The Queue: The Scantily Clad Edition

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Hello, everybody! I'm going to jump right into things today because I'm sure at least a dozen people will want to shiv me for my answer to our first question, and I'd like to give everyone time to do that.

Andrew R. asked...

"Why do the females in WoW always wear such scantily clad gear? I don't see how plate armor that exposes half your upper body will do you any good when someone wants to stab you. Isn't it kind of degrading to real women who play the game?"

I suspect I'm risking my health by saying something about this question since I'm quite obviously male but no, I don't think so! To be honest, WoW isn't that bad about it. There are a few sets (mostly greens!) that are overly skimpy, but there are also greens that put male abs on display that very few people even notice. Most of my characters are female (yeah, yeah, I know), and none of them have really worn skimpy clothing as I leveled them. They were never required to do so. If a breastplate had more midriff than I liked, I just put a tabard on and you'd never know.

My Paladin is a Human Female, she's completely covered from the top of her neck to the bottoms of her feet, and it's been that way since I rolled her. I've never had to wear anything particularly skimpy. Midriff and/or cleavage was covered by my guild tabard (who doesn't wear a tabard nowadays?) and I've never had to wear asspants. She definitely does not wear a plate bikini. If I turned her helm on, she'd basically be a female juggernaut. I actually think it's pretty awesome.

Like I said though, there's definitely armor in WoW that's skimpy, but very little of it is required wearing and I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with there being a few scantily clad women as long as it's not all of the women. It's not completely inavoidable, and it's a very small percentage of just how much armor there is in the game. I'd be more surprised if there wasn't any at all. There's females in the audience that like wearing that kind of stuff sometimes, as they mentioned in the comments yesterday. It shouldn't be insulting. Just don't wear it, or put a tabard over it in those rare cases a set piece has midriff.

Oh yeah, is this where I bust out the obligatory "there are no girls on the internet" line? I almost forgot about that.

coreycubed asked...

"In the Argent Tournament, will we only be able to align ourselves with one home faction at a time? When it was first announced, I saw mounts and titles for each home faction, and I'm already exalted with all of them. I'm wondering if I'm going to be restricted to just one to "champion" for the tournament, or if I can finish one, then set to work on another."

You can only align yourself with your home faction at first. As Jay in Oregon was saying in the comments yesterday, you start the Tournament as an Aspirant. You work your way up to Valiant, and then eventually become Champion of your faction. At that point, you can start working for the other races, starting as a Valiant for them. And like Jay, I'm not sure if you can do more than one at a time, because PTR bugs are wonderful.

Andy asked...

"Hi Alex, or whomever--I have a question that I'd really, really appreciate some help on, as I can't seem to find anything definitive on this: what is the difference between an "Oceanic" server and an "EU" server? Also, do I really need a completely different version of WoW to play on an EU realm--and if so, does that imply that I couldn't transfer characters from a US realm to an EU realm or vice versa (or roll a Death Knight on an EU realm just because I have 55+ characters on US realms), but I could transfer characters between US and Oceanic realms?"

US and EU realms are completely separate, you can't transfer characters between them. You would need an EU copy of WoW and its expansions to play there. Oceanic realms are technically US realms in how they're run, the big difference being time zone and the region they're meant for. Oceanic realms are meant for the Australia, New Zealand, etc. region. You can copy characters there from US realms and vice versa, I believe.

To find out if that would be a better fit for you where you'll be, hit up a world clock and figure out the timezones. If the timezones work for you, go with that. If not? Stick to US realms. To play on EU realms, you'll need to start from scratch. No transfers there from US servers.

Ian R. asked...

"So was the bug with Ebon Plaguebringer ever fixed? Is it fixed in 3.1?"

It is fixed in patch 3.1.

alpha5099 asked...

"Why are trolls so unpopular? I mean, I get that (for some reason) a lot of people want to play the "pretty" races, so you end up with humans and both of the elven races being the most played. But then you get past those people, and you have all the other races, and so few people are playing trolls. Are trolls really that much less appealing a race than the undead or the orcs?"

If I played Horde, half of my characters would be Trolls (other half being anything but Orcs). I am the wrong person to ask about them. My only gripe is I wish they could freaking wear shoes. Gah. Just let them wear shoes! Why is that so hard! They look so stupid! Auuugh!

Sorry.

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!