The Queue is having trouble coming up with a clever title

As I finish writing this at around eight in the morning, I find myself utterly unable to come up with a unique or clever way to introduce the day’s column. Today, cleverness is DIY.

Gnomes do not participate in blood sacrifices. We are a people who are kind and loyal and would not sacrifice our kin, and I find the suggestion that we would to be quite rude.

Firstly, Mitch’s motives are inscrutable.

Secondly, I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT MECHAGNOMES AND I MAY HAVE TO RACE CHANGE.

Ahem. It’s possible that I should take a step back, because Blizzard hasn’t actually announced Mechagnomes as an Allied Race… but they do look super neat. Even though they have the exact same faces as current Gnomes, they have unique hairstyles, different hair colors, and (of course) those mechanical parts. The details are fantastic. The women’s hairstyles are gloriously vintage, and combine nicely with the steampunk aesthetic of their mechanical arms and legs. In just the details in their hair and limbs you can start to imagine a whole world of Mechagnome culture and I love it.

So I do hope to see them as an Allied Race, in which case I may have to think really hard about a race change. (Beyond the fact that they just look really cool, pretty much all Allied Races have ridiculous overpowered racials, so it would be a win/win, right?)

But when Vulpera models came out, we were sure all of the detail meant they were going to be an Allied Race. This may be the same.

Though… if we get both Vulpera and Mechagnomes… that would bring some difficult choices to the game.

Everyone is flocking to the water-walking gear, and we certainly already know how handy it is to have a mount that can skirt over the waves with us. But I am also intrigued by the saddlechute,  which opens a parachute whenever we leap off a dangerously tall object, letting you float safely to the ground.

That’s something that could be tremendously useful when leveling or when — like now — you are stuck in zones you can’t fly in. I very much like the idea of never having to make a corpse run to the bottom of a cliff. And I also very much like the idea of watching a mammoth in a parachute.

But water-walking is so useful that it’s difficult to see us using anything else, and that’s the real problem here. The other gear — one piece to reduce fall damage and another to prevent you from getting dazed — is nice. But water-walking is so useful that it blows the others out of the (metaphorical) water.

It’s one of Warcraft’s many illusions of choice: we have three options, and none of them are bad. But one of them is so good that you’re unlikely to ever use the others.

The obvious answer here is because there’s no piece of gear that lets you harvest without dismounting. If that was removed from the mount and wasn’t found anywhere in the game, it would be a huge frustration to gatherers, particularly those who invested in getting the mount.

But that leaves the question of why isn’t there a piece of equipment that lets you gather while mounted? It fits the theme of mount equipment and it would bring tremendous utility to the players who can’t afford a Sky Golem.

There’s the argument that players did put a big investment into the Sky Golem and replacing it with a piece of gear that anyone could equip would discount the effort players put into getting it. But that’s an argument you could use on the Water Strider mount, too.

My practical thinking is that Blizzard didn’t want to remove one of the few cool Engineering perks in the game… but dang would I love to be able to harvest using mounts other than the large and noisy Sky Golem. That would be a tough choice against water walking, where I’d have to weigh the utility of harvesting against the practicality of water walking.

I’m still waiting for the “let’s all get along and work together to rebuild Azeroth” expansion, which would include the ability to build player and guild housing. I know I would sink untold hours into designing the perfect house and furnishing it.

I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m still waiting for it.

It’s still Blizzard, but Heroes of the Storm, which could bring in all of those completely insane AU versions of existing Warcraft characters into the main Warcraft universe… if only briefly.

Just imagine it. It would be glorious.

And that is all, my friends. (By which I mean the people who do not make Gnome jokes in the comments.) I shall see you all back here next week.