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The QueueApr 6, 2016 11:00 am CT

The Queue: Special mystery guest

Hi everyone. It’s the Queue. I’m listening to Kings and Creatures a lot this week, especially the song ‘Time-Lapse‘. A friend of mine describes them as ‘trailer music’ and it’s pretty apt, but I like them anyway.

Let us go forth and talk about Blizzard and the games they make.


SKARASEN SPACESQUID

I wonder if the lack of overtly Burning Crusade stuff in the alpha so far is Blizzard deciding (probably quite sensibly) that after a year or more in Tanaan we’ll all be thoroughly sick of the sight of fluorescent green fel gunge and having demons all up in your face. (Until you need to slay 20 of them, and then they all go AWOL for the day.)

I tend to think it’s so they can actually have diverse zones and environments within those zones. There are demons invading Val’Sharah, a big demonic front in Azsuna, obvious signs of Fel corruption in Highmountain and a Vrykul who has joined the Legion in Stormheim, but the only place in the Broken Isles that’s gone full-on demons everywhere is the Broken Front, south of the Temple of Sargeras, and that helps keep the zones distinctive. You don’t want it feeling like it’s too late to stop the Legion, after all.

Plus let’s face it, he’s right, Tanaan got eyebiting after a while. All that green just becomes astonishingly monotonous.


GLOBALSMITTY

Q4TQ Just a thought (and bear in mind i’ve sunk a couple of the old Newcastles tonight) Chronicle has opened our eyes to the WoW universe and subsequently our toons feel very small again.

Is Legion tying up the loose ends and prepping us for an off Azeroth curveball?

People have been arguing why we should get off Azeroth and explore the universe for a long time now. I think I first argued for an off-Azeroth expansion (specifically one to Argus) back after Wrath. It doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon and I really have no idea if we’re going to get one next after Legion or not. I guess it depends on if you count Burning Crusade and Warlords of Draenor as off-world or not. Technically they don’t occur on Azeroth, but both are on Draenor (two different versions of it, admittedly) and so I feel like that’s a bit of a cheat. Draenor/Outland was the only word we ever saw in pre-WoW Warcraft, after all.

I would love to get to see worlds like Argus or Xoroth, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting.


SILVERKEG

When the Warcraft movie releases it will possibly/probably spur some people to give WoW a try. Imagine yourself as a brand new player trying out WoW for the first time. You’re a level 1 character and you have no gold, no heirlooms, no chauffeur driven motorcycles, no alts sending you potions/rings/pieces of armor, nothing. What are these new people going to think?

Might even be an article or two in this. Have the editors create a new character of each faction (Rossi makes an orc & human warrior, Joe Perez a draenei & troll shaman, somebody else a night elf & tauren druid, etc.). Level these up from 1, following the natural zone progression (example: dwarves start in Dun Morogh, go to Loch Modan and then Wetlands if need be). Players only get to use quest rewards or any suitable drop. For the sake of the experiment, no dungeons. Experiment ends when these new characters reach level 20 and have enough gold to buy riding training and their first mount.

Well, even if someone goes out and buys the game right now, they don’t have to start at level 1 — they’ll get a level 90 boost with purchase of Warlords of Draenor. But for the sake of argument, I actually roll new, heirloomless, chaufferless characters all the time. Not just for the leveling stream, either.

I like to know how hard the game is for people who don’t have heirlooms. And it is harder. You can even die if you’re not paying attention, especially in the teens and twenties when you can end up in really weak gear if your quests haven’t been giving you what yo need to keep up. Even on servers where I have no characters to help them, I usually don’t find it that hard to get riding at level 20 but I’ve been playing this game since 2004. I’m not a new player and I don’t think it’s really possible for someone like me to get that new player feel, where you really just have no idea past the tutorials what you’re doing.

I do think a lot of the structure of World of Warcraft at lower levels is extremely disjointed right now. A new player will be dunked into the Cataclysm leveling content which is entirely too slated towards the threat of Deathwing, a monster they’re never even going to see, and I’ve complained before about how abilities accrue at lower levels. But it’s hard for me to judge how it’ll feel for a completely new player.


ARKHAM

Lore Q4tQ:
Spoilers from WoW Chronicle ahead, be warned!
– I was wondering on the scale of world’s cosmic powers with the introduction of the Void Lords.
Are they stronger than the Titans, or are more like abstract entities and thus are not really comparable?

Also where do the Naruu fit in this power scale? It seems like they are direct opposites of Void Lords in concept, since they are beings of living holy energy and Void Lords are beings of pure shadow energy?

It’s not that the Void Lords are stronger or weaker than Titans (or even Old Gods, which they created) as much as they are utterly inimical to our reality, and vice versa. The Void Lords hail from Void, a complete and utter nothingness, more empty than even the Great Dark Beyond. A place where nothing exists, as we understand it, anyway. They seek to corrupt our universe and break it down into something they can endure, hence the Old Gods being used to try and corrupt a Titan.

The Titans are essentially the most powerful entities that can exist in our cosmos. They’re the souls of entire worlds. Somewhere out there, there’s a world which once housed Aman’Thul, Eonar, even Sargeras. (Was that world Draenor? No, it probably wasn’t.) The Void Lords can’t contend directly with the Titans in our reality, so they use proxies. Likewise, nonexistence is inimical to the Titans, who can’t directly fight the Void Lords. Could Azeroth do so if it ever woke up? Some of the Titans thought so. We’ll find out if it happens, I guess.

It should be pointed out that even the Old Gods don’t compare to the Titans. Aman’Thul reached down and ripped Y’Shaarj from Azeroth and destroyed it with one hand. And we know that Y’Shaarj was massive, easily as big as C’thun or Yogg-Saron, each of which stretch across whole continents.

As for the Naaru, they do seem to manifest in our reality, but you’ll note that they have a Light/Darkness life cycle that ties them to both Light and Shadow. Is this the cost of their manifesting in our reality? I don’t know, but it seems possible.


NELSONI

Q4TQ: I aways assume that after the events of WotLK, Dalaran returns to its crater over in Hillsbrad foothills. Is this true? and how does that work with the Horde, more specifically undead, controlling most of these northern territories, especially with them running around continuing to use the plague. I feel like this couldn’t go on without the Kirin Tor very easily noticing. While Dalaran is technically “neutral” it really isn’t and is more of a human kingdom filled with living people. Then you had a Worgen rebellion going just north of here, with a large portion of said rebellion taking place right on Silverpine lake. I guess my question is what does Dalaran do with itself if it doesn’t return to its crater? Just hover wherever we left it? and IF it does return home, why isn’t it involved with the events and situations I mentioned? Obviously this question is more aimed at Anne or Rossi. Thanks! Just couldn’t get this out of my head.

Dalaran stayed in Northrend after Wrath of the Lich King until Jaina ordered the Kirin Tor to mobilize to support the Alliance in Mists of Pandaria. The city was seen to be over the water at that time, but it never reached Orgrimmar (because they couldn’t get it to work in game) and it was never stated to be above Kalimdor.

So the answer to ‘where did it go’ is ‘we don’t know’ — they never stated where it was. We know it’s over the Broken Isles in Legion, which is south of Northrend, so maybe it got stuck there or something.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. See y’all Friday.

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