The Queue: Happy Winter Veil!
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 25th 2011 at 12:00PM
Merry Christmas, everyone. It's very quiet in the proverbial WoW Insider offices today. I'm the only soul around, and the only sound in the air is the clickety-clack of my keyboard. That may seem a little depressing, but it isn't -- everybody is off enjoying themselves and grabbing some much-deserved rest and relaxation. It's a good thing.
Today's edition of The Queue is a bit short due to the holiday, but I'm sure you'll all forgive me, right?
Resurect asked:
With the events of the dragon soul, its safe to say that lorewise caverns of time is just a lair of bronze dragons now ? This means we will never see another time traveling dungeon again ?
Also Nozdurmu will now just grow old to be a nice guy without the risk of go "infinite" crazy ?
When it comes to time travel, anything is possible. It's almost completely useless to guess and speculate as to what will happen when time travel is involved.
The Caverns of Time are probably not going away. The Bronze Dragonflight just oversaw and guarded it, but the timeways are still a thing that can be manipulated. When something goes awry in the time stream, it's going to be even more important that adventurers go and fix it, because the Bronze Dragons can't do it themselves.
If the Caverns of Time are still open, should Nozdormu want his power back, he can sneak into the timeways as a mortal and try to find a way to stop us from depowering the Aspects. He could manipulate an infinite number of events to change the path of time and cause himself to become Murozond again. Who knows? Time travel is really quite silly.
Velleekwitay asked:
Was there any other use for Deathwing's humanoid form, aside from artwork and getting punched in the face by Theldurin the Lost?
Nope. Machinimators will find a use for it until the end of time, but Blizzard itself never used it in any official capacity outside of being punched. It's unfortunate, because his character model was awesome. If I had to guess, I'd say Blizzard decided against using it because it humanizes him. Deathwing is not the cold, calculating manipulator that he used to be. He's an engine of destruction now and has no reason to use anything but his dragon form. He doesn't need to shrink down to human size to go indoors. He just breaks the building open as a dragon.
Mortenebra asked:
Okay, I've got a holiday-themed question: What's your favorite holiday treat?
These ridiculously easy rum balls that FoodWishes taught me how to make this year.
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 4)
LynMars Dec 25th 2011 12:03PM
I love that Gaudy Winter Veil sweater SO MUCH. Guild photos! Caroliing! RP gear!
The possibilities are awesome.
Jeff (Not that one ^ ) Dec 25th 2011 12:07PM
You can get an ugly sweater? I didn't know that! Ugly sweater guild party!
Alebeard Dec 25th 2011 12:10PM
I can't believe some people...we had a guy complaining in trade that this was all we got...I think it's awesome...and the name fits...lol
Molly Dec 25th 2011 12:46PM
I logged all of my characters off wearing the gaudy sweater (with the exception of my main, who's wearing her red winter clothes and hat). Just so much wonderful ugliness. I love it better than the Mini-Zep.
icepyro Dec 25th 2011 1:35PM
I once got this kind of thing in real life. I wore it for all family/friends Christmas for a couple years until naturally started falling apart being stored for a year and then worn by me. My mom thought I was going to be embarrassed and not wear it and I ended up embarrassing her by wearing it proudly and telling everyone who got it for me.
True story.
robsmith77 Dec 25th 2011 1:44PM
@Alebeard
Yup, I also read a load of negative comments in trade chat about the awesome sweater. Ungrateful little blighters should thank their lucky stars they got anything at all. I guess some people just aren't able to appreciate how lovely this gift is.
Nadia Dec 25th 2011 2:19PM
People might think the sweater looks ugly, but it makes you sing line an angel.
That just makes it even more beautiful, somehow.
ravyncat Dec 25th 2011 4:36PM
I love the sweater too!
I hope it stays around and doesn't disappear once Winter Veil ends. It's on use condition makes me think it might.
Now I am looking for red or green pants to match the tacky sweater so all my kids can be really tackied out. XD
Elmo Dec 25th 2011 6:51PM
Those people whining about ugly sweaters don't understand it, with Christmas you're supposed to wear an ugly self-knitted sweater. its part of the tradition.
Mr. Crow Dec 25th 2011 7:50PM
My favorite pub had an Ugly Sweater special last week. Show up with your ugly sweater and get your pints for $0.01.
