The Queue: I’ve never loved you more

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!

Look I’ve been a fan of Griftah since Burning Crusade. I can safely say that not once have I ever been carried away by a Tikbalang. But his general appeal has grown even greater in Legion, largely because he hands me 5,000 gold a week for some silly Coins of Air. I don’t even need those things. You know what I do need? Gold. Lots of gold. It…it’s like he knows me, man.

Speaking of knowing things, let’s get to answering your questions.

Families are kind of a tricky thing to begin with in stories — more so in games. The thing is, the story isn’t really about those guys. It’s about the people whose names we already know. There’s a limited amount of man hours available to dedicate time to those stories. Because of this, time is usually focused — as it should be — on the stories that are really important.

If you took a story developer and said “Hey, write a short story about the Windrunner’s parents,” they could absolutely do that. But it means they’d be writing that story instead of developing new material for the story already being told. Unless the parents of these characters are suddenly going to be important from a game standpoint, there’s simply no good reason to flesh them out.

It’s kind of a pity, because yes I do wonder about these characters — but given that tradeoff of time invested, I’d rather have those really important stories, you know?

I’d still like to see a bard class added. Way back when I was first thinking about it, I always envisioned a bard class as a ranged enhancement class. Kind of like the Paladins of old — the big selling point of the class wasn’t necessarily the DPS that they brought, but the buffs they offered for other classes. Instead of playing your character and doing all the damage yourself, you’re essentially fine-tune playing everyone in your party or raid.

I view it almost like multiboxing, in a way — you’d have a degree of control over how much DPS or healing or survival everyone has. Of course, that makes for some potentially boring leveling, so there’d have to be some kind of mechanic that would make the class appealing from a soloing standpoint. But I definitely think if they do add anything new, they need to make a new ranged something. The melee pack is entirely too overcrowded in raids at this point.

This is one of those tiny little details that has been bothering the heck out of me ever since we wrapped up Warlords. We spent that whole expansion on another planet — another universe for that matter — helping out the beleaguered citizens of Draenor. What did we get out of the experience? We set Gul’dan free. That’s…about it. That’s the only significant thing we pulled from Draenor that we didn’t already have.{PB}

What about all those other characters? What are they doing now? Why haven’t any of them shown up if, as Yrel said, they promised to be there if we needed them? Don’t we kind of need them right now?

The answer is yes, we do, and no, they aren’t around, and I’m still mystified by it. I wish they’d show up — at least it would make Warlords feel like it meant something, in the long run. As it stands, it feels like I just wasted my time.

We don’t! The entire race was pretty much reduced to how they appear today. There aren’t any “whole” Ethereals — or whatever they were called before they became Ethereals. I don’t even know if they remember what they looked like. Given their present state, I think it’s probably…highly unlikely they produce children. Chances are, the Ethereals that we see today are the ones that were present on K’aresh when it was overrun. As for K’aresh, we have no idea what it used to look like — we don’t even know what it looks like right now, or if it still even exists. We do know that the Ethereals were apparently capable of building technology that blocked dark energy from reaching their cities. That kind of technological advancement is pretty substantial, so something tells me it may have been a paradise near the level of Argus, in its heyday. But there’s no real evidence of that out there at all.

I believe you’re talking about the Mud Mucking quest — there’s never been any official clarification. Given the teasing she’d given him before, and the fact that they’re sparkling Kirin Tor coins, some people have suggested that Archmage Modera was the likely recipient. But that’s never been confirmed one way or the other. For now, it seems Khadgar’s special friend is going to remain a mystery!

Warriors, obviously — and probably Mages, Hunters, Shaman, Priests, maybe Monks, potentially Death Knights (although that one would be more difficult to explain), and I could maybe see Paladins, but that would be a stretch. Rogue over Paladin. I think, given that members of both factions have proven themselves to the Vrykul several times over, that making them neutral would make the most sense. Have the player pick which faction to side with.

Keep in mind that not all of the Vrykul view Humanity as inferior — the Vrykul of Northrend were the ones hit the hardest by the curse of flesh. They were the ones that had direct experience with it. And even though some Vrykul were vehemently opposed to the appearance of Humans in their midst, there were others who refused to kill their children, and took off instead. So the whole ‘Vrykul hates Humanity’ thing isn’t really as gigantic of an issue as you’d think.

As for the next expansion, it really comes down to what the thing is about. If we’re dealing with the defense of Azeroth, however, bringing in a titan-forged race like the Vrykul makes perfect sense. Maybe they don’t have anything to do with Kul Tiras, but when it comes to defending our world and potentially participating in some glorious battles, they’ve got a keen interest in that.

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!