The Queue: Why I want to go to Argus
@MatthewWRossi
Okay, bear with me. This is The Queue, and we answer your Blizzard questions.
I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent at the end of today’s Queue. If you don’t care about my opinions on Argus, then you can skip the last one.
With Timewalking week, we get to dig out all of our old set bonuses and on-use items that do cool things take them into content that they’re relevant for. Warglaives, Dragonwrath, even non-legendaries like Abracadaver are all suddenly useful again.
I ask you, Queue, what are your favorite items to equip while Timewalking?
Since the Warglaives are solid even in Wrath Timewalking dungeons, I tend to vacillate between them and my Shadowmourne/Gurthalak combo. I also tend to play around with set bonuses from various Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria sets, and I love the trinket from Icecrown Citadel, Deathbringer’s Will.
Q4tQ: Do you think Blizzard will alter the Nemesis quests to include kills made in BGs after Legion?
If they don’t, do you think we’ll be able go to Ashran after Legion and be put in either the 100-109 bracket or the 110 bracket?
I agree with the folks who said they’ll likely drop the ‘in Draenor’ part.
I’ve written about WoW and diversity before at the site that will not be named — suffice it to say that I’d like it if we got humans with different skin tones and cultural underpinnings. WoW’s tendency to turn non-white European human cultures from our history into completely different races (Tauren, Pandaren, Trolls and Orcs are all rooted in historical cultures) is a trifle off putting at times.
As for the blue eyes thing, as a man with spectacularly beautiful green eyes (seriously, they’re gorgeous) I’d like to see more green and brown eyed heroes, for sure.
On the subject of gender and sexuality, I agree that I’d like to see more diversity there, but I’ll also admit I’d want to be certain it was going to be done respectfully, with the people who will be seeing themselves represented taken into account. We don’t need jokes.
New idea for a 5-man dungeon:
The Church of Elemental Not-Goodness
Rogues, mages, and hunters would all have to be able to detect and disarm traps, because… oh boy there’s going to be a lot of them!
Raid bosses in every room too…
Monsters that drain exp if they hit you.
It’ll be great!
Nope.
Ivory Feather Volcano.
The wizard Terapkis has stolen three magical artifacts and the party has to go in and retrieve them. There’s a giant invisible crab boss, a rotating tunnel soaked in flammable and slippery oil, and twin efreet at the end who attack once you think you’ve won.
Oh, and if you die you end up working for Terapkis.
I finally got around to making a warrior alt, dualwielding staves is just too bad ass. I pretty much only play horde so I decided to mix it up a bit and make a Draenei (mainly so I could dual wield Apostle of Argus). I’m trying to think of a basic story for her, again not a big Alliance player but I have read through most of the Draenei lore. My question is were do warriors fit into Draenei society? Is it reasonable to think she could be a Vindicator who puts more faith in her martial prowess than the Light while fighting?
There’s plenty of Draenei Warriors. Vindicator is a Paladin — it’s essentially the same as Blood Knight for Belf Paladins or Sunwalker for Tauren, it’s a racial specific title for the same thing that Humans and Dwarves call Paladins. Restalaan, Captain of the Guard at Telmor and Velen’s best friend, was a Warrior. Commander Steele from the Shattered Sun Offensive is likely one too.
Warriors in Draenei society fill the same role they do in most — they’re the soldiers, from your average grunt to a commander of armies. You don’t need to be a Vindicator to be important, it just helps.
I said I’d talk about Argus. If you don’t want to read that, you can skip this one.
Okay, here’s the deal.
There are several reasons I want to go to Argus.
First off, it’s the original home world of the Draenei, and I think I’ve established that I’m a huge Draenei fanboy at this point.
Secondly, it’s the birthplace of the Eredar, a world that gave itself to the Legion. It wasn’t conquered, it wasn’t even corrupted by decades of Nathrezim infiltration. The Eredar became Warlocks willingly. Most of them probably didn’t understand what they were in for, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that the entire planet consigned itself to an eternity of servitude to Sargeras in exchange for fel power and a place at the top of the demonic pecking order, and that fascinates me. Argus was home to many advanced civilizations — Eredar society was old, old beyond our understanding, and it rose and fell many times before the coming of Sargeras. There’s an entire world of history as deep and rich as Azeroth’s to explore here.
Thirdly, we know nothing about the current state of Argus. Does the Legion still have a presence there? Or did they annihilate the planet and move on? What ruins line its surface? Are there bands of Eredar who were neither fortunate enough to leave with Velen nor willing to sign on to demonic corruption once they realized what was happening, and were they just annihilated or did they find a way to survive?
There was a lot of talk about Mass Effect and Dragon Age this week. One of the potentials WoW has always had was that it could, essentially, be both — the Warcraft setting is a high fantasy steampunk setting that has multiple alien worlds canonically set in its cosmos. We could easily end up traversing the Great Dark Beyond, traveling from world to world fighting the Legion, the Old Gods, and other menaces like Dimensius the All Devouring and the Void Lords. We could visit Xoroth, K’aresh, and other, stranger worlds. The sky isn’t necessarily the limit in World of Warcraft and I still, years after The Burning Crusade, want to explore it.
Okay, that’s the Queue for this week. I’ll see you all Tuesday. Alex is up tomorrow, ask him lots of questions.
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Question: Why are all the good guys in Warcraft blue-eyed? We’ve got Varian, Thrall, Arthas (pre-corruption, changed shade to a more icy kind of thing after), Jaina, Anduin of course, and so on. I get that they do a lot of the tough guy exterior, good on the inside kind of thing, and blue eyes can be a clear, if quite on-the-nose conveyor of that, but really? I know there’s a lot of different eye colours in the warcraft universe, but it seems disproportionately blue-eyed. I’m blue-eyed myself, because you know, scandinavian. Half of us are blue-eyed and blond-haired. Oh, and Khadgar too.
And, this is kind of a bigger topic, but warcraft humans are supposed to be anatomically if not identical then very similar to real-life humans, so why aren’t there more dark-skinned humans in the lore and as random npc’s? This point kind of counts for gnomes and dwarfs too. At least they do female military heroes from time to time, at least in the Alliance, but they’re mostly briefly used and quickly forgotten by game and player both. Like that female commander in the Mists intro cinematic. I don’t recall her name, and I normally have a rather disturbing penchant for recalling fictional names.
I guess I just wan’t WoW to be more diverse, genderwise, and both within human races and with the different species on Azeroth. WoW has a tendency to get a bit “white human males following every american military stereotype versus big hulking orc males that communicate mostly in grunts and has a disturbing blood-thirst but are ‘good inside’” Would love for them to break of the formula a bit. Sexuality is an issue as well, but it can be implied in-game and applied via head canon and fanfic. Skin-color, race and gender are harder to run away from.
But they should do a few CANON homosexual couples, it’s about time with all the hints and internet theorising. We’re talking 2015, not 1995. Times have changed, and on some points Blizzard haven’t changed with them. I would love for them to be a frontrunner and a good example to the rest of the gaming industry and community. Wouldn’t be fair to leave BioWare standing absolutely alone in at least making an attempt. Wow, that was quite a ramble.