The Queue: Valorous intent

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!

While I like the questing experience, I feel the effort/reward ratio is off. The base recipes for Blacksmithing are truly terrible, and I couldn’t even learn most of them until I’d hit level 110. It’s not like I outleveled my profession by hitting 110 too fast — some of the quests sent me to Suramar, which I couldn’t do until 110. The trainer in Suramar is giving me recipe for gear that already sucked at level 105. I know these items are upgradable, and that’s the whole point of the system, but the base recipes producing gear so terrible feels terrible.

If the recipes were marginally useful upon learning them, I’d appreciate the questing experience much more. Running all over the continent for a pile of junk is unpleasant.

No, Neptulon just shows up. Presumably he freed himself off-screen. The raid in which Neptulon was supposed to be significant back in Cataclysm ended up getting canceled, so I imagine if the developers knew they were going to do that ahead of time, Neptulon never would’ve been nabbed. We either pretend it didn’t happen, or assume Neptulon is capable of fighting a squid by himself.

Yep! They give you a point over what would otherwise be the max. If you can put two points into a trait, for example, a relic does in fact give you the benfit of a third point. If a point gives you a 25% damage bonus, and the maximum two points brings it to a 50% bonus, the extra point from your relic would make it a 75% bonus.

Yesterday, technoskald left a great response to this question, and I’m more or less going to echo it. Most questing tells smaller, more intimate stories, which can have a beginning and an end. Most quest characters get to have a full arc, or get to take action because their impact on the overall narrative is minimal. Being a major figure in World of Warcraft comes with the baggage of needing to be “epic.” Major character storylines drag out for years and years. If a major figure makes some kind of move in the universe, it tends to have a huge impact. Is that how it needs to be? No. But that’s how Blizzard handles it. I’d love to see the major figures get some smaller, more intimate stories, too.

Why can’t we get some smaller-scale screentime with Jaina, for example, to better show people the trauma she’s dealing with? Why couldn’t Vol’jin get an arc which shows the weight of what it is to be Warchief?

Suramar is one of my favorite zones because it introduces you to an entire cast of persistent, unique characters, who have their own stories and lives and traumas. There’s a reason that zone has become my favorite and I really don’t give a damn what the overall narrative is in WoW anymore.

They haven’t said, but I assume they’ll become available when raiding becomes available, considering they’re raid bosses which drop raid gear. The Emerald Nightmare first opens September 20, so that’s most likely when we’ll see our first raid bosses.

Personally, I don’t see the vrykul as a Horde race, unless we’re specifically looking at the jerky-jerkface vrykul we fight a lot, who wouldn’t join either faction. Otherwise, the vrykul are still descended from Titanic creations, still worship their Titan gods, and all of that jazz. The Alliance is where it’s at for that stuff. The Alliance has the Humans, descended from vrykul. The Alliance has the Dwarves, Earthen who succumbed to the Curse of Flesh, and the Gnomes, children of Mimiron. The vrykul are less “blood and honor” and more “bravery and valor.” They strike me as very much an Alliance race.

Ditto the Nightborne. They have their posh metropolitan lifestyle steeped in the arcane. Both the Horde and the Alliance already have elves, but Alliance elves are lacking that snobbery the Nightborne bring to the table. To the Horde, they’d just be blue Blood Elves.

Races like the Drogbar, various Troll offshoots, Highmaul-style Ogres, and Arakkoa all seem like they’d make good Horde races. I know when I’ve previously had this discussion, Horde players get upset because I always list ugly races for the Horde … but y’all know you’re the Horde, right? You’re the beastly outcasts! That’s your whole schtick! That’s why you’re the Horde! The Blood Elves are the exception to the rule.

Solution: Be a Warrior and Heroic Leap down to earth instead of using those awful elevators. It looks way more cool.

If the person who tagged it first is on the same faction you are, just once. If the person who tagged it first is on the opposite faction, you can’t get credit. The exception here is rares and named quest mobs, which both factions can tap.

Fishing, at least for a few expansions now, has been less about leveling it up and more about the endless pursuit of ludicrously distant goals. You can easily cap fishing … but if you’re after anything other than cooking materials, you’re going to be at it for a long, long time. Even without getting into the Fishing artifact, check out your Fishing achievements for Legion sometime. The number of things you can catch is pretty crazy and they’re all quite rare.