The Queue: Ultimate ungulate

Welcome back to The Queue, the 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.

So that picture yesterday was actually a dik-dik (shown above), not a royal antelope, a mistake I would never have made if I wasn't super-tired. If anyone knows his adorable, tiny ungulates, it's me! Speaking as a former ungulate, I wholeheartedly apologize to any zookeepers or royal antelopes I may have offended with this grievous error.

Flynters asked:

Protection warriors and soloing/questing: good for that sort of purpose, viable but somewhat awkward due to lack of offensive focus, or slow and boring?

While you're right in that prot doesn't have a heavy offensive focus, I find that it really shines when you stop imagining questing zones as single mobs separated by Charge and start imagining them as packs instead. Pull a whole bunch of mobs at a time, heal yourself with timely Victory Rushes, throw up Shield Block whenever it's available, take heavy advantage of Blood and Thunder. And be aware that prot only really starts to be fun once you get talents like Sword and Board that let you dish it out even better than you can take it, but just because it's less fun earlier than that doesn't mean that it's less effective.

Etcee asked:

When 4.0.6 hit my dwarf main's eye color changed from dark brown to bright blue. I've been told by gm's first that it's intentional, second that it's a bug, third that it's looking at being reverted, then the otherday I was told that it wasn't even a known issue. I haven't seen any acknowledgmet on the forums. Is there any sort of precedent for just changing player models 6 years into the game? And why doesn't anyone else seem to notice?

Sometimes there are bugs with models when patches occur, but sometimes intentional changes are made, too. There's a long history of model changes that were never explained or publicly justified, from the human female "moon eyes" change to the inimitable Patchstache. If it gets changed back, it gets changed back, but these kinda of changes aren't normally reverted once they're made for whatever reason. Unless we're talking about orc shoulders, anyway.

Also, if I can make a slight tangent here, I need to make an important statement, and that is this:

GMs are not developers.

I can say this as a former GM and GM trainer. GMs are usually kept up to date on known issues with patches, but that does require input from the devs. Just like patch notes aren't always comprehensive, so too are known issue lists. Humans are also fallible, which means that a GM may not remember seeing an issue you've listed or may be thinking of a different issue when you talk to him or even may have heard incorrectly that an issue is getting fixed. It's not a perfect system, but WoW is also a game with hundreds of thousands of issues to track, so not every GM (and, more to the point, not any GM) will be personally aware of every issue, no matter how well everything is documented.

Until you see an issue is fixed in patch notes, see a blue post commenting on it, or see it on a list of known issues, assume it is not known and, if you feel so inclined, report it either via the forums or a GM ticket exactly once. There's no need to petition four times for the same non-pressing issue, especially after you receive a response that appears to be legitimate.

Rob asked:

Is it worth it race change my Draenei Pally to a Dwarf? I'm a lore nut, so I'd take a dwarf through the starting area first to get a feel for it... but I'm sick of being a race that people simply don't care about. The only thing holding me back, however, is the hope that Blizz might MAYBE add some Draenei stuff in soon. What do you think?

I can't guarantee any lore additions, but there's a more important reason to play a draenei paladin: I don't see dwarf paladins riding around on the world's biggest elephant! Seriously, the Great Exarch's Elekk is the biggest land mount I've ever seen. And it's got shiny new high-res textures, much better than that old horse. I think you know what the right decision is.

Haimdall asked:

What's the deal with the ritual sites dotted around the Eastern Kingdoms(at least)? I refer to the big statues of cloaked figures standing in a triangular pattern around a stone circle. I've seen one in Burning Steppes and Blasted Lands, and while I can't say for sure, I want to say I've seen at least one more.

That particular construction is called an Altar of Storms, and there are several in the Eastern Kingdoms. During the Second War, they were used to imbue ogres with arcane power to create ogre mages. Pulling the curtain back a little farther, they were also the building where your fallen heroes would resurrect while playing as orcs in the RTS games.

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!