The Queue: Pandaren, Tanaan, Gundrak's mystery tail

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 Rossiwill be your host today.

In today's Queue, I am probably going to outright anger some of you. Try and keep it civil in the comments, as I will when I give the answer that will anger you.

Angerfork asks:
What is your take on Tanaan coming out in a future content patch & how it was communicated?

In case you're wondering, this is how it was communicated - by a tweet from Community Manager Lore.

If you're curious, my take on it is it's his job to do exactly this - answer player questions. He did so in a clear, concise and not at all disrespectful or antagonistic way. If you then look at the responses to his tweet, they're rude, condescending, and boorishly aggressive for the most part. Quite frankly, they're not worth responding to. Lore did his job, and there's no reason to be upset with him for how he did it. The argument that we should have known this sooner and it shows a lack of transparency from Blizzard doesn't work for me either - it's not like with Karabor or Bladespire, where we were told 'these will be capitals' and then later 'they won't be, sorry'.

As for the idea of Tanaan coming out in a later content patch, frankly, I don't see the problem. We already knew Farahlon would be similarly released after the expansion - we'll get to see Tanaan when we come through the Dark Portal, then start our leveling process in one of the two starting zones, and then have Gorgrond, Talador, Spires of Arak, and Nagrand to level through, so a total of six zones available at launch, five per faction. Considering how huge the zones are, it's not like we're going to be starving for content - each zone so far has had subzones within it with special level 100 content.

Basically, I find the idea that everything Blizzard says is greeted with extreme cynicism and doomsaying to be getting crazy old. Does Blizzard make mistakes? Sure they do. All the damn time. Having Mists of Pandaria last this long was a huge mistake, for instance. Do they do things each and every one of us might find questionable? Of course. But when a CM can't even make a simple post clarifying when a zone will be available without enduring sneering contempt, we need to dial it back. Especially when considering that CM's don't design the game. Getting angry with a CM over what he or she tells you is as pointless as flipping out at the guy behind the counter at Starbucks for the company's policy on how it treats small coffee farmers. (This is just an example, for all I know Starbucks has a great policy towards the independent coffer grower.)

Notamoose asks:
Why can't miners make in game currency from gold ore?

The simple answer is 'Because Blizzard doesn't want them to' -- the more complicated answer is because that's not how money has worked throughout history. Currency didn't even exist for the majority of human existence - much of our trade was accomplished via barter for a while, and today it's still used in parts of the world.

When coinage was first developed, its worth had to be guaranteed to some extent, which is why many tradesmen had scales to ensure that the coin they were being traded was actually made of precious materials and at the proper weight. Governments fairly early on got involved in this process, due to practises such as coin shaving or clipping and other forms of coin debasement. In essence, the reason you can't just go stamp your own coins is because governments guard who gets to make coins in order to keep their economies going. Even today counterfeiting is one of the scourges of an economy that uses actual money.

The history of forms of currency and how they were minted/coined is actually a really fascinating topic that I'm giving extreme short shrift to here, but just suffice it to say no one trusts you enough to take coins you minted yourself.

Arcaneth asks:
What place will the Pandaren have in the coming storyline? They seem out of place anywhere else. Will their lore end w/ Mop? The Pandaren and their culture are so closely tied to their homeland I just can't see what part they will play in the future.

Player Pandaren aren't from Pandaria - they're wandering spirits from the Wandering Isle, so they fit into Warlords of Draenor as much as anyone does. As for Pandaria as a whole - yeah, don't expect to see Taran Zhu a lot at level 100 leading players into Highmaul.

Crow asks:
The Claws of Shirvallah ability has got some folk talking about playable saberon in the future. Your thoughts?

Even the flavor text of the ability points out that this ability is basically exactly like the original pack form that led to the development of the worgen curse. I have no idea of the origins of the saberon - perhaps they are, in fact, a strange sect of druids native to Draenor (ooh, orc druids? Draenei druids? The mind reels) who have engineered a form similar to that of the worgen, but replacing wolves with cats even though Draenor has a ton of wolves on it just to mess with my head.

Saberon seem to just have a worgen model with a cat head on it, so I don't think playable saberon is that big a deal, but we'll find out.

Tomato (Rob) asks:
What do you want the tail in Gundrak to belong to?

A gigantic snake whose body entirely encircles Azeroth.

And that's the Queue for Friday.

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!