The Queue: Gimme Sympathy
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.
Looks like this weekend is a Metric weekend. Blame my incredibly good taste in music. Enjoy!
Zakarii asked:
There seems to be a lot of tension between the Forsaken and the rest of the Horde right now. How are Forsaken players aligned? Hardcore loyalists or servants of the Horde? I want to say the latter, but I can't decide considering how players are treated by Orc guards in UC.
This is actually something a lot of players have issues reconciling. Your player character is nearly always an exception of some kind -- the only one who could defeat _______, or an incredibly powerful example of X class, or the goblin who saved everyone's life, or the Gilnean that rescued their king. You're important in some way, or usually in multiple ways, by the time you hit max level. And you can even say that, personally, you're way different than others in your race or faction.
But WoW's narrative is hard-coded, and there's no room for your player character in it. Illidan was killed by Maiev and Akama. Varian Wrynn killed Onyxia. As important as you are, you're entirely invisible to the game's lore. It doesn't matter if you personally disagree with Sylvanas; as a Forsaken character, you don't get to choose to disagree with Sylvanas within the constraints of the game. The biggest act of rebellion you could take would be not to do quests for her or your race. But you're still a Forsaken.
If you're talking about Forsaken characters, as opposed to players, then I think from quests and dialogue it's pretty clear that the majority of Forsaken characters are loyal to Sylvanas and not to the Horde -- especially given that not even Sylvanas is loyal to the Horde.
Darren Skinner asked:
Recently I have been going on an archeology splurge with my main and my soon-to-be main alt mage. Whilst I love archeology and find it very relaxing (not to mention a great way to flesh out tiny bits of lore, and being a lore nerd this appeals a lot to me!) I was wondering whether there is a reason Blizz never added High Elf as another type of artifact to collect.
I mean the High Elves lived in the Eastern Kingdoms for 8,000 years and there are tonnes of ruins, etc all over the place, but no extra little bits like archeology finds to flesh out their story in that 8,000 years!
Was it just a case they felt it would be too similar to Night Elf archeology, or was it just overlooked entirely?
Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) stated on several occasions that archaeology was meant to be easily expandable, so I wouldn't be surprised to see high elf artifacts and dig sites popping up in a future content patch.
Tomar asked:
I want to know who at Blizzard thought it was a good idea to put *130 pieces of loot* on Argaloth? When raid bosses have something more on the order of 20 and people complain about shard too much, what were they thinking??
Argaloth, like Archavon before him, is an incredibly easy boss that can be done in minutes. Blizzard has identified the boss and bosses like him as a loot piñata; they're not designed to be a guaranteed source of loot. They're designed to be an easy one, and there's a difference.
Wild Colors asked:
Why do we still have repair costs? (comment truncated because dang, dude)
Besides being a disincentive to wiping over and over, repair costs are intended to function a lot like limited bag space -- they force you compartmentalize your game time. You know that eventually you're gonna need a break to repair. You know that if you keep wiping, it's going to cost you gold. It helps you keep perspective and helps you keep track of time spent, whether you realize it or not.
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!
