The Queue: The sins of the father
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
New patches and new expansions are my favorite -- not because of all of the new things to do, but because you guys actually start asking questions for The Queue again. Hooray!
durandal asked:
In one of the interviews, it has been stated that "Garrosh has become corrupted and has been doing some really nasty things beneath Orgrimmar", so both factions want to get rid of him in MoP's final tier.
What do you think? Is this corruption self-influenced and based solely on his character, or are there external powers involved? Like, old gods invading RFC and mindcontrolling him from down there? Or is the Burning Blade at work again?
In our back room office talk here at WoW Insider, I've been betting all along that Garrosh is going to go the route of demon blood again. The entire Horde talks up Grom Hellscream's heroic sacrifice, how he's one of the greatest warriors to have ever lived, that Garrosh should be proud of him ... that whole thing. Yeah, Grom had a glorious, heroic death, but it came after years and years of doing horrible, horrible things under demonic influence -- which he voluntarily accepted.
The sins of the father should not be inflicted upon their sons, but that's exactly what happens when you tell the son that those sins were not sins at all but actually righteous and heroic acts. The son will commit the same sins anew.
Personally, I expect that as soon as the Alliance puts up a real fight and starts backing Garrosh into a corner, Garrosh will do exactly what Grom did -- reach out to the nearest demon lord and slurp up his blood for power. Then, if Thrall steps back in as warchief, maybe he'll put in an effort to find his Horde real heroes to look up to instead of encouraging them to worship monsters like Grom and Kargath. If you don't want your Horde to repeat the mistakes of the past, you can't whitewash those mistakes and call them heroic.
wmbrguild asked:
Did Blizzard even remotely address the realms with dwindling populations or servers that are EXTREMELY unbalanced?
Blizzard hasn't given a specific answer to that question and certainly not at the Mists of Pandaria press event. Personally, I don't think Blizzard can properly address the issue until after Mists of Pandaria has launched and the developers can see where the game's population lands at that point. If it consolidates a bunch of servers right now, launches the expansion, and then finds 2 to 3 million more North American players (new or returning) playing the game ... then what happens? It'll need to reopen the servers it's closed. Six to 12 months after that, who knows where the population will be then? That doesn't help anybody.
When Mists launches, either the problem will fix itself, or it'll give Blizzard a surer image of where the game's population will stay for the foreseeable future.
RogueJedi86 asked:
Here's a question I wondered after reading about the Sha yesterday. The Sha are the physical embodiment of bad emotions like Fear, Hatred, Doubt, etc., and it's implied that the alliance/Horde war on Pandaria fuels them. So wouldn't going into a raid to beat the Sha defeat the point of why they exist? Going in with intent to kill would just make them stronger. So we'd beat the Sha by simply choosing not to kill any of them in the world or in dungeons or raids.
I'm not sure a World of Warcraft in which you win by not playing would be a compelling game. I think the point is, in order to kill these things, we need to overcome our inner demons. These guys can be beaten when you believe that you can do it. If you fear the sha, if you hate them, if you doubt your ability to defeat them, you only make them stronger and it becomes absolutely certain that you cannot beat them.
Other fantasy fiction has established that an intent to kill is not necessarily fueled by emotion. It can be entirely logical -- sever the arm so you don't lose the body, that sort of thing. Look at Star Wars. The Jedi kill all of the time. Their Order doesn't forbid killing; it just forbids feeling strongly about it. Kind of weird, but it is what it is.
@paul asked:
In the new Blizz post a Night in MoP it mentions proving grounds. Got the scoop on these? Can't find anything anywhere, other than the Tolvir Proving Grounds Arena, which doesn't fit.
They weren't mentioned at all in the presentation at last week's press event. I imagine they are exactly what Bashiok described in that post: solo instances with a little lore thrown in. They're probably to help you learn the finer details of your class/PvE in general without bogging other people down with the learning process.
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!
