Comic #955: All the King's Alts (Patreon)

I had the first panel as an idea right off the bat. I knew Anduin would be standing at the character select screen, and I would need a list of visual gags for all his alts. I had a few ideas floating around to follow that, but the seed that created this idea was Svelte Kumquat's Patreon comment on last week's commentary! He suggested "Guldansux" as a potential Varian alt and that idea tickled me enough to include it as one of his alts.

I also pictured that Anduin would spitefully create Guldansux, log him in, and then run him straight into Ragefire Chasm to die. I considered making that idea the comic, but in the end I felt that the opposite, more wholesome direction was better.

I always knew I wanted him to have a bunch of Varian alts, as if he were compulsively creating them. But after Guldansux, I knew Varianrox would make a good pair. I also like to imagine he plays these alts until they die and then quits in a fit of grief before eventually starting over again.

This is overkill, but I actually decided to calculate the appropriate level of "Varian", as if he were the real thing. He had the boss skull icon level at the start of Legion, which I consider to be the player’s level +3. So I figure, level 110 stat squished to 40, plus 3 extra levels for being a boss becomes 43? Who knows.