The Queue: Short attention span edition

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column in which the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Mondays. Even working from home cannot make Mondays a more exciting day. I think we should just eradicate all Mondays and replace them with a new, more awesome day. Who's with me?

Erinorofdarkspear asked:

Am I going to be able to play through Operation Gnomeregan after Cataclysm comes out, or am I going to need to reactivate my account before Cataclysm hits and do it?

You have to do it before Cataclysm. Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall are limited time events and will likely only be there for a few weeks. It's now or never.

Ravasha aked:

Mount Hyjal or Vashj'ir?

I assume you are asking which one I prefer. After playing through both of the zones, I actually dislike large chunks of both of them. Vashj'ir was my favorite when I had only done about half of each zone, but Vashj'ir really starts to drag along after the first few quest hubs. The beginning of the zone is really, incredibly fun. The closer I was to finishing the zone, however, the less fun I was having there. I also wasn't a fan of Hyjal at all, because I have an irrational hatred of night elf questing zones. The expansion didn't pick up for me until Deepholm. Vashj'ir still pulls ahead for me but there's a lot of content in that zone that is just plain boring to me personally.

Don't let my answer discourage you or take away from your enjoyment of Cataclysm when it goes live. I am a very picky person who gets bored easily. I don't like staying in one zone for too long, so the larger a zone is, the less I'll enjoy it in the end, even if I loved it early on. I know that isn't the case for everybody. In fact, most of the WoW.com team I've talked to about it loved Hyjal and thought I was crazy for finding it boring.

Even if you do end up agreeing with my assessment of Hyjal and Vashj'ir, everything that comes after them is way better, in my opinion.

Galaden asked:

I have recently started a new guild, and we are looking for a voice chat to use. Do you have any suggestions other than Ventrilo? Are there any free voice chat systems that we could use? Money is a little tight, and having it free would be a godsend.

My number one suggestion for voice chat is Mumble, but Mumble servers are not free. Fairly priced, but not free.

If free is absolutely necessary, the two most common suggestions are using either the in-game voice chat feature or using Skype conference calls. The more people you bring into Skype, the worse it will perform, and WoW's voice chat is just plain not good. Unless readers have better suggestions (which they are welcome to post in the comments), I recommend using Skype conference calls temporarily until you have a little funding to put into a Mumble server.

Edit: Yes, you can actually host your own Mumble (or Ventrilo) server. Mumble is open source and if you have the resources at your disposal, you can host your own server for free. I made the assumption, however, that Galaden was looking for an external host.

zeen13 asked:

Any new info on exactly when race changes to goblins and worgen will be made available?

Blizzard is currently stress testing the paid services on beta realms. They're randomly enabling race changes and recustomizations across everybody's characters and encouraging testers to use them as much as possible. Blizzard wants to know that the paid services will be functioning properly under the stress Cataclysm's launch will bring it, so it seems likely it's intended that race changes will be enabled immediately -- if not immediately, very soon after launch. You probably will not have to wait long.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com 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!