The Queue: At some point today, I will just start hiding under my desk

Yeah, sure, it’s only Wednesday, but it’s already been a really long week. So let’s get to questions so I can get to hiding.

Nope. :(

Muffinus has commented that the “making new stuff” part of expansion development is basically over, and there’s nothing new on that front so far.

Battle for Azeroth content creation is coming to an end soon, many awesome new things will show up in the next build, this has been a super fun ride and I'm incredibly excited to see what you think of everything we have created.

— Muffinus (@Muffinus) May 11, 2018

And when Mitch very kindly asked my very important question about Gnome Paladins when interviewing Travis Day and Jimmy Lo, this happened:

Mitch: I promised I’d ask on behalf of a coworker [Liz]..

[Laughing]

…Gnome Paladins? Any chance [of those]?

[Even more laughter]

Travis: I don’t know, and they don’t let me make those decisions. But… actually, the one thing I will say is that it does seem like we are getting — and this is just kind of almost speaking as a player — we’re getting a little more open about what is appropriate and also as the story progresses things are changing about what is appropriate. I mean, we started expanding into a world where we had a Night Elf Paladin, for example. I could see a world in which this is true someday, but…

Mitch: No plans, but not off the table?

Travis: Exactly.

…A Gnome Paladin. I never!

[All laugh]

They laugh, but one day we will triumph!

I agree. After two Alliance comics we have to see a Horde comic next. I’m going to place my bet on Vol’jin. He’s the character we’ve seen the least lately (uh, for obvious reasons) plus Blizzard has said he has more story coming.

But it could also be Thrall. In which case I’m a lot less interested.

After the Garrosh hate, I think everyone’s kind of ready for Garrosh Part 2.

However, after reading the Before the Storm spoilers that appeared recently, I have to say that Sylvanas’ motives there are, while certainly not kind, do make sense in context. She is herself rather than becoming a maniacal parody of what “evil” is, like Garrosh did. So I hope she’ll continue to have that same kind of subtle characterization where, sure, she’s evil, but there’s also an internal logic to her actions that you can understand. That will make for some much more interesting conversations than Garrosh provoked, though there is certainly still going to be plenty of straight-up hate.

My thinking is that they’ll eventually just give it to everyone with flying. Achievement-based flying is still relatively new, but the older flying tiers — for Northrend and Pandaria — are now simply bundled in with flying. I think eventually they’ll make Draenor and Broken Isles like that, too. But with Northrend and Pandaria, they didn’t remove the requirements until well after it was current content. If they intend to ditch the Pathfinder achievement requirements, my guess is it will be two expansions later.

But since we haven’t seen what Blizzard wants to do with these achievements yet, it really could be anything. However, since Blizzard has been removing costs for older flying methods, I doubt they’ll add one in place of the Pathfinder achievements. My guess is if they go away, they’ll just go away.

Dang, this is a tough one. We have hippos covered. Elephants are available at least in battle pet form. There are flamingos (sort of). Unicorns showed up in Legion. We’re getting alpacas and giant bumble bees and dolphins in Battle for Azeroth…

I’m going to vote pangolin. They’re just such unusual creatures I think they’d be an interesting addition to Azerothian wildlife. Just look at this adorable rescued pangolin:

They are the most gloriously ridiculous animals. They’re bipedal, with short arms and claws that aren’t great for walking, so they trundle around on their hind legs like tiny dinosaurs. They’re mammals, but they’re covered in scales, and they roll up into a ball to defend themselves. They can even fend off lions and other big predators by curling up in a ball and basically waiting for the lion to give up because how can they eat this ball that’s covered in sharp scales? Plus, come on, they’re kind of adorable.

So let’s get some pangolins in here. (And also the whole of that pangolin documentary is streaming if you want to check it out.)

I’m going to get that Mistweaver mage tower appearance or die trying. The latter seems pretty likely at this point, though. I’m also hoping to get the Mythic +15 appearance — I know you can get it in the expansion, but it will be just as hard, so if I can do it now, I’ll do it now. Also I’m hanging around in Friendship Birb Discord to maybe get my own Friendship Birb, but we’ll see.

Okay, folks. That’s it for today. Tomorrow surprise guest Matthew Rossi will be here to answer your questions, so be sure to toss him some good ones in the comments. I’ll see you all back here next week.