The Queue: Peanut butter bologna sandwiches
@MatthewWRossi
Why is this phrase stuck in my head? I seem to recall a muppet saying it before doing magic. Am I insane? Am I remembering what never was? I honestly don’t know.
Anyway, it’s the Queue. Let’s Queue this.
I have always wanted to type that.
Q4TQ: What exactly was going on in the Outland version of Auchanei Crypts? I get that Exarch Maladaar had gone a little crazy, but it seems like there were plenty of living Draenei willing to help him out.
Those were the Auchenai, who were originally the order that tended to and protected Auchindoun. In Warlords you see them in their original role, uncorrupted by madness and grief. But the Auchenai in The Burning Crusade are the survivors of the destruction of Draenor, and have lost just about everything — Auchindoun itself, their last refuge against the Legion, everything. Add to that the void energies emitted by D’ore in his void state and you have a sect that once communed with the dead, but who now believe that death and annihilation are the natural order of things. Like Maladath, they await the inevitable end, and even seek to hasten it.
And it’s hard to say they’re wrong exactly. Their world was torn apart, their holy place blown into fragments, their dead not allowed to rest. Everything the Auchenai originally believed about life and death could be said to have been utterly destroyed. It’s no wonder they’re a touch nihilistic.
QFTQ: Given that Mists lead to Warlords via G-Unit, and Warlords lead to Legion via O-G-Unit, do you think we will see continuing storylines as ‘standard’ now? Or do you feel they will ultimately return to standalone stories a la Wrath where threat is presented, threat is conquered, carry on. Personally I like the continuing story arcs, but I’m not sure how simplistic they are to write as a narrative.
I’d argue that we’ve always had expansions as continuing stories, it just used to be that they continued stories from the Warcraft RTS games. The Burning Crusade definitely picked up on the threads from Warcraft II and Warcraft III, and Wrath of the Lich King is essentially The Frozen Throne 2 — Attack of the Arthas Boogaloo. Even Cataclysm continues stories from Warcraft II and to a lesser degree tie-in novels like Day of the Dragon.
Indeed, Mists is the only expansion that didn’t really continue any previous expansion’s stories because we finally hit the point where World of Warcraft has enough history behind it to have stories to directly continue forward. It’s the nature of a franchise with this much history, ultimately.
One of the biggest problems when talking about World of Warcraft, and one I’ve been arguing against for years, is the danger of taking your group and its experiences and assuming they’re the same as everyone else’s. I’m sure that you’re relating me your experiences with as much honesty and fidelity as you can, and that in your case the scaling issues took place as you report them.
But when I raided this expansion (which I was doing despite my personal problem with playing) I had the exact opposite experience. Flex was a joy. It let us bring as many people as we wanted. Fight scaling seemed to work fine, we never felt compelled to drop people from the group just to kill a boss.
So, do I think Flex worked? Yes, but I can’t speak for everyone. If people are having the experience you just laid out, that’s a problem that needs to be fixed, but it’s not a problem I experienced. Our group loved Flex.
So what in Legion elicits super duper excitement?
Keeping in mind that the leveling experience in the Warlords beta was a ton of fun and I ended up very excited after playing it —
I’m liking the story so far. Every zone except Stormheim I like both factions story. Stormheim, well, I simply hate doing quests for the Forsaken, so I’m not likely to go there on my Tauren. Hopefully I can level to 110 without it. The Alliance story there is fine.
I’m super excited for the new Wardrobe, of course.
The dungeons have all been fun and engaging.
I love Fury’s animations. Just love them. And I’m very excited for the lore behind the Arms Artifact. Even Protection feels pretty badass with its Deathwing scale shield.
I like Superman jumping to the Warrior class hall.
The new scaling so that you can do any zone in any order is well implemented and I love having that freedom.
What do we think will get announced at Blizzcon this year? I’m thinking new Diablo expansion.
I really have no idea, so I’m just going to make stuff up:
We’ll get the next World of Warcraft expansion announcement. Rage of Argus. We take the fight to the Eredar stronghold.
Diablo 4 announced. With Malthael defeated and the Black Soulstone destroyed, all seven of the Evils are loose on Sanctuary and the Angels are in disarray. It’s up to the Nephalem to stop the kingdoms of the world from falling to corruption. But can anyone be trusted with so much power?
With the success of the Warcraft movie, we’ll see a trailer for the sequel.
Okay, that’s enough guessing out of me. I expect an Overwatch announcement of some kind but I have no idea what it’ll be.
That’s the Queue for today. See y’all Friday. I’m going to see if Ashkandi will write that one for me.
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Do you feel that the flex design worked for raiding in WoD?
As a new element in the game, my personal experience was that I felt it was flawed. Often, a boss could be too hard for hours and then someone leaves and it is suddenly easy. The encounters didn’t change depending on number of players or (say) number of ranged vs melee. Finally, I didn’t feel that there was enough information from the designers on raid composition to serve as a template for success.
It was tough when we would blame ourselves for our lack when it was inherent in the design.