The Queue: Garrisons, editorial, remorse, gear

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.

So much interest in patch 6.0.2 lately... It's almost like there's another 600,000 people playing WoW or something.

Huh.

Yaminokaze asked:

Looking at most of the complaints about garrisons, many of them boil down less to any problems with the system as-is, and more to the garrison not being what the person wanted or expected. Less "I don't like this" and more "I wish it had been this".

Do you think Blizzard did a poor job managing expectations for the garrison? They were so vague at BlizzCon that everyone likely filled in the gaps in their imagination (often erroneously), but I'm not sure if they had much more of an idea than what they gave us then. The feature probably changed quite a bit during development.

That's a very good observation -- Blizzard often has problems managing the expectations of such features, and it's something that the community gets control of and goes nuts with. That's not exactly a healthy situation for the community to be in, and in the long term tends to harm Blizzard's good will that they try to establish.

One thing that Blizzard can do is be as detailed as possible at the time of expansion announcements. Even though there'll obviously be iterations and development, they need to be far enough long in that process that the major aspects of the features are entirely worked out. Keep in mind that I'm not ripping on Blizzard, and I'm not saying that such and such a company does it better -- because there are companies at all that have to deal with the things Blizzard has to contend with. All in all they're doing a beter job at managing expectations now than they did before, and I'm sure they'd agree they need to do a better job at it still.

Dobablo asked:

Do you ever edit original articles to show update? For example the Blasted Lands quests now rewarding gear article which ends "No word as yet if it is possible to reward it retroactively" could do with an addendum linking to the blue forum post answering the question. In the current fast moving environment a lot of articles become outdated or wrong within hours of release and could do from having an additional line of comment added to them.

I generally make an editorial pass in the morning and afternoon to make sure that we're still publishing the most accurate information. We also generally publish another post with updates, and we'll be doing that for the above one you mentioned.

TheyCallMeZ asked:

I'm kind of an altoholic. I preordered WoD and boosted my warrior. I'm not crazy about the changes, though, and now I'm wishing I had boosted my warlock instead. Now I'm debating whether to level him normally or cough up the cash to boost. I was wondering... is that happening to anyone else or am I alone in this?

I'm sure that you're not alone. Leveling a warlock is pretty easy, to be honest, so if you're looking to boost another character I wouldn't do it on a lock -- instead look at a class that can be a bit more difficult to level, like a priest or a mage. And yes, I am fully prepared for 500 comments about how I'm wrong and should not procreate because of aforementioned wrongness.

Now, are you alone in your buyer's remorse? Not at all. I'm sure that there's a lot of people who wish they'd have done something differently with their boosted character. Part of this lies on Blizzard's backs -- they activated the boost during the class balance and abilities of Mists, rather than waiting to activate it in Draenor. People characters have changed a bit now, and it's a bit of a gamble if they're going to like the way their newly minted 90s turn out.

Whatever you decide to do, I'd wait a month... get to know WoD, then make a decision after you've played a little bit of endgame.

Benjamin See asked:

I want to queue up for the new dungeon, but I'm shy like 3 ivls. Everything on the auction house is 7000 gold or above. I don't currently have time to raid in LFR. What's the best way for me to make up those last 3 ilvls so I can queue for the dungeon?

Go and do the Blasted Lands quests -- they're quick, pretty painless, and give you iLevel 515 and 520 gear. Your needed item levels will be made up in short order.

I also really like Tyson's answer, which I've reproduced here:

Quest chain in blasted lands gives a 515 neck, 515 back, and 520 trinket. Kill celestials and use a token. Find the blazing chests on timeless isle and use the burden of eternity on something. Buy 550 honor gear. Win TB with a quest for easy honor for honor gear. Do bgs for an hour. Valor gear now costs gold and there is at least a neck at 522 ilv. Complete the quest for doing a heroic scenario that gives 1 ilv 516 piece. Kill Nalak for chance at 522 pieces. Do TOT LFR, it will take less time than the new dungeon when que time is factored in unless you are a tank.

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!