The Queue: Good times with lore and other chatter

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!

Do you like Lore Watch? Then good news, we’re going weekly! The first weekly episode of Lore Watch will be hitting RSS feeds on Wednesday — and you’ll be getting a weekly episode every Wednesday after that. Patrons will still be getting a new episode every Sunday, right after we wrap up recording. And because I can’t possibly say it enough, thank you to all Patreon supporters both old and new for making a weekly show happen. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Now let’s get to all those Queue questions, shall we?

Nope! At that point, your involvement as a loyalist to Sylvanas is essentially over — well, after the small wrap-up quest, that is. The War Campaign is over, and there isn’t really a side with rebels anymore, it’s all been concluded. Basically, you can turn on her because there’s nowhere to turn to. We’re all on the same side now.

Now if there’s a point in the future where Sylvanas reaches out to those most loyal to her, maybe you’ll see an opportunity to turn her down then. But as far as the game is concerned, once you’ve gone through that cinematic, you’re done.

Shadowmoon Valley is your best bet, although Netherstorm is a pretty close second. Blade’s Edge has a few, but only a very few in one select area, so you’d be better off hitting either of the other two zones. But if you’re looking for a really big pile of demons, the area around Kazzak in Hellfire Peninsula is crawling with them. However, you’ll need a flying mount to get up there, so that might not be as easy a task as simply tromping to Shadowmoon Valley and checking things out.

I don’t think sliders are as easy a prospect as you think they are — but I’m not disagreeing with you. I think it would be nice if we could get some new hair styles, some new hair colors, maybe new piercings or tattoos to choose from, and rather than a slider, it’d be cool if we could just select from a group of builds/heights.

I realize Blizzard originally crafted the characters so that they could be easily sighted/identified — like if you see a Tauren, you know it’s a Tauren even without seeing any of the details. But I also think that customization is something that a lot of people are really keen on, and while transmogrification is one way to allow us some customization, it would be cool to get some options for the models themselves, instead of just what they happen to be wearing.

Some people might have done some collecting — for non-soulbound items, you could always make a bank alt to house your various collections of stuff. But most of the time, collecting wasn’t a gigantic “thing” like it is today. Bag space was at a premium, there was only so much you could put in your bank, and on top of that, pets and mounts were items that had to be in your bags — no pet journal, no mount journal.

Because of all of that, you rarely saw anyone obsessively squirrel anything. As for me personally, I kept only the stuff that I felt was really cool/meaningful in vanilla. I had a small collection of pets, but it was pretty limited due to bag space constraints. Most of the stuff I kept was cool from a lore/story perspective, so like the items you could keep from the Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest chain, cool journals, neat diaries — oh, and Taretha’s Necklace. I know you were supposed to give it back and all, but I kind of liked having it in my possession.

In theory, yes! But we still don’t really know if, when, or what’s going to be in patch 8.3. While it would be nice to assume that Mechagon is going to meet the same fate as Return to Karazhan, nobody’s said anything about it so far. Personally, I’m really hoping it does!

The Fourth War specifically refers to the Alliance and Horde war featured in Battle for Azeroth. Other conflicts have come into play, yes, but they had their own labels — in Northrend, for instance, the battles there are referred to as the war against the Lich King, rather than being given some kind of official war moniker.

I believe the conflict in Pandaria was called the Invasion of Pandaria, but I’m not 100% on how “official” that is — that’s the term that was used in the Ultimate Visual Guide, rather than Fourth War. Fun story — I actually asked if that conflict should be called the Fourth War when I was working on the book, and I believe they actually had a discussion about the title. Either way, I was told nope, use this other term instead, so the term was used. I don’t think it’s been used in game, however.

I would say, just based on past history, that the conflict against the Burning Legion in the last expansion should technically have been called the Fourth War — I mean, the Third War also took place against the Burning Legion. But it does make sense that the current battle is being referred to as the Fourth War. It’s the Alliance and Horde at odds again, just like the First and Second Wars, so it fits well enough!

That’s it for today’s Queue — if you have any questions you’d like to see answered, be sure to leave them in the comments below!