The Queue: But we will be conquerors

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 will be your host today.

I really like that line. That being said I think Grommash looks like Sean Bean with an overbite in this cinematic, so he's doomed.

Also, let me be up front - I predicted October as the latest for this expansion, and I was wrong. It's worth admitting when you're wrong.

DiavoJinx asked:
Question!
Has there been any evidence in Warcraft so far that mages can specifically manipulate magnetism (like Magneto)?
I'm thinking if it's the "Iron Horde", then lots of iron in their weapons & armor along with wood, so we just need some fire mages and some magnetism mages to port in and take care of the whole situation. Shortest expansion yet! ;-)

As far as I can tell, no, we've seen no such mages. Quite frankly, everybody uses weapons and armor made out of magnetic materials, like iron and steel. It's not like it would just be good against the Iron Horde. As to why mages can't do that... maybe they just haven't thought to try yet. Ooh, new level 110 spells!

Roseland1985 asks:
Q4TQ: With the announcement of Grommash as the big bad at the end of the expansion, and the amount of hesitancy that Varian had at the start of the mini-series, what are the odds that Varian is killed this expansion? I think it'd be a huge possibility, and with Anduin coming into his own and is more than willing to lead (even with his pew pew smites), it'd be interesting to see what his death would do to his son.

So you think it'd be a good idea to give Anduin Varian's origin? Song of a king whose father dies at the hands of the Horde? (Yes, it'd be the Iron Horde, but that's hardly going to matter.) It strikes me as extremely repetitive and we're already looking at a Hellscream for end boss two expansions in a row.

Look, I know folks have weird reasons to hate Varian, but if we're going to kill him off, why does it have to be the exact same story as the one where Llane died? I'm not terribly interested in that. Plus, Varian and Grommash have the same haircut. Anyone else notice that?

I don't expect it to happen. It could happen, but I don't expect it to. Especially with other spoilers in this expansion.

Zapwidget asks:
Q4tQ: The original Warcraft game was called Orcs & Humans. Over time, the franchise has evolved but for this anniversary year they are hitting heavy on nostalgia, so in that spirit, how many human raid bosses have their been since vanilla? How does that compare to how many orc raid bosses there have been in any given expansion, let alone the entirety of WoW?

First up, do we count undead humans/former humans? Kel'Thuzad is a lich when we fight him, but he was born a human. Assuming for a moment that anyone born as a human counts for this (since we count Malkorok as an orc when he clearly wasn't anymore) then we have a fair amount of human raid bosses - In Vanilla, we had almost no orc raid bosses, in fact. There were none in Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub or either AQ, while there were several current and former humans in Naxxramas 40. Faerlina, Noth, Heigan, Razuvius, Gothik, three of the Four Horsemen, and Kel'Thuzad (we already mentioned him) are or were all humans once.

The Burning Crusade similarly lacked much in the way of orc raid bosses. Aside from Gurtogg Bloodboil and Teron Gorefiend (who was in a formerly human body) I can't really think of any orc raid bosses. Karazhan had Moroes (formerly human), Hyjal had Rage Winterchill (Lich, former human) and that puts the amount of human vs orcs even for that expansion. Wrath of the Lich King had some former humans (Naxx again, then Icecrown Citadel) but also at least one really big orc in Deathbringer Saurfang. The Lich King sorta counts as both. I'm not counting Trial of the Crusader because if you were Horde you fought Alliance races and if you were Alliance you fought Horde races for faction champs, and everything else was neither.

Cataclysm has Blackwing Lair, which has neither. Bastion of Twilight has the Ascendant Council, who knows what those guys used to be. Firelands has neither as bosses. And Dragon Soul has an orc shaman (and a tauren who rides on a dragon). Mists of Pandaria is the first expansion to feature heavy use of orcs as raid bosses, with several bosses in Siege being orcs (Zaela doesn't really count, but the Dark Shaman, Nazgrim and Malkorok definitely do in addition to Garrosh). I don't think there's a single human boss in the entirety of Mists. So up to now, I think it's safe to say humans are actually more common as bosses, if we count dead ones. If not, then it's more ambiguous, but in general there haven't been too many orc raid bosses before Siege.

Now, it's pretty clear we're gonna get a few more orcs to kill in Warlords. But for right now, I'd say there are more human raid bosses than orc ones. ICC and Naxx really skew things in humanity's favor, with all those humans in Naxx and then Lady Deathwhisper and Professor Putricide as former humans in Icecrown. (Again, if you count was born as a human for the purposes of this.)

legoaddict asks:
Q4tQ: Has Blizzard messed with Gul'dan's characterization? He's supposed to be this master manipulator and evil genius, but in The Stranger and the cinematic he comes across more as a bad 1960s batman villain than a master of deception.

As was pointed out by user Mazuren, it's hard to manipulate everyone when some jerk from the future comes back to your time and tells the people you intend to manipulate exactly what the final outcome of your schemes is. It's similar to how annoying it is to fight a precog. Gul'dan had no reason to expect Grom to be suspicious of him, and even though Garrosh whacked Gul'dan's men in the comic, he was fairly mild in his response to Gul'dan himself. He didn't come right out and say Hi, I'm from the future and I'm totally going to ruin your evil plan.

I'll admit to being a little suspicious of why Gul'dan didn't just have Garrosh killed when he killed his followers. But I'm also a little suspicious of why Garrosh didn't kill Gul'dan after he had him helpless next to Mannoroth's corpse.

And that's the Queue for today.

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!