The Queue: Until Friday

Y’all can blame our Holy Paladin columnist Mike Eng for the header image. Since this is my last Queue of the big “BlizzCon forces everyone else to be doing something else so Matt writes the Queue over and over again” period, I thought we could all go out with something special.

Hopefully y’all asked a lot of questions. Let’s do The Queue again.

(Yes, that was to the tune of Time Warp.)

You never have to use the boost if you don’t want to. It sits there. You’ll be fine waiting for Legion, waiting until after the expansion if you want. I didn’t use my level 90 boost for months.

I honestly don’t think I have ever used it.

Right now, we know that you can’t use items you can’t equip in transmog, even if they’re of a type you can equip. So class specific gear (Like most but not all Tier sets) is out. You also can’t mog, say, a plate piece over a cloth one, or vice versa.

We don’t know for sure if, say, Mages can add plate pieces to their Wardrobes. It seems likely that they can’t – they can’t equip them and they can’t transmog a cloth piece to look like a plate piece – but that’s just an assumption based on current rules. If (and that’s an if) the equip rules remain, then if your mage gets a cool plate drop while running Naxx 25, it won’t be unlocked for your DK.

We do not know for sure if that’s the case. It hasn’t been specifically stated one way or the other. If (there’s that word again) they only allow you to unlock the appearances of items you can equip, then plate classes will be the best transmog hunters, since they can equip every kind of armor and almost all weapons. (Warriors, who can equip all weapons but wands, would likely be the go to class for transmog hunting in this scenario.) But it’s a big, big if.

If

So don’t panic yet, is what I’m saying.

Honestly, I really have no idea. I assume very hard — even with various updates and code changes over the years, World of Warcraft first started being worked on back in 2000, and it’s been a going concern since 2004. That’s a very long time, with lots and lots of added code, and we just saw a major upgrade to our character models. I doubt suddenly adding a slider function would be trivial. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be cool, just that it wouldn’t be easy.

But I am no expert in the field. I could be entirely wrong.

Yes, before this weekend it absolutely was.

If you did the Nagrand quests based around Oshu’gun, you ran into Cho’gall, who implied heavily while draining the power from the Void God K’ure that his masters were coming through the Void. Similarly, the Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron mentions the Void by name, and the Tribunal of Ages in Ulduar’s Halls of Stone called the Old Gods ‘necrophotic symbiotes’, and necrophotic could be translated as ‘dead light’ or ‘death light’ which would be a good name for the Shadow energies of the Void. Similarly, we see that Orc Shaman who fail to master their powers can become Pale, and the Pale use the Void to subjugate Elementals, just as the Old Gods once did.

The Pale in particular are interesting in that they are said to succumb to dark whispers from elsewhere, which fits the Void to a T, and we know that when someone (like, say, Deathwing) falls to dark whispers it’s usually the Old Gods. Also, the Twilight’s Hammer forces (Such as Archbishop Benedictus, the Twilight Father) make heavy use of shadow magic drawn from the Void and they serve as the army of the Old Gods in their attempt to unmake Azeroth.

In other words, yes, absolutely the Old Gods have been shown to be related in some way to the Void before this weekend.

Every server I have ever played on.

I may in fact be the sucker here.

It was indeed a good trailer.

Frankly, from a lore perspective, killing Varian now would be an enormous waste of potential. I know some people are never going to get over the Come, Horde filth phase of the guy, or the drunk and abusive phase from Wolfheart, but the fact is that he’s grown and changed as a character (something other lore figures like Thrall never managed) and has overcome a lot of his really egregious flaws, while remaining the same imperfect person trying to do better and not always succeeding. From Cataclysm to Mists of Pandaria to his appearances (brief as they were) in Warlords, we’ve seen Varian settle into the role of leader of his people.

Could he die in Legion? Yeah, and there’s probably a good story to be wrung out of it. But I think it would be a huge, huge waste of all you could do with him. This is a man who saw his father die at the hands of an Orc he called ‘friend’ — he is never going to be comfortable trusting the Horde, it’s just not possible. He may believe that Anduin’s heart is righteous and that peace is the noblest aspiration, but he also remembers the burning of Stormwind, the death of his father, the retreat to Lordaeron and the deaths of all the people he knew while he took refuge there. He saw Arthas kill Terenas, the man who gave him sanctuary as a child. He saw Lothar’s death and the victory the man bought with his  life.

I really like Varian, warts and all. I believe his distrust for the Horde. It feels earned. And when he manages to overcome it, that feels earned too.

Okay, and that’s this Tuesday’s Queue. I’m not sure who’s up tomorrow, but at least you’ll get a couple of days away from me. I’ll see you all Friday. I may be a Dakotaraptor again when I do.