The Queue: Bears, Old Gods, Lich Kings, oh my

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.

I like bears. It's actually been a source of pain to me that I can't bring myself to play a druid for any length of time, since they can turn into bears, and if I could just be a bear in an MMO I'd probably do that. So here's a video of a dude raising a bear. Back in the day (2004 to 2005 to be precise) I remember dying lots to bears in Ashenvale because somehow, the bears would spawn underground and attack you from the ground. You would suddenly start taking damage, and then a bear's head and claws would erupt out of the ground in a swipe style animation, and then you'd be dead. Cause bears are just that awesome.

And now, World of Warcraft questions. Sadly, none are about bears. Unless you count pandaren, which I don't.

JamesWhite asks:
I'm currently forming a Shado-Pan RP guild on my server, and was thinking about the possibility of having events where we'd travel to another continent (well after the Siege of Orgrimmar has ended, mind) to recover pandaren artifacts that may have been stolen by, say, goblins.

My question is, do you think it'd be feasible in lore terms for Shado-Pan to leave Pandaria for such a purpose?

Feasible? Absolutely. Remember, the only pandaren who were really able to leave Pandaria were the ones who rode on Shen-zin Su, as the turtle originally had the ability to return to the beach in Krasarang before he eventually grew too large. This means that, aside from the ancestors of those pandaren who live on the Wandering Isle, all modern pandaren have grown up in a land they couldn't leave. Now, for the first time, people can travel to and from Pandaria, and this includes the Shado-Pan. The Shado-Pan don't generally concern themselves with relics in and of themselves, but if those relics were rumored to be dangerous like the Divine Bell, then absolutely the Shado-Pan could send an elite exploratory force to recover them... and perhaps, for clandestine intelligence gathering purposes as well. After all, there have been 10,000 years of history out there that the Shado-Pan barely know anything about, and Taran Zhu clearly likes to keep abreast of these things since he knew enough about Garrosh to taunt him about Grom's fate.

lcf33099 asks:
Q4tQ: With the old gods heart being taken to Org, do you think this will have some serious ramifications? The Sha no longer bound to Pandaria for example.

It's hard to say if that will matter. The Sha were born when Y'shaarj died and were created by his dying breath, but they're not him - the Klaxxi, who worship the Old Gods and Y'shaarj in particular do not offer the same reverence to the Sha of Fear when it usurps control of Empress Shekzeer. The Sha are byproducts of the Old God's death, and even when the Heart of Y'shaarj was bound by the Titans and sealed away, the Sha continued to influence the world. Now, it could certainly turn out that bringing the Heart to Orgrimmar (especially after dunking it in the waters of the Vale) causes the Sha to follow, or allows the Sha to now spread throughout Azeroth. We'll have to wait and see what Blizzard decides to do with them in the future.

wrathofkublakhan asks:
I read Arthas Rise of the Lich King and very much enjoyed it.

I got to see why there is a huge dead path, I got to see Illidian and Jaina and so many of the characters I see in game.

Naturally I jumped in game to go exploring and see the sites described in the book. I wanted to go see Loerdean (sp) but it's not there. I could see the farm where Invincible was born but the old city seems to now be a Horde place called Undercity. Of all the great stuff that happened in the book, I didn't catch how that happened.

Did they just move in after Arthas destroyed his former city?

Okay, to try and sum up a huge chunk of Warcraft III and WoW lore for you - after Arthas kills his father Terenas, he unleashes the Scourge on the people of Lordaeron. Many die to the demons of the Burning Legion, and many more to the Plague of Undeath. Some of those people rise from the dead as mindless undead. As part of the Lich King's plan, Arthas then takes an army of these risen dead north to Silvermoon, in order to use the power of the Sunwell to raise Kel'Thuzad (a dead necromancer and servant of the Lich King) as a powerful lich himself. After battering his way through the High Elves defenses, Arthas is so furious with Sylvanas Windrunner (the High Elf Ranger General) for her stubborn refusal to allow him to destroy her people that he uses his Death Knight powers to raise her as a banshee, a lost soul trapped between life and death.

