The Queue: In which solidarity is shown

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

Fellow fatty Kevin Smith (we're part of a super exclusive club) was kicked off a Southwest Airlines plane this weekend. And while it has absolutely nothing to do with WoW, it certainly made me stop and cringe for a moment at the prospect of getting kicked off the plane as I'm on my way to BlizzCon. Of course I could take preventative measures to combat this inevitable passenger-eject-button-pushing, but I'm too busy eating my Pepperoni Pizza for breakfast, which is far better than Alex's Hawaiian Pizza.

Nomnomnom.

Ben asked...

"Do you think the tension in Cataclysm will possibly lead to World of Warcraft: The Fourth War? It could be a very PVP centric expansion, with raid content involving major battles in war, lots of new battle grounds, y'know, the works."

It certainly could. Cataclysm is going to caused renewed tensions between the Horde and Alliance, and anything concerning that buildup of tension could be a place to take the Warcraft storyline, potentially into a PvP centric mindset. But is that likely to happen? I honestly don't think so, not for a major expansion. I could see a content patch being all about PvP, but not an xpac itself.

Part of the reason I don't think PvP will get its own expansion is that it's not as popular as raiding and PvE. This doesn't make it any less valid, but we've seen a lot about how arenas are not like they were, and how BG queues are insanely long in some battlegroups. A new expansion that's PvP focused could certainly breath some new life into the PvP system, but it would be a risky financial move, and that's something Bobby K. isn't going to go for.

But on the flip side, I do think Blizzard could release a major PvP patch that changes the entire system. Cataclysm is going to go a long way to making Battlegrounds more attractive again, and somewhere along Cataclysm's release cycle they could dump a gigantic patch that redoes many of the foundational elements of PvP -- things like having separate spell actions and talent modifications for PvP environments (which is something they've said they won't do, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear PvE builds and PvP builds are incompatible in their very existence side-by-side).

At the end of the day though, we don't know what Blizzard's plans are post-Cataclysm. We've heard a few rumors, some of them are probably true, but nothing is out in public yet.

Lilschlute asked...

"Has Blizzard given any hints on if any new passenger mounts would be implemented in the future? If so what?"

Blizzard hasn't said anything about the timeframe of implementing new passenger mounts. They have mentioned they want to do multi-person flying mounts, but again, no timeframe. Possum brings up a good point however:

Elstor asked...

"In your opinion, what's the chance of seeing Warcraft 4 ever made?"

Very likely in the long term, not likely at all in the short term. Blizzard has said previously they're open to Warcraft 4, but right now they've got all their development teams working on other projects (WoW, SCII, D3, Unannounced MMO). When one of those teams becomes free, there'll be a lot of discussion about what to do. That's not going to happen for a little bit though, even with SCII shipping later this year (it will still have two other campaigns to go after it ships).

The clearest indication we have on this matter is from Pardo's comments back in 2008, which you can read over at GameDaily.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com 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!