The Queue: Good girls go bad!
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Elizabeth Wachowski will be your host today.
Since we'll be discussing female villains, I figured that Betty Draper, the most hated woman on basic cable other than Lori from The Walking Dead, would be an appropriate illustration. I used to think that Betty was the absolute worst, but a few conversations with coworkers made me realize that she's really no worse of a human being than Don. So she's cold and manipulative? Well, she's an isolated housewife married to a philandering, lying workaholic. Do we tend to forgive Don more than Betty because he's the hero of Mad Men? Or does Don Draper's handsomeness erase all sins for many fans? Yes, Mom, I'm talking to you.
sergel92 asked:
What major female baddies are there in WoW? There's Azshara, obviously, and Onyxia too, I guess. But who else could be major enough to get her own expansion, or at least her own patch?
There's certainly a lack of female bad guys in the Warcraft universe. The Burning Legion is not yet evolved enough for equal opportunity hiring. Aside from the previously mentioned Azshara and Onyxia, Lady Vashj is a major raid boss, as were the dragons Sindragosa and Sintharia. Depending on your point of view, Sylvanas Windrunner, Garona and Maiev Shadowsong could be considered antiheroes at best and villains at worst. Maiev was driven into an obsessive hunt for Illidan, Garona killed King Llane, and Sylvanas ... well, we all know what Sylvanas is capable of. In my opinion, one of the best and most underutilized female characters in the game is Magatha Grimtotem. She's smart, manipulative, and even though she sneakily killed a faction leader, she still gets to be a quest giver!
puntable1 asked:
Do you think there are any announced features that will not make it into the expansion? There is still no sign of the Tiller's farming mini game, or whatever it is.
After the dance studio debacle, Blizzard is being very careful about not announcing things that aren't going to make it into the game. A lot of people are looking forward to the farms, and since everyone on Facebook has seen how farming games induce a strange kind of insanity, I think the farms will definitely make it into the expansion. I'm even more certain that Pet Battles will be in the expansion at launch. People are crazy about their pets.
sergel92 asked:
How was Mists received during its announcement compared to the other expansions? The last three seemed to get people really pumped and excited overall, but with Mists people seemed to be complaining about things like pandas, and pet battles, and the Asian theme, and pandas again.
I feel like the announcements of the first two expansions were met with more enthusiasm than the last two. With The Burning Crusade, everyone was just happy to have new content, and the break from a 40-man raid focus was a big deal for a lot of people (although there were certainly a ton of class-specific complaints). And Arthas has always been a fan favorite, so most people seemed pretty psyched for Wrath of the Lich King. Cataclysm had a much more mixed reception; many players complained about a lack of release content, and according to the forums, the game was simultaneously made too hard and too easy.
The early complaints about Mists of Pandaria were mainly related to a perceived "silliness" of things like pandaren and Pet Battles; they seem to have died down now that more people are in the beta and see that the new content is really no more silly than the old content. The increase in complaints might also have something to do with nostalgia -- it's easy to think back with fondness on the days of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair when you're not spending hours farming for consumables and trying to get your various resistance gear in order.
Valkyr_ asked:
Can you fix your site please? Your JQuery LazyLoad implementation is wrong and it's impossible to load the front page images.
We've been getting a lot of emails about this, and we can assure you this was not intentional or part of some diabolical scheme. In an attempt to make the site load faster, a change was made that merged multiple pieces of JavaScript and loaded them simultaneously. This included an ad loader -- hey, we want them to load quickly, too! However, this caused AdBlock and similar addons to cut off the whole bundle, and JavaScript and lazy-loaded images were being blocked. This has been changed, so clearing your cache should hopefully take care of the problem. If it's still an issue, email alex@wowinsider.com with information about your browser and whatever plugins you're using.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
