The Queue: Extra strength

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

Mike Sacco was unable to tackle your usual Friday edition of The Queue this week, so I'm going to use this opportunity to make up for my oh-so-brief Monday editions of The Queue and answer a few more questions than we typically do each day. Onward!

Noyou asked:

With Activision pulling the plug on Guitar Hero and True Crime, how will that impact WoW, if at all?

I highly doubt it will impact WoW at all. The company is called Activision Blizzard, but WoW's development house is specifically Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard, as a developer, does what Blizzard wants to do. What happens to other developers within Activision Blizzard isn't going to have much of an effect on Blizzard the developer.

Trilynne asked:

Has Blizzard said anything about fixing the phased ore and herb nodes in multiple Cataclysm zones? It's very irritating when you can see a node in one subsection of the zone, but as soon as you cross over into it, it disappears.

As far as I know, Blizzard hasn't commented on this at all. I agree with you on the irritation factor, though! It drives me nuts, and I fall for it every single time. Even when I know very well that a node is out of reach due to phasing, I try to race to it anyway. Not cool, man. Not cool.

I do hope they figure out a fix for it eventually.

Ezzy asked:

What is up with the killable Cinderbloom in Tol Barad?

I have no idea, but I love it. Unlike the node phasing issues, the killable Cinderbloom is hilarious. I hope they keep it. Or add a new plant to herbalism that requires you to beat it up to get at the goods. Cacti? Lopping off limbs to get at the meat inside? Who knows?

Svylva asked:

My guild just earned access to the Battle Standard of Coordination, which according to patch notes now grants 15% increase to experience, honor and reputation. However, when I dropped it in Tol Barad before turning in my dailies, it had no effect. It also had no effect on my rep for a Ramkahen daily turn in. Anyone know when/how these actually work?

It's a battle standard, so the idea is to take it into battle. That is, you want to put it down in combat and it will increase your experience, honor and reputation gains when you kill something. You would drop it in a big fight in a battleground, or when you're tackling a boss in an instance, not when you're turning in quests.

Telwar asked:

Anybody else notice that the mob spawn rate in the Tol Barad mini-dungeons seems to have increased?

I believe that the respawn rates on the mobs on the Tol Barad cell blocks is dynamic. The more people there are in the area (and thus, the faster the mobs are getting killed), the faster they will respawn. If it's a prime time rush and you have 20 or 30 players killing demons, they are going to respawn nearly instantaneously. However, if you're doing the quests at 3 a.m. and it's just you and maybe one or two other guys in the cell block, the respawns will be much slower.

rnave27 asked:

What ever happened to guild chat being added to the mobile armory? Did it go the way of the dance studio?

I don't believe Blizzard ever said, "Yes, we are going to add guild chat to the mobile armory." It's an idea Blizzard said that it liked and would like to tackle one day, but that doesn't mean it was planned immediately or even in the near future. It's on a very long list of things the team would like to do one day. Eventually. When they get around to it.

Danthrax asked:

Three times in the past two days I have received a dungeon in progress when using the LFG tool, without the pop-up box telling me it was in progress. Has Blizzard removed that message intentionally to avoid tanks queuing specifically for in-progress dungeons, or is it just a bug? Other people joining the instance at the same time have told me they also did not see the warning on their windows.

I'm fairly certain this was done intentionally, yes. Let me tell you, it is not fun to be a healer in line for a heroic, getting spammed with ready check windows over and over because the tank is queueing and declining repeatedly, waiting to get an in-progress proc. The in-progress notification inspired some really terrible behavior in people, so I'm quite glad it's gone.

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!