The Queue: July 4

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.

Last night, I finally had a solid Zul'Gurub group -- the very first one since patch 4.1. Now that I've been able to topple the place in a good, solid group that was willing to take its time and actually experience the instance, I have to give props to Blizzard for the amount of effort it put into the zone. All of the little optional mobs and bosses are very cool, and it felt a little like classic WoW again. You are actually rewarded for exploring and doing more than going from Boss A to Boss B.

I know I tend to rail on how dry WoW instances tend to feel nowadays, so I felt I should give Blizzard a high-five for the work the developers put into this one. Good job, team.

raingod asked:

I've noticed since Firelands dropped my queue time wait looking for a group has dropped considerably for regular dungeons. I mean from 10-20 min (I'm dps) to under 5. Have they tweaked this or have I gotten very lucky this week?

Since it's a new tier of raiding, players need valor points for gear again. Queue times will be good for a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and then I expect them to drop off again. As soon as players have purchased all that they need from their valor points or they can get all of their valor points for the week from Firelands and such, they won't have any need to queue anymore.

Enjoy your awesome queue times while they last.

Dennis asked:

My heirlooms say bind on battle.net account. Is there a way to send them to an alt on another server?

Not currently, no. Well, I think you can do a paid character transfer, but that's a little extreme. Blizzard has mentioned that it wants to make it possible to send your heirlooms to other servers, but it's not something that has been implemented yet.

Yvl asked:

How do you guys keep your cool even through the stupidest of questions?

The cliché answer to that is that there are no stupid questions. We have readers that are seasoned raiding vets who have been around since 2004 and have killed every single raid boss in the game. We also have readers who started the game within the last 24-48 hours and can get lost in Northshire Abbey. There's room for all sorts of players in World of Warcraft, and we legitimately enjoy being able to help all of those sorts of people.

There are, of course, plenty of questions that are just people trolling or being jerks. The ability to roll with that and let it slide off your back just comes naturally when you've been doing this kind of job for years. And if you don't have that sort of capability, you shouldn't have this sort of job. It's the internet, after all. I don't think anybody has managed to actually make me angry in years, and good lord, have people tried.

Tat asked:

In the Thrall Questline in patch 4.2 I find it annoying that when Thrall gets taken away by the Druid of the flame while the following are powerless to stop it: The Aspects, Malfurion and us. What are your thoughts???

Blizzard tends to overuse the "plot stun" in its cutscenes. When the developers want to give someone a chance to monologue, they just lock everybody in an unbreakable stun, extremely powerful NPCs included. Yes, it does give that NPC a chance to speak their dialogue unimpeded, but it feels very not-good to players and doesn't make a lot of sense when looking at the relative power levels of various NPCs.

Maybe development time doesn't allow for it, but I personally would have liked the Flame Druids to show up in force with Ragnaros's crew. The Aspects would be busy fighting them off in the background while Fandral made off with Thrall. You could still get a front row seat to what was going on, but it would explain what the heck all the other powerful people there were doing while Fandral spoke his lines.

It felt double-bad because it wasn't the only time the devs used a plot stun in this patch. They do it to you when you meet Leyara, too.

Teryn asked:

Since it's another BBQ holiday in the States, can you give us another side dish recipe Alex?

Sure. Buy a bunch of tomatoes -- it doesn't matter what kind as long as they're good and ripe. Slice. Salt or pepper if desired. Devour.

Simple!

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!