The Queue: I am not Liz

What a weird Wednesday we’ve wandered into, where one writer is — without warning — whisked away to write wisecracks in response to your whimsical wonderings. We will begin with a question which, as I am wont to do, wrecks this word-warfare with woeful wit.

“What?” you wonder. “Wreck in what way?”

Well, see, the question is about… Heroes of the Storm.

I spent far too long trying to figure this out, but I ended up finding an old gameplay video from a year or two ago that helped answer it. It seems that there is at least one set of trees — above the rightmost keep on the blue/left team’s side — that has apples on them, both now and in the past.

If you’re seeing apples on every tree, that’s different, but I only found this one particular set when I checked out the map on live.

So, I remember at some point or another in the past, someone asked if (or maybe suggested that?) Blizzard “pocket” pets for when something bad happens and donations could help. Their response was something along the lines of that being… well, kinda dark, and working on the assumption that something bad will happen. Which, yes, that may always be true, but it still doesn’t look good if someone (least of all an entire company) has something in their back pocket in case lots of people die.

But, for a more definitive answer, we turn to the official blog post announcing Shadow:

Due to recent natural disasters around the world—and the great needs of those affected—we’ve decided not to wait for BlizzCon 2017 to release this year’s new charity pet. The immediacy of the events, including Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, flooding in South Asia, and countless other crises, have shown we need to act now.

So yeah. They have a charity pet every year, and it’s usually released in winter. In a way, I guess you could say that’s “pocketing” a pet, but I think of it more as an annual holiday charity.

{PB} In my mind, sub-races in WoW would be more or less different skin colors. After all, they use the same wireframe model in almost all cases. The exception to that would be the upright Trolls, which share a wireframe model with Thrall, if I remember correctly.

I think the difficult part of adding sub-races is that they’d either need their own starter zones, or it would have to be explainable why the Wildhammer (for example) are suddenly down in Dun Morogh. I would be 100% okay with some hand-wavey “they traveled here because reasons the end” excuse if it meant we got sub-races, but I’m not sure Blizzard would be happy with something like that.

To answer both of you, the current pattern of content releases tells us we’ll likely see a PTR this week or next, and that Antorus will probably be open in early November (right after BlizzCon seems the safe bet).

For starters, I like Illidan more after that cinematic, but I am not entirely sold on him — it humanized him, but didn’t make up for everything that bothered me about him before. I am absolutely loving everything that’s happening with Turalyon and Alleria (<33 bae). Mists had some great storytelling, but Legion is passing it up with the latest content, if you ask me.

As for a character I had to come around to… I never had super strong feelings about Tyrande, but her portrayal in War Crimes made me realize what a badass she could be when she needed. I would not want her to ever put me on blast.

I don’t have anything to add here, but I appreciate the discourse.

Off the top of my head*…

• “The better side”
• Mitch’s Minions (I stole this one from Moon)
• Assembly of Shadow
• Vanguard of the Void (stolen from Lar Gand aka Captain Mephisto)
• Void Squadron Vincent 16

*Okay, some of those were not off the top of my head.

1. I’m not actually sure, but I have noticed that sometimes loading into the Vindicaar puts my character there before the ship itself, which makes me fall for a bit before being teleported back up. Perhaps having the portal take you to a lower floor would have occasionally caused you to hit the point beneath the ship that kills you? Who knows. I’m going with that because otherwise I have no idea.
2. Nope! You can head to a Greater Invasion Point whenever you please. You will, however, also be able to get a quest from Illidan to do 3 normal invasions, so don’t forget to do that before you head to the lesser invasions.

When you first meet Xe’ra, she tells you she’s “one of the first naaru to be forged here during the great ordering of the cosmos” (emphasis mine). So she’s definitely not the only prime Naaru — despite being referred to as “the” Prime Naaru by Velen and Turalyon at times — but given the fact that the Prime Naaru are only in the Spirit Realm, Xe’ra may have been one of the last alive… until Blizzard decides to add another, of course.

That’s The Queue for today! Normally, I’d encourage you to “help” Liz find questions with totally relatable chatter, but since Anne is likely to follow me, I’d like to not experience her wrath, so try to actually ask questions.