The Queue: Proper orc posture

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) is answering all kinds of questions today.

I like how every now and again you'll run into an orc with a suitably grim and fearsome scowl on his face to act as a counterpoint to the neatly braided beard. Do you think orcs braid their own beards? Who teaches them how to do it? Is this something you can ask your local goblin barber to take care of for you?

nist asked:

Why all orcs but Thrall are crookbacked?

Nist, the standard answer to this is that mostly it's in place to further differentiate Thrall's model from your run-of-the-mill orc NPC. I have my own theories about this however, and they've got nothing to do with game mechanics and everything to do with the lore surrounding the orcs, and Thrall in particular.

Thrall was taken in and raised with humans when he was just a baby, before he could walk or talk or even stand up on his own little green feet. It stands to reason that since Thrall had no other example for "the proper way to stand," he stood straight simply because that seemed to be what everyone else was doing, and children more often than not learn by example. By the time he escaped the internment camps, he was well beyond his formative years, so he just stands like he learned to stand when he was a kid.

Orcs, on the other hand, were a fairly primitive society on Draenor, and followed a hierarchy of strength. You want to look strong, you want to look intimidating, you want your appearance to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies, if you're an orc. And maybe that's why they hunch -- or at least, in my own head that's why they hunch. It's not because of some sort of vitamin deficiency, it's because they have been born and raised to make themselves look larger and stronger and scarier than anything else in the nearby vicinity by hulking out and having that broad-shouldered muscular "I could probably rip your head from your spine if I wanted to" stance out on full display at all times.

That's how I file it away in my head, anyway. It's not official canon or whatever, but it helps me sleep at night.

dimmak42 asked:

Q4TQ: Related to raid change in 6.0 we know Flex becomes Normal, Normal become Heroic, old Heroic kinda becomes Mythic. With regards to the new SOO, will the new Heroic be flexible in size or still 10/25?

Normal and Heroic modes will both be flexible in size. The only raid difficulty that will not have Flex technology enabled is Mythic difficulty.

RufusHonkerIV asked:

So if my garrison is sending me out on quests, who is really in charge of the garrison?

Well ... you are. It's not so much that your garrison itself is giving you quests as all those people working under your command are giving you reports and letting you know what's going on out there in the world, and what sorts of things could probably use your attention.

WrecklessMEDIC asked:

"Think of your garrison as less of a "mandatory time sink" and more of a stationary, ever evolving quest hub. It's not so much something you just stand around in to perform various menial tasks, it's actually a great source of XP in and of itself. You don't have to go out of your way to create buildings, but you'd be missing out on professions and even more potential quests and XP."

Soooo..... basically your garrison IS mandatory if you want to level up to 100 as fast as possible? Got it.

If you want to define it that way, sure. It's an evolving quest hub. It's as "mandatory" as any other quest hub you'll be playing through on Draenor. Can you skip it? If you want to, but if you're trying to level as quickly as possible, why on earth would you ignore a good source of XP? It doesn't take long to get there -- you are given a hearthstone expressly for your garrison and its cooldown is not linked with your regular hearthstone at all. Usually if you're needed back at your garrison for quests or whatever, the chain you're on will end with a "Let's meet back at your garrison and discuss this further," which naturally leads to you ducking back there, talking to someone, then ducking back out again fairly quickly to someplace else.

gazaa07 asked:

Q4tQ: Do you think Blizz should sell all the TCG Pets / Mounts on the pet store for those who missed out on getting them?

On the one hand, I think that's a nice idea. On the other, the practical side of me can't really see them doing that, at least not anytime soon. I suppose it depends on who owns the rights to the mounts -- the company that produced and distributed the cards, or Blizzard itself. The TCG was a licensed property, and the rules for that kind of thing are a little different. So while it's a nice idea, I don't know if it's actually feasible or possible for them to do so.

Zapwidget asked:

Q4tQ: Most if not all of the rares in WoD are kill-once, loot-once and effectively flagged as quests. As such, my question is: if my wife and I are in a group and we kill leaf-reader Kurri, or Typhon or Echidna, etc., do we both get loot or does one of us get hosed as the mob will then be flagged as already killed for both players, but loot will have only dropped for one?

