The Queue: Steam tip

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

If you're at all like me, you're fully entrenched in Cataclysm right now. But that precious honeymoon is only going to last until February or March, at which point it'll slip into the daily regimen of raiding and running the occasional spurt of dungeons some random night. It's at that time that I turn to other games, and that's where this little tip comes in. Go download Steam and spend $20 on a few games to play while waiting for raids, etc. ... Enjoy them in a few months knowing you paid next to nothing for them, thanks to Steam's insane sales.

I normally don't go all fanboi for another game or services like this, but seriously, you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not spending a few bucks on these games. The other day, I picked up a $50 current-generation FPS for $6, and I spent $8 at Taco Bell (chili-cheese burritos).

Now back to The Queue!

Dalixam asked:

Whenever you finish a project, the next one pops up right away. Is this completely random or does something influence it?

Completely random. Any sort of rhyme or reason you're hearing about it is just people looking for patterns in the static. The only thing that is true is that there'll be four dig sites per continent.

Dalixam asked:

If you are working on a project that needs for example 32 artifacts, what happens if you continue to pick up artifacts when the bar says 32/32? Are those artifacts lost or are they stored and used on your project?

Those artifacts are saved, and you'll see your bar say something like "40/32" or whatever. A really smart way to go about things is to just dig up artifacts until you reach 100 archaeology, and then solve everything you've got. The reason here is that at 100 points, you no longer get skill-ups from finding an artifact; you only get skill increases for solving a project (5 points, at that).

Foxish asked:

What's up with the order of factions in the reputation pane? It's a little annoying to have to minimize Wrath and BC reps before I can see Cataclysm reps.

Yeah, that's exceptionally annoying. You can mark the other reps as inactive to get them off the main list, but still, it's a bug that hopefully Blizzard will fix in the next client patch.

Vanillabean asked:

I have seen a lot of hate for this expansion, and I don't get it. What is so bad about it??

The people who don't like things yell the loudest, and that's what you're seeing (on the internet, that statement makes sense). There are some legitimate concerns about the expansion -- something needs to be done to make pugging heroics more accessible, Tol Barad is broken pretty badly, and there've been a lot of issues with phasing in some of the 80 to 85 zones.

But overall? It's pretty good.

The ones who would normally counter the yelling and screaming of the haters are too busy playing right now.

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!