The Queue: Vanessa VanCleef with the steel chair!

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.

Vanessa remains one of my favorite World of Warcraft bosses of all time. Rarely are bosses so tied to our personal game experience, and rarely do bosses have so much personality. To this day, I'm a little sad she's already gone.

Ricky_Gabriel_Bird asked:

Question: If Titans created machine to create the original versions of Dwarves, Gnomes, Humans etc, why did they create female versions? I presume the races were created as workers/builders for the Titans and if the machine creates them, then presumably they were not intended to reproduce. Tol'vir women don't seem to exist for example.

I don't think the Titans did build female versions of their creations. All of the Titan machines and constructs we see are male or non-gendered. Female versions of their various creations only start appearing after those creations are afflicted with the curse of flesh. Essentially, once they became fleshy, they various species evolved to have female counterparts as a means of survival. They weren't intended to reproduce, but nature finds a way, that whole thing.

Freya, the Watcher in Northrend, sticks out as an exception. I'm willing to ignore that exception because she probably exists based on the Rule of Cool.

evoxpisces asked:

I've been wondering for a while, when you are tasked with killing a certain amount of mobs in a quest, and there are NPCs killing said mobs, what determines whether or not you get the credit for that kill if an NPC has already started attacking the mob? For instance, if you're supposed to assist orc NPCs kill human mobs, and an orc gets a human down to 50% of his health and you run in and finish him off, does that count for you? I've seen it go both ways: sometimes it gives me the kill, other times it doesn't.

It seems to vary depending on the mob, which strikes me as strange -- you'd think it would be an across-the-board matter of percentages, but experience says otherwise. For many mobs, you simply need to do more damage to the mob than the NPCs. As long as you do a little over 50% of the damage, it's yours. Other mobs, it's just a matter of ensuring you tap it (or get on its aggro table via damage), even if you do so when it's at 10% health.

I don't have a good answer, sorry!

@aspectofthedork asked:

is the "two bosses enter" column coming back? I miss it!

We have no plans for that right now. When we're just tossing polls up, not many people find interest in it. When we tried to do something more exciting with it, people were ... less than pleased. Readers didn't take kindly to the professional wrestling spin I tried to take with it. I enjoyed it. The audience? Not so much. Storylines, people! Storylines!

Or maybe y'all just hate Vanessa VanCleef. That's possible, too. Haters.

In all seriousness, if this is something people actually want, feel free to let us know in the comments today. Unfortunately, we've been through this song and dance before -- its previous resurrection was based on audience demand, but when we relaunched it, barely anybody turned out for it. We might be willing to give it another go. If we did, we'd likely try that storyline thing again (minus the Cardboard Assassin.) It's a lot less mind-numbing than polls and copy/pastes.

@xederya asked:

Do you know of any plans to allow grey, white and vanity items to be used for transmog?

Nope. Generally speaking, Blizzard actively does not want you transmogging those items for general use. They don't want you fighting raid bosses with trouts or shovels, nor do they want you storming a castle in a Lovely Dress. They're cool with people customizing their look, but still want to maintain the overall aesthetic of war in Warcraft.

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!