The Queue: It’s me!

I know, you’re used to seeing me as an adorable Gnome with excessively large eyes. But while I do play a lot of Gnomes, that’s not really me…

My first character was a Gnome Warlock, which I raided with throughout Vanilla. Then there was a Human Priest, then a Troll Priest, then a Blood Elf Paladin.

As I’m sure you know, these days I play a Gnome Monk — though I also enjoy my Gnome Mage and have a max-level Dwarf Shaman. I’m leveling both a Gnome Rogue and a Lightforged Paladin. On the Horde side, my Blood Elf has come with me all the way to 110 and I have a 110 Troll Death Knight, too. I enjoy playing them all in different ways. I have fond memories of playing all of them.

But when I think about WoW… it’s always that Blood Elf Paladin that comes back to me. I love my Gnome army and I love my Alliance guild, but the Blood Elf is me, and I suspect it always will be. I can’t really explain why, because at this point I’ve been a Monk for longer than I was ever a Paladin. I played that Paladin from Burning Crusade to early Cataclysm, when I took a WoW break. I was in a fantastic guild of friends and we were fairly casual, but we worked to get through smaller raids.

Like I said, I love my current guild and I enjoy all of my current characters. But I miss that Paladin, that guild, and that time in the game so much.

Sure, I still play the Paladin. But she’s definitely an alt now. I don’t have anyone to push challenging content with on her, so I just don’t. But even so, in my head, my Paladin is who I am in the game.

Okay. Here’s Isabel helping me work on the Queue.

See? Helping. Very helpful.

And because he included an adorable puppy picture, I am obligated to answer.

While I must echo Archmage RC’s comment and note who’s to say we haven’t, I do think this is an unlikely Gnome invention. While Gnomes are dang clever, we aren’t exactly subtle. (Insert your own Gnome Rogue joke here.) If we were building autonomous killer robots… I suspect they’d be pretty obvious, and maybe even a little silly. Gnomes are rather lighthearted by nature — I mean, just look at our architecture — and even while we’re inventing amazing things, they tend to have a bit of whimsy, or even outright ridiculousness.

If we built killer robots, they’d look a lot like Mekkatorque’s power armor. Deadly, but kind of soft around the edges, moving with a bounce that makes them seem friendly. Kind of like something from a Pixar movie.

You may never suspect this ridiculous contraption could kill you (right up until it does), but it would definitely not be stealthy about it.

For my first time through an expansion, I want to really see everything. I read the quest text and I try to clear every quest in a zone. I aim to hit Loremaster without having to revisit and poke around for whatever I missed later, so I’m usually thorough.

I’ve tried zooming through the levels, but I’m frankly pretty bad at it. I read everything, I get distracted by shiny objects, I get up from my computer to pet the dogs and forget that I was leveling, I try to level professions, I spend ages running around in circles trying to find cave entrances… you get the idea.

When Legion came out, the Blizzard Watch crew did a livestream of all of us leveling, which I meant to do all in a rush with everyone else. It didn’t stick. (Though the fact that I was trying to level my Monk as a Mistweaver may not have helped.)

You have those people who log in when the expansion drops and don’t log out until they’re max level. I am not one of those people. I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t work for me.

… wait, what are we talking about?

Lotharfox adds: Is your implication that Rossi is Liz’s father?

What?

Jay adds: 1. who said Rossi would be the Warrior? 2. RP might not necessarily be RL

Yeah, it’s safe to say I really have no idea what’s going on here. (In which I am not actually in on the God of War craze, but Dog of War… I’d play that.)

Power creep is a big problem in any kind of ongoing narrative. Every new chapter of the story sends the main characters off fighting bigger, more vicious enemies, so they have to become stronger themselves. And keep getting stronger, as new enemies arrive.

World of Warcraft has been around so long, that our characters, by this point, are ridiculously powerful. Azeroth is essentially packed with demigods who are capable of holding their own against Titans. And that leads to a problem of just what will we do next? After defeating the Burning Legion it honestly makes sense to start fighting amongst ourselves, because until a new threat emerges we are the biggest, most vicious creatures on Azeroth.

I’m not really sure how Blizzard can hit the reset button on that. Even if we were whisked away — as with Draenor — we, on our own, are pretty powerful. If nothing else, Warlords proved that we can function even as strangers in a strange land, forging new alliances and building a base of power. (And also that we don’t have to totally destroy an area while doing so, like we did in Pandaria. I appreciated that about Warlords.)

For all that Battle for Azeroth is about the faction conflict, it also seems to be a lot like Warlords of Draenor. We’re having our powers stripped away by losing our Artifacts, but instead of tearing things down in our frustration (obvious comments about Teldrassil aside) we’re building them. We’re visiting new lands and forging alliances with civilizations that have long been lost to us.

I just hope that after we’re done Kul Tiras and Zandalar we don’t turn around and destroy the rest of Azeroth, leaving it in ruins like Pandaria.

I like Azeroth. Azeroth is home. Azeroth is where I keep all my stuff.

So please, Blizzard, let’s leave some of Azeroth standing after this expansion.

… but I’ve ventured pretty far away from the original topic. Yes, I think it would be good for WoW to somehow hit the reset button. After all, how many big bads can we possibly fight that are more powerful than the Legion? What could possibly threaten us? There is, of course, the obvious answer of the Old Gods. But what comes after them?

We need challenges that go beyond throwing a bigger, scarier, more threatening monster at us every expansion. And I do think Blizzard has tried to do that, but I’m not entirely convinced they’ve succeeded.

And that’s all for today, folks. Until next time, this has been Liz, fielding your weird questions (when they aren’t about cheese or chocolate).