The Queue: StarCraft 2's release date

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

I'm going to use The Queue for another poll today, but it's slightly more topical than our usual "what should I eat today" type of poll. Not completely on topic mind you, but moreso than usual. The question: will you be buying StarCraft 2?
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Kyrro asked:

"Is there any word on if old world zones will grow bigger in Cataclysm? Zones in Outland and especially Northrend are huge, so sizing up the old world zones a bit would only make sense. Add to that we also get mounts 10 levels earlier than before, and also get epic flying in the old world."

With the exception of some mountain ranges and other geographical bits and pieces being shifted around, old zones won't be getting any bigger. They're all changing, but they're not scaling the old continents up. They're not moving a proverbial size slider upwards to make everything bigger, and they're not building a brand new continent from scratch. Blizzard is taking the continents we already have, editing them to make them look better/different and filling in any gaping holes in the terrain. And I suppose making new gaping holes in the terrain where necessary. Poor, poor Azshara.

Westfall will have a lot of new features, but it's still going to be Westfall. It isn't magically going to be twice as big. However, the new zones in Cataclysm will be bigger than the old zones. Deepholm is certainly going to be much bigger than Westfall.

CDave asked:

"Has any lore been released about who Professor Putricide was in life? They created lore for Sindragosa and the Blood Queen, why not this guy? He has a pretty important job for the Scourge and it seems to me that if the Lich King couldn't do Putricide's work by himself, then the Professor must have been someone the Lich King really wanted on his side."

In life he was a mad scientist from the year 3000. The Lich King enslaved a Bronze Dragon (like he's attempting with Valithria Dreamwalker) and went to the future to find the most brilliant alchemist in existence. Unfortunately, the future is a confusing place so he screwed up and brought Putricide back instead.

I made all of that up. There is no lore for Putricide beyond what you see on the surface. He's just a mighty crazy fellow with a penchant for poison.

The Dark Wayne [Planeteer: Power of the Batusi] asked:

"Do you guys have any intention of creating a catalog of the best quest chains for players to enjoy before they're gone forever?"

That's ... quite a name you have there.

And yes.

fez66 asked:

"I was just wondering if the StarCraft 2 release date could be used to make any guesses in regards to the Cataclysm schedule."

Probably not. StarCraft 2's release date is July 27 of this year, and I think we all pretty much knew Cataclysm wouldn't be coming that early. We might have hoped for an earlier release than that, but realistically we aren't going to see it until fall sometime. The two games also have two completely separate dev teams, so it's not like finishing StarCraft 2 frees them up to finish up Cataclysm.

The only reason the release date of one might influence the other is if Blizzard shifts release dates around to game their Q3 and Q4 sales numbers to excite ActiBlizzard's shareholders. Really though, we're looking at one company releasing two very highly anticipated games more or less back to back. As long as both games do end up being released at some point in the next year, there's no gaming the system necessary.

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!