The Queue: Boxing Day, Warcraft novels, Did Thrall cheat?

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.

Today's first question is about Boxing Day. I didn't see that coming when I wrote today's Breakfast Topic.

JeffLaBowski asks:
Canadians: What is boxing day like? Do people have nice meals and exchange gifts? Are stores closed? Do you go to church? Any fun traditions?
Non-Canadians: Do you have any day after X-mas traditions? I usually like to head out to a store or two (in the afternoon), if I got a gift card I wanted to use. Might go see the new Hobbit movie.

I already talked about this in today's Breakfast Topic, but basically, around here at least (here being Edmonton) Boxing Day isn't very dissimilar from Black Friday - there are a lot of big sales and special deals and stores open early to accommodate people coming in to make exchanges or spend Christmas money. It differs from Black Friday mainly in that there's a lot fewer stories of people trampling each other on Boxing Day.

I happen to be non-Canadian, despite living in Canada, and so I could theoretically answer the second part of the question. But frankly, I don't have any fun traditions.

arkainjel001 asks:
Do the authors actually play the Blizzard games or do they just study the lore and write? I feel like it would be required as part of the job for research purposes but then I haven't heard of any of them actually playing.

If you mean the folks who work at WoW Insider, yes, we play the game. Sometimes a terrifying amount.

If you mean, as several commenters suggested, the people who write the various short fiction, novels, etc, I know that Christie Golden plays. I don't know about other people who've written WoW novels or shorts.

CaptainCakewalk asks:
Q4tQ: On the subject of Warcraft Novels I have read only two from what I remember, Night of the Dragon and Day of the Dragon and I have read 3 of the four illustrated books as well. My question is which is the best to pick up so far? I know some are regarded as excellent and a few are not so great so I don't really know where to start.

Well, first off, let me point you at this handy guide to the Warcraft tie in media, assembled in chronological order by our own Anne Stickney. Now, if you're asking me for my recommendations for WoW novels - which ones I would tell you to read - here are a few to get you started.

First up, The Last Guardian is one of my favorite WoW novels. Then I recommend Beyond the Dark Portal and Tides of Darkness, for a good view of the Second War and its aftermath. Then I'd say Rise of the Horde is a must read, especially if you're wondering how the events we're experiencing on Dranor compare to the history. There are other good ones - you pretty much can't go wrong with Christie Golden's Warcraft novels - but those are my favorites.

Alexey asks:
Why are there so many wooden shields in WoW?
They don't seem durable at all...

In real life, many shields were made from wood, with a metal rim and boss. Wood is one of the most common, if not the most common, materials used to construct a shield in history. Shields were also made of hide, woven reeds and wicker similar to the material baskets were made from. Shields weren't intended or expected to last very long - they existed to absorb damage and be discarded once you couldn't make much use of them. Even the huge shields used by ancient Hoplites in Greece were often made of wicker or hide with bronze reinforcement. The fact is, a metal shield is heavy and the less weight your ancient soldier had to drag around the better.

Of course, in WoW we have magic weapons and armor, so it's not that big a deal to have a gigantic metal spiked shield. But don't dismiss wooden shields - they served a real use for centuries.

RyanKomisarz asks:
Q4TQ: speaking of Garrosh and Mak'rogahn, (SPOILER) when Thrall challenged Garrosh to it at the end of the Nagrand questline I thought the rules were 1 weapon and no magic. So didn't Thrall cheat? Not very honorable of Thrall, especially since there is always discussion of his dialogue and Thrall's argument of "you chose your own destiny" thing with Garrosh.

As far as I can tell, there's no rules against magic in the Mak'gora. If we accept the idea that the challenger sets forth the rules of the Mak'gora, then when Thrall challenged Garrosh, if he didn't stipulate 'no magic' then there wasn't anything stopping him from using it. If we assume that the Mak'gora's rules never change between fights, then we'd have to accept that the Mak'gora we've seen (the one with Cairne and Garrosh) would hold true, which means that both Garrosh and Cairne were cheating by not stripping down to loincloths. Either way, it was never stated in any previous Mak'gora that you can't use shamanic magic. They were even allowed to have shamans bless their weapons in that fight.

That being said, it doesn't feel much like a win for Thrall, does it? He goes toe to toe and loses, badly. He was getting whipped when he called on the elements. So no, he didn't cheat, in that there doesn't seem to be any rule against what he did, but he definitely didn't win by any real standard of victory. He needed the help of the Elements to walk out of that fight.

Okay, and that's the Boxing Day Queue. If you didn't like it, you can exchange it for a new Queue written by Anne Stickney tomorrow.

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!