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The Queue: Leveling in Warlords, QQ, and more
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. Let's all agree to lay off of Wildstar today, eh? @crusaderesper asked: Is the leveling in WoD filled with rares and events like the Timeless Isle?
Warlords of Draenor introduces vignette encounters
Playing through the Warlords of Draenor alpha, it quickly becomes apparent that the Timeless Isle was a preview of the upcoming expansion's world design. While quests and quest hubs are still present in spades, the game world is littered with bonuses -- hidden caches of materials for your garrison, rare spawns, and little stories in out-of-the-way places. While questing through Frostfire Ridge, I saw a skull on my minimap in the region known as the Boneslag. Assuming it was another rare spawn of many, I rushed down and encountered Cindermaw. I didn't know it at the time, but Cindermaw isn't a standard rare spawn at all. He's something Blizzard is calling a vignette. I was able to solo Cindermaw, and quite easily at that, but the encounter was more involved than I'd expected. After beating on him for awhile, he burrowed underground and I was given a warning that he'd moved to the southeast. A few moments later, he reappeared far out of the standard combat range, where a normal mob would leash and reset. Instead, I remained in combat with the worm, needing to pursue him through the Boneslag, fighting through (or attempting to avoid) all of the orcs that stood between us. I reached him and managed to do only a little more damage before he burrowed again, causing me to pursue once more. On the third engagement, I used my cooldowns to kill him before he could flee any further. My efforts were rewarded with Cindermaw's Blazing Talon. Vignettes appear to bring a more dynamic type of encounter to the game world, something more akin to a dungeon boss than the typical overworld monster. Cindermaw was my first kill towards the achievement The Frostwind Slayer, which lists eight different vignettes in Frostwind Desert -- what I assume to be a deprecated name for Frostfire Ridge. If that's correct, it's safe to assume every zone in Draenor will have its own set of vignettes.
Google Glass update adds 'vignettes,' sound search and more
Glass still isn't quite ready for the consumer, but Google's wearable platform just keeps getting better and more powerful thanks to frequent software updates. Today's version bump brings YouTube to your search results and also grants access to those with Google Apps accounts. It also brings the Shazam-like Sound Search from Android to your head-mounted display. Most interesting though, is Vignettes, which allows you to lay your current Glass display over a photo to produce an image like the one you see above. Think of it like a screenshot tool for your real, very nerdy life. One can only imagine that eventually Vignettes will get a video mode, but for now its still photos only. If you're one of the lucky Explorers you can download the update now. The rest of you will have to live vicariously through the photos at the source.
