The Queue

It’s a snow day here in Minneapolis. And it’s two weeks into April. That’s just great.

I am really not feeling welcome here, you guys.

Happy Tuesday, folks! It’s a rare Queue that I finish Monday night before midnight, but it seems this will be one of those rarities. I don’t want to risk jinxing this and having to re-write this intro, so why not hop to it?

Let’s Queue.

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!

You know, what with all the real dungeons Azeroth is simply chock full of, I kind of wonder what a session of Azeroth-style D&D actually looks like. Who writes the sourcebooks? Is there a special Marcus compendium somewhere that nobody talks about? Inquiring minds want to know.

Hello. I am not a sword, or a dinosaur, or a proto-synapsid, or a person who is unhealthily obsessed with a carving knife. I am Matt Rossi and I am writing this Queue. I am not someone else pretending to be him. I am him. I am old and my eyes are messed up and I play way, way too many Warriors and Barbarians. I am not subtle.

This is the Queue. Let’s talk about stuff.

Welcome to The Queue, where I — the lady who started off writing about pet battle mechanics — am somehow tasked with discussing narrative direction and literary criticism. This is why we can’t have nice things. Well, that and demonic corruption…

So yesterday Mitch wrote a pretty interesting Breakfast Topic about how Blizzard could add more individual flair to characters based on race or faction, and it got me thinking. It’s an idea a few of us have bandied about before — what if there were cosmetic and tooltip changes available so that, as an example, Forsaken Warriors got an attack called Ghoul Frenzy instead of Rampage? And while the ability did the exact same thing as Rampage mechanically (because it is Rampage under the hood) it would have a different tooltip and a different animation making it look less like a series of weapon strikes and more like the Forsaken just lost their cool and decided to try and eat someone’s brain?

I’m not saying they have to go with that, but there could be all sorts of options here — Tauren Paladins could get Sunwalker’s Stride instead of Divine Steed, where they still get the 100% movement speed but they just get a holy version of Plainsrunning instead, while Gnome Monks could get Skip instead of Roll. Making these options entirely voluntary, so that you don’t have to switch them if you don’t want to but the flavor is there would make them pretty cool, I think. A Blood Elf with a Spellbreaker Strike instead of Spell Reflection that does basically the same thing but looks more like a weapon attack than a shield use would fit their general motif without being overpowered or unbalancing — you’d have the ability whether or not you chose the option with the racial flair.

Anyway, this is the Queue, I’m doing this one, let’s talk.

I’m gonna be completely honest with you guys: I have no idea what happened in terms of April Fool’s jokes yesterday. I spent Sunday away from home, fell asleep extra early, and then spent all of Monday doing work. So anything that transpired after Saturday is not something I’m privy to.

That said, you guys were pretty cool about asking questions, despite “Mitch having Queue duty the day after AFD [be] the most poetic form of justice,” according to PumaBackup. JOKE’S ON YOU, PUMA! I GOT PLENTY OF QUESTIONS!

With that in mind, let’s Queue.

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!

Look, yes, it’s the first of April and the internet is likely up to all kinds of shenanigans today, but I’d like to reassure you that no such shenanigans will be taking place here. Nope, you asked your questions, I’ll be giving you your answers, and we’ll be continuing on as usual. No shenanigans. I promise.

This is Liz, reporting in. Yes, of course it’s Liz. No one here but us Lizes. Absolutely, 100%, definitively Liz. Why would you even ask that?