The Queue: Robin Hood

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Don't worry, this will be the last Queue he does for a while.

It's just occurred to me that I've never seen a Robin Hood MMO, or even really a Robin Hood CRPG of any kind. I mean, I don't have a universal knowledge of gaming, it's certainly more than possible that such a thing exists, but I don't know about it. There's been a fair number of Camelot/King Arthur games, but a surprising dearth of games about Robin Hood. It could be because the character has a fairly convoluted origin with a lot of interpolations, or maybe the idea of a heroic outlaw is too far outside of vogue nowadays. WoW has the Defias Brotherhood, but it's less the Merry Men and more guys who build a giant ironclad warship to blow up Stormwind.

I may be bringing this up because both Kevin Costner and Russel Crowe have played Robin Hood, and they were both one of Superman's dads in Man of Steel. I'm not saying I am, but it wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, on with the Queue! Some of these questions will undoubtedly contain spoilers for Patch 5.4.

Electresserin asks:
Question for the queue- I'm not sure if this has already been answered elsewhere: does Vol'jin want to be warchief? I understand that he wants revenge for the attempt on his life, and of course he wants the trolls to get out from under Garrosh's rule. But does he really want to take on the responsibilities of being the warchief? If he defeats Garrosh, does he automatically become warchief or could he refuse the title?

Well, one of the problems here is, there is no mechanism for determining who is the Warchief. Thrall appointed Garrosh, and Thrall himself was simultaneously appointed by a dying Doomhammer and acclaimed by the orcs at Hammerfall (which wasn't named that yet, of course). Doomhammer got the job by killing Blackhand and anyone else who might stand in his way, and Blackhand got it because Gul'dan manipulated the orcs into accepting him. So basically, in the history of being Warchief, murdering the dude before you has been the method of succession once out of the four times the job got passed down. So if Vol'jin is seen as having defeated Garrosh in battle, then yes, he may well become Warchief. Now, I don't see any reason he couldn't refuse the title if it was offered to him.

As to whether or not he wants the job, so far in game he hasn't said. I suspect we'll find out once Shadows of the Horde comes out. My suspicion is no, he's not really keen on it, but he'll do it if he thinks he has to. I wouldn't be surprised to see him and Baine try and create some kind of Horde Council to replace the position.

rjcmt asks:
Q4TQ - what's the chance Blizz will ever allow transmutation across armor material? for example, i have some cloth armor that would look great on my druid, but leather can't take on the appearance of cloth (even though i can equip both).

I don't really know. I've often said never only to have Blizz come along and say yup, we're doing that so I'm careful not to say it anymore, but frankly I already have so much transmog gear in plate that I don't have room for all the mail and leather I'd start collecting if I could mog to it. Based on their most recent statements, if it does happen it won't be for a while.

HaydenHiggs asks:
Q4tq: if the vales waters are indeed another well of eternity like most are speculating, why are we not seeing the effects that rhonin experienced in the war of the ancients? Where his magical abilities were increased tenfold because the well was still intact and it's potent, watery energies gathered in one place rather than spread around Azeroth like after the sundering. Shouldn't magic wielders be extremely powerful now if the waters are indeed a well

No, because the Sundering still happened. The Vale would be a fragment, a fraction of that original primordial Well of Eternity that we see in the same dungeon. The original Well still blew up, most of its waters were dispersed around the world and its magics scattered. I mean, we went to Mount Hyjal in Cataclysm and the mages and warlocks didn't start one-shotting demigods either. These remnants of the original Well contain great power (and again, I'm not saying the Vale is a remnant of the original Well, although it certainly could be) but they're not nearly as potent as the first Well was, just because of their size.

