The Queue: Fun fights

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host for today.

I have two experiences to talk about before getting started with the questions and answers for today. The first is my general raid experience with the new content from patch 4.3. Dragon Soul is a pretty fun raid so far. I'm the kind of person who is happy to sacrifice a little bit of manufactured challenge for success and progress, especially in the normal mode fights. Heroics are perfectly fine being super challenging, but as far as normals go, letting guilds that can progress do so is fun. The first four fights in Dragon Soul are fun fights, especially Hagara the Stormbinder. I think she might be one of my new favorite encounters in this entire expansion.

The second experience I wanted to discuss was my first Raid Finder adventure. Surprisingly, after weeks of worrying about whether 25 strangers could accomplish the content, I finally found out that it is indeed possible. I had a great time running the first half of Dragon Soul with the random group that I was part of. To be honest, I'm really impressed with the level of difficulty that the Raid Finder setting allows for. If you just want to experience the content and have no aims for more than that, you're solid here. This is a good thing.

Questions, then?

Sarducci asked:

Do you still get locked to heroics if you run them outside the dungeon finder? Like, if we want to run the new five mans as a guild tonight, but some impatient people run them this afternoon, will those people be unable to queue specifically for the new 5-mans due to 24 hour lockouts?

Yes, you are allowed to run the new 5-man heroics once per day under the lockout. However, since the new 4.3 dungeons are in their own category of random heroic, and random heroics have no lockout, you can run those three dungeons to your heart's content. Not too shabby for getting those valor points, hmm?

Rédßèárd asked:

Since chaos orbs can be traded now, does that mean that all party members can roll on them also?

Yes, anyone can roll on them. Just roll need if you want the orb.

MattKrotzer asked:

In End Time... If Nozdormu can take us to the future, where Deathwing is dead... why doesn't he just take EVERYONE there?

Deathwing's gone, and we have a clean slate world on which to rebuild! Sure, it's a bit bleak, but where's that pioneer spirit?!

It's also not the real time line. In Twilight of the Aspects, Nozdormu talks about the real time line that we all exist in and how everything else is a weird branch from that. One of the major villains from the book exists outside of the real time line. It's the "what if" future versus the actual future, and you don't want to live outside the actual timeline? Maybe? I'm always the idiot confused by time travel so I don't know. Also, I think that the world of End Time is just an empty planet, devoid of all life, including the type to sustain other life. So we're pretty much doomed anyway.

byronius_primer asked:

Is there a cutscene after defeating Deathwing in the final encounter in the Dragon Soul raid?

There are four cinematics in the Dragon Soul raid. We've seen three of them so far, since the fourth is apparently missing from the files or is named something different or something. It hasn't been pulled out as of my writing the answer to this question. However, the other three are out there, and they are pretty cool. The first three cinematics are little 10- to 20-second transitional movies that show you some of the cool parts of fighting Deathwing. The final one is assumed to be Deathwing's ultimate defeat.

Scunosi asked:

So maybe I missed something but doesn't the majority of the DS raid take place in Dragonblight? How exactly are they explaining making you go to the Caverns to do something in the present when there's perfectly good boats that have been taking people there for years? I'm sure they just had to stick an instance portal somewhere and going to Dragonblight to enter Dragonblight would be kind of silly, but is there any real in-game explanation for it?

I think it's more of a thematic decision combined with a practical decision. The Dragon Soul raid fits in with the Caverns of Time motif and surrounding story, so it makes sense in that regard to put the portal near the other 4.3 content. The Bronze Dragonflight also plays a huge role in this raid content and story, especially since Nozdormu allows us to go back in time to grab the Dragon Soul, so keeping the portal close to Nozdormu makes sense.

Plus, it's fairly easy to get to versus Wyrmrest which involves a portal to Dalaran and a flight or boat or zeppelin to Northrend and a long flight.

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!