The Queue: Vicarious adventures
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.
If you're the sort of person that likes mobile games, pick up Dungeon Village. Build and maintain a village to attract adventurers, who will spend their hard-earned gold pieces on your fine wines and steaks!
It's fascinatingly fun in the same way that Recettear turned out to be.
Patrick asked:
So...why did Blizzard not have an April Foolz prank this year? Was it just a matter of focusing on their work? I'm actually totally fine with that, but it made me sad.
I have two different theories here. The first theory is the fact that Blizzard just announced Hearthstone and launched a brand new site for it. Their web team usually handles their April Fools' Day jokes. They were most likely far too busy in recent weeks (months?) to bother with it.
The other theory is Blizzard may be feeling the same April Fools' Fatigue that many others are -- it isn't much fun anymore. Seeing April Fools' gags tends to elicite an irritated groan more often than a chuckle nowadays. Sometimes it's worth doing the jokes anyway for those that do enjoy them, but when the person who is supposed to make the joke isn't having much fun with the holiday ... good ideas (and good execution) are hard to come by. April Fools' Fatigue is why WoW Insider hasn't done anything for the holiday since 2010.
jdpatrick.gamer mentioned:
I can't get the top 1/4 of the site to display correctly in Google Chrome. It looks fine in Firefox (using Adobe's plugin) but Google's built-in Flash has apparently lost its mind.
We've seen a few reports of this, and some on our staff have had the same problem. We've had difficulty reproducing it consistently though, and it only seems to impact our background gradient in Chrome and nothing else. Our background is a flat color with absolutely nothing fancy going on in it. I don't really know how Chrome can screw that up. Right now we're in the "maybe it'll go away on its own" stage. If it continues and/or becomes worse, we'll look into it more in-depth.
Keep the reports coming if you keep seeing it.
On a personal note and not an editorial one, Chrome (and other Google products) are becoming increasingly belligerent in regards to completely standard web design. It's pretty frustrating! Their web services are also constantly being redesigned for mobile/tablet and not desktop, obfuscating basic desktop functionality. Why are they truncating email addresses in GMail's new Compose UI and turning them into clickable buttons? Why would you do that!? If I'm writing an email, I want to see exactly who is going to be receiving that email at a glance. Google, stop it!
Jefaar asked:
Do you think changes need to be made to the vote kick? I've also seen people troll LFR. For example, hunters will put on Aspect of the Pack during the Elegon fight (which causes people to be constantly dazed) or they will pull extra trash/the boss. Sometimes people will roll Need on something thst isn't their main spec. And because you can't kick them during combat, they will often pull the final boss (which means they can't be kicked unless the group wipes). Another tactic they use is to wait until the last second to roll on loot (this also prevents them from being kicked). I think we should be able to kick in combat and that when any person votes to kick, there is a note in raid chat (that also displays the reason).
The problem with making any changes to the vote-kick system is you can only design around trolls so much. Disallowing votekicking in combat is, in my opinion, a good thing. If you could do it, trolls could just as easily kick someone who is genuinely contributing to a boss kill by kicking them out right before the boss dies. Vote-kick popups appearing mid-boss also distracts players from actual gameplay. No matter which way you do it, someone is going to abuse the system.
I think it's impossible to design a multiplayer game that is impervious to trolling. Even League of Legends with its Tribunal system, which allows a playerbase to police itself, has immense behavioral problems.
@jupe69 asked:
new character models were pushed back for the next expansion right? i don't know if its confirmed but seems like it.
Unless I've forgotten something, they weren't even slated for this expansion. They're slated for "when they're done." That might be this expansion, or it might be next expansion. If we're really unlucky, it may be even longer than that until we get them.
@nousebod asked:
what would happen if no one did the 5.2 dailies...would the content never be unlocked or would bliz unlock the island sometime
I believe the island is set to unlock slowly by itself if participation is too low to advance at a reasonable rate.
@theloransas asked:
do you think the high elves will ever join the alliance? If so, what would the horde get?
Oh man, I really do hope the Alliance gets High Elves. I would pay insane amounts of money to play one. If it happened, the Horde would most likely get the draenei. On Twitter, @mainfloortank suggested that the Horde would get Eredar that've turned away from the Legion. That would be pretty darn cool.
@Kraereborn asked:
im starting to feel burnt out with wow, any suggestions?
Take a break! Play a different game for awhile, come back when you're ready. If you're looking for an alternative MMO, I suggest checking out The Secret World. It's a modern setting with a completely different leveling structure, and quite a bit of the questing is based on logic/puzzles, though naturally there's still a lot of combat.
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!
