The Queue: Gosh it's pretty outside

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) lives In The Mountains.

Every once in a while, usually just when I've begun to take the view out my living room window for granted, I get evenings where the sun lights the rain from behind just so and I remember that I live somewhere really extraordinary. Nature is cool, you guys. You know what else is cool? Answering Warcraft questions.

Alexey asked:

What's up with normal Norushen? I'm pretty sure I saw Blizzard saying they think Normal modes don't need tight enrage timers, and now we get this?

Nourshen is a bit of a gear check, but it's also all about the timing. You have to juggle players going into the other realm and getting that big DPS buff with add killing on the outside -- and you have to juggle healers going into the other realm, and tanks going into the other realm. It's really kind of a cool puzzle. Yes, the enrage timer is tight, but it gets substantially easier as people get gear. The first week, my guild barely squeaked by the timer -- in fact, he died as we were killed. The following week, we killed him with 30 seconds to spare, and I think a lot of that had to do with gear, and with timing.

john41 stated:

those audio-less hourglass "visions" to me are a big fat dud. I don't know if they were hastily out together or what. there's little to no exposition or context to what you see. kind of disappointing.

Well here's the thing. There's no sound, because you're looking at just a vision, nothing more. There's no exposition because what you are seeing is essentially a mystery, one that Kairoz is trying to puzzle out. What you are using for those visions isn't actually sand from the Hourglass of Time, which would give us some sort of crystal-clear picture (possibly with sound and everything!), you're seeing the future through the murky epoch stones found on the Timeless Isle. Since the Isle itself represents some sort of weird time anomaly, it stands to reason that the visions you see are going to be ... rough to sort out, at least to begin with.

This is all stuff I plan on covering in a later Know Your Lore as well.

Marcio asked:

Question for the queueAt isle of thunder, when multiple people killed the Haywire, everyone got a pet when he felt generous. This applies to Timeless Isle ? I mean, if I happen to be hitting Huolon when the stars are alligned and the mount drops I and everyone will won a mount, or just the fastest autolooter ?

I don't actually recall if it worked that way on the Isle of Thunder or not, but regardless -- loot on the Timeless Isle is randomly distributed. Everyone gets their own personal loot, it's distributed on an individual basis.

dshiryu asked:

Why isn't Brann Bronzebeard with Lorewalker Cho in the raid? Afterall "we see him wherever the action is" and he was right above the heartsoaking stuff (lol)

Shh. Don't say his name. You say it three times and he'll appear out of nowhere, drunkenly staggering around and pressing buttons he has no business pressing, all the while regaling us with a long, convoluted tale of that one time at the family reunion when his second cousin twice removed couldn't hold her liquor and had this problem with a goat, four faulty rifles, and six large bags of overripe wheat malt--

I've said too much. Say no more of this, this Bronzebeard.

butts.and.butts asked:

I don't think anyone in the Alliance is subservient to Varian unless they're specifically citizens of Stormwind. I could be wrong though. Am I?

I wouldn't call it "subservient," but Varian is pretty much the Alliance military leader. In that aspect, yes, the other races of the Alliance answer to him. He also acts as kind of a de facto leader of sorts for the united races of the Alliance, but I suspect that is mainly because it was the human kingdoms that originally brought together the Alliance of Lordaeron back in the day, which then later evolved into the current Alliance of today. Since it was a human kingdom that originally formed the Alliance and brought the other races in, it stands to reason that human kingdom would act as leader of the Alliance by default. So yes, he leads to a degree as far as "Hey, let's all get together as the Alliance and do stuff," but doesn't hold any kind of real authority over the individual races.

Obviously, this runs into weird territory when you look at the Council of Three Hammers and the fact that Varian pretty much barged in and re-created it. But that situation was a little different, in that Ironforge was without a leader, Moira stormed in and pretty much attempted a coup, and oh yes, the little fact that Moira was essentially holding the Crown Prince of Stormwind hostage.

@bubble_hearth asked via Twitter:

Do you think we'll see any quest rewrites for Horde involving Garrosh? Or just more time displacement for people leveling?

I don't think so. See, there's a few problems with doing re-writes like that. First, you have to sacrifice time and resources to re-write that content -- and that's time and resources that could be spent on creating brand new cool stuff that everyone will get to play, rather than re-writing old stuff that frankly, most max level players will never go back and replay. Second, you run into a really vicious circle of re-writing. Take Cataclysm, for example. It re-wrote what was going on in vanilla WoW and updated quests that were painfully out of date and worn out.

But by doing that, the leveling timeline was skewed. So you level through present-day Cataclysm, go back in time to Outland, then more recently back in time to Wrath, then back to present day Cataclysm and beyond. It took an entire expansion's worth of development to revamp vanilla WoW -- and many players didn't even bother going back through all the new-old content. If you revamp TBC to be in line with vanilla-Cata, then you have to re-do Wrath. And then what about Cata content after what happens in Mists? What about what happens in Org five years down the road after another handful of expansions?

It becomes a vicious cycle where you spend more time re-writing old stuff than you spend writing new stuff -- and it halts the story completely. Sometimes it's just better to let the past stay where it needs to be, and work on moving forward into new cool stuff, instead of worrying about the old.

@kuryu_zar asked via Twitter:

lore Q: arthas mother and sister supposedly didnt died on lord, any clue where they are?

Arthas' mother is absolutely without question deceased, according to canon lore. The particulars of how she died aren't really known, however. But Calia Menethil's fate remains unknown -- she could be alive, she could be dead, but Blizzard's not saying anything. We've got no clue where she is, or what she's been doing.

@shamanrongar asked:

Are you happy with the conclusion of the Siege of Orgrimmar? Can we expect Garrosh to have a public defender, maybe a goblin?

I like what happened. I like that Garrosh didn't die -- I think he's a character with far more potential now that he's had the power of leadership ripped from his hands in the most humiliating fashion possible. What does the son of Grom Hellscream do, now that he has shamed his father's name -- possibly beyond any hope of redemption? I don't think he's the type to just roll over and give up. It'll be interesting to see what happens to a dude who went from anonymity and depression to the top of the world, only to have it yanked out from under him. The interesting thing about Garrosh is that above all else, he believes that what he is doing and what he has done was the right thing to do. He wasn't corrupted, he actually believes all this stuff somewhere deep inside. Having the rest of the world smack him down and tell him he's wrong ... that makes for interesting character development.

As far as his trial ... man, I don't know who in their right mind could be a "neutral" party to defend Garrosh. I don't know if there's a single person on Azeroth that could take a properly neutral stance after everything Garrosh has done. Maybe Velen? Velen stands for all that is right and good in the universe, and I can't picture him as someone who would let emotions compromise doing what is right and just. Plus it'd be an Alliance representative, which would make the whole thing far more interesting -- if the Alliance is both prosecution and defense, would it really be a fair trial?

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!