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The Queue: Orange Coke is totally Warcraft-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.

I really want to try Coca-Cola Orange. I don't think you can acquire it in the United States without going to the Coke factory. If you know something I don't know, you should probably tell me! WoW Insider, you're my only hope!

Enigma asked:

Is Blizzard trolling with the T12 models? Mage is hilariously flamboyant and druid looks ... well ... "special." T11 is actually pretty friggin' good-looking across the board, so it seems like T12 is something of a joke.



I think you'll find quite a lot of people enjoy the tier 12 designs! Quite a lot of people dislike tier 11, too. I don't think Blizzard would put that much effort into trolling us, especially when many of the sets actually look quite good. I think all of the mages in my raid are looking forward to mage T12 -- that hat is badass. I personally don't like paladin T12, but I know quite a few people who do.

Don't paint things in absolutes. There are nearly 12 million people actively playing World of Warcraft. You'll find plenty of people who agree with you when you dislike something, but you'll find millions who disagree with you, too.

However, I am willing to go out on a limb and say anybody who holds the opinion that T11 was good across the board is completely insane. Come on, that hunter set? If Blizzard is trolling us, it's hunter tier 11. A worgen hunter wearing that set is just ridiculous.

That means you, Kivharo.

Wellsee asked:

My guild wants to start 10 person raids soon. Other than Argaloth, what are the best bosses to tackle first?

Blizzard did a pretty good job of placing bosses in the proper order of progression. Magmaw, Halfus Wyrmbreaker, and Omnotron Defense System are all roughly at the same level of difficulty. Of those, Magmaw is likely the easiest. It has some tricky mechanics (like learning how to time the chains properly) but is overall an easy encounter to learn. ODS requires a lot of target switching that may confuse someone who has never raided at all before, so that one should probably come after Magmaw and Halfus. Those three are all good starting points, though.

You can toss Throne of the Four Winds in there as well, but that fight always struck me as very complicated for people who haven't raided before. If your guild has some Wrath of the Lich King raid experience, you should be able to handle it just fine. If you don't have pre-Cataclysm raid experience, I would put Throne of the Four Winds after Magmaw, Halfus and Omnotron.

TL;DR: Kill Magmaw first, then Halfus Wyrmbreaker, then Omnotron Defense System. After those three, do whatever you want.

Iirdan asked:

Is WoW Insider going to bring back more guest posts?

I absolutely love writing and reading Breakfast Topics through SEED, but I find myself missing other things like the 4.0.1 reaction post, the "Confessions of a n00b" series. It would be really nice to see maybe a weekly or even bi-weekly opinion guest post or something similar. Hell, even if it weren't through Seed for cash it would be cool.


We would like to, but it isn't always easy. First, we do not (and will not) take volunteer work -- if you're being published on WoW Insider, you'll be paid for it. I know that's going to spark heated debate in the comments because it always does, but that's the way it is. So since we don't take volunteer work, the work needs to be processed within the tools available to our platform -- we contract someone (which we can do for someone anywhere in the world), or we accept that work through Seed (which is currently in the United States only). We're lucky to have a tool like Seed available to us, because most WoW sites have nothing like that.

However, it's important to remember that we're extremely niche. We have to create our own little bubble for ourselves within Seed. All of our open calls are actually set to private on the Seed site, because the greater Seed audience would be so confused if we didn't set them private. You can only see those listings if you have the direct link, which we provide on our site. Once upon a time, we did an open call for articles about healers. We did not set it to private, and were thus inundated with article submissions from real life doctors/nurses or articles about holistic medicine. Leaving our extremely niche requests open to the public is counterproductive. Seed as a platform is a benefit to us -- that's why the tool exists -- but we in turn do not necessarily contribute to Seed (or the greater freelance community), since our open calls are hidden from the masses. Make sense? Of course, that's just a look into how we interact with Seed, not a reason why we don't use it more. That doesn't discourage our use of the platform.

The real limiting factor is time. This is already a full-time job for many of us, not taking any guests posts into consideration at all. When we do open calls for articles on Seed, one of us editors ends up with a great big time sink on our hands for a week. The recent call for Breakfast Topics we held? We received well over 100 submissions, and yours truly had to go through every single one deciding which ones get to make the cut and which ones don't. Almost all submissions need a significant copyediting pass after purchase, which isn't necessarily the fault of those submitting articles -- our internal style guide is not public. So after I've decided who gets to make the cut, then Lisa (our copyeditor, god bless her heart) gets to go through them and make them presentable. It's a significant timesink all around.

Is it worth the effort? Abso-freaking-lutely. We love guest posts. We love being able to feature you guys. Is it hard to find the hours in the day to do it regularly? Very much so. When we have a great idea for a column, it's easier for us to pick someone from our own staff with appropriate knowledge of the topic to bang something out for us than it is to open up a Seed request and receive a few dozen submissions, of which we may only use one. That's one of the worst parts of the process, too -- rejecting people isn't fun. Disappointing people isn't fun.

Will we do more guest posts? We'll try, and you're welcome to email me with your ideas. We love them, and we love you. Will we have one every week, or every other week? Probably not, because the difference in the amount of time and effort to do that compared to using internal personnel is astronomical.


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!