The Queue: Random Hodor

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

Today's Queue doesn't feature anything about the Horde or the Alliance.

It does, however, have a picture of Hodor.

Senusenu asked:

I just returned (just in time to NOT have enough time to get that $&%#ing cloak). I started doing Sunreavers on my rogue again, got revered, and got the commendation for rep boost. I did this for the cloud serpent rep and it effected all of my characters, both factions and all servers. I just logged into my Ally shaman and saw she has the Kirin Tor boost from my rogue's Sunreaver Onslaught commendation. Is this new, or has it always mirrored the factions? Cloud Serpents made sense as it was a neutral faction, but this was surprising.

Yup! The faction boosts mirror across your entire account on all characters and all factions. It really makes like much easier than I think anyone expected -- some of those reps go by just so damn fast now. It's neat-o.

Merkarvar asked:

Q4 Anyone who wants to answer: Is there any easy way to gift a level 90 boost? say its someone Bday and you want to give them a gift. What if you dont want them to know, like a surprise so you cant give them your credit card details or just deposit money into their account.

It's not possible to gift a level boost -- but I think it's something Blizzard should do.

Inkizzzikz asked:

I know this has been said before (a lot), but do you think Blizzard should once again make 2h Enhancement Shamans viable? All it would take, as I see it, is allowing both imbues to be on a single 2h weapon, and abilities like Windfury procs and Lava Lash to use half of weapon damage to calculate, instead of all of it. Would be cool, since I like 2h weapons, but not any of the 2h wielding melee classes.

It's a neat idea, but no, I don't think Blizzard should do this. There's a lot more work than you're probably aware of to make it happen -- weapons in WoW are extremely powerful and a prime piece of the overall balance puzzle. Making large changes like this can send the entire system into disarray.

Now with that said, Blizzard could make this change at an expansion switch. That's when big changes like this occur. I really want to see some staff use in melee fighting. Maybe one day.

The Old Bear asked:

So, games have Alpha phases and Beta phases, for testing. Does that mean the final release of the game is the Gamma phase?

In modern software after the beta phase is what's called "Release Candidates" -- basically the software is ready for release and each release candidate is good to go, assuming no last minute errors are found. Some companies stick to one release candidate version, others are more fluid and use it as a finalized testing phase.

There was, a long time ago, people who called the phase after beta "delta testing" or "gamma testing" -- but those terms are rarely used today, if ever. And yes, it'd make sense if it was "gamma testing" first, but for whatever reason I've heard more delta testing than gamma. But really, no one uses this anymore, it's really an artifact from bygone days.

Now cue people saying they use these phases all the time... 3... 2... 1...

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!