The Queue: Like a haggis

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!

Sometimes I find myself wondering what happened to the Stormwind guard after that whole Onyxia situation in vanilla — after all, they didn’t just discover that Prestor was Onyxia. She also revealed that a chunk of the Stormwind guard were dragons, too. I mean, it’s got to be a shock to discover that good old George — the buddy you were constantly sent on patrol with, the one who shared touching stories about his wife and kids, always shared his lunch, never complained about the long hours — was in fact hiding a set of black scales under his polite and affable exterior.

It’s a wonder they haven’t all gone mad, isn’t it?

I think it’s fine that it’s locked behind PVP. This isn’t a change that’s going to affect character performance, it’s just another cosmetic option. It’s kind of like the cosmetic equivalent of having PVP tier sets that had their own look. PVP gear doesn’t exist anymore in Legion, so having a PVP-only cosmetic look for the Artifact weapon isn’t out of line at all. The Artifact weapon isn’t just a PVE feature — it’s being used in PVP as well as PVE. We’re using it everywhere.

I’m going to say yes, mostly because it gives people more options when it comes to swapping out gear, and it makes getting those tier bonuses just a little easier — you’ve got more chances at being able to get that bonus. Plus, you know, it’s always nice to have a complete cosmetic set for transmog reasons (and I do love my transmog!).

Abathur was created by the Overmind — the big brain-like entity that led the Zerg Swarm — as a “brood of one.” Basically, he was created by putting together bits of all zerg species, with the intention of being a living library of the Swarm’s DNA. The Overmind wanted to perfect the Zerg, and Abathur was the physical creation that would bring that perfection to fruition. Abathur was pretty much the evolution master, designing different strains of “better” zerg — he was also the one who designed the Queen of Blades.

So he’s this highly analytical creature that looks at various species of zerg, analyzes them, and thinks of ways to genetically improve them. He’s aware that it’s not really possible to achieve “perfection” as such, but it’s still in the zerg’s best interests to at least try to do so as far as he’s concerned. Also, he “studies” the Swarm’s enemies and picks apart their DNA for useful information. He does this by eating said enemies.

…which is a little gross, but we’re talking Zerg here, they aren’t exactly sweethearts to begin with.

Oh dear. All right, I’m going to preface this by saying this is my opinion, and others may have different opinions about why they aren’t exactly fond of Malfurion.

I’m not fond of Malfurion because he’s one of those characters that’s constantly being touted as a major hero and lore figure, and yet we’ve never actually seen him do anything of major substance in game. When WoW originally launched, Malfurion was “lost in the Emerald Dream” — it seemed like a valid and interesting plot point, but it never went anywhere. He returned in the novel Stormrage — and a good chunk of that novel was spent on the process of people trying to go save him.

He finally returned to the game in Cataclysm and got together with the rest of the druids, working directly with the Horde in some cases and pretty much ignoring the fact that the Horde and the Alliance had any kind of tensions going on. He is, in a way, the Alliance’s version of Thrall — a super-powered guy who apparently wants to play nice-nice between the faction lines, to the point of blatantly and blissfully ignoring any and all conflicts between the factions. That does not make him an effective leader. It didn’t make Thrall an effective leader. The difference being, Thrall stepped down and gave leadership to someone else — Malfurion returned and promptly took a position to “co-lead” the Night Elves.

And honestly, when we look at history and where Malfurion played a part, I’m wondering why he’s got that “co-leader” moniker at all. Malfurion stopped the arrival of the Burning Legion in the War of the Ancients, and locked his own brother away. He was there for the War of the Satyr, and formed the Cenarion Circle. And then … he went to sleep? With the rest of the druids. To fulfill his obligation to Ysera. Which makes sense, after all that was the price he had to pay, but while he was off dozing in dreamland, Tyrande was the one leading the Night Elves. For thousands of years.

She was the one that witnessed her people as they evolved and grew. She was the one that dealt with any conflicts. She was also the one who, when the Burning Legion reared its ugly head again, had to go wake Malfurion up to help do something about it. And after all was said and done and Illidan was dealt with … Malfurion went back to sleep again. But not before having a scuffle with Fandral Staghelm about the formation of Teldrassil, the fallout from which Tyrande had to deal with after Malfurion went back to sleep.

Basically, what we have here is a character who has been proclaimed a great leader and a hero, and has done little in the way of any kind of active leadership or heroics beyond a few examples. Meanwhile anything Tyrande may have done while he was sleeping has been completely ignored and passed over. We don’t know what she did, because there’s no record of it. And once he came back to the game, he wasn’t just put back in place as leader of the Cenarion Circle — which is absolutely appropriate and he should be leading that group, he created it — he was also shoved in as co-leader of the Night Elves.

So here’s this guy who’s playing a neutral role, allied with a neutral organization, working with both factions, and supposedly leading his people — the people who have been beleaguered by the Orcs pretty much ever since he went back to sleep after the Third War — down this path of…I don’t know. And to me, it felt like rather than give Tyrande something substantial and character-driven to do after ignoring her for the majority of vanilla, they just shoveled Malfurion on in there instead.

And he’s a weak character. He’s a character with a ton of scattered, contradicting motives that don’t mesh with the main story of the game. He doesn’t make sense. We keep being told he’s important, but we don’t actually witness him doing anything important, we witness him doing a lot of confusing things that deliberately muddles those faction lines in a game where we’ve been told they exist for a reason and probably shouldn’t be crossed.

Having said all that — and that was a mouthful, wasn’t it — both he and Tyrande get some pretty good moments in Legion that don’t exactly excuse the creaky character development so far, but take both characters in a direction we haven’t really seen before. I’m kind of digging it so far. But I’m still keeping a wary eye on Malfurion.

Yep, they absolutely do!

We really haven’t heard anything about that just yet. In fact, we haven’t heard anything or seen anything about unlocking appearances on the alpha so far at all. On the one hand, that sounds like a good idea, on the other, maybe that’s just one of those things that characters will have on their to-do list come Legion, as an end-game activity. I’m sure we’ll hear more on that front as the alpha progresses!

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!