The Queue: Let it go

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!

Oops I made a pretty. Look, it was a relaxing way to spend an evening, okay? Some people say they should take Photoshop away from me. I say they can pry it out of my cold, dead, frozen hands.

…let’s just forget the puns and move on to your questions, shall we?

Here’s what we have so far on Classic servers: Blizzard’s going to make them.

Really…that’s it. There’s no details to be had just yet. I think for now they’re probably busy at work figuring out how to make them happen, rather than looking at how we’ll be accessing them. Which…well, that’s the sensible option — there’s no use planning on how people can get to a thing, if that thing doesn’t even exist yet. Should probably focus on making the thing exist, right?

When we do find out more information on that sort of thing, we’ll be sure to report on it, however!

I can’t really speak for all roleplayers here, but my characters have always had a by-and-large hands-off approach to most of these grand global conflicts, whether it’s against a big bad like the Burning Legion, or simply the opposing faction. For my Rogue, it’s just a matter of survival — easier to stay out of the way and unnoticed when one isn’t in the thick of things. My Shaman has better things to think about. My Druid is woefully out of touch with silly things like faction conflicts.

In general, though, I’ve noticed that a lot of the roleplaying guilds and groups on the servers I frequent mostly stay out of those major conflicts. It’s something that’s going on, but guilds tend to focus on stories of their own making and design. Whether or not a character is going to jump all-in on that faction conflict is up to personal choice. But usually when there’s a new expansion out, people will at least try to acknowledge or work that material into their roleplay in one way or another.

For one thing, I think with this conflict in particular there’s more personal motivation behind it. Sylvanas was — at least from the Alliance’s perspective — responsible for the death of Anduin’s father. The Horde deserted their post. Genn saw her withdraw — right when they needed that cover. Genn has a really serious grudge against Sylvanas, for good reason — she flat-out murdered his son. Sylvanas isn’t happy with Greymane either, his actions in Stormheim prevented her from saving her people. It wasn’t just condemning her to a terrible fate, it was condemning the entirety of the Forsaken.

Needless to say, I doubt she’s very happy about that.

But what I really like here is that this expansion seems to be exploring that dichotomy between life and death. The cinematic trailer introduces and reinforces that in a major way, both visually and through the story it’s telling. Anduin represents life, Sylvanas represents death — and in the trailer, you see Sylvanas embracing that part of herself with her banshee transformation, and using it to motivate the Horde. On the other side, you see Anduin embracing the Light and just…channeling it into that absolutely beautiful, golden resurrect and heal.

Beyond that is Sylvanas’ journey — she’s not quite dead, but undead, and she’s trying to find new life for her people. That’s been her focus ever since the end of Wrath. From the brief prologue preview of Before the Storm we got in those BlizzCon goody bags, it appears as though some of the Forsaken are not about that part of her journey. I feel like we may see some more exploration into that side of undeath — that struggle between continuing on in a world in which they are unwelcome, or the search for that eternal rest they never received.

And beyond that is Anduin’s journey as a leader. Anduin has never been a creature of war. He’s been a proponent of peace and diplomacy, as much if not more so than even Jaina in his early years. He embraced the path of the Priest — a path of healing. He even went so far as to visit and try to understand the Warchief that nearly killed him. But Anduin’s been thrust into that leadership role in the midst of death and war — he lost his father and inherited a throne.

His struggle is going to be finding that balance between what he wants the world to be, and what the world needs him to be.

So here we have an (un)dead faction leader, searching for renewed life for herself and her people in spite of the poor hand fate dealt her, and we have a perfectly alive faction leader who would love to embrace and foster all that life has to offer, but has to deal with the grim reality of death instead. There’s an elegant contrast between the two that I really like.

And if we zoom out even farther, it’s the Horde and Alliance fighting a life-or-death battle for faction survival. And if we zoom out farther than that, it’s the world of Azeroth itself, fighting a life-or-death battle for her own survival. Again, it’s several different stories, but they’re all aspects and layers of that overarching theme we see in the announcement trailer.

There are a lot of layers to explore, here. I’m not sure how they’re going to approach it, but I’m very interested in hearing that story.

It’s kind of hard to answer that question. I come from both sides of this debate — I used to raid at least three nights a week from vanilla all the way up through Mists. I’ve since stepped back and now any raiding I do is solely through LFR. From the raider perspective, when you’re doing regular raiding, your focus isn’t really on the rest of the game — so it’s nice that there’s at least one thing in game that you get to see before everyone else, you know? On the LFR side…well by the time the raids are released, I’ve already devoured all other content. So I’m left twiddling my thumbs in-between wings, waiting for something new to do.

I think the wait between wings is justified. But I also think that yes, it’s a little long. If they did away with that week-long delay between Normal/Heroic release, and LFR release, I think I’d be a little happier. I wouldn’t get to experience the entire raid on day one — and that’s fine. But I’d at least get a little taste of it, and get to experience that excitement of release day right along with everyone else. That’s the part that kind of bums me out the most — that I still have to wait a week while everyone is excitedly talking about how cool the new raid zone is.

It’s a cure. The fruit of the Arcan’dor brings the life essence and the arcane spirit of the Nightborne into balance, freeing them from their addiction entirely. They no longer need the Nightwell for sustenance. Presumably, they can now eat whatever they’d like, and get nourishment from that just like any other living creature on Azeroth.

Side note — I’d really love to see the adventures of a Nightborne explorer out to get reacquainted with the world, and eat everything it has to offer. I just picture it like that bit in Star Trek Generations where Data installs his emotion chip and is delighted to discover he hates a drink.

My phone’s dictionary seems to have absorbed most of the unique words and phrases from a variety of Blizzard IPs. It recognizes everything from Kil’jaeden to Kehjistan, and will happily capitalize and plunk in the appropriate apostrophes. I kind of need to get a new phone here, but I’ve been dragging my heels because…I’m going to have to teach the poor thing all over again.

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!