The Queue: You can be my Sleeping Beauty. I’m gonna put you in a coma.

All right, let’s see if The Queue behaves this week. Let’s also see if I can’t finish this the night before it actually goes live. Frankly, I have to, because I’m not going to be at my PC for a couple hours before it goes live. Is anything important happening today? Who cares!

Let’s Queue.

Today? I don’t know. I’m writing this yesterday. But yesterday? I am very tired right now, in yesterday. I like having sun out later, but good Yogg, does waking up in the morning feel a lot rougher after the time change.

4BE: In the end, Death claims us all.

Heroes Q: They’ve heavily implied Anduin is the next hero to arrive in the Nexus, and I imagine he’ll be around in the next… month or two? They’re in the process of monthly Q&As, and if he’s not revealed before the next one, I imagine that’s when we’ll first hear about him.

Whew. That’s a lot of questions. Simplest answer: It’s been less than 6 months since Blizz announced the stages at BlizzCon, and they’ve already updated that system. I think your questions are looking too far into the future to have a real solid answer — even from Blizz itself. This is an experiment. Even if they wanted to open new servers at the end of a cycle, WoW Classic might bomb and they’ll just leave one or two servers active for the rest of forever and leave ’em alone.

That said, there are a couple things I’m confident about: They will not wipe servers at any point. They will not “upgrade” servers to BC or Wrath servers at the end of a Classic cycle.

Beyond that, I imagine new servers won’t start at a different patch than existing ones just because of the way Battle.net works and how a different patch cycle would essentially be a different install (like how the PTR requires a whole install instead of being a server you log into through normal WoW).

So, I imagine we’ll have servers sitting at that final stage. If we need news ones, we may get them — but they’ll be at the same stage as existing ones. BC or Wrath servers, frankly, are unlikely — ever. But if they do happen, they’ll be their own thing the way Classic servers will be (or, again, PTR servers are).

I’m going to play a Kul Tiran Druid once I finish my reputation, but beyond that, I haven’t entirely decided. I’d been leaning Moonkin, but the specific forms really are what drew me to Kul Tiran Druids, and the Moonkin one is my least favorite, so… Dunno. I hadn’t actually thought about it until this question. I really do like the Kitty Form for Kul Tirans, so maybe I’ll go with that.

My guess? Burning Crusade has not only a lot of raids, it has a lot of raid bosses. While Wrath technically had one more raid instance than BC (9 in total vs. 8 for BC), it had a lot of very short raids like Ruby Sanctum and Trial of the Whatever. There are 44 bosses in Burning Crusade content,  54 for Wrath, and…

Wait. Crap. That’s a lot more in Wrath than Burning Crusade. Guess there goes that argument.

WAIT AGAIN! Naxxramas was bundled with the first Raiding With Leashes achievement, which puts Wrath’s boss content at 39 bosses.

Okay, if you’ll pardon the stream of consciousness, I think it’s actually a result of Blizz experimenting with the formula. The first RWL included 4 raids (all the ones from Vanilla). Then, Burning Crusade had 6 “major” raids. Blizz’s second take on RWL could have either been all 6 of those (and maybe include the “minor” bosses) or it could be closer to the first RWL, focus on half the major raids, and serve as an experiment to see if the Battle Pet hype kept up. Obviously, it stuck, and they still had 3 more big raids to include.

I am a bit surprised Cataclysm’s version of RWL included Throne of the Four Winds, but eh. I think I’ve spent more words on this than I ever needed to.

I serve Yogg-Saron, always and forever. Though I do respect all Old Gods, and I especially respect the way N’Zoth has survived as long as he has. While Yogg slumbers, N’Zoth has my servitude. When Yogg awakens, I will help them make sure they achieve their goals. And if it ever came down to picking sides?…

May Yogg bless you.

I actually forwarded this his way, and he pointed out that we do have something like that, and it’s still relevant! Go figure. That said, it’s nice having requests from y’all, especially if there’s something evergreen you think we’re missing. Requesting it doesn’t guarantee we’ll write it, but at the very least, it might help you get your name in The Queue and the article you wanted written — in the past!

Wow, how non-gaming focused of you to get married. Congrats or whatever, but please be less selfish in the future. The game needs you.

To answer your question (lazily), Rachelle wrote up a nice summary on this site, and Blizzard published their own summary/notes. Both cover things quite nicely, if you ask me!

This warrants a full post (and it’s one I’ve considered like 50 times before, only to forget about it), but personally? I think the Alliance is doing a good job fighting the war, even if they’re not necessarily accomplishing their goals. Yeah, their efforts to destroy the fleet succeeded, but their goal of dissuading the Zandalari from allying with the Horde backfired. Their (presumed) goal of ending the war quickly isn’t succeeding either, but in prolonging it, the Horde is doing a good job tearing itself apart anyhow.

Ultimately, I think each side is winning battles here, losing battles there, gaining new allies where they need them, upsetting old ones where they don’t, and generally playing things like a chess match where they don’t always predict what their opponent is going to do, even if they think they can.

It’s complicated. It’s not a matter of winning or losing anymore. It doesn’t come down to just accomplishing what they’ve set out to do. And even if a treaty is arranged in the end of this… we’ve done a lot of damage along the way, and we’ve awakened forces long thought dormant. There is not going to be a winner to this war, because what’s happened along the way already means both sides have lost more than they wanted.

And on that happy note, The Queue is over! At least for today. Have fun with the patch, and be sure to leave lots of questions for Liz.