The Queue: I like fire

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

Yesterday we had a question about the little fiery looking thumbnail I use at the end of almost every edition of The Queue. What the heck is it? Well, it's pretty hard to make out the details as a little thumbnail, but it's a picture of Volkhan from Halls of Lightning. The big red flare is a fireburst that comes up when he wangs his anvil with his hammer. I thought the bigger version looked pretty cool, so I kept using the thumbnail.

alpha5099 asked...

I keep seeing references to EU-Magtheridon, and I'm absolutely fascinated by a server with such a ridiculously unbalanced player ratio. Does anyone know how that happened? Is there some reason an insane number of Horde players are there? Did the Horde just start getting the edge and the Alliance players left for less ganky pastures, and it's gone out of control since then?

EU-Magtheridon is a very special case. It's the home of Nihilum, now Ensidia, and they play Horde. Naturally a lot of people rolled there as Nihilum hopefuls, others rolled there just to hear all the gossip and news firsthand. That meant the Horde earned a quick upperhand on the server, which made the Alliance less inclined to play there, and it just snowballed into the imbalance you see there today.

Not much you can do about it, really. Those sorts of things just happen around well known people.

Debesun asked...

Is this big swirly maelstrom in the middle of the map a big whirlpool or a aerial vortex storm.. thing?

The maelstrom you see on the map is The Maelstrom. Gasp! It's a very whirlpooly, stormy area of the world, where the Well of Eternity used to be. It blew up, split the world into a few different pieces, and there's all sorts of tasty ruins down there now like the former Elven capital and its Queen. We'll probably be going there in a future expansion, though it's never been specifically stated.

Kishin asked...

Is there a mote extractor for the clouds in Northrend?

There isn't a new Northrend mote extractor, but the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor from Outland/The Burning Crusade works on them just fine. You use the exact same one.

lawlzcake asked...

Hi, I'm wondering how people in Wintergrasp get like 60k health? When I Google search it, it doesn't do anything and of course you can't Wowwikki it, so this seems the best place to ask.

That's the result of a buff called Tenacity. It's a stacking buff, and how high the stack goes is determined by how imbalanced (population-wise) the battle is at that moment. If the difference between the two sides is minor, the outnumbered team will only have a couple stacks of it. If the gap is very, very large, it can stack as high as 20 which will give that faction pretty massive healthpools and obscenely high damage. It's meant to level the playing field a little bit.

slunk asked...

I am looking for a suggestion for a buff mod that will let me assign buffs that I should always have. I would then want it to tell me which of these buffs are no longer active or are about to expire. Any suggestions?

I'm glad you asked, because I've been in the market for an addon that does this as well. Now that it's legitimately important for Shadow Priests to have Inner Fire up 100% of the time in a raid setting, my inability to babysit that buff is really coming to light. I was pointed in the direction of SmartBuff by a friend, and it was also suggested in the comments after you asked this question, so I'm going to give it a shot.

Looking at its description on Curse, I probably won't use most of the mod personally, but it looks just like what you want. I'll likely just use the alerts to let me know when to recast Inner Fire and such. You'll probably use a lot more of what the mod has to offer.

I know, it looks like a real copout when I completely ride on the suggestions of others and don't have much personal experience, but it's a learning experience for both of us! It's like a bond, slunk. We're soulbound.

Wulfkin asked...

Who is the woman who's voice you hear in Naxxramas screaming things like "help me, save me!"?

Pretty sure it's just ambience, and it's not actually a specific character/person. Just general spookiness. Some people say it's a part of Thaddius since he's stitched together from many, many women and children... but I'm pretty sure she's just ambience. If you want to know her name, you're better off looking at a list of Blizzard employees rather than a list of Warcraft characters.

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!