The Queue: Zombie goasts, leave this place

Rossi, Alex and I were talking about the DotA 2 leak that included some Half Life 2: Episode 3 strings that were most likely just Valve's trolling the fans a bit, as we have been anticipating the news of a new Half Life for some time now. There's some pretty amazing fan fiction out there, but none is as thrilling and amazing as the Half Life: Full Life Consequences series of stories featuring Gordon Freeman's brother John Freeman. Personally, I hope that Half Life 2: Episode 3 is as good as Full Life Consequences. It is time for me to live up to my name and face Full Life Consequences.

Also, I promised certain artistic friends that I would post a new art challenge in The Queue when I was given the reins, in the same vein in which Alex posted his paladin bubble art thing, which turned out to be exceedingly awesome. So, here's mine: Rossi and I are totally DPS warrior bro's Horde-side now, raiding together and generally topping charts and taking names. You should totally draw Rossi's male Tauren warrior and my female Blood Elf warrior doing their best bro-fist.

Skozz asked:

Will I be able to transmogrify my head piece into the Chef's Hat? It's blue and looks like it gives an armor bonus, but it has no specific type (Cloth, Leather, Mail, Plate).

Probably not. Chef's Hat would fall under two of the exceptions/rules for transmogrification. First, you can only transmog gear that has stats on it over just armor. Second, many "funny" or "silly" items have been excluded from transmog, including fish daggers, fishing poles, and most likely the Chef's Hat. Sad, I know.

ptay313 asked:

Two days in a row, I have killed Coren Direbrew, gotten my daily keg shaped chest, opened it and got... NOTHING! Is this an actual common occurence, or is Direbrew messing with me from beyond the grave?

For your first kill every day, Coren will drop his Keg-shaped Treasure Chest, which will always contain a small number of justice points. Sometimes the keg will contain rare items and mounts specific to the holiday. If the keg only contained these justice points, you will get the message "There is no loot." Sadly, this is lame and demoralizing. I would have much preferred the bag at least contain some Brewfest tokens or something in the bag by default.

Amanda A. asked:

Does anyone else get the impression that they swapped the vendor items and boss drops for tier 13 to reduce loot drama in LFR? A dps needing a tank ring would cause issues. A third of the raid needing a generic tier token won't.

I think the reason that the tier gear was removed from the vendors was two-fold. First, tier gear continues to be the best-looking, iconic armor from the tier that requires raiding to get. By keeping the iconic set items as part of the raids only, you give players a new incentive to try raiding and the new Raid Finder feature.

Second, by filling the valor point vendors with off set items, you don't have to itemize those items in the raid itself. The big example this tier is the fact that there are no plate shoulders for DPS classes in Firelands other than the tier shoulders off of Majordomo Staghelm. Had there been off set shoulders available from vendors, players would have been able to gear up and replace lower-ilevel items to make Firelands easier and work for their tier set pieces as a reward for completing content.

Tadiermot asked:

If you could trade places with any NPC for the day, which would you choose, and what would you do?

I would trade places with any repair vendor in the Firelands on a progression raid night. Stand around, repair some gear, and then retire.

fallemwarrior pondered:

Is it bad that when i que'ed for WSG the other day i tried to go back to our flag and purchase a Banshee's veil?

Gunblade for life.

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!