The Queue: Rocker chick weekend

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) sings this track in her car sometimes.

I think Joan Jett is probably Grace Potter's spirit animal.

Pancaek971 commented:

I thought the Twisting Nether is simply what we call Space. You know - in orbit, between the stars, etc.. Space! :D

I answered this in the comments, but I thought maybe I should put it where everyone can see it! The Twisting Nether is actually another plane of existence. It's kind of like the Emerald Dream or the Elemental Plane, in a way. You can read more about the Warcraft cosmos in a couple of Know Your Lore columns I wrote on the subject. Part one covers the Material Plane, and part two covers the other various and assorted planes of existence.

And if you feel like going all brain-bendy after that, I wrote a Tinfoil Hat edition with some different theories and speculation about planes and all that good stuff.

BlazeNor asked:

If Chris Metzen and Greg Street went into a restaurant own by a Horde player who comp their meal for free, do the servers (Alliance players) lose out on their gratuity?

I wouldn't think so. Both of them seem like pretty decent dudes that wouldn't stiff someone out of a tip, and I believe Metzen plays Alliance anyway. I'm not sure what faction Ghostcrawler plays, though.

... I feel like I'm missing an implied metaphor, here.

WordGardener asked:

"If you're referring to the Dominance Offensive/Operation Shieldwall quests, you get the new wyvern or new gryphon mount, respectively. You also get another for reaching exalted."

The one you get for reaching exalted - is that one that you purchase? Or did I miss a mail?

There are two mounts you can get. When you reach exalted, you also get the last few bits of the 5.1 story quests that unlock with reputation. The end of that chain has an unarmored gryphon or wyvern as a quest reward. But there is also a second mount, an armored gryphon or wyvern, on the faction vendor -- and it requires exalted reputation to purchase. So one costs gold, one is a freebie, and both of them look pretty awesome.

jackesteve asked:

Does anyone else think that a mount quest reward (in this era of account-wide mounts) is a bit of a let down? When I finished Shieldwall on my second toon it was kinda anti-climactic to get something you had to automatically delete.

I think the real question here is why you're doing Operation: Shieldwall on more than one character. I mean ... once you've finished it once, there's really no need to go through the whole thing a second time!

JeffLaBowski asked:

How many, "got it right" when you made your fist toon, as far as the race/class combo? If not on the first try, how many attempts did it take you?

Oh I most definitely did not. My first character was a night elf druid. I was Alliance mainly because that's where my friends had ended up. Once I hit 60, I decided to roll Horde. My Forsaken priest was my next character, and she felt pretty right -- I played her until Burning Crusade.

But when TBC came out, I decided to go ahead and roll the one class I always wanted to play, but never got to, and made a rogue. She ended up a blood elf just because I had one of every other race, and I wanted to see the new start zone. I don't think I could change mains at this point. I love the class, ups and downs and all, and after all these years I can't really sink into playing anything else seriously.

JohnSmith1 asked:

q4tq: I've noticed that queue articles have become a bit shorter since MoP was released. I've also noticed that there are fewer "how does this game work?" questions & more "what's the lore?" or "can I get advice on an in-game project?" type stuff. It seems to me that this is a good thing. Like more people understand how the game works, which was one of Blizzard's major goals this expansion.

Am I off base with this? What do the Insiders think?

Keep in mind that it also depends on who is writing the Queue on any given day. I tend to answer a variety of stuff, but I lean more towards lore because I'm very familiar with that. Others have different specialties. But by and large, we don't get a ton of "How to" questions anymore. I guess one could take that as a sign that people know how to play the game by now, sure!

JacobS.Kuntzman asked:

Here and there, I've seen mention of Sargeras from other players, implying he's not dead. The Ra-den voice clips in 5.2, while I think are just referring to the Thunder King, some players have thought are referring to Sargeras... I can't remember other specific examples, but it's kept happening. So, set me straight here: do we have *ANY* reason to believe Sargeras is still alive? If so, I've missed it somewhere. As far as I know, Kil'jaeden and the Old Gods are pretty much the pinnacle of evil these days. So did I miss something?

Sargeras isn't dead. Way back before orcs came to Azeroth, Sargeras had a face-off with Aegwynn. But it wasn't really Sargeras; it was an avatar of Sargeras. Like a puppet with Sargeras' essence inside of it, pulling the strings. When Aegwynn killed this puppet form, all she did was break that mold. Sargeras' essence then leapt to Aegwynn, and later possessed her child, Medivh.

But that essence wasn't the "real" Sargeras. It was like a tiny fraction of Sargeras' power, just a little piece of his essence. When Medivh was killed, it didn't kill Sargeras by proxy or anything -- it just sent him back to the Twisting Nether from whence he came, probably with a pretty major headache. So Sargeras has just been ... well, we don't know what he's been doing, exactly. Chilling out, recharging, maybe going out for tacos and karaoke, you know. Just being a big evil dude.

I'd suggest reading through the Warcraft cosmos articles that I linked up at the top here. The Tinfoil Hat one in particular talks about demonic and elemental death and how that all works.

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!