After the fall of the Burning Legion, Arthas moves in and drives the Dreadlords out of the former capital city of Lordaeron, only to feel his powers waning as the Lich King has fractured his frozen throne in order to push the runeblade Frostmourne that corrupted Arthas in the first place out of the icy prison that holds him. With that prison breached, the Lich King's power wanes, and as a result, many of the mindless undead begin to regain some semblance of their former lives and minds. They're still rotting corpses, but now they're rotting corpses that know they're rotting corpses. Sylvanas, no longer controlled by the Lich King's will, rises up and nearly destroys Arthas before being driven back by Kel'Thuzad. Arthas leaves for Northrend to become the Lich King, so Sylvanas becomes de facto leader of the slowly awakening former Scourge, calling them Forsaken. After several battles she defeats the Dreadlords and seizes Lordaeron for her own, making use of the former capital's extensive sewer system to settle in. In time, Sylvanas joins the Horde for mutual protection, and so Lordaeron and all the territory of the former kingdom is now part of the Horde.

For a more detailed answer to your question check out our Know Your Lore column.

mtayfd asks:
Q4TQ: As I have just been getting back into PvPing I remembered you couldnt use the level 60 pvp armor for xmog but the replica armor sold in netherstorm is available to those who achieved kinght lieutenant in vanilla however I believe I read earlier in 4.3 that you could unlock replica for achieving the title via RBGs can you or anyone vouch or give knowledge of this?

Check out the patch 5.2 patch notes - it was introduced in that patch.

So yeah, that's how you can get those items and use them for transmog on a character who wasn't PvPing or didn't earn those ranks in vanilla.

Eggchan asks:
Not sure if this has been asked before but seeing as Warriors can now dual wield polearms in the upcoming patch have they relaxed the restriction to transmog them with other two handed weapons (yes I know they have different animations for certain races but that could be said about hunter's ranged weapons)?

As of right now, polearms still only mog to polearms and staves in 5.4.

Jedi asks:
I started playing World of Warcraft in May of 2013 and I always hear about how WoW was better years ago, read about the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj event being amazing, the items and mounts removed that were once obtainable, and how the land was better before Cataclysm. My question is: "Did I miss out on experiences that I could only participate in all those years ago? Or is the game just as great as it was?"

In some ways, the game is always better for you when you first started playing - I know I'll never recapture the sense of discovery and newness I felt leveling to sixty in the old days. But at the same time, there have been a host of improvements and new features and in a lot of ways every aspect of the game is greatly improved now. It really comes down to nostalgia in many cases.

Did you miss experiences? Yes. That's the nature of things - the game has changed, and therefore, some things are just impossible for a new player to experience. You'll never raid MC as a level 60 with the talent system we had then, for instance. But that doesn't mean that the game was better then - I could list all sorts of negatives to the experiences I had back then. The important thing is always 'are you having fun now' and if you are, that's all that matters.

tatharnio asks:
Did we ever find out any details about Deathwing's attack on Stormwind? Why he attacked, why he only destroyed The Park and a couple of towers? Either in game or out, I've only ever seen references to Deathwing attacking Stormwind and nothing more. He seems to me to be the kind who wouldn't really do a half-assed job and would totally raze the city, not just a couple of small pieces.

He was there for Onyxia's head. He never intended to destroy Stormwind in the first place - if that was actually what he'd wanted to do, he would have done it and no one could have stopped him, since no one there had the Dragon Soul to hand. (Remember, we only beat Deathwing after he took two hits from the Dragon Soul with the combined power of the Aspects behind it.) He simply didn't care about the city at all - that's what makes his destruction of the park even more terrifying, the fact that Deathwing did it as a byproduct of his actual goal, not even really intending to do it.

When Nefarian raises Onyxia in Blackwing Descent, he does so because Deathwing got him the head. That's why it's kind of stapled onto her body.

And that should do it for my weekend of Queueing it up. Thanks very much for all the questions.

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!