The Queue: Sadly there are no raptors here today

Half the time Alex and I agree on things. The other half, we absolutely don’t. Let’s see if I end up answering a ton of questions about Night Elves or Druids today.

This is The Queue. Sadly no dinosaurs helped me write this one.

Actually, I’ll go further — I’d argue that the problem is how Night Elves, all Night Elves, have been written in World of Warcraft. WCIII’s portrayal of Night Elves was a bit different.

You had the split between the aggressive, martial women and the contemplative, druidic males, as exemplified by WCIII’s versions of Malfurion and Tyrande, both of who were strong willed and even argued fiercely (and Tyrande wasn’t at all shy about telling Malf to step off when she wanted to do something — “Only the Goddess may forbid me anything!”) over many subjects.

We’ve kind of lost that edge to Night Elf culture as they became part of the Alliance, and it’s a shame, because frankly Night Elves make a better foil for Orcs than Humans do. Nelves are aggressive. When the Orcs pushed into Ashenvale, Grom Hellscream called them savages. Grom Hellscream saw the Night Elf women in combat and was so afraid of them that he went running to find a source of magic powerful enough to combat them. The whole reason he ended up a Chaos Orc in WCIII is because he knew he couldn’t stand toe to toe with the Night Elves and Cenarius, because they were wholly dedicated to guarding their forests from him and they had the martial prowess to back it up.

But here, at this point in WoW‘s life cycle, the Night Elves have been pushed back from Azshara, forced to endure the waffling leadership of WoW‘s version of Malfurion (whose idea of leading his people is to propose neutrality and tolerance of the Horde while they’re burning Astranaar) and Tyrande only seldom gets to display the same aggressive nature that led her to kill her own people when they dared to defy her. It’s not Druids we should be blaming, nor is it really Malfurion, it’s the entire way Night Elves as a whole have been written.

Night Elves enjoy nature, yes, but they enjoy it the way a panther would — it’s their habitat, their home, and they know they’re the deadliest thing in it. We need to see a more menacing side to Night Elves. These are a people who forsook Arcane Magic because they were simply too good at it, and who’ve only recently allowed its return due to the threats they find themselves facing. When demons rain from the sky, Night Elves should be in the thick of the fray, ruthless, cunning and remorseless killers.

My own personal preference would be for Shandris Feathermoon to assume control of Darnassus and the Night Elves for the duration of the Legion invasion, and for her to move her people into a war footing — any threat to Night Elf territory being ruthlessly suppressed. It’s time for Azeroth to see the might of the Kaldorei again, and remember they were the people who destroyed two Troll empires when even the Aqir couldn’t manage it.

Honestly, right now people who use Old Dalaran use it as a place to get to various Northrend locations, to level their Wrath characters, or work on professions. I doubt any of those things will change. The shrines in Pandaria have better portals than Old Dalaran, so that’s already been eclipsed. I can’t really see Legion changing much of anything for Dalaran.

I know that my Warrior couldn’t select a different ‘skin’ for the shield over the sword for the Protection Artifact, nor the Warswords of Valajar — they share a ‘look’ as it were.

As of right now, this is mostly right, but there are some caveats. One is that the Alpha is coming back up soon and there may be changes to how it works. The second is that as of the last time I was able to check, you can only unlock items for your armor preference. So if you’re a Paladin, equipping a cloth item and soulbinding it won’t matter. It will only unlock plate for your Paladin, and as soon as the Wardrobe goes live the changes to armor will mean that Paladins and Warrior start with Plate at level 1 — several pieces of gear that are currently mail will become plate in Legion in order to ensure the new system is fair to all.

So go ahead and save those crates, but if a green quality cloth robe drops that you want for your Mage while you’re on your Hunter, mail it to the Mage and you should be good to go.

All my Shaman are significantly higher level than that, but during the leveling stream Liz Harper complained of this exact problem when healing our dungeon runs on her Resto Shaman. It seems to stay that way until mid 40’s.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. I’ll see y’all Friday. Archer is a very cute dog.