The Queue: Goodnight Axe

So yeah, Nighthold’s pretty fun and pretty weird. The Chronomantic Anomaly is a strange fight that kind of reminds me of the room in Dire Maul just off the library with Immol’thar in it. The pylons with all the arcane elemental type mobs? Yeah, it definitely felt similar. And I guess that makes sense, since DM was built by and for the Highborne in much the same way Suramar was.

This is the Queue. I admit I may actually run Nighthold LFR on my DK when it comes out, I actually like the raid. Emerald Nightmare never really did it for me and Trial of Valor is a resounding meh, I just don’t really want to kill Helya all that much. Gul’dan, though, I very much would like to kill. Although with my luck he’ll come back as a demon thing.

This is the Queue. Let’s talk Blizzard games.

As far as I can tell after running 10 Timewalking dungeons yesterday, no, it does not count them. I am 95% sure it does not.

The goat people in question, the Khazra, are actually descended from humans transformed by ancient Vizjerai wizards, who summoned demons to possess and inhabit their bodies. The original human clans in question, the Umbaru, were chosen as victims by the Vizjerai because they were a relatively peaceful people and five of their clans were essentially destroyed as part of the Mage Clan Wars. Still others of the Umbaru deliberately pacted with a demon in order to gain control of their former kinsmen to use them as weapons against the Vizjerai, and were themselves transformed in Khazra as well.

In other words, the Khazra are demon infested monsters, not a natural race. They’re not innocents who just want to live in peace and play the drums (and those drums are likely made from human skin) they’re horrible, fiendish and aggressive. We fight them in Diablo III because the Fallen Star goads the evil inside their misshapen frames to madness.

It was fun but it was fun for reasons that no longer apply to me or I think most players. My guild was a big 40 man raid group and enough people to fill in for people who had to miss raid or burned out or whatever, so like 60 or so people on at any given time, and we all went to Silithus to help farm up bug parts and dumped a metric ton of Runecloth in Ironforge on the way out. After some mishaps with boats not going where they were supposed to, our small army of players hit Silithus and started competing for bug kills with the small army of Horde players and a few other small armies of Alliance players who were all after the Scarab Lord title for their own guilds.

I can’t imagine doing that stuff today. Just on one server Silithus must have had close to every single level 60 toon imaginable in it — easily a few thousand or so players crammed into that zone. It was frankly crazy and I have no idea how it ended up with our GM as a Scarab Lord. Sometimes I wish I’d gotten that title — I’m still playing, and he long since retired from WoW — but at the time I was happy to help him get it as a thank you for all the work he did running raids for us.

Yes, it was fun, but it was a kind of fun that was fun because we really didn’t know any better. I would absolutely not want to do it again.

Well, Wowhead lists it as account wide.

However, several comments in the Wowhead post for it indicate that other players are having the same experience as you are, and that the title is restrictive to characters who are exalted with the Tillers. So even though Wowhead lists it as account wide, it’s effectively not.

The Nightborne/Nightfallen dependence on the Nightwell goes beyond mere addiction to actual dependency. The Nightwell took the place of food for the Nightborne, and as a result they grew to rely on it in a manner far more intrinsic than even the addiction the Blood Elves faces after the destruction of the Sunwell.

The Arcan’dor does more than simply cure the addictive part of this dependency. As we see in the case of the Withered, they’re not merely desperate for mana, they’re also ravenously hungry. When they attack you, they’re trying to eat you, but they can gain no sustenance from the act of doing so, and so they continue to wither even as they kill and feed on whatever they can catch. Even the Ancient Mana that you bring to the Nightfallen is a temporary reprieve at best.

But the fruit of the Arcan’dor actually can provide them true nourishment, taking the place of and healing them of their dependency on the Nightwell.

Does this make them ‘normal’ Elves? I’m not sure, but the words of the quest text certainly seem to indicate that they haven’t traded one dependency for another. The Arcan’dor is just one tree, and I doubt that if it had to feed all of Suramar indefinitely it could. But Thalyssra speaks of it providing a new future for her people, and once we feed her, Oculeth and Valtois they all become permanently cured of their dependence on ancient mana, so I think it’s safe to say that yes, they’re as cured as one can be of such a state.

Okay, that’s the Queue for this Friday. I haven’t asked in a while, so I’ll just say if you’re looking for a book to read you could pick up one of mine. I’d appreciate it. The eyes are getting worse and I could use any mood lift you can spare.

Stay safe, take care of each other, and I’ll be here again next week.