The Queue: Snakes on a complain

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi is riding this bus all the way to the ground today.

I said I would title this edition of The Queue this if I were allowed to write it. Here's the issue, as best I understand it.

1. They are introducing new snake models in patch 5.2.

2. These snake models are not tameable by hunters.

3. Several people, including my own wife, somehow think that if I say that I agree that these snakes should be tameable, somehow that will have some sort of positive effect and the snakes will become tameable.

So, in the interest of getting people to stop tweeting at me, I will now say that if Blizzard decided to make these snakes tameable I would be for it because then I wouldn't have to hear about it any more. I know that there are issues that are far, far more important than hunters, like warriors getting to dual wield polearms, but in the interest of a moment's peace I stand here today saying Okay, whatever, let hunters tame these snakes already.

Seriously, guys, my voice carries no weight. You're fooling yourselves. But for those of you who keep tweeting at me, here you go, I officially support strength polearms... er, I mean, hunters taming snakes. Yeah, that's what I mean.

darthonyx says

Freya isn't the only female Titanic construct like that though. There are several others, including Isiset, Ironaya, Auriaya, and Nablya.

There's also Myzrael, who might be an earth elemental, a titan construct, or perhaps both (a titan construct made out of an earth elemental) for all we know, but yes, there are quite a few female titan creations. Still, the vast majority of earthen, vrykul, mechagnomes, mogu and tol'vir we see are male (I have yet to see any demonstratably female tol'vir, not that I would be brave enough to try and check their undercarriage, as it were) and we don't really know why.

Vrykul are the only real exception in that we've seen enough female titan constructs to assume there could have been a few up front. (The Avatar of Freya is a female vrykul, not a human or titan construct). It's also worth noting that, while the Old Gods made the Curse of Flesh that seems to have created female counterparts for dwarves, gnomes, etc, the enslaved tol'vir and titan watchers in Ahn'Qiraj (Moam and Ossirian as just two examples) do not have flesh forms, nor do they have the female gender.

BlazeNor asks

Question for the Queue: With Sony big announcement today, it had me thinking, How much of an impact do the launch of new consoles have on WoW or MMO in general?

Well, for starters we now know that Diablo III is going to be out for both the PS3 and PS4. In terms of the direct effect of consoles on World of Warcraft itself, I'd say it's pretty minimal. WoW has never seriously been considered for a console port. Now, Sony does have some history of porting MMO's to consoles (EverQuest Online Adventures for the PS2 which lasted for nine years, running until 2012, DC Universe Online for the PS3) but while I've learned never to rule anything out when it comes to Blizzard, I don't think console announcements directly influence the development of WoW.

Now, that doesn't mean they don't indirectly influence them. In fact, it goes both ways: I've played quite a few console games that felt a lot like World of Warcraft. We're seeing companies experiment with consoles (CCP games releasing Dust 514 for the PS3 for instance) so while I don't expect a direct influence on WoW from the PS4 launch, I could end up completely wrong. Clearly, Blizzard is paying attention to console development right now.

Multiple people pointed out

There are white items in the game than can be transmogged to or from right now.

That's true. That doesn't change the fact that, in general Blizzard doesn't yet want to open up the floodgates on transmogrification to grey or white items. Yes, there are white weapons like the Brunnhildar Harpoon you can mog from, but it's just not very common. Blizzard has let a few exceptions sneak past, but most of those are in fact either white items that don't look too outlandish, or green items that do look too outlandish. Again, I refuse to say it will never change, but considering the 5.2 changes and the discussion of polearm models I expect it'll be a long while yet before they revisit this particular issue.

Koboi_K asks

With the recent announcement that LFR fail bags will contain surprise loot, is it advised to not open them until 5.2 drops?

If you want to gamble that the changes will be retroactive, it's your loot bag. Blizzard has made no statement that indicates it will or won't work. I expect they will either continue to make no statement or will come out and say not to bother holding onto those bags.

HerrKlokbot asks

Not exactly a two bosses enter-scenario, but who would win in a fight between a kobold and a murloc (if we stick to basic melee classes)?

Gnoll vs naga?

Centaur vs satyr?

Snake vs gopher?

(Ok, the last one is a pet battle :P )

Kobold if there is a candle involved, Murloc otherwise.

Naga are generally a ton smarter than gnolls, so naga wins.

Centaurs are generally brutes, while satyrs are descended from fel-corrupted highborne sorcerers like Xavius. I'd give it to the satyrs.

Snake beats gopher. Look, I don't even care what your argument is, after the whole 'give us tameable snakes' debacle I'm just siding with snakes.

Also, have some Falco. Your name reminded me of him.

Cambrowarrior asks

Is there a lore explanation for the new final boss fight in Scarlet Monastery? Before Mists, it was Mograine and Whitemane. Now, it's...Commander Durand and Whitemane. When you kill Whitemane, she calls out Mograine's name. What?

Mograine's father killed him. But to be fair, Mograine killed his father first, it was just payback. The embedded video explains in some detail.