The Queue: Hey, pretty lady. Nice ... hair.
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.
How about that Dragon Age II demo? How many of you have checked it out already? While playing through it, I couldn't help but notice that the women of Thedas all seem to have huge ... Monty Python jokes. It's a bit much, isn't it?
Joakim asked:
Is the Defias Brotherhood terrorists, and if so, why or more to the point, Who branded them as terrorists?
Oh, dear. My gut says answering this question is asking for trouble because it includes everybody's favorite buzzword, but I'll try to tackle it anyway.
In the loosest sense of the word, sure, they're terrorists. The most basic definition of terrorism is, "to instill fear through the use of violence and/or threats." Spank your child if he doesn't behave? Terrorism! Heck -- threatening to ground him? Terrorism! In that sense, yeah, they're terrorists. They do use violent methods for political gain, and that qualifies for the label. However, I think terrorist is a totally lame label that doesn't adequately describe anybody's actions.
The Defias Brotherhood is a group of extremely disgruntled citizens of Stormwind who believe the current leadership is doing a crap job. The original iteration of the Brotherhood under Edwin VanCleef got screwed out of their pay after rebuilding Stormwind after the war. They were unhappy with the nobles' decision to not pay them, so they rioted and became thieves and assassins. The second iteration of the Brotherhood under Vanessa VanCleef (who is easily my favorite character this expansion) is a group of people who felt Stormwind abandoned them during the war effort in Northrend -- taking out the Lich King took so much of Stormwind's attention, both financially and militarily, that the surrounding territories back home suffered.
In both cases, they became criminals. Criminals with good intent are still criminals. I think that label is better than "terrorist" in this case. Do they engage in terrorism? Yes, sure. But just calling them terrorists doesn't adequately describe their modus operandi.
GrumblyStuff asked:
What was the question I was so excited about asking but totally forgot?
I think it was something about RIFT.
... you can put down the blunt objects, people. I was kidding! I swear!
Udderpowered asked:
Why oh why do people stand in fires but run out of my healing rain?
Blizzard has spent so much time training us to run out of things on the ground that running out of them is instinct. People not paying attention are going to stand in fire, but the few times they do pay attention they're just going to see junk underneath them and run -- pure instinct.
What's even better is the ground AoE that the trash in Bastion of Twilight casts. It's damn near the exact same spell effect as the priest ground heal. Do I run out of it? Do I stand in it? Is this heals or is it fire? Who knows! Stand in it and find out!
Logan asked:
I was doing a Karazhan run with my guild for the achievement the other day and when we downed the last boss he doped Gorehowl. I looked at the flavor text that said it was the weapon of Grom Hellscream. Why is the axe of one of the hordes greatest heroes doped by a random demon in an entry level raid?
Probably one of the itemization developers just thought it would be cool and put it in there for kicks. Since then, Blizzard's creative development team has retconned Gorehowl being in Malchezaar's possession. Thrall hands the weapon down from Grom to Garrosh, so most likely Thrall picked it up when Grom bit the dust and hung onto it. Either Blizzard retconned it, or Thrall robbed some raider's bank and took the axe from them.
NO NAME asked:
When are Michael Sacco and Alex Ziebart gonna tie the knot?
That seems like it would be a difficult task -- though Mike does live in Massachusetts! Or was it Maine? Mexico? Madagascar? Montenegro?
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!
