The Queue: That was a week

Some good things happened. Some bad things happened. It was a week, all right.

This is The Queue. Ask questions, we try and answer them. I’m listening to Flame by The Sebadoh. Let’s get to it, shall we?

I just get one?

Okay, imagine this. As the Legion starts making a push on Stormwind, and the Alliance is at its most beleagured, a figure rides into the city on the back of a griffin, leaps off, and starts laying waste to demons with a huge golden 2h sword. She makes her way to the castle, having almost single-handedly destroyed a major Legion offensive. The King demands to know her identity, upon which she draws back her cloak and declares that she is Julian Lothar, daughter of Anduin, last of the Arathi bloodline. Raised in secret to protect her from her father’s enemies, she has spent the past two decades since the Second War honing her talents and skills to help defend her people and live up to her father’s legacy.

I’d definitely love to see a Lothar walk Azeroth again. And it would be nice to have a badass Warrior now that so many of them are dead and gone, someone to carry the tradition of figures like Lothar and Turalyon. Also, as the last of the Arathi bloodline she could even be involved in retaking Stromgarde for the Alliance and restoring the ancient capital of the Arathi to Humanity.

I imagine her using the two hand sword from this piece of fan art, a kind of golden lion version of Ashkandi. I have all sorts of ideas for the character, but I don’t want to bore y’all to tears here. But she’d definitely serve as an antithesis both to Anduin Wrynn’s extremely pacifistic turn and those that refuse to seek common cause against the Legion.

Yes.

What? I agree with him. It’s time to just do that already. I don’t know why we haven’t already made almost everything account wide. I mean, with mounts account wide, heirlooms account wide, the upcoming Wardrobe, stuff like flying in new content linked to an account wide achievement, yes, I think it’s time it was all account wide.

There is no canonical in game lore reason why they didn’t bring Acherus to Northrend. However, since I like you, here are several plausible reasons they may not have wanted to do that:

1 – Bringing Acherus to Northrend is a direct and immediate challenge to the Scourge that would almost certainly cause the Lich King to marshall all of the forces at his command to retake one of the largest and most powerful of the former Scourge necropoli.

2 – The Lich King lost control of the Order of the Ebon Blade when he used them as disposable pawns at the battle of Light’s Hope and admitted to such in front of them, causing Darion Mograine to break free of his control. Perhaps Darion didn’t want to risk the loyalties of those under his command who might fall under the Lich King’s sway again if such an open target was presented to him.

3 – They didn’t know how to move Acherus yet. There’s nothing saying that they knew how to do it then. For that matter, they do move Acherus to Northend briefly during Legion. But there’s an in game reason why it might not have been their idea to do that.

4 – They weren’t sure of the Alliance and Horde response. Dalaran had allies on both sides; the Death Knights of Acherus might have felt like they didn’t want to risk the divided loyalties we saw in Andorhal in Cataclysm by forcing their DK’s to choose a faction side. What if Garrosh saw Acherus as just another Scourge threat and attacked? What do Horde DK’s do then?

I could make up more, but that’s four reasonable ones for now.

As far back as when Diablo 3 launched I was arguing that the Barbarian was what Fury should be like. I’m aware that there are lots of reasons why WoW doesn’t play that way – Warriors (and other classes you mentioned) have more than six active abilities at a time, for example. I’m sure allowing Warriors to accumulate a full resource bar with attacks like that would have balance issues (right now in Warlords a Fury Warrior can talent Bloodthirst so it can be used over and over again in a similar manner, but it ends up being less DPS to play that way) but I’ve always thought and will always think that Warriors need a more frenetic style when they dual wield, and Fury in general just lacks the visceral power of the D3 Barb.

I don’t play Starcraft much at all. But if I did, it would be Protoss all the way. Mind links, energy blades, cool alien culture. I would love for Blizzard to say “Hey, write a Protoss novel for us” because I have so many ideas. It’s not even funny.

And that’s the Queue for today. I’ll see you guys Tuesday. In the meantime leave lots of questions for Anne.