The Queue: You are my son

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.

"You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders."

Just take my freaking money already.

ErikSetzer asks:

Q4TQ (and others): It turns out the Alliance title for 5.3 is "The Hordebreaker." Will this make Alliance players happy? And why can't I have a title like "The Alliancebreaker?" Man, all I get to do is be a revolutionary, not break a faction... (grumble, mumble)

I actually quite like the title. I mean, I'm not going to dump 'Death's Demise' for it, but yeah, it's pretty cool. I get why some people are saying we're not actually breaking the Horde, but for once, I'm just going to go along with things.

cambrowarrior asks:

Now that we have at least one scenario that you can play as either faction with a costume buff, what do you think of the idea of Blizzard implementing this for questing in other zones? For example, if you're an Alliance player and would like to go through the Silverpine and Hillsbrad quests (for which there are absolutely no Alliance quests, but significant lore related to Alliance races) to see the lore without rolling a Horde character.

There's a lot that would have to be done to make this work - does the disguise fool other faction players? Does it work on PvP realms, effectively making you the opposite faction, or can Horde players gank you while you're doing Horde quests and so on? Can you go to Stormwind to turn in the Westfall end quest to Varian Wrynn while disguised and if so, does entering the enemy city get you dead sixteen times before you even get to turn in the quest?

Furthermore, I'm not sure Blizzard would want to let people get to see these quests without playing a character of the proper faction. Keep in mind that leveling an alt is replay value, and one lesson from Cataclysm that Mists seems to be aimed at addressing is the idea that there's not enough stuff to do. Letting you play opposite faction scenarios means there's more scenarios for everything, but letting you skip leveling a character doesn't seem to answer the same need.

In the purpose of complete honesty, I would love it. But I think it would be hard to get right, and probably not worth the time.

plviana asks:

Q4tQ: Do you think the WoW player base has matured enough to allow Blizzard to lift the language restrictions btw Alliance and Horde?

No.

Stk5m1 asks:

Are there any plans for Darion Mograine to swear vengeance on someone soon? I'm sure he's sick of sitting in that floating citadel for 2 expansions. I think it would be interesting if the Knights of the Ebon Blade were involved in the Garrosh overthrow somehow.

I'd love to see Darion do something. I doubt he's feeling particularly motivated to attack Orgrimmar or get involved in the whole Garrosh mess, but one of his death knights was kidnapped by Sylvanas, and I wouldn't mind seeing an army of death knights descend on Undercity to ask politely for Koltira's return. And then to demonstrate to the forsaken how bad death can actually get if he's not handed over. Darion's had two years to study Scourge necromancy and adapt it to his order - it'd be an interesting fight.

Of course, that's assuming Sylvanas doesn't convince him to throw in with her. After all, he is dead. The forsaken are the closest to peers the DK's of Acherus have now. It's always a mistake to underestimate Sylvanas, after all. There are a lot of forsaken now, and taking them head on could be a significant task for any group, and the Order of the Ebon Blade is a very loose organization that crosses factional lines. It may lack the cohesive will to act necessary.

wstomlin asks:

Here's a question: do you think that the more-or-less single storyline (that is, both Horde and Alliance players working for Vol'jin) in patch 5.3 is primarily a cost saving measure?

I mean, I can't believe that Blizzard didn't realize beforehand that many (most?) Alliance players wouldn't be satisfied being Vol'jin's lackies.

So the best explanation I can' come up with for Blizzard not having separate Horde and Alliance story/quest-lines in 5.3 is that they needed to free up staff to work on patch 5.4 and the next expansion.

No, I don't believe that it was in any way a cost saving measure. Whether or not you agree with the choices made by the dev team is your own affair, but just based on my own limited conversations with them they're incredibly invested, passionate and dedicated to telling as good a story as they possibly can, and I can easily believe they didn't see the issue with working with Vol'jin in patch 5.3, because I didn't see it either. I had no idea some Alliance players wouldn't take this as an 'enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy' scenario and go into it knowing that we were using Vol'jin and he was using us.

I don't for an instant feel like Vol'jin's lackey. We're allies of convenience - I'm using him to get a beachhead and he's using me to divide Garrosh's forces. We're not friends, I sure as heck don't report to Vol'jin. I'm sure that 5.4 is already in development and didn't require any story shortcuts like you're suggesting - I suspect it simply seemed like the best way to show the revolt to both factions.

No one asked but I feel like talking about it anyway:

There was a lot of talk about an underground expansion in yesterday's Queue, with some for it and some against it. My idea is to steal the Hollow World idea (similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar) and run with it: do an underground expansion that leads to a lost world deep beneath the surface of Azeroth, with its own sun or sun analogue, its own flora and fauna, even oceans and seas. This inner world would be on the inside of the globe and thus would have a horizon that curves upward instead of downward, like living inside a huge bowl instead of on a giant sphere.

In essence, I want an underground expansion that doesn't feel at all like it is underground.

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!