The Queue: He screamed BlizzCon and then keeled over

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.

This column goes live at 11 am on the East Coast of the United States. BlizzCon opens at 11 am on the West Coast of the United States. That means another three hours until BlizzCon. The suspense is killing me. I feel as though I were being crushed in the jaws of a mighty Giganotosaurus.

Yeah, okay, I was reaching for that one. It's a Friday Queue, gotta have some dinosaurs in it. Enjoy you screencap from Primeval. If you haven't watch it yet, do.

Saph asks:
Q4TQ - Having gone back to ICC multiple times these past few weeks, do you ever think we will go back to Icecrown and have more story with Bolvar? With the many 'nearly a setback' baddies out there, returning enemies is clearly a story theme in WoW.

It's certainly a possibility. I wouldn't expect it next expansion or anything, but I think the idea of losing the Scourge entirely was too much from a story perspective - the recurring threat of the walking dead is one Blizzard wants to have in the quiver, so to speak. Then again, Sylvanas and the Forsaken could well end up filling that role for the living of Azeroth at this rate.

Eliza asks:
Have you ever regretted a race/gender/class combo you leveled?

I've leveled several classes that weren't warriors. I've regretted all of them. Only the shaman comes close to not being regretted, but then they removed Sentry Totem. That ruined it for me forever.

Many people were shocked to find out dragons can't reproduce
It's true. Dragon's can not reproduce since the Age of Mortals began, and they became mortal themselves, aging and dying. So basically, it really isn't great to be a dragon right now.

Pee asks:
So people often say Thrall's un-orc appreciation of peace is due to his upbringing by humans...but IIRC the only humans he had much contact with were Taretha and and Blackmore. Given that Blackmore doesn't really seem to put so much emphasis on the peace side of things...so realistically, for how much of the New Horde's ways do we have essentially just Taretha to thank, or were there other influences on Thrall's early life that I'm missing?

You're missing Sergeant.

Sergeant was the warrior trainer at Durnholde when Thrall was there. Despite the fact that Thrall was an orc and Sergeant had plenty of reason to distrust him, he had compassion for the youngster thrown into the slave gladiator pit and did his best to train him as well as possible, as well as attempted to teach the young orc something of honor. Lord of the Clans highlights Sergeant's pivotal role in Thrall's development.

antonius_prime asks:
Q4TQ: To allow Rossi to get his Dinosaurs in, if they added Dino's as a playable race with appropriate skins, what dino's would be what classes, assuming they gained access to all classes?

Okay. There are so many dinosaurs (and I'm just counting dinosaurs, not all prehistoric animals like mammals from the Cenozoic, therapsids from the Permian etc etc) that this would be a fool's errand. Now, I'm not disputing that I'm a fool. It's well known. The proof of my foolishness is everywhere. So instead of completely wasting everyone's time (too late) I'll try and approach this from a different perspective.

It's kind of ridiculous to imagine a Tyrannosaurus or Spinosaurus casting healing spells or standing back at range. I mean, look at those jaws, those feet. Those are creatures that bite you. So any big theropod would be the strength melee, while smaller coelurosaurs like the maniraptora would be your agility melee. There are some cases that straddle the line, like Achillobator and Utahraptor, I'll speculate that they would be agility melee as well but only due to how massive the strength melee really were - Achillobator was twenty feet long, so that's a very big animal by modern standards.

Most of the tankers would be herbivorous - your sauropods being the massive strength tanks, with aggro centered around their sheer bulk and whip-like tails. They'd also have a stomp attack. Other herbivores like Stegosaurs and Ceratopsians would use their offensive weaponry more than sheer size, although they certainly weren't small animals. Ankylosaurs would potentially be the ultimate tanks, with multiple tanking specs based around their heavy armor and hammer tails.

But then there's critters like Therizinosaurus, an herbivorous theropod with huge claws it could definitely use to keep aggro, and Deinocheirus, a fish eater with huge powerful forearms. Would these be hybrids? Tank/DPS? Hard to say. I would almost want to approach the design of a playable dinosaur differently, something almost akin to druids - you'd have a dinosaur, and then you'd specialize in tanking or DPS, and how you approached that role would control what kind of dinosaur you were, with some cosmetic options (Strength Melee could pick any big theropod, agility melee any raptor-sized dino, with tanks getting various options based on their spec) - you could borrow to some extent from the hunter pet trees in concept as well, with 'tenacity' dino tanks and 'ferocity' and 'cunning' DPS. Another possibility would be the dinomancer class - similar to the Zandalari Dinomancers, they could potentially be hybrids capable of all roles, healing in their humanoid forms and performing other roles via shape-shifting into various dinosaurs.

And that's the Queue from me today. Tomorrow, expect lots of BlizzCon news to be discussed, I'm sure.

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!