The Queue: I turned my Tauren into a Tauren

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!

I decided my Horde main should be a Highmountain Tauren. Here he is. He has extremely detailed antler carving going on. He had zero money so I decided to run some old content on him and now he’s up to about 2k gold, which is enough that he can start working on stuff like the AH. Or I may just ignore that and leave him where he is until Battle for Azeroth drops next week and he heads to Zandalar.

Yes, I switched from a Tauren to a Highmountain Tauren. I’m weird.

Yes.

For one thing, Strom’kar still works in Throne of Thunder and other Troll instances — I just spent some time making Zandalari run around like chickens with their heads cut off. Ain’t no way I’m ever getting rid of that.

My Warriors, Paladin, DK and Hunter will all keep their Artifacts, and I haven’t really bothered to level anyone else this expansion.

I certainly am willing to entertain the notion of Bolvar engaging in such activity, I just don’t think it’s necessary. Occam’s Razor applies here — it’s not necessary to theorize some outside force motivating the people involved in these events when they fit perfectly well within the established behavior of both parties.

I just don’t see any reason each faction would need outside influence to do the things they’ve done up to this point, with the variable of Azerite introduced as it has been.

At some point, the developers have to make some choices. There are a lot of characters in Warcraft, even accounting for deaths and retirement, and they can’t all be present in every scene. I mean, I’m a Shandris Feathermoon fan here, you think I don’t want her to, I don’t know, show up and do something right about now? But as much as we all have our favorites and we all want to see our favorites doing the things that made them our favorites,  a story this big and expansive requires some characters to step back and let others have some spotlight.

Sometimes it makes sense — Khadgar’s been pretty big on the neutrality and working with bot factions thing for a while, Velen just got a major expansion full of focus and letting him cool down means other characters get to step forward — and sometimes it’s kind of odd. I get that Jaina was off fighting demons during Legion, but if only they’d shown her doing that once or twice it would have been cool.

Plus it makes sense that not everybody can be present at everything. Armies don’t bring every soldier they have to every battle, organizations need different leaders to take care of different missions and so on. I’d have loved to have seen Mayla Highmountain and Thalysra at the Battle for Lordaeron just to get to hear what the Horde’s newest leaders think about all that’s been going on, but I get why they weren’t there.

I really don’t know. Most of my characters have backstories that tie them into their faction or people in a way that would be hard to imagine severing them from those bonds of fellowship. My new Highmountain Tauren, for example, is extremely devoted to his people. I can’t imagine him leaving or betraying them, even if he’s not comfortable with everything the Horde does — he trusts Mayla and her judgement.

My Draenei, Lightforged or not, are also similarly devoted to their people.

My Human on the other hand would probably ditch the Alliance. He’s old, he’s from Lordaeron, he’s lost so much and he’s tired of losing it. I could see him joining a group not constantly getting into slapfights instead of getting stuff done. Even though he’s got no love for the Forsaken, he’s pretty much done with the whole idea of constantly going to war. He’d like an out.

My Night Elves won’t be happy until every Horde who took part in the burning of Teldrassil is dead. That whole Cycle of Hatred thing? Yeah. I doubt watching your people die is conducive to a good mental state and it literally just happened. As a player I get that this is a game, but if Khadgar shows up and is all “We must not continue these petty squabbles” I’m pretty sure my Nelves would reply with profanities.

And my Orc wouldn’t be able to make himself leave the Horde. He’s done too much, seen too much, given up too much of himself to protect it. He is Horde, and that’s never going to change. So of all my characters, I think only my Human would consider it.

Yes, I RP that much.

Outside of RP considerations, though, I’d love it if we were given this option.

I mean, short of a Pokemon style battle between them, I’d say there’s little way to determine this. Both of them are seasoned, experienced mages (although Khadgar has more) and both have done some very powerful magic. Both were remarkably gifted apprentices who studied under one of the most potent mages alive.

Khadgar went up against Gul’dan at the Tomb of Sargeras when the Warlock was empowered by a lot of raw Fel power, and Jaina’s done the stuff you just saw her do so I wouldn’t be comfortable picking one above the other. But Jaina seems a bit more comfortable with combat magic thank Khadgar is, he seems more of a generalist.

I mean, Jaina once took Aethas Sunreaver out with one gesture, so she’s not someone to trifle with, but Khadgar stabbed his own mentor in the chest, so… yeah. They’re both pretty dangerous and powerful.

Okay, there’s the end of this week. My next Queue will be four days into Battle for Azeroth. See y’all there.