The Queue: They’re not lost, they’re broken

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!

We didn’t want to go there. We knew those island were there, we just ignored them. We’ve had one world crisis after another and all indications pointed to the Broken Isles being a place which sucked real bad, so we kept our distance. Having played the alpha, I’ve seen a few reasons why we wouldn’t want to get too close: naga, murlocs, and sea giants. There are a number of giants in Azsuna who sink ships like it’s their job. The coastline is full of wrecked ships. The Broken Isles are the kind of place sailors would really rather avoid.

That said, we do actually see some people on the Broken Isles who arrived long before we did — not natives to the area, but people who traveled there previously and have spent some time there already.

This feature haunts me. Very few people actually ever read it, yet people keep asking for it to make a comeback. We’ve resurrected it based on requests numerous times over the years, yet its viewership was consistently bottom of the barrel. I’m convinced even the people who ask for its return never actually read it. It’s one of those situations where I could publish a fart and more people would look at it. I even tried to spice it up with comedy and the result was its few readers getting super mad I ruined their highly scientific poll about NPCs fighting each other for some reason.

I’ve spoken to/heard from enough people who know nothing about Warcraft to know this marketing is not aimed at me, but it is absolutely working on its intended audience. We’re already Warcraft fans and we’re almost certainly going to see it regardless of the marketing. People who know nothing about Warcraft? The trailers make it look like a fun film, something they’d have a blast watching for two hours. Trailers are rarely aimed at people who already know what a movie is about. They’re aimed at the people who don’t. In that sense, the worst thing a trailer can do is make a movie look boring. If dubsteppy quick-cuts gets more people in seats to see what the movie is really all about, that’s a marketing win — and it seems to be working.

Suramar isn’t open yet on the alpha and that zone seems to be the center of their civilization. What’s in there? I’m not sure yet. However, we do see the Withered in other zones — Nightborne which have succumbed to their mana addiction. Suramar was once in close proximity to the Well of Eternity, but that’s gone now, so it’s probably safe to say they don’t have a Well anymore. There might be remnants and pockets of magic they slurp up, but probably no Well.

No, and if they would ever do such a thing, it wouldn’t be this one. My perspective as someone in the alpha (who is admittedly not a developer) is they’re going to be hard pressed to hit 100% completion by the end of August. I’m sure they can do it, but with the state things are in now, it’s going to be tough. I think the leveling experience is almost there, although the quest flow in each zone changes slightly in every build. Suramar isn’t open yet, world quests are only in their first testable iteration (and extremely buggy), most classes don’t have their class questline playable yet, class balance is wonky, some dungeons are still wonky, I don’t know where they are with raid testing, and on and on.

It’s getting there. It isn’t done. It likely won’t be done until August, and once it finally launches, we’re going to see the same deluge of hotfixes we experience with every expansion/patch. There’s a reason I’ve rolled my eyes whenever I saw someone insist the expansion absolutely will launch by June. No. No way. Ain’t happening.