The Queue: Legendary decisions, Lore, A boring lack of dinosaurs

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.

No dinosaurs today. We are going straight into the meat of the Queue.

Arthonos asks:
With all the flack that Blizzard is getting right now over their decision to remove the Legendary quest chain, do you think they should be more upfront at the release of an expansion what will and will not be temporary content? More importantly, why should a company destroy content it created? I can see if the intent is to update or upgrade stuff, as they did in Cata, but this is removing content that would remain entertaining even after it has served its purpose as a source of loot.

This is one of those times where I'm not happy with a decision but my unhappiness with said decision doesn't seem to be the same as everyone else's unhappiness with said decision. I don't care that they're taking a legendary out of the game or making it so people who don't have the quest by 6.0.2 can't start the quest. But I feel like making it so people who've started the quest can't finish it once Warlords drops is a bad move. Even if we feel like those people have had plenty of time, the legendary cloak is a huge ball of RNG luck, tons of time and dedication, a lot of really hard single player moments, that stupid lightning serpent on the Throne of Thunder - if people are on any part of that quest, they've done a ton of work, and to my mind they should be allowed to finish that work. Just zeroing out the quest and getting rid of their quest items doesn't sit right by me.

Maybe I shouldn't care. But I really don't like the precedent that sets. The idea that the coming of a new expansion should erase all that effort. They've removed legendaries before - you can't get Atiesh anymore - but this is the first legendary that was simultaneously accessible and yet felt like such a personal achievement. Maybe that's why it has to go - a level 100 player could probably breeze through the chain. It still feels weird to me. That's my take on it, which doesn't really directly answer your question because I have no idea if Blizzard knew they were going to take the quest out when they introduced it.

trimbleirl asks:
Why is it a common thought by Alliance figures that they think they defeated the Horde by defeating Garrosh?

Because they did. Garrosh Hellscream was the duly appointed Warchief of the Horde. He was enthroned in Orgrimmar, the capital city of the Horde. He was defended by the Kor'kron, the Horde's honor guard. Up until the Darkspear Rebellion broke out, he was the acknowledged leader of the Horde, obeyed by or at least placated by every other Horde faction leader. Vol'jin deciding to lead a rebellion didn't magically make Garrosh not any of those things. If anything, it's interesting that Horde players think Garrosh's defeat isn't a Horde defeat. What else could it be? When you have a civil war, the losers are as much part of the fighting as the winners. The Alliance walked into Orgrimmar and when it was all said and done walked out with Garrosh deposed and the Horde's very existence on the sufferance of people it had bullied and attacked for years.

The Alliance beat the Horde. It's a fact that the Horde helped them. In fact, the Horde was so divided by Garrosh's bellicose leadership that the Horde split down the middle and took up arms against itself, which really helped them. It's a lot easier to beat an enemy that is fighting itself. It's as if the British sailed up the Potomac and shelled Washington DC in 1864 - the Confederacy would have loved it, but it still would have been a British victory over the United States.

Slothcloctimus asks:
So, now that Blackrock Spire is coming back, I've been trying to find something out: were UBRS and LBRS both in the game when it first launched? I know BWL came later, but I haven't seen anything that says when the other two came...

Keeping in mind that I'm old as the hills and have been playing forever, yes. Yes it was always in the game. I completed the key quest on two characters before BWL was even a thing. We used to kill Rend and then clear out that hallway behind him just to check out the portal, which didn't go anywhere at the time. As far as I remember, UBRS/LBRS were in the game from day one. (It's possible I'm wrong, but if I am, they opened very early, like before Maraudon early.)

Marathal asks:
Sylvanas has been awfully quiet. Do you think she is biding her time waiting for an opportunity? Is she already planning?

That's kind of a given. Sylvanas is always planning. She's probably recovering from the emotional trauma she went through at the end of War Crimes, though - if you haven't read the book, trust me, Sylvanas took the worst injury she's taken since she became undead in the novel, and she may need to brood and lick her wounds for a while before she comes out swinging.

Benjamin Seeburger asks:
Question: what theme do you think the next expansion will have?

Vanilla: no overbearing theme, mostly dealing with big baddies of e RTS come to roost

BC: demons

Wrath: undead

Cata: dragons

Mists: sha

Warlords: orcs

Next expansion? (Probably not orc)

Okay, well, I don't think you can really say that Mists just offered Sha as enemies, nor that Wrath just offered undead, or BC just offered demons. Most expansions have had a lot of variety. So far the first tier of Warlords raiding has ogres as well as gronn, orcs and there are hints of arrakoa as well. So with all that said...

We're really past overdue for an expansion focused around evil humans. Not evil humans like the Twilight Cult, either. Conquering, warmongering, expansionist humans that pose a threat to the entire world. Now, this could happen in lots of different ways. We could have Varian go coocoo for conquest puffs and start throwing his weight around, but we already did that with Garrosh. We could have Kul Tiras return, led by Daelin Proudmoore (but you're dead! We killed you! Foolish orc, my death was merely a setback!) or someone else, and show that they've used their time isolated from the rest of Azeroth to build up a truly enormous and destructive navy and are willing and able to take out both the Horde and the Alliance to set up a human dominated future. We could have an Alternate Azeroth ruled by a Sargeras-possessed Medivh come raging through the Dark Portal to invade Draenor at the end of Warlords, which would be fun because it would be the first time a new expansion actually used the previous expansion as a kind of base of operations. You could even just have zones like Farahlon and the ogre lands to the south opened up as your next expansion content.

I don't actually expect us to get evil humans, though. It'll probably be the Legion again.

Austrel asks:
QftQ: Where is Tyr? After finishing Dawn of the Aspects today, I am actually starting to wonder where he is ( if he is still alive at this point ). Also, how did the humans learn about Tyr since we have Tyr's Hand and Knights of the Silver Hand (kinda ironic ). I know there are scrolls who spoke about Tyr, but how?!

We don't know where Tyr currently is. It's hinted in Dawn of the Aspects that it's actually Tyr behind Kalecgos' visions, but that's not certain. At present Tyr is just plain missing. He's not up at Ulduar, he's not in Uldum, no one knows where he went.

As for how the humans learned about him, blame their vrykul ancestors. When the Curse of Flesh began turning the formerly iron vrykul to flesh, it then began causing their offspring to be born smaller and weaker than they were. King Ymiron ordered them culled. But a few vrykul refused, and left Northrend with as many of the cursed children as they could, taking them south to what would become the Eastern Kingdoms. They were raised by these few vrykul until they reached adulthood, and their memories of Tyr come from the scrolls the vrykul brought with them to educate their cursed children. Humans, as strangers exiled from their homeland, found the tales of Tyr's sacrifice of his hand to battle a great evil inspiring and adopted him as a sort of patron.

DeGei asks:
If you were to write Med'an out of Warcraft history, how would you adapt Aegwynn's death & Garona's revenge in Twilght Highland?

Why would I ever write out Anne Stickney's favorite character?

However, it's not like Garona needed Med'an to have plenty of reasons to hate Cho'gall. The dude was one of the Shadow Council whose forced breeding produced her and who brainwashed her to kill Llane Wrynn. She didn't need Medivh's baby to want to stab that guy. As for Aegwynn's death, just have her die protecting Theramore from the Cataclysm. That way, it's even worse when Garrosh blows it up later.

That's the Queue for today. I'm up to bat tomorrow as well. I may talk about dinosaurs.

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!