The Queue: The sins of the father
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 21st 2012 at 11:00AM
New patches and new expansions are my favorite -- not because of all of the new things to do, but because you guys actually start asking questions for The Queue again. Hooray!
durandal asked:
In one of the interviews, it has been stated that "Garrosh has become corrupted and has been doing some really nasty things beneath Orgrimmar", so both factions want to get rid of him in MoP's final tier.
What do you think? Is this corruption self-influenced and based solely on his character, or are there external powers involved? Like, old gods invading RFC and mindcontrolling him from down there? Or is the Burning Blade at work again?
In our back room office talk here at WoW Insider, I've been betting all along that Garrosh is going to go the route of demon blood again. The entire Horde talks up Grom Hellscream's heroic sacrifice, how he's one of the greatest warriors to have ever lived, that Garrosh should be proud of him ... that whole thing. Yeah, Grom had a glorious, heroic death, but it came after years and years of doing horrible, horrible things under demonic influence -- which he voluntarily accepted.
The sins of the father should not be inflicted upon their sons, but that's exactly what happens when you tell the son that those sins were not sins at all but actually righteous and heroic acts. The son will commit the same sins anew.
Personally, I expect that as soon as the Alliance puts up a real fight and starts backing Garrosh into a corner, Garrosh will do exactly what Grom did -- reach out to the nearest demon lord and slurp up his blood for power. Then, if Thrall steps back in as warchief, maybe he'll put in an effort to find his Horde real heroes to look up to instead of encouraging them to worship monsters like Grom and Kargath. If you don't want your Horde to repeat the mistakes of the past, you can't whitewash those mistakes and call them heroic.
wmbrguild asked:
Did Blizzard even remotely address the realms with dwindling populations or servers that are EXTREMELY unbalanced?
Blizzard hasn't given a specific answer to that question and certainly not at the Mists of Pandaria press event. Personally, I don't think Blizzard can properly address the issue until after Mists of Pandaria has launched and the developers can see where the game's population lands at that point. If it consolidates a bunch of servers right now, launches the expansion, and then finds 2 to 3 million more North American players (new or returning) playing the game ... then what happens? It'll need to reopen the servers it's closed. Six to 12 months after that, who knows where the population will be then? That doesn't help anybody.
When Mists launches, either the problem will fix itself, or it'll give Blizzard a surer image of where the game's population will stay for the foreseeable future.
RogueJedi86 asked:
Here's a question I wondered after reading about the Sha yesterday. The Sha are the physical embodiment of bad emotions like Fear, Hatred, Doubt, etc., and it's implied that the alliance/Horde war on Pandaria fuels them. So wouldn't going into a raid to beat the Sha defeat the point of why they exist? Going in with intent to kill would just make them stronger. So we'd beat the Sha by simply choosing not to kill any of them in the world or in dungeons or raids.
I'm not sure a World of Warcraft in which you win by not playing would be a compelling game. I think the point is, in order to kill these things, we need to overcome our inner demons. These guys can be beaten when you believe that you can do it. If you fear the sha, if you hate them, if you doubt your ability to defeat them, you only make them stronger and it becomes absolutely certain that you cannot beat them.
Other fantasy fiction has established that an intent to kill is not necessarily fueled by emotion. It can be entirely logical -- sever the arm so you don't lose the body, that sort of thing. Look at Star Wars. The Jedi kill all of the time. Their Order doesn't forbid killing; it just forbids feeling strongly about it. Kind of weird, but it is what it is.
@paul asked:
In the new Blizz post a Night in MoP it mentions proving grounds. Got the scoop on these? Can't find anything anywhere, other than the Tolvir Proving Grounds Arena, which doesn't fit.
They weren't mentioned at all in the presentation at last week's press event. I imagine they are exactly what Bashiok described in that post: solo instances with a little lore thrown in. They're probably to help you learn the finer details of your class/PvE in general without bogging other people down with the learning process.
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, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 13)
Puntable Mar 21st 2012 11:02AM
I’m worried for the Pandas…
I liked vanilla wow. I liked Ashenvale before they plopped a big volcano on it. I liked Azeroth before Deathwing busted it up. I was sad when they turned those old zones that I loved into ugly lava. I think it was the big mistake of the Cata expansion.
I like the way Pandaria looks in the screenshots. It’s beautiful! I’m afraid that they are going to send tanks to knock down the forests so they look like Verdun, and bomb the towns so they look like Dresden. Am I just a sentimental fool?
(cutaia) Mar 21st 2012 11:14AM
"I liked Ashenvale before they plopped a big volcano on it."
During the last Blizzcon, a girl convinced a very drunk Chris Metzen to promise he'd get rid of the Ashenvale Volcano.
I still occasionally harass him about it on Twitter. :P
Domintal Mar 21st 2012 11:18AM
It is called World of WARcraft.
Ad134 Mar 21st 2012 11:24AM
War destroys natural environments. It always has. Wrecking the world in this way is - although we don't like it - immersive and realistic.
Architect Mar 21st 2012 11:40AM
Puntable, you are now looking at Azeroth through the eyes of the Night Elves or the Trolls or another ancient race who knew what the world looked like "before." Before the Sundering, before the Cataclysm, before Draenor broke into fragments.
Most of the time, we come upon ruins (in Feralas, for example) and wonder what it looked like long ago. Now we can wander into the ruins of Auberdine, or the great fissure in Westfall or the submerged world of Thousand Needles and remember exactly what it was like.
