The Queue: Never not playing dressup

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!

This isn’t a question, but I wanted to address it anyway. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a bug, but an intended change. You see your own pets full size, but other people see your pets in miniature to reduce screen clutter. This is, most likely, so they can go wild on pet count and sizes for the player. If I were playing melee and I had a Death Knight’s full sized abomination (or a Warlock’s full sized Infernal/Abyssal) standing on top of me, I’d be pissed. Similarly, Demonology Warlocks can have roughly ten billion demons on-screen at one time — they can have more demons on the battlefield than there are mobs in a typical dungeon trash pack.

WoW’s combat already has issues with screen clutter. While I do love WoW, I’ve never played another game where I have so much trouble keeping track of my character in the midst of heavy combat. While the baby pets look silly, it does prevent the screen clutter from getting even worse.

Nope, Blizzard hasn’t announced the virtual items yet. However, it’s probably safe to assume WoW will get some kind of murloc.

The zones all tend to have one main biome and then a few smaller ones used in specific areas. Stormheim is mostly autumnal woods, but there are also darker areas, such as spookier woods and misty, gloomy shoreside regions. Val’sharah is mostly green, but red and black where the Nightmare has taken root, plus the areas around Black Rook Hold which are much darker — reminiscent of Gilneas in lighting. Highmountain is mostly mountains and valleys, but the color palette changes depending on elevations. When you’re at the lowest points in the zone, there’s trees and vegetation and all of that. When you’re up near the peaks, it’s snow and rocks, resulting in a completely different color palette.

Also not a question, but answering anyway: This is how I remember the encounter playing out ever since Burning Crusade. Some people mentioned this is a new “bug” or some kind of book-related retcon, but this is how it’s always been. Illidan collapses while Maiev is delivering her monologue, but you don’t strike the deathblow until Maiev is done talking.

Burning Crusade was many years ago now, so I might be misremembering, but I seem to recall our take regularly punching Illidan in the face to end him after Maiev had done her speech.

I believe you encountered the transmog window bug which has been around for awhile now. Now and then, for reasons unknown, the vendor won’t apply your transmog after you’ve clicked the confirm button. It just won’t do it — nothing will happen. If you close the window and try again, it should work.

He isn’t blind without it. They’ve shown him without it in the comics. I believe his visor is meant to be the thing which is providing his “auto-aim” ability — or at least assisting in it. When you use his ultimate in-game, additional HUD elements pop up. His visor is what’s displaying those HUD elements to him, the character.

Well, a couple of things. First, the Tavern Queue format is innately limited, especially on a site where it’s a side activity rather than primary focus. There are a lot of subjects I love, but I’m not necessarily knowledgeable enough on the subject to answer everyone’s bizarre and esoteric questions. Therefore, while I would feel qualified to write news or editorials or opinions or what-have-you about those subjects, I wouldn’t feel comfortable opening it to Q&A like I’m some kind of expert. I would rather write what I have to say about those subjects rather than do the Q&A format and hope and pray people ask the questions I actually want them to ask. I had plenty to say about Metal Gear Solid, but people didn’t ask questions which resulted in my ability to say them — and the number of questions period was quite small because this is a Blizzard games site, even if people did, in fact, read it.

There’s only a small handful of topics I’d feel comfortable doing a Q&A for … and I already did two or three of them. There’s an endpoint there. It’s like I know enough about Warlocks to talk about them sometimes, but I wouldn’t write the Warlock column. I have some knowledge about the class, but I won’t reach beyond my ability. I can write about a comic book I like. I can’t answer a Q&A question about a specific writer in a specific run of a specific comic from 1982.

Second, we haven’t done much Tavern-related content at all recently because we’re much closer to giving that content its own home now. We were doing it here because we wanted to do it anyway but weren’t ready to create a new space for it yet. We’re getting there, so we’ve eased up.

I wouldn’t say I have a preference. It depends on the talent. Is it a cool button? Is it a cool passive? That matters more. What I will say, though, is I’ve leaned heavily on passives in this Legion patch while I re-learn my classes. Pick a bunch of passives, learn the basic rotation, then switch to active talents if I feel like something is missing.

I don’t know about anybody else, but none of my fantasies involve a wand. (Don’t misconstrue that.) Wands are preeeetty boring. I don’t care how hard Harry Potter and certain other franchises try to make wands cool. They’re not cool. Even the word “wand” isn’t cool; it’s a lame-o replacement for “scepter” or “stave.” And World of Warcraft also has staves, so let’s throw all of the wands in the trash and stick to knives, swords, and staves.