The Queue: Happy Halloween -- have an utterly terrifying video
by Anne Stickney 
Oct 31st 2011 at 11:00AM
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney is in your column, posting creepy stuff.
I am not responsible for any nightmares that spawn from the above video. Blame Alex for asking me to write The Queue today!
erik asked:
Any word on the Pandaren death knight story?
There aren't any. Next!
I am not responsible for any nightmares that spawn from the above video. Blame Alex for asking me to write The Queue today!
erik asked:
Any word on the Pandaren death knight story?
There aren't any. Next!
No, seriously though, there's a good lore reason for the absence of those classes that Pandaren aren't able to be. Pandaren weren't around fighting the Lich King; they were out on their island, and therefore there's no reasonable explanation for Pandaren death knights. Pandaren were also out on their island chilling while the rest of the world was discovering the Light and how to become paladins, so they missed out on that. In fact, the Pandaren have been on Pandaria for 12,000 years according to what we've heard, so they took off and said goodbye to the rest of the world well before Cenarius started teaching druidism -- so that knocks druids off the list, too. As for warlocks ... well, a Pandaren isn't about to truck around with demons. It's not in their nature.
Frankly, besides being lore-breaking, Blizzard would very much like people to experience the Pandaren starting zone, as it explains a heck of a lot about who the Pandaren are, where they've come from, and why they've rejoined the rest of the world. Being able to bring in a Pandaren as a death knight means you start at a higher level in a different zone and miss out on all that delicious story. Blizzard works very hard on all that delicious story, so experiencing it should be something you partake in.
Personally, I don't think Goblins or Worgen should have been able to become death knights, either. Sure, there's lore reasoning behind it and that's fine -- but by rolling a death knight, you're missing out on the respective starting zones. Those starting zones are all kinds of fun! Death knight Goblins never get to experience the joys of Town-in-a-Box, and death knight Worgen miss out on shirtless Liam. And nobody should ever miss out on shirtless Liam.
Hadomen asked:
This is a two part question! In MoP the new pet battle system will be bringing our pets account wide. Will these new pets be new/special pets only? will all of our pets combine into one account wide force?
And if so...what does that do with the yet unreleased winged guardian cub that is not account wide? doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of it only working on one character?
We haven't seen the details as to which pets will convert to the new system, so there's no way to tell yet. It could be that they leave the pet store pets out of the equation as far as Pet Battles are concerned -- or Blizzard could put them in. Supposedly, not every pet will be able to battle.
Me, I'm still holding out for Alliance vs. Horde balloon battles.
yous95 asked:
Why would the Pandaren willingly split up and tale up sides with either faction (from a lore perspective)? If I'm not mistaken, I though they were a content, peaceful race until the factions showed up.
In the past, Pandaren have been known to be neutral. They take the perspective that everyone is a friend until they prove otherwise. I would assume that on the island, someone proves otherwise -- either that, or they simply want to preserve the balance that they cherish, so they split up accordingly. The bit of the starting zone we got to play through at BlizzCon didn't really explain it fully, which means we get to find out either in beta or when we get the game. It's a surprise. Surprises are fun!
darksky asked:
Question for anybody that's had experience on the PTR and has read 'Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects':
Without giving away any spoilers from the book, there are some pretty significant developments to lore in Dragonblight that occur while Deathwing is still alive. Are any of those changes reflected in 4.3, or do we think we'll have to wait 'til the pre-MoP launch events (or even MoP itself) to see them reflected in-game?
Stuff has definitely happened in 4.3 -- however, it's all instanced. So what you read in the book is reflected in game, just in an instanced version. This is to preserve the timeline of Wrath; those who are playing through Wrath are playing back in the past. If Blizzard wanted to update the world every time a novel came out, I'm pretty sure we'd have nothing but expansions that tried to play catch up in an endless loop. And ... well, that's pretty boring, don't you think?
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!
Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 11)
dev_null0 Oct 31st 2011 11:02AM
I will see your cat with hands and raise you a "cats with thumbs"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6CcxJQq1x8
chyllyphylly Oct 31st 2011 11:35AM
Funny enough, that was the 1st thing i thought as well :D
dodgeballer2005 Oct 31st 2011 11:43PM
Nigel Thornberry, is that you?
alzeer Oct 31st 2011 11:05AM
Q for the Q
about warlocks, when they summon a demon is the demon basically alien from other planet like the burning legion demons? or the demons come from some dimension on azeroth itself?
razion Oct 31st 2011 11:07AM
They pull their demons from the Twisting Nether, I believe.
llcjay2003 Oct 31st 2011 11:08AM
They are summoned directly from the Nether. Or in the case of Voidwalker, the Void, of which he is not particularly pleased. I'm not sure about the difference between the Nether and the Void. The latter seems more...emo.
Knob Oct 31st 2011 11:15AM
If only Blizzard added a chance that warlocks would get Wilfred Fizzlebang'd when summoning a demon while out of combat. No durability loss, and the demon wouldn't run rampant like the old-school infernal summon from classic till it was enslaved but would instead just return back to the Nether, and with it able to occur only out of combat, mid-combat summons wouldn't be a roll of the dice.
