The Queue: Stat inflation, loading screens, Extra Buttons, and more

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.

Every year, we make Allison Robert compile a Best of WoW Insider series for the end of the year, and 2011's Best Of series is in progress right now. I know all of you enjoy looking back on the biggest news of the past year, but it's something that's really cool for us, too -- when you're here doing this gig every day, sometimes you forget the really fun and satisfying things you might've written at the beginning of the year. It's especially interesting when Allison picks one of your editorials from January as a Best Of and when you look back on it 12 months later, you realize you completely disagree with yourself. Your thoughts and opinions can change a lot in a year.

It's a fun experience, and I'm looking forward to the series starting up next week.

ricard.bossle asked:

There were any news about the 5.0 Stats Inflation and how this issue will be adressed in game?

There haven't been any updates regarding how Blizzard intends to handle item stat inflation, no. The last we heard about it was the great big blog post from Ghostcrawler at the beginning of November. I don't expect we'll hear any firm details until the Mists of Pandaria beta rolls around -- anything Blizzard does is going to require significant amounts of testing.

Cyno01 asked:

do you think they'll update some of the loading screens with MoP? The ones for EL and Kali specifically, because they have all the faction leaders on them... Except for the Cata races, there's just a generic worgen and goblin on them that seem to be placeholders instead of Genn and whoevers in charge of the goblins. Or is that why they haven't updated them, because the trade prince is still MIA?

Blizzard certainly might update the loading screens, but there's no rule saying all loading screens need to portray faction leaders. Blizzard just picks a cool piece of existing art and sticks it on the loading screen. I don't believe it's ever made art specifically for the loading screens. The loading screen art back in vanilla WoW and The Burning Crusade was all concept art for dungeons, terrain, and races. The Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor loading screens were initially numerous pieces of individual concept art stitched together to make one good-looking picture. When those loading screens were changing, Blizzard just changed them to art relevant art it already had lying around. The reason the generic worgen and generic goblin are there is because that was the art it already had for those races.

Blizzard probably won't make custom art for Genn Greymane and Trade Prince Gallywix specifically for loading screens, but if it has art of those characters that it wants to use for that purpose, sure. Both characters have had some art done for their faction leader stories and other fiction since the launch of Cataclysm. Blizzard can change the loading screens whenever it wants. There's no guarantee it will happen in Mists of Pandaria (though Blizzard does it every expansion), but there's also nothing saying it can't change them sooner than that, either. Unless I'm terribly mistaken (and I could be), the loading screen for Northrend changed in a content patch.

arixian asked:

Since I never got the standing in fire achievement on any of my toons I was just wondering if it has been confirmed that once DW has been killed on your server he is no longer randomly appearing in zones and all chance of still getting the achievement are gone?

Deathwing is still torching zones, you don't need to worry about that. He'll probably continue doing so right up until patch 5.0 or whatever filler content patch happens to come between now and then.

If you're really desperate for the achievement, I believe you can get it by wiping to the Spine of Deathwing encounter in Dragon Soul, I believe. If you use the Raid Finder for any length of time, you're inevitably going to wipe to the guy at least once.

techno-warrior6 asked:

What the name for the button that appears in DS that gives you a buff? i want to know so i can use moveanything so i can failing see my frame in those fights

It's the Extra Action Button. Most updated action bar addons will let you map or bind that button, or you can macro it like so:

You can read more about the Extra Action Button and how to work with it in the most recent Addon Spotlight.

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!