The Queue: Amber Kearnen, don't die on me

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.

If you do, I will never forgive you.

Chris asked:

Is there anything new for Hallow's End?

Beyond candy buckets in Pandaria, there isn't anything completely new. However, all of the Headless Horseman's loot has been updated. Getting an ilevel 470 ring on my rogue last night was pretty sweet.

Draelan asked:

I was just on my 85 priest, and harvested some Mogu Pumpkins for my main's cooking. Now, I could have sworn that my lower level alts were getting rep for harvesting crops before, but I noticed today that I got absolutely no rep for harvesting these pumpkins on my level 85 priest. Was my brain making up the idea of pre-90 toons getting rep from harvesting crops?

If not, has anyone else experienced this today? I specifically went back to Stormwind to get the Unburdened buff from the Wickerman fire to try and get extra rep from harvesting, so if I'm NOT simply being crazy, I'm wondering if this buff somehow caused me to get NO rep instead of 10% extra from harvesting.

If you got no rep and didn't have the buff, that's good to know, too, as it might be that Blizzard hotfixed the game so you need to be 90 to get rep from harvesting.

Any info you guys have on this would help, as I'd really like to know if I'm simply going crazy, if Blizz changed this, or if it's a bug.

You were imagining things before, or at least remembering incorrectly. You don't start accruing Tillers rep from harvests until level 90. Your low level farm alt won't get any.

elmwright2009 asked:

Why is the mages new teleport/portal not put in the drop down menu with all the other city ports, and instead they are two seperate spells on there own thet have to be place on your action bars?

It's either a bug, or something the devs forgot to take care of before launch, which might as well be categorized as a bug. I doubt they intend for these specific portals to be hidden somewhere different from the rest of them, it was just an oversight and it will most likely be fixed later on.

Brett asked:

This is something that has bugged me since the cataclysm beta... Koltira Deathweaver. Last we heard Sylvannas was going to turn him into of a more "Loyal servant of the Horde" ... I was hoping that a future patch was going to give us more information on this story, but it seems a lot of the Cata side stories were never followed up on sadly.

There's still a chance this plot thread will return. Blizzard's stories tend to do that -- the things you're really interested in and want to follow, they disappear into stasis for years before they come back again. Unfortunate, but it is what it is.

@The_Godbear asked:

What Happens to the rest of the SI:7 members after the jade serpent fight I only seemed to find sully and mishka

I very much hope I am wrong, but the vibe I get is that Sully, Mishka, and Admiral Taylor were the only survivors of Jade Forest. There has been no mention of the others whatsoever, either for or against, but I find it weird that they would continue to use Sully and Mishka but not Amber Kearnan. It's actually quite depressing, because I was excited to see SI:7 in action in a meaningful way. Back in May, I wrote a piece showing off all of the new members of SI:7 to try and get other people excited about them, too. But the SI:7 members that are most like SI:7 -- that is, intelligence agents and assassins -- disappeared from Pandaria.

Rell Nightwind is confirmed dead, and both Amber Kearnen and Nodd Codejack are missing. That leaves us with Sully, the comedy relief, and Mishka, the doctor. I love Mishka, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't feel like we're actually working with an intelligence agency in unfamiliar territory anymore and that disappoints me. Hopefully I'm wrong and we'll see Nodd and Amber make a comeback down the road sometime.

Amber is a particularly painful loss, because she wasn't new in Mists of Pandaria. She's a returning character from Westfall. It was cool to see her move up in the world. If I was going to kill off a member of SI:7, it would have been Sully, not Amber. Pandaria provides its own comedy relief without his help. The Alliance is in a situation where it needs competent soldiers and agents, not comedians.

There's the argument that losing Amber is supposed to be painful, but nothing in-game actually tells us that she's dead. She's just gone and nobody thinks to mention her. There's no closure. It's very frustrating! Much like Koltira in the previous question.

keithwares1 asked:

why is golden lotus dailys so low in rep? a daily gets u 110 rep while every 1 else rep is like 4-500 per daily!

Likely because you can get so many Golden Lotus dailies in one day. You get 2-3 hubs per day in Vale of Eternal Blossoms, none of which take particularly long, while other factions only give you a small handful of quests per day. If you're doing everything the Golden Lotus asks you to do, it won't take you any longer to complete than other reputations, despite the individual quests giving less rep each.

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!