RnRa asks:
Is it just me or is the game community getting more hostile by the day? Case in point: today, I was running my cousin, who's just returned to WoW after over three years of downtime, through Throne of the Tides. I was tanking, and our healer (a shaman who kept pulling in advance) started trash-talking my cousin's low DPS and the fact that he took the time to watch the cutscenes. I /w'ed the healer, explaining that my cousin was out of practice and that if he left, I left. The shaman responded with a "don't care" and kept talking shit. After finishing the Neptulon fight, he ninja'd an item that my cousin (a warrior) could have used and signed off with a super agressive comment. My cousin's a tough dude, so he probably didn't take too much to heart, but what the hell? I seem to be noticing players acting like this more and more these days. Any thoughts?

I hate to say it, but I've been seeing that behavior since before we had a dungeon finder. I still remember a run I did, so far back in the day that it was a 10 man full clear of all of Blackrock Spire. I had the key, so I tended to go there a lot. One of the people in the run, a DPS warrior, would not stop griefing the tanks. He'd constantly taunt mobs off of them, run ahead to pull before anyone else was ready, make snotty comments about every single player in the group, and was generally awful and unpleasant. He was friends with one of the guys who'd put the run together, so they seemed unwilling or unable to rein him in. Once he got outright abusive (certain language was used) I finally put my foot down and refused to open UBRS for them until he was gone. Even then, he then went around trying to aggro patrols onto us to be an extra special jerk before he left, because back then you had to wait for the dungeon to port people out if they were removed from a group.

So what I'm saying is, it's not new. I don't even see it more often now, but I do admit it can be pretty memorable now because all you can really do is put the offender on your ignore list so you never group with him or her again. It sucks that he took the item your cousin could have used, though. I kind of wish dungeons were smarter about who could roll on what.

loopnotdefined asks:
Not necessarily a question for tomorrow's Queue (how many more can be spoilerific?), but a question none the less:

After the conclusion of the Siege of Orgrimmar, what do you think will happen with the Heart of Y'Shaarj? If the Titans couldn't destroy, I'm pretty sure we can't either.

Joke answer: Med'an comes back, eats it, goes crazy.

Actual answer: I have no idea. Perhaps Wrathion shows up and makes it into a legendary weapon. Maybe we take it to the Lightning Forge and create an entire new world out in the cosmos to imprison it. Maybe the Heart is consumed by Garrosh's attempt to use it and the essence of Y'Shaarj is fully dispersed among the seven Sha now (which would be bad for Pandaria, because that would just make them stronger). Maybe Y'Shaarj is reborn at the end of the raid although man, that doesn't sound good at all. Perhaps Ra-Den or the watchers of Ulduar can imprison it. There's that device in Uldaman that can purify the essence of the Old Gods, maybe it can be used on the Heart. After all, we don't know that the Titan's couldn't destroy it. Perhaps they just didn't want to, or thought it was a bad idea after they killed Y'Shaarj and made the Sha.

gamer4279 asks:
Is Flex Raiding the big change that Mists will be remembered for? The same one that GC tweeted about not too long ago? Or is is Virtual Realms? Or something that we havent heard about yet?

Ghostcrawler specifically tweeted that there would be a lot of features in 5.4 and we could all just go ahead and assume whichever one you wanted was the feature in question. So if you want to believe it's Flex Raiding, or Virtual Realms, or the Proving Grounds, or even the possible pet battle tournament, you're free to do so. The power is yours.

h0sti1e17 asks:
Is there any chance the next expansion won't have new zones, just use phasing to create 90+ content in existing zones? I think it would be cool to do high level quests in existing zones.

I think the developers would be leery of that, since one of the lessons they singled out when talking about what they learned from Cataclysm was that people like having a new land to explore. Even with new zones people didn't like losing that feeling of exploration. I'm not saying they'll never do this, but I'd be surprised if they didn't still offer someplace to go explore.

And that's it for me and the Queue this week. I had fun, hopefully you did too. You know, Vanessa VanCleef could make an interesting Robin Hood figure. If the Defias were less ruthlessly murderous, we could actually let them hang out for a while.

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!