The Queue: Weapon of choice

No, we’re not talking about that weapon of choice, we’re talking this weapon of choice.

Some princesses have an obvious weapon choice (i.e. Mulan), but others aren’t so clear. After all, both Snow White and Aurora spend most of their movies asleep, only to be rescued by a handsome prince. When they aren’t sleeping, they’re predominately engaged in housekeeping. And Cinderella is a straight-up maid.

Early Disney princesses really didn’t inspire heroism. So what would these classic princesses do to take the fight to the Legion? Hm.

Let’s say Snow White is a Hunter with a bow, having picked up some tricks from the Huntsman who sent her into the forest. And, anyway, someone has to find dinner while the dwarves are working in the mine all day.

Aurora takes guidance from her the good fairies who raised her and is a Mage. There’s no telling whether she’ll be in Frost or Fire spec on any given day, though. And while the traditional weapon of Mages in WoW is the staff, Aurora is definitely wand spec.

And Cinderella knows that it’s not about who you are: it’s about how you dress. She eschews fighting and instead runs Dalaran’s finest tailoring shop. I suppose this makes her weapon an array of very sharp pins, which you would do well to be wary of.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with these revisited dungeons. On one hand it’s great to have a reason to go back to your favorite places, but on the other hand I hate losing those classic places. Deadmines I don’t mind terribly because it keeps the same layout and nostalgic feel… even though Edwin is gone. Still, I miss those classic stories and wish there were some way to go back to the originals. (Scholomance is another dungeon I’m awfully nostalgic about, and I’ve never felt that the revamped version quit captures the original.)

But that said, I’d love to revisit Dire Maul. Yes, it’s a nostalgia thing, but Dire Maul also introduced some interesting gameplay mechanics. It had an interesting winged layout that encouraged you to tackle it in sections — something that earlier dungeon Blackrock Depths kind of had (in that you could go different directions to tackle different goals), but BRD inevitably wound up being a painful multi-hour run from the dungeon entrance to the final boss. Then you had tribute runs, where you went through Dire Maul North and used various tricks to skip all of the bosses save the very last, which rewarded you with better loot. (Plus you got to be king of the Ogres, which was pretty great.)

It was such a wonderfully different way of tackling a dungeon, and I don’t think we’ve ever seen its like since. I’d worry that Blizzard might ruin what I enjoyed about Dire Maul by redoing the place, but I also think that with a decade of game development experience behind them, they could do something wonderful to already good gameplay.

{PB}Black Temple Timewalking is nearly here, so … what next? I’d say keep going through the expansions and give us Icecrown Citadel next. I feel like Black Temple has come back into vogue because of its ties to the current game story, but ICC has its connection to Legion lore, too, so why not? It would give players a chance to go through and see that pre-Legion story first-hand.

And as a purely selfish reason, I never did either Black Temple or Icecrown Citadel at level, so I’d love the opportunity to tackle their challenges.

Class campaigns are a bit non-linear, as there are a lot of starts and stops to them. You may spend an evening online running through campaign quests, but then several playsessions without any sign of a quest at all, as you may need to level, earn reputation, or run dungeon quests before you get to the next part of the chain. Every campaign is different, but the basics come down to checking in at your class hall regularly and doing absolutely everything there is to do there. If it’s a quest in your class hall, it’s part of the campaign.

Wowhead has a good rundown of the initial class campaigns (though not all of them are very detailed) as well as the patch 7.2 campaigns which award your class mount.

As to Legendaries, you can unfortunately get them almost anywhere — so if you want a Legendary, you should carry on with your usual gameplay routine. You can grab Legendaries from bosses and rares, Emissary caches, Battleground and Arena victories, and more. Basically, keep on doing what you’re doing and eventually, one day, you should get a Legendary. Again, Wowhead has a more comprehensive guide.

It’s because we’re playing Gnomes, Mitch. Come on, I expect you to be smarter than this.

Blizzard games are so packed with pop culture references that I think a lot of our favorite video game characters would fit right in (though the potential copyright issues are another matter). But as anyone who knows me could probably guess, I’m going straight to Bioware with Garrus Vakarian. Not only would that guy love being on the front lines in a hopeless battle against evil, but he’d always have your back.

That’s it for today, folks! Be sure to leave your questions in the comments and come back tomorrow for a Q&A with Anne. I’ll see you next week!