The Queue: DMF

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

I'm working Darkmoon Faire Los Angeles this weekend. You should stop by if you're in the LA area.

Nina Katerina asked:

They announced that everyone who took out an annual subscription would get a pass to beta-test Mists. I see an awful lot of Tyrael's Chargers running around. With all these people getting beta keys, aren't we going to have to have more than the usual number of PTRs? Are we going to have waves of beta test invites? How are they going to make it fair?

I don't think there's any doubt that MoP's beta test is going to have a larger pool of testers than we've had in the past, but that also doesn't mean that all of them will be joining the beta at the same time. The Annual Pass agreement doesn't state when you'll be invited to the beta; it only says you will at some point. We'll likely see waves of invites lasting for quite a while before beta ends.

The Dark Wayne asked:

Is there a sort of quest progression to follow before the Dragon Soul raid? I haven't really done anything in WoW for about a year but want to change that and get to all the juicy story parts. Do I need to complete all the firelands quests to fully understand what's going on with DW? Are there breadcrumb quests for the DW 5-mans? (Are there 5 mans? Did I make that up?) I've heard bits and pieces about the Infinite Dragon flight, are there other quests and dungeons ill need to do?

You should do the Elemental Bonds quest line with Thrall and then do the three 5-man dungeons released with 4.3. That should get you up to speed with the Dragon Soul raid. Firelands stuff isn't necessary.

The Dewd asked:

Do we know if Blizzard combs through sites like WoW Insider like they do their own forums? I know I've seen a lot of really good suggestions on any number of topics ranging from achievements and archaeology to PvP and loot drops and it'd be a shame if they miss them because they don't have the manpower and no one bothered to copy them over to the official forums.

I don't expect anyone to suddenly come out and say "Yeah, I work for Blizzard and my job is to read through external sites to see what the non-hypervocal community thinks of things." (Admittedly, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Krotzer ghost-writes for the Blues, too, since he disappeared not too long before Blizzard made the we're-too-busy-for-Blizzcon-if-you-guys-want-3-game-releases-this-year announcement.)

The community managers do more than just read the forums; they look at all facets of the community for feedback. We definitely have developers who read the site, but I think it would be disingenuous to say that our feedback is valued more than any other given person or site. Blizzard employees often get hold of me directly for advice, though -- hair care advice.

Fallemwarrior asked:

Is raid finder going to be the new norm for wow? making a version of raids where i literal think people could faceroll their keyboards to do just to hold up the content for everyone ideal?

Yes, the Raid Finder is going to be the new norm ... for the Raid Finder. It's intended to be a difficulty level that pretty much any group of 25 people can complete. It's not supposed to be prohibitively difficult for the average (or below-average) player. That's what normal and heroic modes are for.

Ganrokh81 asked:

Metzen said at Blizzcon that "Love of Life" is what describes Pandaria. If the Pandaren are so entwined with life, why can't they be Druids?

You're misinterpreting. He means that they enjoy living life, experiencing things, leading rich and happy lives. He didn't mean capital-L 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!