Khadgar before I realized I didn’t have the hand and I admit I got pretty mad about it. After awhile, I realized I was so angry because the questline as a whole was so unenjoyable. Just the absolute worst grindy non-interactive nonsense.

I dropped the quest and never got Blackhand’s stupid hand. I’m never going to get it, either. At this point, I don’t want it. I don’t want the legendary ring or Garona or any of that because the quest grated on me that much. I’m not going to get the legendary ring and I’m fine with that. If the next expansion’s legendary questchain is structured the same way, I’m not going to get that one, either. I’m okay with that.

If I were on a regular raid team, this probably wouldn’t be an issue. I’d be in those raids every week anyway, and I’d make progress simply by playing. I’m not on a raid team, though. To make progress, I have to specifically set aside X number of hours each week to do LFR — and I just don’t have that kind of time. I enjoy other aspects of the game so much more than raiding. Grinding through the legendary quest chain just isn’t worth it to me with the current structure of the quest. It isn’t for me.

I’ll always recommend Riyria Revelations by Michael J Sullivan. They’re an all around solid series of fantasy novels — there’s a buddy cop dynamic (except they’re thieves) and uses a lot of well-known fantasy tropes in ways that aren’t terrible or eyeroll worthy. They’re some of my favorites. The audiobooks are also extremely well done. Currently, I’m reading Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan — the third in a trilogy starting with Blood Song as the first. Interestingly, I’ve found that many absolutely love Blood Song but find the books that follow it in the series to be not nearly as good — but I love Blood Song, Tower Lord, and currently loving Queen of Fire, so eh. Certainly, Tower Lord and Queen of Fire aren’t the same sort of book as Blood Song. Blood Song is a coming-of-age hero’s-journey kind of story. But a guy can only come-of-age once. Tower Lord and Queen of Fire expand the scope of the tale started in Blood Song.

Also, I heard a pretty cool dude self-published an ebook earlier this year. And another cool dude has some, too.

I do feel like the average player is probably finishing up in Tanaan now, yeah. However, I’m an odd one in that I adore zones like Tanaan — my main is exalted with everything, but I still go there for Baneful drops to try and min/max my gear outside of raids, and I enjoy taking an alt there from time to time. I love big, objective-based zones where you mostly just kill stuff and get rewarded for it. Tanaan could last me a very long time. I know that isn’t the case for most people, though. For their sake, I hope patch 6.2 doesn’t drag on too long.

Yes! We have one in progress. With the Warlords of Draenor short stories, it’s become a bit wonky to organize — we can’t simply do chronological since they’re an alternate universe with questionable canon status in the main timeline, but we’re working on it. Hopefully you’ll have it soon.