The Queue: Throw the book at him

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!

I already kind of liked Khadgar, but the latest Harbingers short pretty much launched him into “lore people I love” territory. Although really Khadgar, you should take more care when you’re handling those books, seeing as how your first gig was cleaning up that library way back in The Last Guardian. Speaking of which, they’re re-releasing that title and a couple of Blizzard’s other older books under the Blizzard Legends moniker. No word on a release date, but you can preorder them, anyway!

It’s really hard to answer this question, because that answer is pretty subjective. Personally, I think the best starting areas for story are probably the Worgen, Night Elves (particularly Darkshore), Forsaken, and Humans to a degree — although Human storylines lean more towards the comedic side of things at early levels. I think it has less to do with the race in question and more to do with the quests themselves. I love Draenei, and I love Blood Elves, but they currently have the oldest starting zones in the game, so quest chains feel dated and aren’t quite as packed with story as starting zones that were revamped or introduced post-Cataclysm.

I think Worgen is still my favorite because so much happens while you’re leveling. So many major events collide at once that it makes the whole experience really entertaining. Or it did for me, anyway!

I don’t know if I find any of them inspiring in terms of being…inspirational, but there are a handful that are just really well written and inspiring in that aspect — characters whose stories I’d like to write. Wrathion’s right up there on that list, Khadgar has joined him, Anduin is on there, Lorna and Alistair Crowley — there are…a lot of them, really!

It’s pretty much magic. Mind you, Sylvanas wasn’t originally undead, she was a banshee, and she reclaimed her body. So maybe her body just wasn’t that far gone, or was pretty well preserved. Or…well, you know, magic! Forsaken don’t really decay. They’re in a state of decaying — like how some models are missing pieces or parts — but once they’re reanimated, all of their assorted parts seem to stay put.

People are still getting set up and comfortable with the new classes, and shuffling through collecting things for their Wardrobes. There’s the whole Doomsayer achievement to take care of it you haven’t done that yet, too. Basically they’re rolling out the systems stuff and letting people acclimate to that, and then hitting us with the invasion stuff after everyone’s had a chance to catch up and reacquaint themselves with what’s going on in game, if need be.

Yes it is — he’s always been powerful. He just hasn’t gone overboard with that power. But you have to remember even back in the days of the Second War, Khadgar was a force to be reckoned with. He destroyed the Dark Portal, although he was unable to completely seal the rift between worlds. He faced off against Deathwing on Draenor and basically chased him off by using magic to rip the adamantium plates that were holding Deathwing together off of his body. He used Medivh’s spellbook to shut down the portal from Draenor’s side, preventing Azeroth from getting hit with the backlash of Draenor’s destruction.

And I mean even in Warlords he was powerful. He froze a mountain of angry Orcs in place so we could get away, mass teleported a mountain of people out of a mountain and blew up a dam like it was nothing. And that was only the beginning — really, the fact that he was able to craft those legendary rings for us out of materials he had no real knowledge of to begin with was pretty extraordinary.

Khadgar doesn’t use his powers that often. He’s not a flashy Mage — he doesn’t like showing off. I think part of that is because he knows it won’t really get him anywhere, but more importantly I think he’s well aware that giant displays of power often get the attention of the wrong kind of people. Like the demonic armies of the Burning Legion.

Draenor was destroyed in year 8 of the timeline — year 0 being the year that the Dark Portal first opened and unleashed the Orcs on Azeroth. Burning Crusade was in year 26, meaning that all those people stranded on Outland were there for a good 18 years before they saw anyone on Azeroth again. That’s why Arator — Alleria and Turalyon’s son — is full grown when we run into him in Outland. He was just a little kid when the Alliance Expedition went through the Dark Portal, and he had plenty of time to grow up while his parents were off stranding themselves somewhere in the Twisting Nether.

That’s it for today’s Queue — if you have any questions you’d like to see answered, be sure to leave them in the comments below!