The Queue: Achillobator Giganticus

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.

Yeah, it's me. I don't care at all about tacos, but I do love dinosaurs, so when Alex asked me to write the Queue today, I knew I was going to talk about one. But which one?

Well, why not Achilles Hero Big, aka Achillobator giganticus, one of the largest raptors (smaller than Utahraptor). Both Utahraptor and Achillobator were in the Dromaeosaurinae, so relatives of Deionychus and other sickle clawed predatory dinosaurs - at over five meters long from tip to tail and easily more than two meters tall, this is a fairly large member of the raptor family. Austroraptor cabazai might or might not have been larger, but it was a more distant relative, a dromaeosaurid from the more basal Unenlagiinae.

The remains of Achillobator were found in Mongolia in 1989, but were not described until 1999 - this can happen in paleontology, sadly there's not always enough money and manpower to catalog finds right away. Due to some primitive characteristics in the skeletal remains we have, there's a bit of a debate about whether or not Achillobator is in fact the remains of more than one species accidentally assembled into a composite, but most tend to believe it's a single type species, Achillobator giganticus.

Anyway, let's talk about you. You, and your questions.

Zheo asks:

I fully appreciate the lore updates and the depth of information that Blizz has integrated into the game with the various expansions. That being said, I don't know what it is, but I just cant seem to bring myself to roll a hunched over class (orc or troll male). Even the undead male model irks me. I just feel like they look too downtrodden to be heroes. I get that orcs, trolls, and undead have had a pretty rough time of it, but really? Can we make them look like they haven't just finished pulling a ton of stone uphill in the snow.

I think it's very unlikely that the basic posture of these races will change. Especially not trolls. Based on what we saw at BlizzCon, definitely not orcs, either. And the forsaken are essentially corpses. Those tend to have a nasty habit of rotting, so they may not feel all that much like standing up straight. What I'm saying is, don't expect the models to change super drastically - Blizzard still wants them to feel like the races we've come to know.

On the subject of soloing Cataclysm content

There was a discussion in the comments on this topic, based on a question by MightyTobias. I know that if you're a tank, you can probably solo Cataclysm raid bosses right now. I've solo'd up to 10 man Dragon Soul bosses on my warrior in his prot set. I got to Hagara before I got bored and left, and I'm pretty sure I could have taken her. I know others who have solo'd 25 man Dragon Soul bosses. So yes, assuming that the item squish doesn't make soloing older content harder, it will easily be doable.

Zheo asks (again):

QFTQ: Given the relative success of Pandaren as a race being able to choose Horde or Alliance, do you think in any upcoming xpac we will see cross-faction races from what is currently available? (i.e. an Orc going alliance or Dwarf in the Horde).

No. I really, absolutely don't think they'll ever allow this. I'd love to be wrong - if I could play a tauren and stay Alliance side, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Larcener asks:

Q4TQ: Has there been any word as to whether or not battle pets max level will increase? Secondly, has there been any mention of Blizzard turning off character xp for pet battles in the beginning of WOD, or will I be able to level 90-100 with pet battles if I choose to?

I have not heard anything about raising battle pet levels or turning off pet battle XP for Warlords. The last big news I heard for pet battles was the pet stable feature for Garrisons letting you display some of your favorite battle pets.

Ottah asks:

I've got a warrior question! Now she's 90, are there any polearms about for her to rock?

Besides ilevel 463 blue polearms you could get for running random scenarios, there's the Immaculate Pandaren Spear from heroic scenario chests (random chance, and random enchant), Bo-Ris, Horror in the Night from Throne of Thunder, and Britomart's Jagged Pike from Siege of Orgrimmar. Those are your best bets for strength polearms. There's another that you can purchase for 20,000 timeless coims, the Yak-Herder's Longstaff (which IS a polearm despite the name) but it's really not worth spending the coins on - you'd ditch it in Throne of Thunder LFR.

Dest asks:

Q4tQ: Why are there instance restrictions on the challenge mode dungeons? I understand why they exist for regular dungeons, but having them for CMs is beyond inconvenient. There's nothing to loot, you can't gold farm them, and at worst they punish people trying to practice.

You can just reset the Challenge Mode dungeons from inside it and start back at the beginning, you don't have to zone out if you want to do a few practice runs. Just run until you feel like going back and trying again and reset it internally and try again. You can do that as many times as you want. The limit on how many times you can reset the instance is basically there because it's using the same basic coding as a regular/heroic instance, and it would be a ton of work to take that coding out just for CM's, especially when they can be reset from inside anyway.

Bob2525 asks:

/raises hand slowly and asks nervously

What happens if we don't want to have tacos today?

Man won't still be alive. Woman won't survive. No one will find... tacos.

Seriously, don't eat them if you don't like them. I loathe hard-shelled American tacos. I won't eat them.

Eliza asks:

Q: Why is there an undead nerubian lord in Western Plaguelands, and how did he get there? Sure, that's kind of ground-zero for the scourge on Azeroth, but other than Ghostlands I can't think of any other nerubians on that continent, let alone that area. Seems very random for him to be patrolling around with his tiny battalion of minions in the middle of nowhere.

There were nerubians in the Plaguelands back in vanilla - the easiest explanation for them is that they hitched a ride on one of the necroploli that dumped undead everywhere when Arthas was doing his little Scourge Invasion thing. Both Acherus and Naxxramas floated over the Eastern Plaguelands for a while, for starters. Arthas could also have brought some south with him when he came to kill his father and take over/destroy Lordaeron. The fact that there were nerubians in the forces he led into Quel'danas when he sought out the Sunwell implies as much. In short, it's not really hard to justify multiple nerubians in the Plaguelands at this point.

Tausss liked Cataclysm's endgame. I did too, Tausss. I did too.

GnomeMaleModel asks:

I'm leveling through Outland (again), and I'm reminded of how intense my initial reactions were to Fel Reavers. Huge, meandering killer robots that made a creepy sound and shook the very ground I was walking on. Now with flight at 60 they're a total non-issue. I fly in their robot clown faces and chuckle. So, two questions:

Q4TQ: Will WoD have Fel Reavers? And will they be awesome again?

Fel Reavers themselves are creations of the Burning Legion, so we're not likely to see those. But I've seen tons of concept art of siege gronn.

Maybe it's just me but that dude looks like he could absolutely ruin your day.

And on that note, it's time to call it a Queue.

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!