Sooo delishus. ^_^
Alja Dec 25th 2011 7:54PM
boo to the trade whiners - my gnome makes that sweater look good :D I'm thinking the sweater itself won't go away after the holiday but perhaps the on use/caroling portion will.
Alebeard Dec 25th 2011 12:06PM
Yay! Rum balls
Blunderwear Dec 25th 2011 1:17PM
I had rum balls, once. Tingled.
cloudhopper013 Dec 25th 2011 12:10PM
I think that lack of humanization is one of the reasons killing Deathwing felt so underwhelming for so many people.
But really, I felt the same thing when killing Madness of Deathwing. I felt that way, that is, until I really thought hard about WHY I was doing it - that this was once a well-intentioned guardian dragon, that this was now the last bid of an engine of destruction and face of corruption, by one of the most powerful beings in Azeroth serving the MORE powerful beings in Azeroth.
I took only a second to flash all of the story knowledge and cutscenes and everything I had known about how truly awesome DW, his character, and origins were, and then I looked at the lava-tentacle-dragon before me in the giant whirlpool hot-tub that was once this (questionably) noble, intelligent, scheming dude and I was like "Goddamn this is awesome."
And then he blew up in to sparkles.
OrloChavez Dec 27th 2011 2:43PM
"And then he blew up into sparkles."
This was the single biggest letdown of the Dragon Soul raid.
It was like "OMG YOU GUYS!!! We're totally fighting Deathwing as he's hanging out of the Maelstrom. Those other big-ass dragons are totally fighting with us! Holy crap he totally fell down and we have to finish him off! OMG you guys this is totally it! We totally defeated his ass! Did you see that! He totally ... Wait ... Were those fucking sparkles? Seriously?"
Scard Dec 25th 2011 2:08PM
Killing Deathwing felt so underwhelming because nearly everyone was able to kill him in faceroll mode on the LFR.
My favorite moment was after having killed Deathwing, a little rogue in the group said in the raid channel, "That's it?" Yup man, you just killed the big baddie of Cataclysm the first week the fight was available with very little struggle. Pretty epic, huh?
Minstrel Dec 25th 2011 2:27PM
@Scard
Yeah, I have to question Blizzard's decision to send armed men out to place guns to the heads of WoW players, forcing them to run the Deathwing encounter in "faceroll mode." You'd think that would violate any number of laws, world-wide.
That said, we probably should have seen it coming from their corporate motto: "Forcing you to make bad decisions that devalue your enjoyment of our games, since 1721."
Talsenar Dec 25th 2011 4:03PM
Remember when casual players used to complain, and say "I can't see end game content" and hardcore players would respond "Sure you can, everyone can, just join a guild, put the time in and earn the content" totally ignoring that some people don't have the time, or inclination or patience to do that and it was basically a worthless response.
I think "Blizzard isn't putting a gun to your head to force you to do LFR" is the equivalent reversal of that response. Sure Raiders could ignore LFR completely to keep the surprise and impact of killing DW with their raid, but that ignores the nature of Raiders, which is they will clear content, they will do what they can for gear upgrades and that it might even be expected of them to keep a place in their guild.
What the solution to these competing interests is, probably that Raiders have to suck it up, but saying "you don't have to do LFR" isn't a useful answer to anything really.
yagamimoon Dec 25th 2011 5:01PM
Killing deathwing in LFR doesnt change the fact that DW needed a little bit more of fleshing out. You can go from level 1 to 85 and only see him a little bit in twilight highlands (if you get that far into quests), most of the time you are getting comments from npcs about the twilight hammer, alliance vs horde, but the guy himself? Almost nothing, it's just "omg all this happens because of Deathwing!" "Deathwing is to blame!" "They all serve deathwing!" And then when you go deeper its all about " The old gods!" "The old gods are here!" "It's in fact the old gods to blame!"
All in all, humaniing Deathwing would have worked much better =/
SamLowry Dec 27th 2011 2:02AM
"All in all, humanizing Deathwing would have worked much better =/"
Agreed. The devs didn't like the heat they got for making Arthas show up here and there so they went in the opposite direction with Deathwing, making him such a scarce and impersonal force of destruction that they might as well have presented him as a tornado with eyeballs.