The Queue: Storms in Stormwind

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!

With a name like Stormwind, you’d think it rained in the city fairly often. But when I saw it actually raining in the city on the Legion alpha the other night, I was struck by the curious feeling that I had never actually seen this before — not without a rain stone at the very least. I don’t know if this was expanded weather effects, or that I just managed to finally be in the right place at the right time. Still, it was really nice to see, and I’m kind of hoping this might be a hint that we’ll see storms in Stormwind with a little more regularity. Let’s face it — it’s super weird to ride in from super-rainy Elwynn to blue sunny skies the second you cross the city border.

I have a crazy amount of screenshots on my computer — if I’m doing new quests or exploring new areas, I’m usually snapping screenshots as I go, mostly to build up a catalog for future columns. That said, I have staged plenty of screenshots before, but when I do, it’s because I’m taking them for a particular column and I want a particular setup. If I need something staged, I’ll usually ask people in my guild if they can come and help out.

No character copies as of yet. You can still make pre-made level 100’s of the classes that are available, but right now, there are still certain specs that you can’t play. The spec itself is locked out. This would make it kind of problematic if say, I wanted to copy my Assassination Rogue over, because I can’t actually play Assassination yet. I doubt they’re going to open character copies until they’ve opened up every class and spec combination for testing.

The current canon timeline is available in the World of Warcraft: Ultimate Visual Guide — you can find it over on Wowpedia as well. Year 0 was the year the orcs came through the portal and the First War began. It’s also presumably the year that Thrall was born. The Second War began in year 6. Thrall was made leader of the new Horde in year 18, and the Third War began in year 20 — Archimonde was defeated at Hyjal in year 21, and Arthas traveled to Northrend and arrived at the Frozen Throne in year 22.

World of Warcraft began in year 25, Burning Crusade began in year 26, Wrath of the Lich King began in year 27, Cataclysm was year 28, and Mists of Pandaria began in year 30 — the only two-year gap between expansions in World of Warcraft‘s history. This is a unique occurrence, so we can assume Warlords of Draenor begins in year 31, making Thrall currently 31 years old-ish, no older than 32. He’s younger than he looks!

Any toys with level restrictions. I get that you had to play through a certain expansion to obtain the toy, but if the Toybox is supposed to be account-wide, well…why can’t I use fun toys with cosmetic effects at level one? If I can’t use them any time, what was the point of making the Toybox account-wide to begin with?

I’d love to see Reno and the gang from Hearthstone show up in World of Warcraft. They’re ridiculously fun characters with a lot of personality, and I think they’d fit well in the game itself.

Oh definitely. I’ll try any class, but if it doesn’t have long-term appeal, then I’ll just stop playing it. Paladin, Warrior, Death Knight and Monk have all fallen under this category. It’s not that the classes aren’t fun to play, it’s just that they don’t really capture my attention the way my favorites do.

That’s it for today’s Queue — if you have any questions you’d like to see answered, be sure to leave them in the comments below!