The Queue: I always feel like my axe is watching me

So last night this dropped. Combined with the 2h weapon from my Proudmoore Admiralty emissary chest, I have two 445 weapons, which is doing pretty well for my very casual self in my very casual raid. But on perusing my transmog collection, I now realized I have Sk’shuul Vaz, Dark Edge of Insanity and Xal’atoh, Desecrated Image of Gorehowl. I’m pretty sure this means I have every 2h axe that has a big eye (or several) sticking out of it in the entire game.

I feel like Dark Edge is my formal eyeball axe, Xal’atoh is my party eyeball axe, and Sk’shuul Vaz is my casual eyeball axe. This is the Queue. How many eyes is too many, really?

Forsaken Paladin, I’d say. But all three have a lot of interesting things to talk about, in my opinion, and not just those three. A Forsaken DK has died twice. I mean, think about how wild that is. You die, are raised from the dead as a mindless monster, fight and get your free will back, die again and the Lich King raises you again. You’re practically Anub’arak at this point, that guy just wouldn’t let you die. You’re like a Demon Hunter with that immortal demon soul, except it’s imposed on you from outside.

There’s so much room in the Forsaken for interesting stories, I really felt like the Desolate Host had serious potential. I hope something like it comes around again now that Sylvanas is out of the picture. I also very much hope for Forsaken Paladins. I’d roll one. Imagine a Forsaken who is brimming with the Light and wants to heal everyone hurt by the Fourth War, going so far as to repeatedly try (and likely fail) to reach out to the Night Elves. I can feel so many RP possibilities here.

Oh, they absolutely do.

The issue isn’t this patch or this raid tier, though. Corruption is a first draft of what they’re going to do in Shadowlands, it’s a way to test out an idea. Are players willing to absorb some risk for power? How much? How well does this current version of it work, and how could we improve on that design going forward? Should it be something that we see in leveling or just at endgame?

Any work Blizzard does now to balance the system as it is on live is also work on the drawing board for a better version of Corruption down the road. What are we going to see in Shadowlands? How is it going to work? It’s a pretty interesting process, even if it scares the crap out of me.

But they really do know that they could have just stuck a bunch of Warforged and Titanforged gear in patch 8.3 and called it a day. They also know the player base craves new and interesting systems, even if people like me complain like crazy about them.

Blizzard is taking liberties with their own made up world? Taking liberties with  magic, a thing that does not exist and, if it did exist, very deliberately flouts things like reason and understanding? I mean, Mogu and Iron Vrykul can cast spells and they’re literally made of minerals. There’s no flesh there at all. Same with the Tol’vir who accepted the deal and were made stone again, they cast spells all the time and they’re made of rock.

Magic doesn’t need you to be made of flesh at all to work in the Warcraft setting and it never has. We’re letting rock and metal things cast spells. Things made entirely of crystal can cast spells. Why shouldn’t Gnomes with prosthetics be able to cast spells?

For starters, I’d have Mayla Highmountain and Queen Talanji step up into prominent leadership positions. Mayla is close with Baine, and Talanji commands a still powerful naval force (once their shipyards rebuild the ones they lost, anyway) and is one of the few members of the Horde with a personal, and powerful, grudge against the Alliance.

Note, this isn’t me saying let’s keep the animosity going but I do think these two, plus Geya’rah for the Mag’har, need to step up and lead more. We can’t have Thrall, Baine and Lor’themar doing everything, and Thalyssra looks like she’ll be getting a decent amount of focus, so I’d definitely try and bump Mayla and Talanji up a notch.

I think a good story going forward for the Horde would be to focus on what the Horde is, when it’s not all Orcs and their amazing friends running around under a Warchief. Saurfang died trying to move the Horde away from its roots. But look at the roster we’ve got now — both Blood Elves and Nightborne are magically adept urban cultures, as are the Zandalari in their own way. Highmountain has been settled and had its own culture for over 10,000 years. These aren’t the rootless, wandering people who founded the Horde, they’re people who have their own strong cultural assumptions. How is the Horde going to change with them in the mix?

What will the Horde be when Orcs are just one seat at the table? When Trolls and Tauren are seen as elder statesmen? When the Forsaken have to adapt to a world without the Dark Lady watching over them? With people from places like Quel’thalas, Suramar and Highmountain coming to Orgrimmar and potentially thinking wow, what a backwater much less going from Dazar’alor to Org? There’s a lot of potential story to be mined out of the Horde growing up.

Well, I don’t feel comfortable writing that, but I can say this — I married a gamer, and I feel like it was an excellent choice. She was already playing StarCraft and Diablo 2 when we met, and she got me into World of Warcraft because she was playing it during the beta test and she thought it would be a good way for us to hang out together. Clearly, I followed her advice.

You don’t have to share the same interests as your partner, but being at least conversant in their likes and dislikes helps, and with gaming it’s very helpful when you can explain to someone I can’t, I have to raid and have them understand. Although she did make me level a Shaman just so I could cast Heroism on her in a swamp.

Julian is my best friend, the love of my life, and my favorite questing partner. I feel like being with someone who understand makes gaming a lot easier as an adult.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. I’ll be back next week. I can’t promise my axe won’t have eyes on it.