The Queue: Mounts and more
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.
Today's a little short on the WoW questions, but we have a nice tour of various Blizzard games.
DavidGodfrey asked:
Why does mount size seem to vary inconsistently? I've just noticed that my protodrake is actually smaller on a Draenai than it is on a gnome. Shouldn't it be bigger so as to be in proportion?
I don't actually have an answer to this, but it has always struck me as odd that gnome mounts are scaled larger than normal. I've always felt like there was some attempt to average out the size -- making mounts larger for smaller races, and smaller for larger races, so they have the same overall size. But I don't think that's true. I'm pretty sure mounts aren't scaled up for dwarves, and I don't think they scale down mounts for tauren. That would be ridiculous, downsizing a mount to fit a gnome's silhouette.
Maybe they just thought it looked neat.
CatrionaShadowleaf asked:
did the Heroes, er, hero articles get canned with the downsizing? I should probably l2p more than Raynor and Gazlowe...
No, we didn't eliminate them, I just haven't been doing them. I was the only person doing them and each one took a huge time investment, so I'm taking a bit of a break. I tried to do so many all at once that I was burning myself out on a game that was still in early alpha. Bad idea! I'll get back to them, and when I do, I'll pace myself better. Maybe one per week rather than 2-3.
@ScottLeyes asked:
Has Hearthstone lost its fun? Seems to have become a min/max mess.
I think it depends on your personal definition of "fun." That's not intended as an insult -- everyone has their own definition of fun. Hearthstone is a competitive game, as most of Blizzard's games are. Competitive play is often determined by the constantly-shifting idea of the "meta" or the "metagame." They're the rules beyond the rules -- what is, at that time, considered the prevailing path to success. The top players find a strategy, figure out what does and does not work, find success in it, and it trickles down to the rest of the playerbase. Then you have the other top players who react to the meta, creating counter-strategies devised specifically to unseat the prevailing strategies, and when those find success -- they become the new prevailing strategy.
If you're a min/maxing strategic player, that is fun. If you're not, you just kind of copy strategies/decks off of the internet. This happens in card games, RTS games, even FPS games -- there are guns and weapons considered "the best" and you're not competitive unless you use them.
For those that don't like that kind of min/maxing, trying to ascend to the highest ranks of the game is going to suck. Really badly. But if you're okay with hanging around the lower ranks, or middle ranks, you can pretty much play how you want and still win around half the time, as long as your deck isn't totally boneheaded, like 30 minions of 1 mana cost with no card draw ability.
Currently, I think Hearthstone suffers slightly from the limited pool of cards. While the metagame is still shifting, and will continue to shift into perpetuity, the limited pool of cards does have a limiting effect on strategy variation. With every expansion, the variation of play will increase -- assuming power creep doesn't invalidate cards from previous expansions.
Whew, that was long-winded.
@Fienddan asked:
should I mix my past in or just have my pasta separate in the bottom of my dish?
Your past has no bearing on your pasta. Unless, of course, we're talking a history of allergies. If you have a reaction to basil, tread lightly.
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!
