The Queue: Still too real for me

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!

Be warned: Y’all have been asking me some dark questions lately. Some of the Q&A today might be upsetting. Enter at your own risk and please be respectful in the comments.

I still say Orc Mages. It’s not something I’m going to get worked up about, and I know they probably exist because the Horde needed more races which could be Mages back in vanilla WoW, but I don’t think there’s any actual support for them in the lore/mythology. Humans transitioned into Warlocks from Mages. Orcs transitioned into Warlocks from Shaman. We hear a lot about Human Mages and Elven Mages but they never talk about Orc Mages — because I don’t think there were any. Other races generally have an outline of who learned magic from where, how it was discovered, and on and on. Orcs have no such background.

Now, at this point in the game’s lifecycle, surely someone could’ve taught Orcs to use magic. If they added Orc Mages in Cataclysm or whatever, no problems here. It was just their inclusion in the base game which didn’t have much justification outside of game balance — which is a good justification.

Edit: Apparently Orc Mages were added in Cataclysm. My bad.

Demon Hunter tattoos aren’t on display 100% of the time. Their armor isn’t invisible. It depends entirely on the gear you equip. The Demon Hunter starts out in gear which shows off their tattoos pretty well, but things start getting covered up soon after. Their tier gear, I imagine, will take their tattoos into consideration.

Whether or not you want your tattoos on full display will be determined by your ability to transmog yourself for it.

I’m not sure there was a compelling reason. This is, honestly, a topic I don’t like discussing because it all makes me feel ill, too — but I think it’s important people remember the Warcraft franchise has done some pretty messed up stuff on that front. The breeding experiments with the Draenei wasn’t an isolated incident. The Dragonmaw Orcs forcibly bred Alexstrasza to get their dragon mounts. Check out the character model of Sinestra sometime. Those burns and claw marks? Yeah, guess how the Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight ended up that way. And think the Blue Dragons in Wrath of the Lich King. Remember Keristrasza? The red dragon which Malygos mind controlled to be his new consort and we had to put her out of her misery? Malygos didn’t simply mind control a dragon for laughs — no, it’s established and clearly stated he captured Keristrasza specifically to be his new consort.

Blizzard has used this particular story hook over and over again. In a franchise which is typically fluffy and fun, they really like using this specific thing and then glossing over it in the hopes nobody notices. For some reason, they seem to take it lightly and make it the default “bad guy” activity. And people tend to ignore these things are part of this game’s story. I don’t know whether people think it isn’t bad, don’t know it’s there, or they just don’t want to recognize Warcraft has repeatedly used rape as a plot device, but it’s there and holy crap does it make the people aware of it really uncomfortable.

I don’t think there are any established half-dwarf/half-humans, but when we’re talking fantasy settings, I generally don’t have a problem with this kind of thing. I’m of the opinion they add fun and variety to the setting — and I think it’s perfectly believable that a human and a dwarf could fall in love, or a human and an elf, or an elf and a dwarf, or an orc and an elf. I think those races are all similar enough that it doesn’t hurt the world, but rather enriches the world, to allow viable offspring between them. My only exceptions are when the races/species are dramatically different. The tauren and pandaren, for example. Count them out of this whole viable offspring thing. A gnome can fall in love with a tauren if they want, and that love can be reciprocated — they’re both talking, feeling, thinking, sentient beings — but their ability to reproduce seems unlikely.