The Queue: Image related
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.
The image above is most certainly related to a question in The Queue today. The question is ... which one!? You'll just have to read and find out! Mwahaha!
... that guy's kinda cute for a disgusting slime creature, isn't he?
Mal asked:
Is it just me or are many guilds dying lately?
I certainly don't have numbers I can provide as to how many guilds have died (or have been born) lately, but if you're experiencing that, there's probably an easy explanation for it.
One, while patch 4.2 is imminent, we've had largely the same content for half of a year now. If you're a raider, even if you haven't beaten all there is to beat in the current tier of raiding, you've been banging away on it since Cataclysm's release. You're going to be really damn sick of that content. I, personally, have not killed Sinestra. However, my drive to get there is almost completely nonexistent. I've been seeing the walls of Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight so often that if I had to be in there for another month or three, I simply would not be interested in playing the game anymore. I think I have a higher tolerance for tedium than most, so people with a threshold of, say ... four months? They're long gone.
Can you think of any other type of game where it's standard practice to kill the same things repeatedly for half a year? To break down for you how long I've been zoning into Blackwing Descent, I have 20 Magmaw kills. That's at least 20 weeks back-to-back of going into BWD. It doesn't matter if I've killed hard mode Nefarian or not -- 20 weeks of zoning into the same place is about 10 weeks too many. With how slowly Blizzard trickles out content, you're inevitably going to reach a point of burnout prior to every tier of raiding.
Two, it's summer -- at least in the United States. Even huge dorks find better things to do during summer. Either they drop raiding (or logging in) completely, or it becomes a weekly song-and-dance to figure out which of your raiders will actually show up and which of them decided to hit the beach or a barbeque or a festival. Some guilds don't want to put up with that so they just call it quits, either permanently or temporarily.
Mal also asked:
Everyone is saying that Dragonwrath is going to be bis for dps casters for this patch and maybe the whole expansion. But in this patch the tier 11 raids are being nerfed so more players can do them. So what will happen in 4.3? Will everyone be raiding the nerfed 4.2 raids for a chance at a weapon better than what 4.3 drops?
Sure. Even if Blizzard doesn't specifically nerf tier 12 content when tier 13 rolls around, the simple addition of tier 13 will go a long way toward trivializing tier 12 content. Legendaries always become easier to acquire after awhile. Val'anyr in Wrath of the Lich King was good for quite a while in the right hands, and you bet your butt it became easier to get when Trial of the Crusader loot rolled around.
Grigor asked:
Maybe this is too early to ask but I'm making my annual clothes shopping trip soon....do I need to pack shorts for Blizzcon or can I get by with just pants? Blizzcon is October after all.
Oh, dear god. Shorts, my friend. Take shorts with you. Even if you take nothing else, take at least one pair of shorts. I'm from Wisconsin, where it's usually freezing over by the time October rolls around, so my first BlizzCon was a huge shock to the system. It's still hot and humid in California in October, and you'll be doing tons of walking around in a tightly packed building full of other nerds. You want to be as cool and comfortable as possible.
Worst case scenario, it's cold and rainy. Pants still won't feel good once you get indoors. You'll get wet outside, then once you're inside ... your wet jeans will get heavy and stiff and cling to your legs. You'll sweat in your moist pants all day long, and with pant legs going all the way down to your shoes, nothing will be able to breathe or dry. You know what happens then? Crotch mildew. Do you want crotch mildew? No. You don't. Bring the freaking shorts.
If you truly and honestly never wear shorts at any other time of the year for some crazy reason, just find one decently fitting pair of shorts on discount somewhere. Hell, go to Goodwill or some other secondhand store. BlizzCon is full of people dressing up like elves, panda bears, and fish men. Nobody cares if your shorts are secondhand.
All you need is one pair. If you got sweaty and gross on day one of BlizzCon, don't even worry about it. Every hotel has a laundry room. Even teeny-tiny hotels have one washing machine. It might cost you a few quarters to get them washed, but that's no biggie. Throw them in the washing machine after BlizzCon day one, wear them again on day two, done.
After BlizzCon 2010, I spent a few extra days in California to hang with Mike Sacco and drive eels to extinction. We stayed at the Sheraton Park (which is absolutely gorgeous; I spent some time there in 2009 as well), and their washing machines were poolside outdoors. While my laundry was running, I sat by the pool ... and hunted snails. I had never seen a snail in the wild before. It was very exciting! I tweeted pictures!
Many asked:
Is patch 4.2 tomorrow?
I will neither confirm nor deny the arrival of patch 4.2 tomorrow. However, I will request that you lay the patch 4.2 questions on thick in the comments today. For ... you know. Reasons.
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!