I fear for the Pandaren as well, but that is the nature of this world.
Bynde Mar 21st 2012 12:57PM
I think the sundering was the most interesting and dynamic change to the game environment, ever. Even now an alt of mine will discover something new, due to DW's emergence.
I think Cata was mostly blah. But the sundering was fantastic, for me anyways.
Daedalus Mar 21st 2012 1:09PM
War. War never changes...
Sorry, had to get that out of the way. But in all seriousness: war never changes. There's no way to sterilize it, or keep it confined to set area; wherever the fighting goes, devastation follows.
I think that's why Blizz is doing Pandaria this way; 5.0 giving us the chance to explore the land and fall in love with it so that when it's ravaged in 5.1 and on, it will have emotional weight.
I think you're right to be worried for the pandas, and no, that doesn't make you a sentimental fool. Everything Blizzard has said about the expansion pretty much points to our arrival as being the worst thing to happen to the Pandaren in 10,000 years.
Drahken Mar 21st 2012 1:45PM
I'd be happy with, even if they didn't get rid of the volcano, they at least shut up the giant fire elemental who shouts across the whole area every 30 seconds.
Joakim Mar 21st 2012 1:57PM
I think it was one Of the Romans - Cicero or Marcus or someone - who said, roughly, "when they have made it a desert, they call it peace".
Azeroth warfare is medieval. It's even worse than medieval. It's medieval warfare with modern day bacteriological and mechanical implements. Plagues, gasses, tanks, things that go "booom!", magic ... imagine half a company of warlocks, each and everyone of the 150 or so casting affliction-based diseases on the enemy. It's ... well, Wilfred Owen-ish.
(If you don't know who Wilfred Owen is, look it up. It's an eye opener, trust me.)
The world as we knew it has changed, not just because of Deathwing. It's changed because of _us_. WE are responsible, in the end.
Ooooh ... the sha is gonna have a smorgasbord in MoP. Death, terror and hatred all around!
And we invited it ...
Duts Mar 21st 2012 1:58PM
WAR! Huh!
God God ya'll. What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Say it again.
Noyou Mar 21st 2012 2:00PM
@Puntable
Take solace in the fact that the druids healed Hyjal. Ashenvale too can heal. Going to take a lot of time though.
Dreyja Mar 21st 2012 6:07PM
@ Domintal and no one is ever saddened by, or deeply regrets the effects of War?
eel5pe Mar 21st 2012 11:05AM
If it turns out Garrosh goes evil because he's yet another leader that was corrupted by the Old Gods, I give up on WoW lore.
"Old Gods corruption" is the new "a wizard did it".
(I like Ziebart's story much better)
Domintal Mar 21st 2012 11:21AM
The thing is, the Old Gods are the main threat on Azeroth. All bad things that happens here that isn't from a different world is ultimately because of the old Gods.
Shinae Mar 21st 2012 11:28AM
I like that Olds Gods are a thing in Azeroth, but I agree that they should not be tied-in to every villain we get. I hope Alex is right about Garrosh's story.
eel5pe Mar 21st 2012 11:45AM
Yeah I like the idea of the Old Gods: a latent infection on Azeroth that can't be cleansed without killing the patient. The all-powerful titans would just annhilate the planet and be done with it, but one of the things that makes us mortals awesome is that we're stubborn/dumb enough to believe we can fight it.
BUT
Blizzard keeps inserting the OGs unnecessarily into lore figures' story. Case in point: Arthas. He was a compelling villain because it was so understandable where he was coming from: a man trying to do good, burdened simultaneously by his upbringing as crown prince and his training as a paladin, who as a result saw the world a bit too much in black and white terms, decided the ends justified the means, and finally like many other great men in history became the evil he was trying to prevent. That's a compelling story in of itself. But then we find out that he REALLY became evil because Yoggy was whispering evulz in his head the whole time, and how is that relatable at all? I think we've all ended up messing something up despite good intentions, but how many of us can relate to a random evil dude in our head telling us to do bad things?
(Insert joke about schizophrenia, and then thread being derailed by arguments between people offended because schizophrenia is a serious condition, and then other people telling them to lighten up)
DonSerrot Mar 21st 2012 11:46AM
http://fim.413chan.net/fim/src/129911450592-applejack_wizard.png
I'm definitely interested to see how that story progresses, especially what happens from the Horde perspective.
Shrikesnest Mar 21st 2012 11:47AM
@Domintal:
But that's the problem. Real drama comes from emgaging conflict, and that comflict comes from compelling villain motivation. The satisfying part of defeating a villain isn't breaking his body, but defeating his ideas.
If the only font of evil and conflict in the world is totally evil, invincible old gods whose only motivation is to corrupt and destroy all life, that saps all the fun out of it. There's no joy in defeating that idea over and over because it's so self-evidently bad.
Plus it makes the world feel so small. The world should be full of interesting characters, some of them evil, working from a diverse array of motivations, not mere puppets of the same three superbeings. If for no other sale than variety.
silentbob1125 Mar 21st 2012 11:48AM
I was actually hoping for his turn to be related to the sha something like he is possesed by one and they use him to do the things he is going to to escalate all the bad asspects of the war to empower them further
llcjay2003 Mar 21st 2012 11:54AM
I was going to blame El Niño. Which is Spanish for...The Niño.