The Queue: Superbeard

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. The hairy fellow above will be answering your questions today.

Behold the beard. My wife likes to take pictures of me. Her artistry is pretty amazing, although I dislike the subject matter. I kind of like this one, though. I could almost imagine that guy prospecting out in the mountains or something. Turns out he's a ridiculously sedentary geek, but whatever.

windstalker668 asks:

What is the lore behind the ogres in Kalimdor? There are several tribes across the southern part of the continent, and I was just wondering how they got there? Ogres are not native to Azeroth so it seems odd that there would be full tribes of them, especially in Kalimdor.

It's fair that I be the one to answer this. An extremely short answer would be to link to the KYL I did about ogres. Since I see that commenter Morbid has already won this, I'll sum up.

Ogres are like big, stupid rats. They breed fast, they infest everywhere that can hold even a small ogre mound, and once they're in, it's extremely hard to get rid of them. While they are indeed often tremendously stupid, they're also very physically powerful, so it's hard to stamp them out. (These are guys who survived the Gronn for years.) As for what the ogre females look like or where ogre babies come from, I don't know, and I don't want to know.

Mike asked:

Is there a set formula for stat conversion for pre-Cataclysm items? Like a weapon with 300 spellpower and 60 intellect becomes a 360 intellect weapon in Cataclysm?

I don't think we can say with any certainty what the final system for pre-Cataclysm items will be. For one example, here's Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas on live. It has int and SP on it. In the current beta, it has completely different itemization: no int at all, 224 more spellpower, nearly half as much physical DPS (not that many casters would care, I suppose) and close to twice as much stamina. So clearly, spellpower on items isn't just going away. Looking at various ICC caster swords (which seem to be to be a good option, as they're usually mage/paladin weapons), we see again no int and heavy spellpower on them.

So keeping in mind that there are months to go yet in the beta, the answer to your question seems to be: "If anything, they dump int on current raid weapons and jack up the spellpower." Hope that helps.

Kriegle asked:

Where exactly is the Pit of Saron? I've flown all around ICC and Southern Icecrown, and I can't seem to find what should be a pretty conspicuous giant floating skull and quarry of slaves.

A wizard did it.

Seriously, as several of your fellow readers commented, it's best to treat the whole issue of where instances are in the world with a bit of suspension of disbelief. While it's possible, say, to estimate which of those platforms outside the ICC spire are ones the gunships dock on or the one you fight Deathbringer Saurfang on, they clearly don't match up in scale, and if you fly to the top of the Citadel, the Frozen Throne is curiously unfinished. There are places in Icecrown Glacier that would be suitable for the Pit of Saron, but they lack things like free space into which to fit a huge saronite quarry, because there's just no room for them on the existing map. I mean, where does the final escape from Arthas in the Halls of Reflection take place? You can see Malykriss floating there as you run down the pathway, but when you fly to Malykriss in the world outside the instance, it's very difficult to see where in the Citadel that path could possibly exist.

Again, it's best to just say, "a wizard did it" and move on.

My beard asked:

When are you going to trim me again? I'm getting ridiculously snarly-looking here.

Never, my faithful face friend. Or at least "never" as loosely defined by me, which means "until my wife complains enough."

threesixteen asked:

Any word on what might happen with Badges of Justice? It'd be great if they'd make that gear BoA so we could attire our alts in cool lvl 70 epics, even if they only get used for like a week or two while we level up.

In fact, I'd love to be able to grind some of token/emblem that would allow me to "upgrade" my complete T1 and T2 sets with stats comparable to near-endgame gear ... Any chance of that happening?

No, no chance of that happening. (This has been Matt pretending to certainty he cannot possibly possess.) More seriously, I can't say that it will never happen. I would never have predicted race changes, faction changes, paid realm transfers or purchasable mounts or pets. But I would be willing to say it is extremely unlikely that you'll see anything like Badges of Justice being usable for BoA gear or instance tokens or emblems to allow you to upgrade your older tier sets.

Blizzard wants you to have to abandon that gear. It would be self-defeating for those goals if people never updated their appearance from old-world raid gear, as cool as we may think that gear is. Sure, I'd love to be able to raid in that old gear all the time ... It looked awesome to me. But it's been repeatedly stated that even legendaries should eventually see their relative power wane and be replaced. Same for your old tier sets, I'm afraid.

I do look crazy awesome in my old tier 2, though. Only set I've ever held onto.

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!