The Queue: My favorite dinosaur is...

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.

Brad Mitchell asked what my favorite dinosaur was. Well, frankly, my favorite dinosaur, if we're limiting ourselves to actual dinosaurs and not, say, therapsids or pelycosaurs, is most likely a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is why I wrote one of my Queue's about them. There are so many awesome dinosaurs that it's hard to pick a favorite, though, from the awesomely weird Therizinosaurus to my old friend the trombone headed Parasaurolophus. To be honest, pretty much any dinosaur is pretty awesome. One of the things I love about dinosaurs is that the science on them is always moving forward - we now know that some tyrannosauridae probably had feathers, like the ones in the image I used for the header from that Wired article. Some dinosaurs were more like birds than reptiles.

If that ruins dinosaurs for you, cool. More for me.

Donald Hindle asks:
Are there any races left that would be good candidates to become playable in a future expansion?

Sure, lots of them. Besides the often mentioned naga and ogres there are furbolg, arrakoa, vrykul (tell me you don't want to play as a giant viking), wolvar, sasquatch, ethereals, and then there's various sub races of established playable races to consider like broken, yaungol, taunka, dark iron dwarves, earthen, dark trolls, etc etc. Heck, I didn't even mention mantid, and mantid would rock.

The only real issue is coming up with a reason why some of these would join the Alliance or Horde. Also, some of them are even bigger than tauren, and tauren are currently the biggest playable race - introducing playable ogres or sasquatch would dethrone them.

foxkelfonne asks:
So... I finally collected all of my Secrets of the Empire, did the scenario with Wrathion, and now he wants me to stick this stupid spear into the side of a world raid boss on the deserted Isle of Thunder. Are there any possible ways for a Druid to solo this part of the quest, or do I just have to hope that somehow, I'll be able to find enough people on Ravenholdt who want to bother with Nalak again?

As many mentioned in the comments, you don't have to kill Nalak, so either get a friend or two (I had help from several guildies including a friendly warlock and resto druid) to keep Nalak aggro'd while you throw the spear, or try any trick that either drops aggro or gets Nalak to aggro on someone else while you kite the add around until you get the quest completion. A druid should be able to do it, but it may take you a few wipes.

revnah asks:

Which of the races - or shall we say, creatures - introduced in MoP are your favourite?

I think the Grummles are perfect, from their name, to the luckydos, to the Burlap Trail, and "Greetings, friend of the Grummles!" -I never tire of them (and whenever I'm in Kun-Lai, I listen to the Luckydo Rap), and although I've got larger bags, I will always use my Grummlepack :-)

I am ludicrously fond of the mogu. I love mogu lore, love their animations, love their ridiculously evil way of life, love that they reverse engineered the Curse of Flesh, I'm desperately hoping that somehow down the road they make a return appearance. Some new mogu warlord could arise and unite the scattered tribes against the outsiders who ruined their bid to reclaim their empire.

JeffLaBowski asks:
The Monkey King NPC: Brilliant or cheesy?

I loathed him during my first time through the Operation: Shieldwall quests, but I've since warmed up to him. I liked him in the Burdens of Shaohao shorts.

Angus Magrath asks:
Would allowing the use of temp premades for use in proving grounds be a good way for players to check out another class?

It would be a way to do that, but I don't know if it would be a good way to do that. For one thing, even just picking up an alt I haven't played in a while, I find myself having to relearn them, and that's a character I've played before - from my experience on the PTR and betas with premade characters, it's always a bit of a mess trying to understand a new class when you get all of their abilities at once instead of learning them over time. It's doable, and it's how I decided I'd roll a death knight, but I'm not sure picking up a premade and immediately trying to master its abilities via proving grounds would help players learn a new class.

GeekGirlinKY asks:
As a Forsaken, I get tired of having my knees, hip bones, elbows, and spine exposed. Do you think that they'll ever implement more flesh into the game for my character's weary bones? It affects the aesthetics of gear.

I hear you on the knees and other bones. Having them poke through everything like that is weird to me - I guess it's part of the undead curse, that even magical metal armor just rots in selected places on them, but it seems weird to me. Especially since death knights, who are technically also undead, don't have that problem but forsaken ones do, which I guess makes sense, but shouldn't they have even bigger holes, as they're double-dipped in death?

evoxpisces asks:
QftQ: So let's say there is no new class next expansion, no new races, and no 4th specs. What do you think Blizzard could offer us that would be game changing or a major addition to really sell the next expansion? A new continent, new raids, and new dungeons alone are not enough in my opinion.

Since you asked, I'm now free to blue sky my butt off, so here's a few ideas:

• Multi-classing - you could do this in all sorts of ways. You could allow your multi-class toon to be say, a fury warrior and a holy paladin, switch between the two the way we switch between specs now. You could let people select a second class as they level and have, as an example, all the abilities of a level 45 hunter and a level 45 rogue. There's plenty of other ways you could work it in, those are just two options.

• All races get all classes - Tauren rogues! Blood elf druids! Pandaren paladins!

• Sub-races, like I mentioned before - draenei could play as broken, tauren could be taunka or yaungol (or even Grimtotems with the face paint), dwarves as dark irons, blood elves with the high elf eye color, orcs as fel orcs.

• Path of the Titans allowing for customization of abilities in a whole new way. Imagine if you could have Golganneth's thunder infuse you, adding electrical damage to all your attacks or growing in size and strength visibly when you take damage.

• The dance studio. People still ask about that.

• New profession benefits that allow players to customize their gear, like allowing inscription to make armor dyes, enchanting to make cosmetic auras, blacksmithing creating gold etching, etc etc. This would be accompanied by a general profession overhaul that allowed more kinds of crafting options, like a blacksmith or engineer dismantling an appropriate item for materials used to make new ones.

• New item categories, like Diablo III's mighty weapons, polearms for one hand use, maybe even magical tattoos.

• New character models.

• Way way more freaking prehistoric critters. A gorgonopsid mount? I mean come on! Who wouldn't want to ride a gorgonopsid?

That would be the only mount I ever rode.

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!