The Queue: Close the floodgates again, please

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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Hi again, everyone! I may be covering The Queue for the rest of the week while Adam Holisky flees from a righteous flood. We usually trade off days, but he's kind of a wuss and can't take a little water, so I'll spare him the tragedy of needing to toddle through a puddle or whatever.

pants asked...

"I know that they are taking away the proto-drakes for the raid achievements in 3.1, but will the title "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" be gone as well for it's respective achievement?"

I just hopped onto the PTR to see if the title was still listed for the achievement, and it appears to still be there. It doesn't look like it will be going away in patch 3.1, so you'll still have a chance to earn Champion of the Frozen Wastes.

Deargchief asked...

"How come a lot of the cloth gear in Ulduar looks the same as the Mage set? Why can't they use the Warlock set also!"

Because the Mage set rules.

restodrood asked...

"Will the fragments for the legendary mace work like emblems? For example, in your loot box one or two emblems show up, but everyone gets one or two. Or will we have to roll on them, only getting a total maximum of one fragment off of each boss?"

It's one fragment per boss, period. Only one person gets to loot it. It's not like Emblems. They're most certainly not going to give a Legendary Mace to absolutely every single member of the raid all at once. You're going to need to focus on getting one person at a time, get them all of their fragments, then work on someone else.

Drow asked...

"Hard mode, is that just doing achievements, or is there an actual button that is pressed in game before an encounter? I know it sounds stupid, but I've heard this rumor a couple times and would like to snuff it out."

Well, there are achievements for the hard modes, but that's not all they are. By intentionally doing a fight differently, you make it more difficult and thus you get better rewards. Most of the Ulduar bosses have these. Sartharion also has this, times three.

For example, for the basic Sartharion kill, you kill all of the sub-bosses first before ever pulling him, then the fight is easy epics. If you don't kill the sub-bosses first, they enter the fray while you're fighting Sartharion and the encounter becomes much more difficult. Depending on how many sub-bosses you left standing before pulling Sartharion, you get better loot. That's the Hard Mode. It exists in both 10 and 25 man versions of the encounter.

Brouck asked...

"What is the most successful strategy for Heroic Oculus, other than don't PUG it?"

Umm... don't PUG it? Okay, sorry. My groups use one Red Drake, one Green Drakes, and three Bronze Drakes if we're not going for the achievements. Red tanks everything, green heals the red, the Bronze rotate through their timestops. Easy sailing on the final boss. All the bosses before him? Learn what explodes. Avoid those explosions. That sums up the entirety of those encounters. In each of them something explodes, and there is somewhere to stand that will not explode. It is recommended that you go to the place that isn't exploding.

The Oculus isn't that bad as long as people stick together and actually look at the abilities their drakes have. People start dying when they zoom off by themselves on the drake and get owned, then fall to their death and everyone gets anxious while waiting for that guy to corpse run. People get annoyed, people get sloppy, people die endlessly. It's silly.

molimo asked...

"Here's a question, why is Gamon killable at all? I just don't understand it."

He's part of a Rogue quest called The Shattered Hand. They must pick pocket him for a key, and since in order to pick pocket something it needs to be able to be attacked, Gamon has the unfortunate fate of being an attackable target in the middle of Orgrimmar.

Rahl asked...

"So where's all the news, info and guides to the Argent Tournament?"

Well, there hasn't been much news about the tournament beyond what we've covered. It's there, it's pretty cool, there are new mounts, et cetera. It gets some polish and bug fixes each patch, but that's about it!

As for guides and information like that? We're working on it. By the time patch 3.1 hits, we'll have a set of guides to the Argent Tournament quests and daily quests and all of that. It's a bit silly to release full blown guides to things that aren't finalized yet, but the Tournament seems to be nearing completion, so it wouldn't hurt for us to kick up production on those. And we have. You'll see them soon.

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!