The Queue: White Lions, Grand Tournament pre-order, flight, 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!

This is the order in which the raids take place in progression:

1. Karazhan
2. Gruul / Magtheridon’s Lair
3. Serpentshrine Cavern / Tempest Keep
4. Mount Hyjal (though it’s narratively a Caverns of Time time travel thing)
5. Black Temple
6. Sunwell Plateau

In the ye olde days of Burning Crusade, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep were in the same tier of raiding, so you don’t progress from one to the other. You’d progress through them both simultaneously. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to have killed only a couple of bosses in each raid. You might do two bosses in Serpentshrine Cavern, then go over to Tempest Keep to kill a couple bosses there, then go back to SSC to try a new boss.

I pre-purchased because I have to Brawl with Matticus every week. Trying to be competitive with that guy as a F2P player is impossible.

You know, I have no strong opinion about hunters. I haven’t played one very much and I don’t pay much attention to them. I just let them go and do whatever it is they do. That said, though, I’d love to see Warhammer Online‘s White Lion find its way into World of Warcraft. The White Lion was, essentially, a melee WoW Hunter. It was a melee class with a pet — a white lion. Warhammer Online died an unfortunate death but had a lot of rad gameplay. Many of the quality-of-life changes Rogues received such as combo points being attached to the character rather than to a mob, all of that was in place years and years ago for Warhammer Online‘s Rogue equivalent.

I imagine it largely depends on playstyle — what you enjoy doing in the game is going to determine that. Right in the comments in this question, we had people saying Warlords proved not having flying sucks — I’ll be the contrarian here and say I quite enjoyed an expansion without flight. It felt good. It would have felt even better if garrisons hadn’t kept people indoors all day. It’s nice to see players on the ground and the lack of flight combined with treasures made me enjoy exploring while I try to find the well-hidden ones. Nagrand is the exception there — I found those too irritating to get, but that’s beside the point, I think. Other players on the ground with me is the highlight.

Yes, I’m anti-flying, and players often say if I don’t like flying, I don’t have to fly even if it’s in the game. While true, other players flying is part of the problem. At max level, other players tend to disappear from the game. They’re all in the sky. And if I punish myself by choosing not to fly, that sets me at a disadvantage. Consider the following scenario: I’m max level and I’m out questing, choosing not to fly. I have to fight my way through a cluster of mobs to get to the end of an encampment where I must kill a named mob. I fight, I fight, and I fight some more, and that named mob is in view. A player with flight drops out of the sky and kills that named mob. Now I need to wait for it to respawn. While I wait for that named mob to respawn, everything I just killed respawns, too. Now I have to kill everything at least twice because I chose not to fly.

It’s not actually a viable choice. That player who stole my mob may not have even been acting maliciously. They simply didn’t see me because they were zooming through the sky. If we were both grounded, maybe that player still would’ve stolen the mob if they were being a jerk. More likely, they would’ve seen me and waited — or we’d have both been fighting to the same destination and gotten there together. Without flight in Tanaan, that’s usually how it works — even if players aren’t grouped, they fight toward a rare spawn together intentionally or not. All players in the area must fight the same hurdles to reach the goal. That is, of course, unless someone gets there first with one of the Hunter’s Seeking Crystals and doesn’t wait for anybody to show up. The Hunter’s Seeking Crystal is, itself, a problem. I think so, anyway.

So I think the game is better without flight. After an expansion without it, I continue to think so. That said, if the lack of flight makes so many people upset, I’m willing to let them have it without a fight. The fact that so many people have paid real money to buy flying mounts off of the store reinforces my thought; no matter how much I hate flight, if Blizzard sold something to someone for real money, they should be allowed to use it. Pandora’s Box has been opened and I’m not surprised people were angry when Blizzard tried to put its contents back.