The QueueMar 5, 2019 12:00 pm CT

The Queue: I could take the high road (but I know that I’m goin’ low)

Well if it isn’t Tuesday again. Time to finish writing a thing I started 12 hours ago!

Let’s Queue.

LuotianX, um.. probably not. But maybe?

Re: The Yrel thing:
Am I the only one that doesn’t WANT Yrel to have a good reason? I really just want it to be a case of the good guys taking good too far. I want SOMETHING to give the Alliance and the light any flavor but vanilla.
We got that a bit with Illidan and Xera (I still cheer) and I want more of it. I don’t want Gromm to be misusing us our whatever Rossi implied a couple weeks ago on the podcast. I simply want this to be a case of good going to fast because it is so convinced it is right.

I’m close to your camp, but not quite there. I actually liked pretty much everything about the Draenor update we saw with the Mag’har scenario. I thought it was a cool inversion of events that happened in our timeline, and I think it showed that the Light isn’t something to blindly follow and that fanaticism can lead to some bad places.

But Yrel did deserve better. Even if that’s the direction Blizz ultimately wanted her character to go, we needed to see it happen more. Again, it makes sense that, after 30 years or whatever, a lot will have changed. And it makes sense that those changes would feel drastic or even unnatural from our (the players’) perspectives.

But a character like Yrel — if she was going to become what she does — deserved to have that journey shown, not just told. It’s telling that my two major issues — slightly outdated as that article may be — with the Mag’har scenario both revolve around specific characters and not the overall story that’s being told. Yrel especially deserved better.

Eno has a question pertaining to the Forsaken:

QftQ: If Forsaken find being healed by the Light extremely painful, would they rather that they be accompanied by druids, shaman and monk healers than priests and paladins?

QftQ: Would Sylvanas try to encourage more Forsaken to become monks so she could have more healers, since Forsaken cannot be druids, shaman or paladins, or would she be too afraid of her Forsaken conquering their “inner turmoil” as a result of their monk training and seeking more peaceful alternatives to their problems?

Before I dive into your questions, take a look at the below, which are from an “Ask a Creative Dev” series of posts from 2012. Now, they’re from 2012, so some of this may have been retconned as Priest lore has expanded, but I think it’s pretty safe to say these all hold more or less true:

Without spoiling too much, we can tell you that wielding the Light is a matter of having willpower or faith in one’s own ability to do it. That’s why there are evil paladins (for example, the Scarlet Crusade and Arthas before he took up Frostmourne). For the undead (and Forsaken), this requires such a great deal of willpower that it is exceedingly rare, especially since it is self-destructive. When undead channel the Light, it feels (to them) as if their entire bodies are being consumed in righteous fire. Forsaken healed by the Light (whether the healer is Forsaken or not) are effectively cauterized by the effect: sure, the wound is healed, but the healing effect is cripplingly painful. Thus, Forsaken priests are beings of unwavering willpower; Forsaken (and death knight) tanks suffer nobly when they have priest and paladin healers in the group; and Sir Zeliek REALLY hates himself.

___

Channeling the Light in any way, or receiving healing from the Light, only causes pain. Forsaken priests do not disintegrate or explode from channeling the Light for an extended period of time… though they may wish they would.

___

It is difficult to say, as there are no known records of undead wielding the Holy Light before the Third War. There are reports, however, that some Forsaken have slowly experienced a sharpening of their dulled senses of touch, smell, etc., as well as an increase in the flashes of positive emotions that have otherwise become so rare since their fall into undeath. Unfortunately, this may be the cause of the Forsaken priesthood’s increased attempts at self-destruction; regaining these senses would force the priests to smell their own rotting flesh, taste the decay in their mouths and throats, and even feel the maggots burrowing within their bodies.

I think, based on the above that it’s a safe bet Forsaken would indeed prefer to be healed by Nature abilities than by Holy ones like those of Priests and Paladins.

There are two factors that could affect my answer to your second question, and we don’t really know definitively either of them. Namely, there have been hints — or conflicting representations — of free will in the Forsaken. If free will isn’t as free as we think it is, which is entirely possible with how Sylvanas “conditions” new Forsaken sometimes, then I don’t think it matters. Monks might find inner peace, but their higher purpose would be in service of the Forsaken, full stop.

If free will does exist, I think Sylvanas would come up with an excuse to avoid Forsaken Monks without outright saying she wants to avoid them questioning her. After all, what is the pain of the Light’s healing compared to the eternal nothingness of death? It is but a small price to pay in order to not experience True Death, Champion.

Melissa Boz is finding leveling doesn’t feel the same:

I’ve only leveled 2 chars to 120 and am finding it too tedious to do more. I think it’s because the world quests are the same as the leveling quests most times. Was this the same in Legion?

World Quests in Legion definitely did overlap. Off the top of my head, I don’t know if the same percentage of them that did then does in BFA, but I suspect this has more to do with leveling being reduced to three zones (if you’re playing the same faction) and the lack of any individual story (like the class campaigns). The big thing in BFA is the faction conflict. Different leveling areas, different war campaigns. But that’s still 2 different stories versus… well, a lot more in Legion. Even if the World Quests haven’t really changed, the things you do as you level have. And your alternative to stories is running Island Expeditions, which, uhh… yeah, that gets old fast, if you ask me.

