The Queue: Snorkelplex

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A column in which we answer your questions about the World of Warcraft. Basil Berntsen of Gold Capped and Insider Trader (as well as a few moderately popular podcasts) will be your host today.

I can't get enough of you guys. Answering emails for my regular columns, as well as in both of my podcasts, hasn't sated my voracious addiction for questions with easy answers! Alex is what you would call "an enabler" and thus insisted that I do the Queue today.

Burnaphatone asked:

Any idea of what the total time played of every account in the World of Warcraft amounts to? Has this ever been looked into?

I don't think so, but I'd bet a stiff drink that it's not pretty. I'm fairly casual as far as playing goes, and my number is disgustingly large. If these hours were spent on, say, my day job, I'd be out of debt chilling on a yacht (probably with Goatcrawler), and I'd be able to hire my driver a driver for when he wasn't driving me around to various charitable benefits and Slayer concerts. Assuming I'm a fairly average member of a representative sample, that means that the 11+ million people who have an active account have collectively spent so much time on the game that we'd have to make up a number to express the value. I'd vote for snorkelplex, but nobody ever asks me these things.

As for Grovinofdarkesthour's comment that we could have cured all sorts of diseases by now, I'd like to say in our defense that very few of us are able to use our spare time toward the betterment of humanity. I don't know any only know one cancer researcher who plays, and he doesn't play instead of working but rather to make himself capable of working harder after relaxing.

Hal asked:

Has anybody ever grabbed a large group of players (i.e. multiple raids' worth) and just taken over an opposing faction city?

Gosh, yes! Every chance I get! In fact, city PvP was one of the reasons I started PvPing on my hunter. The best I've personally seen so far was taking the trade district of some smaller cities, though. Auctioneers need more health, in my opinion. At least they respawn quickly ...

The most inventive use of faction PvP I've seen is from a while ago before flight masters had been trained to leash when they got kited too far away; some random guild took a mid-level flight master hostage.

Chris asked:

Any news on the overhaul of the banking system? At one point, I read that the personal banks were going to have tabs like the guild banks and that all toons were going to share the same bank. Any news on if this has appeared in the beta?

Last I heard, the personal banking system was the same as it is in live. I wish I didn't need a guild bank to hold all my junk ... It'd let me keep my bank alts somewhere they would benefit from company and (in Cataclysm) guild perks. Like many of the nice-to-have features, they're something I'm not holding my breath for. I imagine they're on a list of stuff that'll get looked at again after launch and tuning is done.

Niiru asked:

Does WoW.com keep track of just how much comments get upvoted and downvoted? I think it would be neat to see which comments have been the most upvoted and the most downvoted!

We have a super-secret database that we all have to check each morning. ... Just kidding. No. It'd be cool to have reputation attached to our comment system, but it would be too much stress for the chewing gum.

Scotepi asked:

What is the best way to powerlevel to 85? I'd like to try for realm first; if I tank randoms, would that be faster then questing?

Yup, it's pretty well a design point that dungeons are better experience per hour than questing -- especially as a tank, assuming the ratio of tank-to-everything-else remains where it is, allowing you to chain queue without ever having to stop except to sleep. My advice, though? Spend as much time as possible with a strong healer and a strong DPS, queuing together. You'll waste less time if you can carry the odd terribad player.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? We're here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!