They work with a shared loot system -- so if you both kill the mob, you both get whatever special thing that rare mob happened to drop.

CillyElefant asked:

QFTQ - Did the snake vendor in Org resume selling his snakes, now that the siege is over? Cause on live they currently just have the vendor saying something like "they took my snakes mon..." and I am very sad. Bring back the snakes!

Xan'tish has all of his snakes back and is once again patrolling along the Valley of Spirits and selling scaly companions to any interested parties.

jake074 asked:

Q4tQ: How will the leveling of professions change with the release of the expansion? Specifically, if I use the insta level 90 option to create a level 90 from scratch will it be easy for me to quickly get my professions up to speed. I am particularly interested in Herbalism/alchemy. I know we will be able to tap nodes found without having to worry about the level limit, but is there some sort of mechanism that will help alchemy level up through the lower levels more quickly as well?

Yes! There's actually a pretty cool feature in place for leveling professions. While you're out questing and killing things and gathering loot, occasionally you'll run across broken items associated with your respective profession. These items can be repaired with herbs or ore or furs (cloth) that you'll also be picking up while you're out and about taking care of business. Doing so and returning the item to your garrison will reward you with skill points for your profession, and garrison resources while you're at it. So standing in one spot crafting items definitely isn't the only way to get your skill up to where it needs to be.

jbl916 asked:

Garrison Question: Is garrison progression too tedious to do on more than one character? In other words, on a scale of one to ten alts - how many alts will make garrisons feel like a chore?

I wouldn't call it tedious at all. I think the moment you get tired of leveling alts through the same quest hubs is probably going to be the moment you get a little tired of running multiple garrisons.

bushkanaka86 asked:

QFTQ: How is the XP per zone ratio looking on the beta? I typically level the first time in an expansion be doing every single quest. I know most people seem to skip to the next zone once their level allows, but I don't like to interrupt the storyline of the zone so I usually do every quest I can find in a zone before moving on. Unfortunately in every expansion so far, I have hit max level by about the 3rd zone. The XP from quests and mobs is just to high so then the remaining zones become a bit trivial. Is WoD doing any better?

Ah ha, a completionist like me! Here's the deal -- it's going to be about the same. If you are absolutely intent on finishing every quest and every vignette and finding every last cool thing there is to find and killing every rare before you leave a zone, you're going to get to 100 well before you finish every zone. That's just how zones work -- you certainly don't have to finish everything before moving on, there are plenty of quests that are optional, as are all vignettes and aforementioned rares. But if you're like me and that's what you enjoy doing, just know that you'll have a zone or two of content to play through at your leisure once you've hit max level.

@tomfromhr asked via Twitter:

Blizzard says to you "Anne, we want to expand race/class combos but need something good lore wise. Help?" What do you do?!

Oddly enough, it almost feels kind of like they're setting things up for a sort of logical progression that might open up a few new combinations. The draenei rangari of Draenor have what appear to be full-out rogues in their ranks -- they stealth. Of course that could just be construed as hunter camouflage, but it could also be seen as a potential hook for introducing draenei rogues into the game. Similarly, there have been signs that have pointed towards the possibility of orc druids -- which again, you'd think would be odd, but this is Draenor, it's not our world, and things are a little different here. That's the easiest place to slip in a couple of new combinations -- simply have the people of Draenor teach our people how to do what they're doing.

Over on Azeroth, I suppose it depends on what kind of race/class combination you want to see. Gnomes currently only have seven potential choices for classes -- I wouldn't mind seeing them picking up how to be hunters from their dwarf friends. Alternatively, it would be interesting to see them look into harnessing elemental power and utilizing it in the same way they utilize the light, allowing shaman to be a gnome class. Can you imagine the utterly amazing totems they'd tinker around and come up with? Pandaren are the only other race stuck with seven choices for classes. Jojo Ironbrow expressed an interest in wanting to know what exactly the "Light" the people of Stormwind was -- it might be interesting to see Jojo maybe doing some more research and mastering the Light just as skillfully as he displayed his mastery of strength on the Wandering Isle, and teaching the paladin arts to the other pandaren now that he's had sufficient time to figure it out.

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!