The Queue: Patch 5.2's release date and heaps of dirty laundry

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.

Today's edition of The Queue is mostly WoW Insider questions and not so much WoW questions, but we'll get the biggest WoW question of them all out of the way up front:

frankie asked:

Patch 5.2: Live before February ends?

I'm thinking early March sounds like a good patch 5.2 release date. Though I guess it isn't really a "date" if I'm only providing a month, so ... March 12?

Edit: Bashiok has me beaten! We're expecting the patch the last week of February.

Russ asked:

I was under the impression when you guys announced the new hires that we would have a new mage columnist. From my perspective, that hasn't come to fruition. Any idea/ETA on when we might see one? Maybe someone could go enslave themselves to Mr. Belt and we could get Archmage Pants back? I only play a mage in WoW and would REALLY like some insight from WoW Insider...

JeffLaBowski's comment yesterday was fairly accurate, so I'll paste that here, then throw in a bit of additional information.

Jeff said:

Here's the thing Russ. At the time when they announced the open call for contributors they had no idea who would apply and ultimately win the positions. There was a possibility that someone with some mage insight could join their ranks.

I'm not sure if any of the new writers fit that bill. If one of them does and wants to write a mage article- we will have one. If not, then we won't.

When we called for writers, we listed a bunch of things we haven't covered very much recently. We weren't hiring specifically for those topics, but if the general applicants had some expertise in that area, we would have counted it a plus. The people were hired were all very good, but none of them had a focus on mages. Will we get a mage columnist again? Possibly, but don't hold your breath. Class columns are tough for us because while they have a small group of devoted readers ... it's a small group of devoted readers. Class columns cost as much as every other feature, and sometimes cost more to produce. It's rough on the budget, when we could be using that money on producing content for a wider audience.

I'm not saying we won't ever do class column hires again, but our old way of handling it just doesn't work anymore. It especially doesn't work for multi-role classes. For example, having a seperate column for restoration, enhancement, and elemental shaman is expensive (and logistically insane.) The more class columns we have, the less everything else we have. It's tough. Maybe we'll have a good solution in the future. We don't right now.

And please, don't flood our inbox volunteering to write for free -- we don't accept donated work. Don't flood our inboxes asking why we don't, either. It's just policy, y'all.

AlecCharon asked:

When I visited the site on my phone the other day, I scrolled to the bottom and found something along the lines of "Have the full WoW Insider Experience". Curiosity overtaking, I hit the option. Now, I prefer the normal mobile version. Is there any way I can revert it?

You need to clear your cookies/cache on your mobile device. It's inconvenient, we know, but we hope to fix our mobile format ... eventually. Don't hold me to that, it's just something on The List.

Many asked:

Your comments disappeared on the mobile site! What's up?

I don't know. It isn't something our editorial staff did. I'll get in touch with the people that might know what the dillio.

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!