So, yes, leveling probably is more tedious, but I don’t necessarily know if it’s because of World Quest overlap.

Buscava has a question about negativity. Won’t this be fun?!

Q4tQ – not necessarily blizzard related. Do you think that the negativity in the game industry is actually caused by a general perceived drop in quality, or is it more that it’s so much faster and easier for the negative voices to be echoed and heard.

It seems like there are so many content creators, game sites, critics etc that when something marginally mediocre or disappointing happens it gets amplified so fast and so loud that it’s even worse. Anthem story as an example – the story is genuinely about the same overall quality as the original mass effect, maybe a little less good, but because the Internet loves to hate there are being bashing it after playing an hour or two of story.

This is a more complicated question than I can really answer perfectly, but what the heck — I’m gonna do my best anyhow.

Honestly? It’s both. Negativity is — and has always been — more easy to turn into an echo chamber. And there are more and more outlets and ways to voice the initial negativity, and more and more outlets and ways to spread that negativity. The exact same number or percentage of people may hate Anthem that hated Mass Effect when it released — but it’s a lot easier now than it was before to be exposed to all of those voices.

At the same time, saying something like “this old game was just as good as this new game” may be objectively true, but that’s ignoring the fact that the bar has been — and, if you ask me, should be — raised in the time between the old game and the new.

Maybe a game didn’t drop in quality. But did it increase relative to the current acceptable bar? Moreover, even if one aspect of a game did increase with the bar, did it maintain the same increase in all aspects? Again, using your example, even if Anthem’s single-player story was better than Mass Effect’s, does it offer romance options people want? Does it provide intimate character moments? A great story relative to Mass Effect’s wouldn’t change the fact that it’s missing what makes BioWare games BioWare games for so many people.

I think the general perception in the games industry is less about overall quality of games and more about what those games are (or aren’t) providing for gamers and how expectations for those games are being set. And right now, a lot of games aren’t providing gamers with what they want, regardless of how “good” or “bad” those games are.

Mistah Jay, oh you!

2BE: 2BE Questions vs Questions about Shadow Priests and/or OldGod stuff

It totally depends on the 2BE — some of them I can genuinely come up with interesting stories/scenarios for (see below). Others, I don’t have a great response. I still like to include a 2BE if I can, though, because it’s sort of tradition.

That said, I’ll probably always have more to say about Shadow Priests and the Old Gods, regardless of what the question is.

Lotharfox reminds me of a funny story that didn’t happen to me:

2BE: The ever changing Colonel Sanders from the KFC commercials vs. The plastic faced king from Burger King commercials

So, back in… probably Vanilla, to be honest, I had a guildmate who had this story where he and his buddies (I think hungover) were grabbing breakfast one morning and just chatting or whatever. At some point, one of the friends just goes, “…Dude, look behind you.”

It was the Burger King mascot (the Burger King King), in the window behind him, waving.

It was the most hilariously terrifying mental image ever, and it’s stuck with me ever since. So… BKK wins this. (Also the changing Colonel Sanders shtick is annoying to me anyhow.)

Buscava, I love this question!

Fun Q – you can fuse two games. What do you make?

Because TIL that overwatch Pokemon was a thing, and it’s radical

Ooooh… I may have to make an article about this at some point. For now, you get bullets:

Literally anything I play with a horror game. I know that’s vague, but I absolutely love when games sneak in bits of horror that aren’t normally there, and it always ends before I get tired of it. Give me an entire WoW game set within zones like Drustvar or old Eastern Plaguelands, please! Or an Overwatch single-player experience seeping with spooks.
StarCraft and WoW. We could call it… Warcraft! (…4)
The cute, crafty aesthetic of the Yoshi/Kirby games with an RTS (just imagine yarn lasers!!!)
Oh crap, The Queue goes live in 13 minutes, I need to wrap this up.
The stealthiness of Dishonored/Dishonored 2 with, uhh… the worlds of Kingdom Hearts (or something else super cute).

Okay, yeah, I need to think more on this. But I do love the question!

Kalcheus, I cut your 2BE. I am so sorry:

Q4tQ: So in the Northeast section of Nazmir (near Atul’nazman, where a lot of the Incursion happens) there’s the Sundered Span. I’m guessing this is another road destroyed in the Sundering, but does anyone know where it went?

If you’re referring to what I think you’re referring to, I’m pretty sure this is part of the literal Path of the Titans. It’s been broken and shifted over time, but considering it’s directed straight toward Uldir (a Titan facility) and roughly in the direction of the Broken Shore (which has the Tomb of Sargeras and more Titan paths), I’m pretty sure it’s one of the pathways the Titans used to walk on way back when. Which is a roundabout way of saying I think it went to the Tomb of Sargeras. It’s actually pretty cool if you take a look at the different Titan paths in-game. There are a lot in Northrend, but the other ones that exist (roughly) point toward one another in a way that implies they were connected across the world.

That’s all I have for ya! Leave lots of questions for Liz.

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