The Queue: Here’s where I’d put my cute holiday picture of Marshmallow …

… if I had one!

So the whole family got matching pajamas to wear for Christmas, and Marshmallow got a bandanna that also matched. He looked super-cute in it too.

And then it disappeared. We have no idea what happened to it. At some point it was no longer around his neck, and we haven’t found it anywhere. As near as we can guess it fell off while he was outside and then blew away, but that’s just a guess. I suspect it’ll turn up in four months.

While we lament the cute picture that could’ve been, let’s answer some questions!

According to the 2024 roadmap we’re finally getting Troll Heritage Armor in patch 10.2.7, so if it doesn’t happen then it ain’t ever going to happen.

I don’t know if Vol’jin will formally become a Loa, but I do expect him — or his spirit, I guess — to show up during the quest chain.

I am not a fan of how professions were made overly complicated in Dragonflight. Not that it was all bad mind you — public orders and the ability to craft epic-quality gear was nice, and I hope that continues in The War Within. The complexity however was too much. We didn’t need five levels of quality for crafted gear and three levels for reagents. I’m also not fond of the vast quantity of knowledge points the system requires to max out your skills with a profession either.

In other words, it needs to be scaled back some. It’s a solid framework and an improvement from before, but there has to be a way to make it more accessible.

To actually answer the question, I did put a lot of effort into Mining and Engineering on one of my characters for the first several weeks of the expansion, but I eventually gave up hope. I wasn’t having fun and I didn’t relish making an effort across all the professions.

To confirm for everybody, we will not be getting Dynamic Flying in patch 10.2.5. Instead, you’ll be able to mount up and fly on any of your Dragonriding mounts in the non-Dragon Isles zones that already allow flying. Dynamic Flying should be arriving with The War Within pre-patch 11.0.

When it does arrive I expect it to be a toggle, either via the spellbook or a setting on our mount collection screen like the War Mode selector on the talents page.

I believe the tunnels should be wide enough to ride our dragons through, but it’s going to be tough not to hit a ceiling or wall while doing so. I doubt they’ll put any “official” races in-game that goes through them.

Unfortunately I don’t believe the Tram will allow mounting up any time soon, so racing there is probably out.

I’d be shocked if it isn’t the trio you already mentioned. A dark horse candidate would be an Earthen and one of the Arathi people, but those are real longshots. Xal’atath making an appearance would be a surprise, but enemies have appeared on loading screens before so it’s not out of the question. But anyone besides Thrall, Anduin, and Alleria would constitute an upset.

Participating in the War of the Three Hammers in-game has been a dream of mine for over a decade now so of course I have the whole thing planned in my head for how to implement it.

The main issue is the breadth of the conflict: starting from the death of Modimus Anvilmar through the summoning of Ragnaros a lot happens. Unless you’re willing to commit an entire expansion to it there’s really no way to do it justice within WoW (note to Blizzard: it would be a fantastic setting for Warcraft 4. Just sayin’). That said, I believe you could do it as a tier patch if you focused on the latter events at Grim Batol and Blackrock Mountain. The former would be a dungeon which involves Modgud and Xal’atath, while the latter would be a raid where the heroes have to ensure that Ragnaros gets summoned. Obviously you’d have a questing hub, and it would be cool if there was a “defense of Ironforge” scenario as well.

One neat quirk of recent events is that it doesn’t have to be the Infinite Dragonflight that leads us there. With Smolderon defeated at Amir’drassil and whispers of Ragnaros’ return in the recent Dark Iron quests, we could see a faction of Primalists make the effort to change the past so that Ragnaros is restored in the present.

All that said, I don’t think it’s likely we’ll ever see this done in-game (as much as I’d want to), I think at most you see a Timewalking Dungeon or Raid and even that feels unlikely.

For a game as anticipated as Persona 6 you have to imagine the reveal will happen at one of the big shows like Summer Game Fest or the Tokyo Game Show. The issue with either is that they take place before a likely Metaphor: ReFantazio release in the fall, and I would expect them to be marketing that game hard as it’s a new IP. That leaves the Video Game Awards as the next most likely candidate, but when they plan to release P6 is also a factor — if it’s planned for early 2025 then that’s probably too late to announce, but if it’s not coming out until later in the year it’s probably ok.

TL, DR: *shrug*

Sorry about the lack of holiday Marshmallow, here’s another pic of him for you to enjoy instead. Have a great week everybody, and be sure to ask plenty of questions for Matt tomorrow!