The Queue: Slouching towards Anaheim
@MatthewWRossi
It’s the Queue. Everybody dance!
So BlizzCon is this Friday and I published my second novel this week. I’m not getting a lot of sleep is what I’m saying.
The Xavius that worked (or just had similar goals) for the old gods was killed in Stormrage, something the novel went out of it’s way to confirm. But because he is a demon, his soul went back to the Twisting Nether like all demons. So for him to be walking around again, he would have had to make a deal with the Legion. So my guess he was sent back to destroy the Dream by the Legion and using Ill’gynoth was just a means to the end for him.
This is an interesting theory, and it might be the case, but we don’t know that it is. We know from the Demon Hunter starting experience that just because you have an immortal demon soul, it doesn’t follow that the Legion gets to tell you what to do. If the Legion found his soul in the Twisting Nether, it’s certainly possible that they grabbed it and gave him new marching orders. But it’s just as possible that N’Zoth is powerful enough to grab hold of Xavius and drag him back to existence. Especially since it’s strongly hinted by the end of the raid (esp. if you’re a Shadow Priest thanks to their chatty artifact) that thanks to the events of the Emerald Nightmare raid, N’Zoth is awake now.
I was reflecting on the “Destiny Unfulfilled” quest, and I thought of an interesting twist: What if you had the ability to actually wipe the raid?
For me it was one of the most frustrating things. To go and get all of them down only to infinitely Battle Rez (I call hax!). Everytime they wipe they come back with “better gear,” and “better strategies,” and more cheeky dialog. Players could test to see how many rounds they could go against a raid.
The only real fall down is that Taunt won’t work on a player controlled character, however how about having the tanks literally taunt you (basically a yell with not nice things said to you). Sure it won’t work mechanically, but some entertainment value could be squeezed from it. Maybe to force you to deal with the Tank instead of just zerging down the healers they could make the tank have an intervene on a short cooldown or produce a damage reduction aura for a certain radius around the tank.
Thoughts?
I’m going to put it out there that they could make Taunt work on a player controlled character for this quest.
There’s already mind control effects in game that force you to attack your party or raid (like going insane fighting Yogg, for one example) and it wouldn’t be hard to code a ‘Taunt’ in the Destiny Unfulfilled scenario that forced you to attack the tank for eight seconds. You could even design a ‘Threat’ mechanic for the fight that fills up a bar and when the bar is full, forces you to attack a specific character and you can’t stop until the bar is empty.
There are ways to do this using tools that already exist in game. Yes, it would be incredibly frustrating, but I think that sums up what life must be like for a raid boss anyway.
Remember, BlizzCon-goers, 5-2-1! Every day: Sleep 5 hours, eat 2 meals, take 1 shower. Your brain will thank you. Your body will thank you. Your fellow attendees will thank you!
I sleep 3 hours a night when I’m getting to sleep at all. (I slept 3 last night, so for me I’m well rested.) I generally support the idea that you should always get some sleep, at least two meals a day, and you should definitely shower once a day at least when going to a convention.
Seriously, take care of yourselves out there. Another tip I have for you is wash your hands frequently. Con crud is real and it will savage you.
QftQ: Would you like to have your Main Toon’s abilities IRL? If so, what would you do with them?
I’m going with my main of 11 years: Druid
Yes totally want to have shapeshifting abilities IRL.. FLYING?? Yes please! Stealthing? OMG Yes..(hopefully I will use only for good purposes). And I would totally want to be able to heal… Alex, amongst other people.. I wouldn’t be stingy.
If I had the abilities of a World of Warcraft Warrior?
Well, the thing is, even though Warriors in WoW aren’t magic or anything, they’re definitely superhuman. Especially now that I can superman jump to a magical city from certain places. I’m not sure what practical use the ability to take more damage, heal up instantly after six seconds, dual wield two claymores or charge people and stun them when I got there would really be, but sure, I’d take it. At the very least I’d be able to open jars really really well with a strength score that high.
Does anyone else have the game crash since 7.1? I’ve searched for other people having these bugs, but haven’t found anything.
There’s an item in my bag (it looks like a hearthstone with a bear paw print–I think I got it from the druid campaign). Whenever my mouse hovers over this item, WoW crashes and I have to log back in (so now I have to be very careful whenever I open my bag–as I can’t delete the item).
Another weird thing I’ve noticed is the Underlight Angler no longer displays as an artifact and has a title of “Item Level 187” (the actual artifact should be ilvl 750). It has stats of ~30K mana, a gem socket, and the undercurrent ability. I can no longer use the pearl in Dalaran, and I can’t gain AP (as it is not considered an artifact).
I’ve submitted a bug report, run the scan and repair of wow files, deleted caches and cookies, and run disk utility in safe mode (mac). Nothing has changed it. :(
I have not but I figured I’d put this here to see if more folks could help out. I checked the Bug Report forums but didn’t see anything about it, sadly.
Q4tQ: Where does BW get it’s breaking news? Are you guys on some Blizzard VIP mailing group? Do you scour the Blizzard website/Twitter constantly looking for new announcements? Do you data mine? Do you mine the data other people data mined? Do you have a fortunetelling cat? Does your spidey sense tingle? Do you get deja vu whenever Blizzard changes something?
We don’t data mine.
We get a lot of stuff emailed in as tips, we browse the various blogs and sites, both Blizzard’s official sites and other fansites. We read Twitter and other sources (Metafilter, Reddit, etc) and we’re all active players so sometimes (like with the thing where they’re letting you transmog to items like Shadow’s Edge since patch 7.1) we just notice things.
That’s just some of it, but it gives you an idea. We do in fact directly talk to Blizzard so sometimes we get press releases and/or just straight up contacted.
The last member of my raid group got her legendary today so I am now the only member of the 0/2 legendaries club… yay…
Update: 4 mins after writing this, yet another member of my guild got a legendary, he is not raiding at all and have only played his character for about 16 hrs on lvl 110.
Good for him I guess but the envy is real.
I play pretty constantly and I haven’t seen a legendary drop yet, so it’s not just you. Don’t feel bad.
In the Warcraft universe, what is “The Abyss?” Back in Warcraft III, I see there was a chapter/campaign about the Gates of the Abyss. Is this related to the void, or nether, or maelstrom?
There’s likely more than one, complicated by the fact that the word ‘abyss’ is used generically and also specifically in WoW.
For example, we have the demonic Abyssals, which are basically bigger, meaner Infernals. Abyssals are demons, they serve the Burning Legion.
But then we have the Abyssal Council, which is related to the Twilight’s Hammer and which serves the Old Gods. That’s not even mentioning the Abyssal Shelf (demons) the Abyssal Maw (Vasnj’ir, and a more proper use of the word Abyss since it’s in the ocean) or Mardum, the Shattered Abyss (the remains of the prison world that the Demon Hunters are sent to when you roll one) all of which are different places.
The word Abyss comes from Latin and is itself borrowed from Greek, and basically means ‘bottomless’ or ‘vast chasm’ and it’s often used to mean Hell or a infinitely dark place. I expect it’s being used that way in WoW as well.
Okay, that’s the Queue for today. I’ll see you guys Friday for the big ‘Aaaaah it’s BlizzCon’ Queue, and if you wanted to buy my new book to read while waiting for exciting things, I would not stop you.
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