The Queue: Today I learned Misty's real name is Kasumi
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.
You know, I don't really care where the fire hawk mounts come from. I've already decided that it will be mine regardless of source. Tier 12 achievement mount? Going to get it. WoW TCG? Going to get it. Blizzard store? Doesn't matter. Going to get it. Why? Because it's fracking Zapdos, that's why.
Surrich asked:
I noticed that a lot of the WoW Insider writers thought it was a GOOD thing that Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman are coming back. How can you get excited over recycled content?
I can't speak for the entire staff, but for me personally it's a question of how much of the content is recycled. Certainly art assets have been, but look at an instance like the Deadmines. The revamp of Deadmines was, in my opinion, incredible. It advanced the story of the Defias Brotherhood and every single encounter was brand new. We weren't fighting Edwin VanCleef with more HP. We met Vanessa VanCleef, who became one of my favorite characters in WoW ever. I'm actually quite sad she's already dead!
If a recycled instance advances the story and brings new encounters and new material to the table, I'm okay with them reusing select art assets or reusing a location. After all that's happened in the game since we first cleared out Zul'Gurub, do you think nothing else has happened in there? We'll probably see even more of this as this expansion progresses. And in the next expansion? I bet we see recycled Burning Crusade instances. Maybe a return of the Shadow Council will inspire a revamped Shadow Labyrinth. You know, one with fewer trash mobs.
kenny asked:
Why are there a ton of twilight drakes working with Deathwing in Cataclysm, but only a few black drakes? Are they almost all dead lore-wise?
Yes, the Black Dragonflight is fairly close to extinction. When Deathwing started to lose his grip on sanity, the rest of his dragonflight went with him. Reproduction was less important, and they suffered a lot of losses due to their aggression. All of Nefarian and Sinestra's crazy experiments in trying to create a Chromatic Dragonflight or the Twilight Dragonflight is an attempt to bolster (or replace) the remaining ranks of the Black Dragonflight. Oh, and to maximize their ability to murder things, of course. That's important to note.
Yurt asked:
Why do you guys talk so much about the PTR? Some of us want to focus on what's in the game now, not what might be in the game later.
If you've been reading WoW Insider for long, you've probably noticed that we try to have at least a little content for every sort of player out there. Raiders, PvPers, hardcore players, extremely casual players, people who have been playing for the last six years, and people who picked up the game last week. We try to have something for everybody, but that means not everything is for everyone. That's okay though -- do you buy the Sunday newspaper and read every single article in it? Unlikely. You probably read whatever catches your eye on the front page and then skip to whichever section is your favorite.
Many of our readers want to know all of the details of the PTR, so we will provide. We also have readers that care little for the PTR, and I'm not sure anybody can claim we don't cater to that audience as well. If you look at our front page right now, you probably see more non-PTR content than PTR content. Don't rail against what you don't like. Just don't read it. There's still quite a bit there for you. If there's something you think we should be covering and we're not, please let us know!
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!
