The Queue: Zandali lessons
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
A question about in-game languages! My favorite!
Lenneth asked:
When tromping through ZG the other day I noticed something odd. One of the Zandalari Hierophants mentioned a certain MoP inspired dino boss we all came to know and love. Here is what our troll buddy said, those of troll ancestry feel free to translate;
"Deh dem riva tinG bwoyar Ju wassa cyaa oondasta fu ju dim iman is ir machette"
Since ZG was revamped and was part of Cata content I thought that name was interesting. Possible foreshadowing of our future Isle of Giants' all star? Most threatening word in the Zandalari dialect Blizz could adopt for the bad dino? Perhaps "oondasta" was the dying curse thrown at the player going through ZG and that curse finally manifested when we arrived in Pandaria?
/dons tinfoil hat :P
The truth is much more boring! Each race's in-game "language" is actually just a set of specific words used in the place of English words with the same amount of characters. For example, if you type a six-letter word and set your language to "Draenei", then you'll get one of these words in its place:
Arakal, Azgala, Kazile, Mannor, Mishun, Rakkan, Rakkas, Rethul, Revola, Thorje, Tichar
The word "oondasta" has been in the game since launch as part of the Zandali (troll) language. It's just one of the eight-letter words. Occam's Razor tells me that when looking for a name for Oondasta, the devs simply looked at the list of Zandali words and found a fun one.
Braellyn asked:
Blizzcon pre-party this year? If so, any plans to put your stage on risers? (Please!!)
Nothing to announce at this time.
Brian8 asked:
I have a lore question for the queue, maybe it's been addressed before, but I haven't seen it.; Do we know if the tendrils of the Draenei serve any function and are they prehensile?
Excellent question. We have no idea. My educated guess is that the tendrils aid draenei in detecting the flow of magical energy, like fish have the Ampullae of Lorenzini organ that detects electromagnetic currents.
skawilliams asked:
How do you create those pillars of light that people use in raids as markers? Is it an add-on?
The raid leader or anyone with assistant rank can put those markers down via the raid panel on the left side of the screen (in the default UI).
Fizzl asked:
Q4 anyone who has read/is reading War Crimes: do you think knowing Garrosh escapes to do his whole WoD thing ruins part of the novel? I'm still not all the way done, but part of the subplot seems like it would be a lot more interesting if I didn't know how it was going to end (not that it's not interesting by any means, but still).
Well, we knew what the "end" of The Shattering would be, too, but it was still a fun read. As valencemagi points out in the comments:
If they do it right, the fun is in the journey, not the destination. Columbo is a great show, even if you know he's always going to nail the killer at the end.
I haven't gotten around to reading War Crimes yet, but I agree with anybody who uses a Columbo reference to get their point across.
See y'all next weekend!
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!
