The Queue: The cartoonening

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.

Monday. Yep.

JeffLaBowski asked:

Is it me or has this expansion flew by? It feels like we are in the pre-expac lull even before 5.4 is out. Anyone else get that?

I've felt that way too, but I'm tentatively considering it a good thing. Pandaria isn't bad, but the entire expansion has felt like a bit of a sidequest. Sidequests are good as long as they don't overstay their welcome. Personally, I still can't take the pandaren seriously. Don't get my wrong, I like them. The problem is they're cute and adorable and comedic, something I smile and laugh about, but doesn't pull me into a story or its associated content. The land of Pandaria doesn't feel connected to the rest of Azeroth in any way -- even less than Outland, which is a completely different world. That won't hold my attention for a year or more.

Pandaria, its people, and its story feel like a Saturday morning cartoon to me, Garrosh's arc included. I like Saturday morning cartoons, they're fun, but they're not very deep. Warcraft has never been the most serious thing ever, but Pandaria has been even less so. I'm ready for Saturday to be over. If the next expansion comes relatively soon, I'll be happy with the experience Mists of Pandaria provided. If we're waiting until next summer, I'll be pretty sour over the whole thing.

SeanClayton asked:

A question I've always wanted to know: why do you think Blizzard settled on the 'Holy Trinity' when they first started planning WoW?

It's a stock fantasy/RPG trope. Even in games like the Final Fantasy series where there isn't someone that can hold threat 100% of the time, there's always a character that's particularly beefy with way more health than everybody else and a ton of skills that fill the guardian role. For example, Cover is a standard ability for the beefy character in that series -- Cover transfers all damage dealt to your party to him/her. Then you have your White Mage, the healer, and a large spread of damage-based classes. That trinity extends across almost all RPGs, long before Final Fantasy and all the way through today. EverQuest did it. WoW did it. You're going to see it for as long as the RPG genre exists. There will be exceptions, there are many good exceptions right now, but it's easy and it works.

Ron2 asked:

I was going around delivering the final shipment of jade for the great statue of Yu'lon, and Surveyor Sawa said that this jade shortage was "the worst thing to happen since the golden autumn crisis." Any idea what he's referring to?

I don't think it has ever been explained. It's possible I'm wrong and simply overlooked a short story or Wowpedia article somewhere, but I'm pretty sure it's unexplained.

arkainjel001 asked:

I remember the vendor mounts allowing access to its vendors while moving but I've recently noticed that they are only accessible while stationary. It's not a huge deal but being able to auto run to my destination while selling items or reforging felt very efficient. Was this change made for a reason or just overlooked by devs?

If you click on the vendors while stationary, you can start moving and the window will remain open. If it doesn't, you may have some sort of lag issue happening where it thinks you left the vendors behind.