The Queue: Took a day

I didn’t play WoW at all yesterday. Legion is great, but it also kind of got a bit overwhelming for me and I wanted a break. I’ll hopefully be raiding tonight (want to try out the Fury hotfix changes) so I figure taking a day to just do other stuff won’t hurt me too much.

Let’s talk about, well, anything you want I suppose.

There are so many returning favorites in Legion that I actually had a hard time with this. I’d pick out a character and then remember ‘oh, no, that’s from Cataclysm‘ or ‘no, he was in the novels’ and I had the devil’s own time figuring out which new character to list here.

But I’m going to go with Finna Bjornsdottir. From the moment I met her on the Broken Shore to having her serve as a my combat ally, I’ve enjoyed Finna quite a bit. I like that she’s a Prot Warrior with Shield Charge (I miss Glad Stance), I like her attitude during the Broken Shore itself (“I’d rather kill it.”) and I’d love to get to see her do more in the world. If we ever get playable Vrykul I’d want her to be their faction leader.

Runner’s up include Mayla Highmountain, Prince Farondis, and Havi. Yes, I know who he really is, but Jim Cummings does an excellent job on the voice and makes him feel distinct. (To be fair, I actually like Odyn in a ‘I can’t believe what a jerk you are’ sort of way.)

I believe that your combat ally scales to your ilevel when out in the world — Champion ilevel is only used in missions.

I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about the whole Xe’ra questline without spoilers. Because I like the quests, and think they’re a lot more nuanced than anyone else seems to think.

First off, I’ve enjoyed the quests as quests — they take the old Battlemaiden formula from Cataclysm’s Vashj’ir and make it a lot more interesting, in my opinion. I especially liked the last one I did at Artifact Knowledge 5.

But I think the storytelling is interesting as well. I’m sorry to say I disagree with ScottLeyes’ interpretation of Illidan’s characterization, but I also disagree with our own Alex Ziebart’s take on it — I think with Illidan we’re getting to watch a master class in self rationalization continuously biting a guy in his nether regions and it’s fascinating. It’s a very Blizzard story — person does despicable things with good intentions and ends up buried in a quagmire of bad acts, and if you paid attention to Arthas or Garrosh you’re not surprised at all by it.

What really interests me is how Xe’ra presents it all, though — how she frames these stories to emphasize Illidan’s great destiny but then shows him at his wartiest, most intractable, most petulant moments. Illdian doesn’t come off well in a single moment I’ve experienced yet, and that’s fascinating to me. I honestly wonder where Xe’ra is going with all this.

I’m very fond of this quest line so far. How does someone come back to the Light after being and doing what Illidan has? Is it possible? Will it be believable? We can but wait and see what they do with it. I’m definitely interested.

How do you mean ‘related’ in regards to Humans and Elves? If you mean ‘they’ve had the most contact’ I could kind of see it — Humans were the closest thing to an ally the High Elves had until their constant back and forth “We want to be isolated because we’re superior to you/We’re racists” got too much to deal with. But Humans aren’t actually related to Elves at all, as far as we know. (It could turn out that Trolls descend from a Titan Forged race, but as of now it doesn’t appear to be so) and so, I don’t know that I’d put them up there. I mean, there’s no real connection there anymore, especially since the Alliance’s Elves are Night Elves nowadays.

I mean, you could make a case for Draenei, but I think most people (including Draenei themselves) would be leery of hopping those guys up on the demonic kool aid. So maybe Humans out of a lack of a better option? I kind of feel like most other races seem ludicrous as Demon Hunters. Gnomes? Dwarves? Pandaren? And a Worgen Demon Hunter is just starting to get silly. Pandaren feel right out.

As for Horde races, the only race I could see doing it are Orcs. I get what you’re saying about Trolls being related and all, but for whatever reason I can imagine tattooed, blindfolded, demon infused Orcs a lot more easily.

I think we’d all need brown pants if the Tauren started eating demons and getting wings, though. The Feltotem were bad enough.

I’m sure people have already mentioned that Wowhead has a dressing room feature where you can look at various outfits, but in terms of actually applying them to your character? No, you have to be logged in to do that.

And dear God if they made a transmog app I’d never have a moment’s peace in my life.

Okay, that’s the Queue. Not wanting to dump a ton of bad health news on y’all, but if you could, I don’t know, ask the universe to be nice to me today. I could use it. Alex is back up tomorrow so he’ll see you then. Be cool y’all.