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The QueueApr 17, 2024 12:00 pm CT

The Queue: I like humans

I like humans in fantasy games. I know I’m the exception here: people are all about elves and dwarves, orcs and minotaurs, vampires and werewolves, demons and angels. And I like those too! But for some reason, I always tend to gravitate towards good old, boring, predictable, vanilla, run-of-the-mill humans. Their stories speak more to me.

When it comes to other races, the truth is that, although there are exceptions, they can often be very stereotypical. Elves are long-lived, pretty, magically-inclined, nature-loving, and a bit arrogant. Orcs are brash, hot-headed, and warlike. Dwarves dig and drink. Humans, on the other hand, are more of a blank slate — and for that reason, they don’t have a predetermined set of stories already written for them. I just find that the intricacies of political drama on human kingdoms and the pains and woes of human drama are not only easier to relate to, but they usually scrape a little deeper as well.

And with my defense of what is often called “the most boring race someone could choose to play as in a fantasy game” — I disagree — it’s time to Queue.


STRANGE THOMAS

Q4tQ: What’s your best guess for how we get the Sylvanas Windrunner transmog ensemble?

FWIW, I don’t think it will be attached to the Trading Post (neither as a monthly completion reward, nor as a 12-month complete-every month reward), and I also don’t think it will be for sale.

…my boring-but-pragmatic answer is exactly what you don’t want to hear: it feels like a Trading Post reward to me. Maybe not major enough for a 12-month cycle, but possibly a monthly reward.

But I’m gonna try not to be boring and pragmatic for a second and imagine that they could add a Sylvanas-related questline in the (near?) future. We could have our characters return to the Maw, intent on either checking up on Sylvanas, or getting revenge on her. And what would happen during that encounter?

I don’t know!

It’s super hard to predict what the writers want to do with Sylvanas these days. It’s more than clear that they don’t want to erase her from the story completely, but it also doesn’t feel like they want her to be back in action already. Much like Illidan, she’s been congealed to be returned at a (probably much) later date.

Either way, whether we encounter her or not, and whether we have a friendly chat, or an unfriendly chat, or even a little fight with her, for some reason we walk away with her armor. Or a replica of it, at least.


STRANGE THOMAS

So, hmmm… Pandaria Timerunning offers some cool recolors of existing sets, as well as a recolor of the Elegon mount. And so on.

Kind of makes me hope that they’ll do Timerunning Burning Crusde at some point. Like, what if they offered more modern “clown suits” that were higher rez and also in better colors? Like, instead of a violet gown, lavendar hat, green shoulders, and yellow gloves, the whole thing had a smoother, more modern appearance but also was in less clowny, more matchy colors?

Given what we’re seeing of the Pandaria rewards, yes, this is a very sound line of thinking. One thing that I’d really like to see is a higher resolution version of Tier 2, which is, to this day, the most well-designed tier of all time in my opinion — it gave us Judgement for Paladins, Bloodfang for Rogues, and Nemesis for Warlocks, just to name a few sets that are extremely iconic to this day.

The only problem is that those sets are a part of… Vanilla. The idea of having a “Vanilla Timerunning” event is a bit odd, given that the leveling zones are all technically Cataclysm content. The dungeons and raids would still work — but some of those have also been revamped and integrated as content for other expansions.

So I guess this could be part of a special, commemorative Timerunning event. Perhaps something to celebrate the next big milestone for WoW, or Blizzard itself?


KALCHEUS AND MUSEDMOOSE

(K) Q4tQ Have you tried out the new Hearthstone Battlegrounds season? Thoughts on the changes?

(M) Q4tQ: how has your experience with the new HSBG season been? I’ve already been kicked in the face by what’s clearly the new beasts meta, but I managed to get something good going with murlocs and had a comeback victory in my next battle, with one of my little guys getting up to nearly 500 health and attack. I haven’t had a chance to play anything else, though, so I’m looking forward to seeing what else is new.

So far, so good! Got a 1st place on my first Duos game, and a 3rd and a 2nd on my first two Solo games!

The power level of Battlegrounds was too high on season 6, due to the combination of powerful minions, quests, and spells. Things seem to have calmed down for season 7, since quests are gone and there’s been a huge minion rotation, meaning that people are still adapting to the new meta. Some minions I hated have been removed (bye, Hawkstrider Herald), while others that I loved are back (welcome home, Magmaloc). It’s definitely a fun time to play the game!

(If you ignore the absurd weekly quest changes, that is.)


ARTHONOS

Q4tQ: Since I have indie games on my mind, if WoW was to do a collaboration with an indie dev, who would you like Blizz to work with and what would you like to see? Crypt of the NecroDancer’s dev collaborated with Nintendo and we go Cadence of Hyrule out of it, so I feel like there could be something really neat made out of a WoW collaboration. Way better than just naming an NPC Zagreus and stuffing them in some remote location on Azeroth.

poncle, the makers of Vampire Survivors.

We could get the previously-datamined-but-not-yet-implemented Vampire Survivors mode in WoW, and we could also get a WoW-themed map and WoW-themed characters and weapons in Vampire Survivors!

Jaina Proudmoore and Imelda Belpaese would 100% become best friends and fight crime together!

Giovanna Grana would challenge Khadgar to a dance-off!

Gallo would totally resurrect Gul’dan!


MUSEDMOOSE

I know I said “Maldraxxus and it’s not even close” originally… but our own Anna Bell changed my mind with her (much better) answer:

The Underbog. While the other places y’all are mentioning are definitely stinky, Underbog is wall to wall dead fish and mold and rot, and humid af to boot.

It’s pretty hard to disagree. Hundreds of thousands of rotting fish in a damp place? That would probably smell even worse than a gigantic — but single — rotting corpse.

I still dream of the day when we’ll get a single player RPG set during the events of the Second War, with the seven kingdoms of Stormwind, Lordaeron, Alterac, Dalaran, Kul Tiras, Gilneas, and Stromgarde as the setting. Humans deal with the Orcish invasion and lose themselves in their own machinations as well — the dashing Lord Daval Prestor comes out of nowhere to stir things up, and we need to navigate the turmoils of war from a more down-to-earth perspective, until the final confrontation between Turalyon and Orgrim Doomhammer at Blackrock Spire.

I like humans.

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Filed Under: Human, Second War
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