The Queue: Your friends will explode

Back in the day I raided in AQ 40 when it was the hot new raid and we’d just mastered writing. One of the things that was weird and cool about that raid was, C’thun (the Old God who was the big boss of the raid) would randomly whisper things like Your heart will explode or your friends will abandon you to your raid. Now, my wife Julian used to play in the same room as I did, and as a result often C’thun would whisper to her and then to me within a second or so. As a result, the whispers would get mangled together, and we’d often hear Your heart will abandon you or your friends will explode, which to our mind was both every bit as creepy and also a touch more bizarre as threats go.

Your Heart Will Abandon You sounds like a 70’s country song to me.

Anyway, this is the Queue. My new book is out, if you like weird Lovecraftian monsters making friends explode. Even if you don’t.

Mercy.

{PB}Tyrael’s lieutenant was Izual, who was captured during a poorly conceived assault on the Hellforge even though Tyrael told him not to. (Izual had done very well in previous battles against the Prime Evils, and it seemed that it had gone to his head.) He managed to get himself captured and spent a long, long time being tortured until he revealed the secrets of the Soulstones to the demons. Eventually he broke utterly and the demons remade him as a servant to goad and insult the High Heavens and Tyrael specifically. It was using Izual’s knowledge of the Soulstones that the Prime Evils plotted the Dark Exile and their eventual corruption of the Worldstone.

As for why none of the Angels who served Tyrael chose to embrace mortality, I think most would have been horrified at the prospect. When Angels die, their essence returns to the Crystal Arch and a new Angel is born. What Tyrael has chosen means that when he dies, no one knows what will become of him.

I don’t know when my next Warrior column will go live, but when it does it has a detailed run through on the Warrior Class Mount scenario. In it, I admit that Damrul the Stronk killed me the first time I did him, because I didn’t realize his jumping attack left a patch of ground that would slow and damage you. Once I realized that I just Heroic Leap’ed out of it, but that first time, he got me down.

So don’t despair. It’s just a matter of learning what mechanics to avoid.

If you pay attention, Malthael’s armor is purified when he dies at the Nephalem’s hands, returning to its classic gold and white appearance. This heavily implies that yes, Malthael’s essence has returned to the Crystal Arch and someday a new entity will be formed from it. That being won’t be Malthael, of course, but it might be a new Archangel of Wisdom.

Nope.

I feel no more guilty for getting achievements in that fashion than I do in getting transmog loot in that fashion. That’s the whole point of running old content, to get stuff you couldn’t get when it was current. Achievements are just another thing you can get that way, and I’m really not concerned with them coming too easily.

Okay, this is the end of the Queue. I’ll see y’all next Friday.