The Queue

When I first started playing games, the major in-game maps as we know them now just didn’t exist. If there were maps at all, they were likely to be physical things that came in a game box, vaguely describing the game world in paper or (for fancier games) cloth. So how did I find my way around? I made my own maps with graph paper and as-neat-as-I-could-manage handwriting. How old-school is that?

I still have, tucked away in my desk, whole notebooks of game maps, particularly MUDs for which the graph paper method worked particularly well. Perhaps I’m spoiled these days, though, because not only do I expect maps in the games themselves, I expect good maps… and  WoW‘s just don’t meet my expectations. But whether you care about maps or not, read on for answers to your questions.

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!

Yes, occasionally I like a nice pop song. I started writing this Queue on my birthday, but it’ll go live the day after, so you don’t have to get me a present. Of course, if you chose to do me a solid anyway, I wouldn’t say no.

Let’s talk about those Blizzard games, shall we? As always, we’ll likely end up talking about Legion so there will be spoilers. I’ll try to keep that to a minimum, but it is a site covering Blizzard games and we have to talk about it somewhat.

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!

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!

Motionless. Bald. I know I talked about this in yesterday’s Queue but I still can’t get over these guys. Right now they have taken the title for Weirdest Thing in the Alpha. We’ll have to wait and see if anything else pops up to take the crown. Until then, let’s get to your questions!

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!

Sometimes you see things in the alpha that you just don’t quite understand, like the frozen, naked, bald, Blood Elf mannequins stationed in strategic locations along the Broken Isles. Why are they there? We don’t know — I’m assuming they’re marking a spot for something. Why the old male Blood Elf model has suddenly turned into a marker, I couldn’t tell you. Nor why they are bald. Or, you know, standing around in Burning Legion central clad only in their skivvies. Let’s just move on to questions I can answer, why don’t we?

This is an image of the statue of Lady Mara Fordragon in the Paladin Class Hall underneath Light’s Hope.  We don’t really know that much about Lady Mara, save that she was High Clerist of Stormwind during the evacuation after Orcs set the city on fire during the end of the First War. She helped the refugees escape and served as their patron, and she’s probably dead now. She may have been related to (perhaps even mother to) Bolvar Fordragon, aka ‘Captain Toastybuns McDeadpants of Evil Snowcone Mountain’.

I’ve always liked that characters like her exist, heroes we don’t know all that much about, and I think the statue is pretty cool. So there it is.

This is the Queue. We’ll likely talk about Legion today, so be warned and on the lookout for spoilers.

So yeah, I’ve gotten the first stage of the Artifacts for Fury Warriors, Retribution Paladins, and Frost Death Knights so far. I won’t spoil anything if I can possibly help it, but still, spoiler warning — we’re going to likely talk a lot about the Legion alpha test in here.

This is the Queue. We talk about Blizzard games. Again, there may be spoilers for Legion, so proceed with caution if you don’t want spoilers.

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!

If that headline piqued your interest … I’m sorry to disappoint. There isn’t much scandal or sleaze in today’s Queue. However, I’m attending the Scandal & Sleaze event at the Milwaukee Public Museum tonight and I’m stoked.

Funny true story — I had essentially finished this edition of the Queue when a glitch erased all my work.

Much pirate ghosting was heard.

So let’s try this again.