Stonebeard Oct 31st 2011 11:19AM
To my knowledge, all demons come from the Twisting Nether originally (depending on what exactly the void is). BC demons are no different. The Nether is not like the Emerald Dream in that it only exists for Azeroth; the Nether is its own separate dimension.
In fact, there is nothing in lore to suggest that Argus and Draenor are out in "space" because the Exodar is not a spaceship - its a magical transdimensional transport. Is there anything in lore at all that suggests interstellar travel? I don't think there is...
llcjay2003 Oct 31st 2011 11:22AM
@Knob: That would be hilarious. Summoning that Infernal used to be awesome (it still is, but you know what I mean). Didn't a Curse of Doom kill randomly spawn a Doomguard that would terrorize until enslaved? Or was it spawned enslaved? Furthermore, I thought it was cool that you had to sacrifice someone to summon a DG out of combat. Completely useless, but interesting.
Marbles Oct 31st 2011 11:37AM
If I were to postulate, I'd say that the Twisting Nether is like reality, only, well, twisted. Things become like they are in reality, only not. THe Nether leeches stuff from reality, and corrupts it. Magic stemming from there (usually called Fel Magic) twists stuff to make it it's own. The earliest known inhabitants of the realm are the Nathrezim, though it is likely that Infernals (semi-sentient Fel Rock elementals are native too). A brief vision of Netherspace can be seen at the top of Karazahn - all strange shapes hanging in nothing.
Whilst the Nether is arguably the opposite of Reality, the Void is the absence. There is no light, there are no stars, there is no substance. It stretches for unknown distance - how do you measure distance without landmarks? Yet there is life, of a sort. Where enough shadows accumulate, a shadow elemental may coalesce, forming a Voidwalker. And where Reality pushes against the Void, the Void sometimes pushes back.
The Void has one known leader - Dimensius the All-Devouring, General of the Void Armies,destroyer of an unknown number of worlds, though the only one principally known about is K'aresh, homeworld of the Ethereals. Dimensius briefly appeared on Outland, feeding off of a broken manaforge before the Consortium banished him.
Hob Oct 31st 2011 11:42AM
I thought succubi were eredar? Could be mistaken though (obviously). And I also thought that voidwalkers were the "souls" of corrupted orcs.
Imps, however, are clearly what happens when gnomes and goblins put their differences aside for the night. Or maybe you get an imp when you feed a gnome after midnight...?
Boobah Oct 31st 2011 11:57AM
Yeah, you used to be able summon a doomguard with the spell 'Ritual of Doom.' And yes, originally it was a guaranteed kill of one participant in the ritual; the current felguard voice clips were originally made for the doomguard, and that is why the felguard sometimes says 'Whatever happened to your friend?' when summoned.
Mortenebra Oct 31st 2011 11:58AM
@Hob: I didn't think succubi were Eredar because they lacked the Draenic characteristics (e.g. the Eredar Twins in Sunwell aren't succubi... they just act like succubi). It could be, though, that they're descended from female Eredar, maybe?
@llcjay2003: The old Curse of Doom used to spawn a Doomguard that went rampaging through your party until you enslaved it. I remember the first time it happened and I couldn't understand why the rest of my party members were still in combat, losing health. Oh man, those were good times. I miss those days.
Aurilia Oct 31st 2011 12:04PM
@llcjay2003 Curse of Doom-spawned Doomguards were definitely not summoned pre-enslaved. I use to use Doom with my Warlock in BC on 5-man boss fights - nothing confuses a tank more then an aggressive demon popping up when a boss falls over. ;)
Ritual of Doom was even worse; not only did the Doomguard summoned need to be enslaved, a random party member was sacrificed for the ritual, and the warlock was not exempt from this.
Boobah Oct 31st 2011 12:26PM
Well, the draenei don't think the succubi are eredar; they make no bones about the wrathguard's origins at the holographic display in the Exodar, but they claim the succubi are Sayaads.
Chance Oct 31st 2011 1:17PM
@Jay
The Doomguard indeed needed to be enslaved when summoned from CoDoom. I used to love not enslaving it when it spawned just to hear crys of hatred for me over vent.
themightysven Oct 31st 2011 2:37PM
All Warlock demons are aliens, and most hail from worlds conquered by the Burning Legion. This doesn't nessecarily make them secretly in league with the Legion though. The exception to the "from conquered worlds" rule is the Voidwalker, because Voidwalker don't care.
furrama Oct 31st 2011 2:46PM
Back when Sargeras was a good guy, he was tasked with finding evil destructive races and tossing them into the Twisting Nether.
So they are aliens. Later he broke a bunch of them out to go destroy the universe with him thus creating the Burning Legion, because THE CYCLE OF SUFFERING MUST END and stuff.
Loww Nov 1st 2011 11:55AM
http://www.wowwiki.com/Burning_Legion
This article and the ones for all of the demon races are a great read if you're interested. Heres to hoping the burning legion shows up again in MoP.
The Dewd Oct 31st 2011 11:06AM
Balloon battles would be amazing.
I do wonder, though, if the reason they've been going back and giving all the non-combat pets sound files for when they're clicked on has been building up to the new pet battles. I'm pretty certain that most of them didn't have sounds before.