The Queue: Of hearthsteeds and hearthstones

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.

Let's get sparkly.

michaelm517 asked:

I am a proud new owner of the Hearthsteed. It was very easy and actually enjoyable to get. I play Horde, however, and was very excited about the red Hearthsteed, only to log in and find that there was no red Hearthsteed, only the blue one. Has there been any information regarding the availability of the other color?

This is one of those questions where I doubt my answer, because I might have missed something obvious somewhere. If I'm wrong about this, feel free to correct me in the comments. As far as I can recall, no official Blizzard source said the Hearthsteed colors are divided across faction lines. Red and blue were datamined, and based on that data, we concluded blue was Alliance and red was Horde. It was a pretty good assumption, that's usually how this works, but Blizzard never said one way or the other.

Based on this tweet from the official Hearthstone twitter account, blue is all we're getting for now:

If we want to consider the lore of the mount, blue is all that makes sense right now. The Hearthsteed is constructed of the same stuff as hearthstones themselves. Hearthstones are blue, not red! Maybe we'll get red hearthstones on Draenor. Or the red one is being reserved for a Hearthstone expansion.

CatrionaShadowleaf asked:

Can anyone that has boosted a 60+ tell me if recipes are involved in your profession boosts, or if you have to buy/farm them up? This will affect which toon I pop.

The profession boost on 60+ characters does not teach you any recipes. You're given 600 skill, but no recipes whatsoever. You have to learn all of them on your own.

@RichardkurnieJ asked:

do you think we are responsible for our burnout by wanting everything now, pushing too hard and then overdoing it.

Honestly, we pay a subscription fee. It's our perogative if we consume the content quickly. And then we're also free to suspend our subscription afterwards. While it isn't healthy to play 12+ hours per day to consume everything as fast as possible (and we at WoW Insider have often encouraged people to slow down), it's crazy to blame the player if they get burnt out at some point during a 10-12 month wait for the next expansion. When subscription fees are in play, it just isn't reasonable to expect people to keep paying that $15/month for, effectively, nothing. Ten months, fifteen dollars per month? That's $150. You can buy a lot of other games for that! While waiting for Warlords, you can play something else.

@OniLink666 asked:

I can't win 3 Hearthstone matches to get a mount, what do I do?

The best thing to do is keep practicing. You're going to lose a lot when you get started. You don't know the mechanics/strategy yet and you haven't unlocked any cards beyond the base decks. Eventually you're going to get matched up against people of equal skill/ability and you'll get the hang of it.

@welshjemz asked:

why does it take 14+ Plainstriders to collect 7 beaks? :p

Because you keep breaking their beaks! Try hitting them in the butt instead of the face.

(Disclaimer: Hitting birds in the butt does not actually help.)

@Jamesski86 asked:

how do you feel about hearthstone-wow crossover loot?

It's fine with me. Every Blizzard release has had crossovers like this -- I think there's been a WoW pet or mount included with the purchase of every non-WoW Blizzard title since WoW launched. In this case, they ask you to play rather than simply purchase because Hearthstone is free-to-play. They could require you to spend money on a pack of cards in Hearthstone before you get the mount, but I suspect players would riot.

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!