The QueueJan 4, 2019 12:00 pm CT

The Queue: I love utterly impractical swords

By Matthew Rossi

Look at that thing.

I love it. I love every pointless, over-designed centimeter of it. I love that it has blade catchers on the back. I love that the blade’s sweep makes it entirely unbalanced. I love that hilt with the giant moon that looks like an eye. You’d probably injure yourself swinging this thing if it actually existed, and I love it.

This is the Queue. World of Warcraft is completely, totally ridiculous, and that’s what’s good about it.

ELEFTHERIOS

QftQ: Is there a storyline behind the Azeroth at war missions of the mission table? I mainly send out my champions through the app, so I cannot read any flavour texts for missions.

It’s less that there’s a story behind them and more that they’re part of the story already unfolding — if you pay attention to them, you get a picture of unfolding resistance on Kalimdor, for instance, that sets up what’s happening on Darkshore. Through the missions you find out that the Horde just isn’t very good at actually holding territory — they’re great at storming an area and throwing wave after wave of bodies at it until their enemies retreat, but once that’s over, they have no idea what to do against an organized guerrilla resistance campaign. They’re a scorched earth kind of invasion force, and when the enemy is hiding and picking their time to hit you, they don’t know what to do about it.

Likewise, the Alliance isn’t great at extirpation warfare, and the Forsaken are taking advantage back on the Eastern Kingdoms. The Horde is far from gone, and it’s not just Arathi, either. Yes, major centers are gone on both sides, but that doesn’t make for a settled situation, it just means less huge armies crashing against each other and more skirmish, hit and run raids.

Combined with (as an example) the War Campaign storylines and you get a picture of how each side is conducting the War so far and what they’re up to.

ARCHMAGE RC

Q4tQ: Are there any activities in a game that you had such a bad experience with that you will no longer do them, even if the experience has been improved since? I’m finding it hard to get stoked for Expeditions currently, even though they’ve made great improvements, just cause they were so terrible for me the first week or two.

Sure.

I won’t run PuG’s outside of a Timewalking weekend and I almost never tank them. I’ve stepped up and tanked one when the tank drops until we get a new tank on a few occasions, and one time the tank decided to be a jerk and wouldn’t pull (and their guildmate was there and wouldn’t vote to kick him) so me and the healer essentially two manned the dungeon, but overall I am just no longer here for random queue experiences as anything but DPS. I show up, hit stuff, and leave.

The one exception is if it’s between 2 and 6 am my time. For whatever reason, when I sign up for those, I can usually tank and it’s not a bad experience. Overnight crowd seems looser and more friendly. I’m not sure what’s up with that.

I absolutely will not PuG a Mythic+, not ever. I understand my one bad Mythic+ does not represent how every such run would be, but I do not care. I tried it, it was awful, that was back in Legion, and I’m not trying it again.

SOEROAH

Every now and then I come across something in the game that almost feels like it was designed this way because Blizzard took note of something I was doing.

Last expansion, I would hoard paragon chests to open them once a month, and I’d get to to open like 100 at a time. This expansion, not only are BoA rep tokens not a thing from the mission table (so I can’t hoard those either), the paragon caches are like the Hallow’s End candy bags, in that you cannot have a duplicate item.

So I can’t hoard those either.

I always find myself wondering, when changes like this happen, why they happened. Was there a potential bug or crash situation caused by opening so many Paragon chests at once? Did it encourage an exploit I don’t understand, or otherwise impact performance in some way? Did they always intend to make them so you had to open one before you got a new one, but forgot, and decided to fix it once they were implementing the new Paragon rep this time?

I don’t have an answer to it, of course, but it fascinates me.

ENO

QfRossi: If Ashkandi had been a Legion artifact, what special powers or a special effects would it have given the wielder?

Interesting question. Well, first, they’d likely have to settle that whole why does it look like that question that I wrote a KYL about, and I’m assuming in this answer that the sword was enhanced by the Red Dragonflight in some manner to help it oppose Black Dragons and other minions of the Old Gods/Void.

So the first thing to decide is, what spec would Ashkandi be an artifact for? Arms seems like the easy choice — there aren’t two Ashkandi, after all. And it’s a greatsword — says so right on the weapon name, so it’s not likely to be a Protection weapon. So we’ll assume it goes to Arms Warriors, since Lothar was a Warrior and not a Paladin or DK.

I think the primary attack would be a big AoE flame strike that did extra damage to shadow/void creatures and abominations like the N’raqi and A’qir, as well as other Old God minions. Call it Wrath of the Life-Binder. It would also be able to rally allies, giving it a small area of effect heal over time for all allies within a certain range.

I’d also have a small quest that sent players back to Karazhan with the sword to find the hidden Crypt of the Brotherhood of the Horse, where you’d commune with the ghosts of all the departed Armsmasters and get a special appearance that was less dragony and more like the blade in this old fanart by Pulyx, one of my favorites. As for the special axe equivalent, that would remain the same, a riff on the Arcanite Reaper.

RANDOMGUY67

Q4TQ: When you start the Darkshore Warfront as Allies, the battle cry is “For Auberdine!”… why on earth is that the battle cry? Auberdine was destroyed by Deathwing, the Horde have no responsibility for it’s destruction.

Auberdine is your landing zone. As Alliance, you’re literally storming the beach at Auberdine.

Maiev isn’t a very fanciful person. When she yells For Auberdine, she’s literally telling you to make for Auberdine. It’s less a war cry and more an instruction. The Horde are infesting Auberdine and spraying blight everywhere, go there and kill them.

LEFTYTHEPERPLEXED

So. Did all the Arathi rares and got a bunch of [Tiny Azerite Splinters] and one pair of gloves that were a total downgrade.

Woo.

Hmm.