The Queue: Short but sweet

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.

What's up, ladies and gentlemen? I got some good news, and I got some bad news. The bad news is that The Queue today is a little on the light side. Possibly a weekend factor, mixed in with a depressing state of snow here on the east coast of the United States? Most likely. Lots of internet traffic frozen in the tubes. One day, the sun will thaw my pipes and finally, finally, Portlandia season one episode 5.

The good news is that you've got me, Mat McCurley, at the helm of today's Queue. I picked out some real winners, kids, so sit back, strap in, and let's get RadiQueue.

Vacasta asked:

Stupid cosmetic question, but if I hit Z to draw my weapon outside of combat, does everyone see that? Or us it just client-side?

Everyone sees if you have chosen to have your weapons drawn or not. Most things that you do in game are represented to all players in the world. It's actually one of the things WoW does remarkably well. The secret is that the actual animation is not shown but the result is. This cuts down on the amount of, well, stuff that has shown client-side, potentially increasing performance for some players with lower-end computers.

tw_holt asked:

Is there a tool/website/addon that shows more data in regard to the time /played?

For example I'd like to see how long, in time played, I was level 70, or 45, or 3, or 61 and so on.We can of course see how long we've been playing at whatever the current level you are, but I'm wondering if that past data can be accessed somehow.

The in-game /played function only reports to you the time actually played and no other time played information, sadly. Blizzard obviously collects much, much more data about your characters and gameplay experience, but for the very simple fact that the game isn't telling us that information, we cannot see it. An addon could collect information on its own, but that would not be retroactive and would only start collecting data from the date of installation. Maybe one day the APIs will be updated with even more information about a character's life in Azeroth.

@Atanae on Twitter asked:

If Blizzard is able to provide additional character slots, what is the likelihood that we'd have to pay for them?

You would never, ever have to pay for more character slots. Never. Ever. In a million years. The chance of you having to pay for extra character slots, if they are in fact introduced into the game at some point, will be zero. None. Impossible.

All PR isn't necessarily good PR, especially when it comes to the fine art of nickel-and-diming. Nobody wants to be nickel-and-dimed, and in an age when Yelp reviews sink businesses and Twitter recommendations are more lauded than professional critics, we are a vocal culture. Blizzard wouldn't get away with charging for such a deep-seated, core game play feature. Oh, someone at Activision-Blizzard has a chart with numbers and percentages and spreadsheets that shows the exact amount of subscriber loss-to-feature ratio and gains from the character slot microtransaction. It exists. This charge will never happen, though.

Jere Hunter asked:

I think you may have answered this before but im not sure. On the Load Screen, I like that they represent current expansions but I miss some of the old ones sometimes, Like the Classic, the Burning Crusade, and the Wrath with the chilly landscape. Do you think WOW will ever give us a Transmog for that so we can pick our Load Screen (the Sign on Screen) since after Cata we will be getting another one for Mists

This is actually something I've wanted for a long time, and I think that it is finally time to demand it from Blizzard. Hear us, Blizzard -- we wish to pick which login screen we see when we load up the game. Even the secret old Twilight portal one you had for Cataclysm. Yup, throw it in there. I saw it at BlizzCon! I know it exists!

Or something even cooler: The screen changes depending on the level of the last character you played on before logging out. I'm liking all of this already.

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!