The Queue: Missing faces

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!

You know, I’m still pretty annoyed that Wrathion hasn’t made an appearance in Legion. I mean, this is the whole reason he was hand-holding us along in Mists of Pandaria. This is the thing he was seriously concerned with, the thing that gave him purpose in that expansion. And suddenly he’s just…gone? I miss the snarky little guy. I hope we see him at some point in Legion, because I don’t think that character deserves to just be abandoned. He was great.

As a fan of all the little moments of recognition players got in Wrath, I’m really pleased to see it make a return in Legion. I especially like the little moments where random NPCs will chatter about whatever Artifact I’ve picked up. Having an NPC notice the world around it makes the NPC feel just a little bit more “alive,” if you will — and it also makes players feel like their efforts are appreciated, even if it’s by random Tauren #376 in a building somewhere off in the wild.

The dungeon journal certainly implies that the Nightmare is about to spread out into real-world Azeroth, but I don’t think the individual encounters are taking place in the “real” world — they’re threatening to bleed over. You’re rooting out the corruption at its source, in the Emerald Nightmare.

Okay I know the holiday is over but there’s another major one coming so I feel like I have to step in here and offer my two cents for aspiring holiday-dinner crafters out there. Reynolds makes these things called Oven Bags for various roasts, and they’re lifesavers. I have never made a “bad” turkey in one of those things, same goes for Christmas hams and other big roasts. Just follow the instructions in the package and you’re golden — along with the turkey you pull out of the oven. Turkey’s not really what I’d call a super flavorful meat anyway, it’s more like neutral fodder for your mouth in between all the delicious side dishes. And a vehicle for gravy. But yeah — the oven bags keep everything from drying out. They’re great. They’re not what I’d call expensive, they’re usually marked down to a couple bucks over the holidays. And they collect all the broth in one convenient place for you to freeze, if you like using broth/stock in soups and the like.

I don’t think the idea was a bust necessarily — people seemed to enjoy the packs well enough. But it didn’t really feel like they had any major promotion behind them, and they were oddly spread out. It felt like there was way, way too long between releases of the packs, and there wasn’t a really clear set of release dates for the things. When they did come out, it was to very little fanfare. Which is a pity, because they were a really cool idea.

As for StarCraft — I don’t know, maybe it’s time to give that particular franchise a rest for a bit. Maybe come up with something new to hit the sci-fi angle, tackle a different genre of game, come up with a different deep-space tale to tell.

Not…really? I mean it’s not impossible to think about, but the Alementals were a direct result of Uncle Gao’s wild experiments in Stormstout Brewery. I’m not sure if they’re a proper “elemental” — they’re more like poor water elementals that got tangled up in the brewery. So it’s not sentinent beer so much as sentinent water that whoops, got tossed into that whole fermentation beer-making process. It makes sense when you consider that the Alemental model is just a recolor of the water spirit model.

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!