The Queue: Swimming kitties

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.

Today we address the real issues. Issues like kitties on broomsticks.

aldristavan asked:

I'm very upset. My feline familiar isn't riding on a broom. Kitty's just floating in air! >:( Is this a bug?

I think so. Rather, I hope so! The broom was adorable. Swimming through the air is wonky.

Soulerous asked:

Are the nights in WoW actually going to be returned to their old, realistically dark selves, or was Blizzard just testing that out? Has blizzard not made a statement on that? If so, what do you expect?

They were tinkering with it throughout beta. Night does appear to be more obviously night than it used to be, but still not so dark it is realistically nighttime. We might not even want that -- realistically dark in the wilderness would result in a completely black screen.

Malajin asked:

Why are so many of the hotfixes since 6.0.2 related to fixing abilities that "deal an excessive amount of damage"? Stat squish fail?

"Fail" is a strong word, but yes, these are abilities that were missed in the stat squish transition. Given the thousands of spells that had to be changed, it's inevitable that a few would slip through the cracks. Especially in Pandaria, since most of the playtesting would have taken place in Draenor.

DanielMitchell asked:

If I am a tank, how come I have to wait an entire day for the next "The Queue" article? Shouldn't it only take like 30 seconds?

I play primarily DPS, and since I'm Editor-in-Chief, The Queue runs on my timer.

Digsu asked:

I took my ele shammy to do the Iron Horde quests and noticed this thing where sometimes in combat the enemy would get struck by floating, black, pointy stones. What is it? My best guess is that it's got something to do with Flame Shock but I honestly don't really know.

That confused me, too. My elemental shaman is something like a 4th-tier alt for me; I play her so infrequently that I didn't keep up on any beta changes for shaman. I logged into that character and had no idea what my rotation is supposed to be. Those stone spikes are the new elemental shaman mastery, Molten Earth. When you deal damage, you summon a molten spike that deals extra fire damage.

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!