The Queue: Therapsids are so freaking cool

I love Therapsids. It’s a big group, and it includes not just cool prehistoric creatures like Inostrancevia and Anteosaurus, but also your house cat or dog, any bats or pigs or wolves or dolphins you might see, and human beings — because all mammals are part of the therapsidia. That’s right, despite what this headline says, Anteosaurus wasn’t a reptile at all, but a dinocephalian therapsid, and a relative of ours.

Of course, while I love dinocephalians, the gorgonopsids are my absolute favorite of the ancient, long extinct lineages that were our cousins. Big beasts like Inostrancevia and smaller but still agile predators like Aelurosaurus — these particular predators had a lot of adaptations that we see today in mammals, but also lacked some, like the larger mammalian neocortex. The non-mammalian therapsid brain was apparently, according to their skulls shape and size, more like that of a reptile than ours. But while the synapsids (including therapsids) started out as a cousin group to the sauropsids, their divergence led them down a path that differed in many ways from their counterparts in the reptilia. And for many millions of years, before the Permian-Triassic extinction called The Great Dying, therapsids ruled the Earth.

And while they were mostly pushed out by the archosaurs after the PT extinction, they hung on throughout the entire Mesozoic, with the cynodonts evolving into true mammals by the late Triassic. And today, those very cynodonts are giraffes and lions and hippos and squirrels and yes, humans — not only are all mammals therapids, all mammals are cynodonts as well.

So that’s a long winded explanation of why I put a picture of my dog at the top of today’s Queue, because she’s the cutest little therapsid you’re ever gonna see.

If you mean the epics that can sometimes drop, I’m pretty sure those are just random higher ilevel versions of weapons that drops from World Quests and such. But there’s a list of the pets and mounts and stuff you can get from various factions once you earn Paragon status with them.

Dude, it would be Tyrande purging the city, Illidan going along with it, and Malfurion being grumpy about it but ultimately letting it happen because wtf does he care about a bunch of humans on some other continent?

Here’s a link to a bunch of videos of my buddy Matt Fossen, soloing various Battle for Azeroth raid bosses, up to and including ones from Ny’alotha LFR.

Now, some of these like Taloc he did in February of 2020, so before Shadowlands came out, and even with the item squish I’d say that bodes well for you to be able to solo starting Mythic dungeons. The last four LFR boss clears are all at level 60, so after Shadowlands, and I have to think if those fights can be solo’d when they’re designed for 25 players initially, you can probably solo at least some BFA Mythics. I also found this video of a Druid using stealth to sneak up to the bosses in Mythic Freehold and killing them, so it’s at least feasible.

I have personally not been trying to do it, mind you, but I think the evidence suggests that if you can’t do it now, give patch 9.1 a few weeks and you’ll be more than geared enough.

Begone, carrion feeder! Ymir’s flesh is no fit home for…

Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting that you’re not actually a Norse myth. I think. Maybe you are. Who can say? Not me. Anyway, I’m positive at least one of those cinematics will be revealed after Sylvanas goes down in the Sanctum.

Yes.

What? I’ve been saying they should do this for years. I’d love if they did this with all of their games. A Diablo RTS, a Warcraft action RPG, a StarCraft 4x, an Overwatch JRPG-alike, the sky is the limit.

Yes, do this, it’s a great idea.

Okay, so y’all are therapsids, except maybe Kalcheus if he’s a mythical Norse dwarf. Then he’s a kind of divine arthropod.

Take care, everyone.