The Queue: I had an NPC before it was cool

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
Yes, yes, it's great that Red Shirt Guy got his own NPC, but what's better than hanging out next to a classic, beloved lore figure? That's right. Being barefoot in the kitchen, performing some unknown action with a haunch of meat. Top that, Red Shirt Guy.

Lochlorien asked:

Since patch.4.0.1 was released and druids lost their tree forms, being a 30-second buff now, how do you explain Applebough? He's always in tree form sitting in Dalaran selling fruit. Shouldn't his tree form have the same cooldowns and duration as the rest of us?

Treants existed before Tree of Life form did. I would imagine that Applebough, with a name like Applebough, is an actual tree, instead of a dude what turns into one.

Arizor asked:

In your article about Preloading Cataclysm with pre-ordering, a commenter explains that the disk is now only for people who can't "download tons of data quickly." What exactly would people with some tech knowledge define as a download speed that would be worth it?

That's a pretty subjective question. If you're on dialup and playing WoW (you can do it; I did, for a quite a while), then you're probably better off getting the client in a non-downloading kind of way. Alternatively, lots of people are bandwidth-capped and face overage charges if they download too much. Those are two examples in which waiting for the disc edition would be "worth it."

Covert7 asked:

When the guild perks and heirlooms make it into live, how much bonus XP gains will it be possible for a character to have active?

There's 10 percent on shoulders, 10 percent on chest, 10 percent on head, 5 percent on cloak, 5 percent on ring, 10 percent from guild perks. A decked-out character could have 50 percent extra experience gain. There are also rings and pants in the game files, worth 5 percent and 10 percent extra experience respectively, but we don't know where or how to get those yet (if at all).

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!