The Queue: This is where the buffalo roam

Today we had a special request from Buffalo, who asked for a buffalo-themed Queue for his birthday. Apparently this is a tradition that I have previously missed, but it seems we have dutifully carried it out in the past, so I will do my best with this fine image of bison, above.

You all aren’t just joking with us about this, right? Is it really someone’s birthday? I hope it’s really someone’s birthday, otherwise I’m going to feel pretty silly about this.

Buffalo-themed and something that Khadgar totally could have said? That absolutely fits the qualifications for today’s Queue. However, I’m not sure how long I’m actually going to be able to hang on to this theme, because some people want to actually talk about video games. Geez, people.

I think the addition of races of questionable morality — i.e. Elves tapping into dark powers which may or may not drive them to madness — can only be an interesting story element. The Alliance is typically stereotyped as the “good guy” faction, and being the good guys all the time is frankly dull. Interesting stories come from conflict, from disagreement, and the Alliance… sometimes they just all get along too well. (Sometimes. There are definitely exceptions.)

I’m not quite sure how Void Elves will fit in with the Alliance. Will their allies fully trust them? Or are they only interested in the power the Void Elves offer, while remaining suspicious of their intentions? But that’s exactly what’s going to make them an interesting addition to the Alliance. The Dark Iron Dwarves are similar, as we’ve already seen with Moira in Ironforge, where political tensions are high and betrayal is possible at every turn.

Neither of these races are necessarily a natural fit for the Alliance… and that could make for some fascinating stories. We’ll get to see how Anduin manages to hold this new Alliance together, with factions that don’t necessarily get along… or even trust one another.

From that angle, it’s a bit like Death Knights joining their respective faction: they’re absolutely hated, but after having some fruit thrown at them, they’re accepted in to the family and the matter is dropped. I hope Allied Races have more depth than that, and we keep seeing those tensions at play in the game’s story.

I think it’s been easier for Overwatch to push into diversity because it was a brand new game, a brand new franchise. That let Blizzard build diversity in from the ground up. It’s harder with an established IP like Warcraft, which was released in 1994, when game developers just weren’t thinking about diversity in their characters. All of these years later, World of Warcraft is still playing catch up.

I do think WoW is trying to catch up and diversify its cast of characters. But because the game’s roots don’t have that diversity, it’s going to take time. And Blizzard has already had some missed opportunities here. Consider Yrel. She was a woman in an expansion with few female characters. She had a great character arc. At the end of the expansion she said she’d be there to help if we needed her. And then we never saw her again. Sometimes Blizzard makes these amazing characters that would add to the diversity of the game, but they’re left behind. And that’s a shame.

But they’re trying. I really think they’re trying. And they’ll get there, eventually.

As it’s shown in game, at least, Azeroth appears relatively small. (And pretty oddly proportioned, with newer zones typically larger than older zones.)

To get a sense of scale, I looked up DiscoPriest’s Running Azeroth videos, which are straight recordings of running across zones (designed to accompany treadmill workouts and such). On a fast mount, the trip from one end of Kalimdor to the other took 44 minutes. If we assume a galloping horse moving 25mph, the continent is about 19 miles long. That would make the whole continent somewhat bigger than Manhattan, which is about 13 miles long. That would be pretty dang small.

Personally, I think Azeroth has to be larger than it appears in game. In World of Warcraft, there are some necessary constraints due to gameplay reasons. Huge zones would be frustratingly slow to cross, and it would take forever to get from quest to quest. A castle the size of a real castle would be a maze of hallways and rooms where you’d never find anyone, while Azeroth’s template two-story castle is much more navigable. You can’t make a video game world that would be as large as an actual world without leaving vast spaces that are either empty, boring, or both. (This is my main issue with games that describe themselves as “open world.” Sure, they feel like a massive, expansive space to play in… but a lot of that space is usually dull, and you have to waddle through it to get to the interesting stuff.)

How big is it actually? Damned if I know, but bigger. Maybe one of our Lore Watchers has an answer. Anne! Annnnneeee! Hey, Anne! How big is Azeroth?

(That’s how you get Queue questions answered, right? I’m just going to assume so.)

Oh, and happy birthday to Buffalo, and anyone else who might have a birthday today. We’ll close out today’s Queue with another buffalo, who I think is asking “What are you doing up here instead of down in the comments asking questions?”

Don’t disobey the buffalo. Get questioning, Queuevians!