The Queue: Is Jaina evil?

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.

Let's find out!

wi1dfire_b1ue asked:

Do you think Jaina has already crossed into villain status, and would that answer change based on faction? I mostly think no, she's not there yet, but that Blood Elves are going to look at her as the human that broke the last link the old Elf kingdom had with the human kingdoms (which conveniently, would ignore the sins of their former prince).

I don't think Jaina is a villain at all. And I certainly hope she isn't treated as one in the story in the future. She's someone who, against everyone else's opinion, campaigned for peace for a very long time. She felt so strongly that peace was possible that she helped the Horde kill her own father. Think about that: she has her own family's blood on her hands because she thought it would help secure peace between the Horde and the Alliance. That peace never came to pass. Over and over again since then, she has been betrayed by the people she's tried to help. Theramore, a city under her protection, full of people she considered friends, was annihilated by the people she tried to forge peace with.

Jaina isn't evil, she just doesn't have any confidence left in the Horde. She's stopped trusting people that she shouldn't have trusted all along. She's been hurt and betrayed. And depending on how you want to interpret the events in her novel, Thrall, the guy who was supposedly working with her on this peace thing all along, went out of his way to belittle her and dismiss the trauma she's gone through for him and his people.

Jaina woke up. That's all.

braellyn asked:

How do we know Thrall and Aggra's son's name is Durak? As I recall, it is never mentioned in game, but Anne provided it in the Ultimate Visual Guide (fantastic work, btw Anne!). On Wowpedia, it says that the name was revealed in the Ultimate Visual Guide (I had to call him "Thrall's little one" when I asked a question at Blizzcon because I didn't have the guide yet). Did the Blizzard brass give up the name? Is it canon?

I believe the Ultimate Visual Guide is, indeed, the only source for that so far. All of the information in the Ultimate Visual Guide came straight from Blizzard's creative development/story team, so if that's the name provided in the UVG, that's the name Blizzard gave the little guy. It should be considered canon.

gazaa07 asked:

Do you think "Off-Hand" and Shields will be transmoggable between each other the way swords, axes and maces are now? would love to quest with my lock with a sword and shield as Demon Hunter

I'm going to guess this won't ever happen. First, you're a warlock, and thus you wouldn't be able to transmog into a shield due to an inability to use it in the first place. For classes that can use both off-hands and shields ... a protection paladin blocking with a book would be bizarre. Cool, kind of, but also bizarre.

thegatherer615 asked:

Will there be a continuation of the monk column? Two questions contingent on the previous: 1) When, and 2) Will it be a column like Warlocks' Blood Pact and be weekly?

Generally speaking, if we aren't currently running a specific class column, we won't be. In the case of monk, we have some monk content coming, but it isn't a weekly column. Most of it is guide content, and not high-end raiding content. Basics, mostly. That's only because we have people on staff who are playing a monk. We aren't hiring for class columns anymore, but if we have someone on staff who is playing a particular class already, we're happy to let them write about it.

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