The Queue: Happy Star Wars with our good friend Mat McCurley

Our good friend and previous WoW Insider podcast host Mat McCurley has decided that Star Wars fans need a bit of happy, something I agree with. And who better to provide that than the other (better?) half of the two-headed Orc MatMatt? I’ve recently given his show a listen, and it’s got the classic Mat “my other name is Ira Glass” McCurley vibe to it.

In episode two he goes into why he loves, and we should all love, Rose Tico. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I think we should also love Rose Tico and what she brings to the films (and hopefully have more of it), and Mat frames the recent goings-on around the character in a perspective that is very respectful and spot-on, I think. It’s definitely worth a listen.

You can find more on his site or on the Happy Star Wars iTunes page.

Yes, you need more coffee, and so do I, but that’s kind of a given these days I think. I can’t seem to look at the internet without thinking “drugs or coffee, and I don’t have any drugs.”

Anyways, I wanted to highlight this comment to talk about something that’s been on my mind for a bit. It’s OK to root for the evil guy in fiction. Some people’s favorite character in Star Wars is Darth Vadar. That’s not because he’s a tyrant and is hell bent on bringing draconian order to the universe, but because he is, well, just cool looking. Some, like me, look at his overall story and see a lot of complexities and deep fall from grace, only to be (possibly?) redeemed at his end.

I think Sylvanas is one of those characters. Yeah, she’s probably evil and her end will come one day, but in the mean time I really love her story and the way that Blizzard has developed her character over the years. And now with the Windrunner Sisters reunited, I think there’s going to be some huge potential over the next couple expansions for some amazing story telling.

This topic wouldn’t be done justice if I didn’t mention that evil/wrong is also in the eye of the beholder, and there’s rarely 100% moral high-ground in WoW. That’s one of the beauties of this game that’s kept me playing and engaged with it for over a decade; we get to see how two factions, both alike in dignity, in fair Azeroth, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

I’m rooting for her. Your friend can too, he doesn’t need to justify rooting for the bad guy in fiction. #TeamSylvanas

Well, it’s June 18th in Minnesota. So the next Blizzard might be here in September, which is about two and a half months away. #winning

As far as what we’re up to, I love using this time to go farm out mounts and other things that I’ve been wanting forever but have never gotten around to it. I’m also considering, and am on the verge of, leveling the remaining allied races to 110. I don’t know why really, other than I think it would be cool and I always find new bits of story and insight into the game whenever I level a character.

If you haven’t gotten the fishing legendary yet, I’d recommend you do that — it’s not terribly hard and there always seems to be a group that’s farming for the arcane bobbles in Dalaran, making it a 100x easier than it would be normally. And dare I say, after the expansion pops it could be more difficult for this. This is where I also hope that I can transmog my fishing pole…. sigh.

Take it slow though now, casual, and go play some other games too. No need to wear yourself out on WoW when there’ll be a big shiny new game in two months.

I want to address this with something pretty simple:

Blizzard Watch does not favor one faction or the other. All of our writers have characters on both, they’ve all been through the game on both, and most of them can get into deep lore discussions about both.

As for the community and a particular subset of people commenting on an article, I think it’s very dependent on the article if there’s going to be any or an imbalanced faction representation. Some articles deal with Alliance stuff (positively or negatively) and some deal with Horde stuff (positively or negatively). Each type will draw out their own crowd. I wouldn’t read much into it more than that.