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The Queue: 64-butt client

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.

Which World of Warcraft client does Mike Sacco use?

Abbadon asked:

Do you think we'll ever get any gold or auction related titles?

I've been thinking it would be cool to have the title "Auctioneer" for posting some ridiculous amount of auctions, or maybe to stop players from just posting crap, successfully selling X items via the AH.

And while it's not a lot of players, there are more and more getting gold capped... Something like "the Gold Hoarder" would be pretty cool for hitting the gold limit.


I don't believe we will ever see gold-related achievements because gold hoarding and amassing fortunes in WoW is part of a meta-game many participate in, but by no way Blizzard wants to say, "Here's another reason to artificially inflate your gold amount by purchasing gold for these rewards." There already is a title in game for what used to be a large sum of gold -- of the Shattered Sun costs 1,000 gold after achieving exalted reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive.



It's not that Blizzard hates the Auction House or that Blizzard doesn't want people to play the game and collect gold. Quite the contrary, in fact, since the last thing Blizzard did to the gold cap was raise it. Rather, by putting in achievements that can be cheesed just by holding a certain amount of gold or driving more people toward purchasing gold just for an achievement, Blizzard only exacerbates its already-problematic gold selling issue. I'd rather just ignore the whole thing all together and put achievements in game that are more substantial than gold-related feats.

B-Rush asked:

A Question/Thought...

Blizzard is trying to eliminate gearing issues every patch it seems. The recent LFR change (can only win 1 out of a pair of items each boss) is a nice change, as I've seen people win multiple tokens multiple times now.

What about, NO loot off each boss, but instead at the end of a Dungeon/Raid, giving everyone in the group a goodie bag. Each bag would be based on your spec and each dungeon would have a different loot table, they might contain anything from 50 gold, a rare mount, or a new chest or weapon.

This would eliminate the loot ninjas, loot traders, etc. I simply can't see a problem.


While Blizzard wants to make gearing up easier because gear is one of the biggest barriers to entry for raiding and grouping, they are still very much married to the old-school EverQuest loot style where a creature has a chance to drop the loot you need. Points and badges were introduced as a booby prize sort of stop-gap to help with gearing issues, but we watched during Wrath of the Lich King as badge gear almost took priority over dropped gear. Blizzard has since recanted on that, moved to make points and badges less of a factor and still have bosses drop random loot. It's part of the fun of raiding -- forcing yourself to hate shoulders for the rest of your WoW career. While Blizzard could give everyone a loot bag at the end of the instance, I think it would much rather have the random loot drop off a boss and for a player to use some points to make up for the missed luck. The ninjas, loot drama, and so on are all part of the system and an unfortunate byproduct, not the aim.

blazenor asked:

Question for the Q:

Do you think gamers receive the worst customer service or to put it another way, do gaming companies have the worst customer service?


I don't think so. There are far worse companies out there in terms of customer service, but really, each company is unique. Blizzard's customer service has always been top-notch for me. I've never had an issue.

Another company that has always given me great service is Bose. I bought some in-ear headphones from Bose, and it has never had a problem fixing them or replacing them. So yeah -- thanks, Bose.

Andre asked:

Is there any possibility of a column similar to Reddit's "AMA" threads? I was thinking something along the lines of 15 Minutes of Fame, but the readers ask questions instead, and the person goes through answering them. What do you guys think?

I love this idea. I kind of want to pitch it to Alex as a "WoW Office Hours" kind of thing. If this is something you'd like to see, especially more interaction with the columnists, let us know here or tweet @alexziebart.


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!