Advertisement

The Queue: Blame Alex

Anne Stickney
Updated ·5 min read

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is taking over this shindig.

Alex asked me to do The Queue today, so I bring you ponies. You can blame him for that.

Moving on!

Valorum asked:

Can someone please clarify if achievements shared across accounts is something they would like to do, or something that they definitely are going to do?



It's something that Blizzard is doing. Whether or not we see it in the final release of Mists is still up in the air -- largely because there is a lot of time between now and then, and that's a lot of time to work on stuff. I'm sure we'll get more info about all of that lovely Mists stuff with the press event in March.

Goshawk asked:

Why is MoP going to be so small in scale? In BC, there were 7 current zones, and then the leveling areas for Blood Elves and Draenei. Then in Wrath, there were 9 (I'll exclude Hrothgar's landing for the sake of argument). In cataclysm, there were only 5, and I will grant that there was a MAJOR 1-60 rehaul. Now, based on the Blizzard Pandaria preview there will only be 5 zones plus the Panda turtle.

Maybe I'm just complaining because flight in Azeroth made everything smaller, or that we weren't out in the world because it was not a single unified continent, but I would be really disappointed to see a small continent for what seems to be an epic amount of content.

Goodness, is it not going to be small -- Blizzard actually talked about this at BlizzCon. The continent of Pandaria is huge, and the different zones in that continent are also huge. I believe Blizzard said something about being able to fit the Twilight Highlands in the first zone in Pandaria and still having room left over. Keep in mind we won't be flying in Pandaria while we're leveling -- we'll be grounded until level 90, and we'll have to roam the lands on foot, which will help keep everything looking gigantic as well.

And don't forget, there are the five zones on Pandaria, and then we've got that pesky Zandalari Isle to the north to contend with as well -- so technically six zones, seven with the starting area. And who knows? Blizzard mighty add some other stuff along the way. Heck, we didn't get the Isle of Quel'danas until the end of The Burning Crusade, and it was pretty cool.

P.S. I am still secretly hoping for Kul Tiras. Please?

Philster043 asked:

What is the second important city for both the Alliance and the Horde, next to Stormwind and Orgrimmar? Ironforge for the Allies, or Darnassus? Undercity or Thunder Bluff? I got in a little friendly debate about this with a friend the other day.

That's actually a pretty good question. At first I thought Ironforge would be a shoe-in for the Alliance, because it's connected with Stormwind and it's a dwarven stronghold and therefore a pretty good place to defend against attacks. But Darnassus represents a foothold on Kalimdor, something that the Alliance have desperately trying to hang onto -- and may have problems holding onto, given what we've heard about the fate of Theramore. So it's kind of up in the air.

Likewise, Thunder Bluff is a pretty well-fortified stronghold for the Horde -- but Undercity is over on the Eastern Kingdoms, someplace that the Horde really doesn't have a strong hold over. Although it could be argued that given Sylvanas' temperament in Cataclysm, the Horde might not be so keen on the Forsaken at the moment. So maybe Silvermoon could be a foothold, since the sin'dorei are hopefully a little more trustworthy than Sylvanas "Oh no, we'd never release the plague" Windrunner.

Rob asked:

What are the Dark Rangers, are they undead night elves, that just did not get turned into banshees? I've read many, but not all of the novels, and I don't remember any lore of them.

They're actually undead high elves. Sylvanas was the first -- she was the former ranger-general of Silvermoon, after all, and when she regained her body, she altered her ranger teachings into a new, darker form. A lot of the undead who were formerly under the Lich King's control were also high elf rangers in thier previous lives; these former rangers fell naturally into the dark ranger role. Some of them were possibly banshees that reclaimed their bodies the same way Sylvanas did, but we don't really have a whole lot of information on them, really. Most of it exists in the RPG source books, and we don't know if that information is really canon or not.

@Majikthiiz on Twitter asked:

Are we ever going to see gnomes in a cinematic? And more dwarf centric books? Sick of humans.

Aw, I'm not sick of humans! But we did get a couple of non-human short stories in Cataclysm. There's a pretty good one about Mekkatorque heading back into Gnomeregan after failing to retake it completely prior to the Shattering, and a really, really amazing one about the Council of the Three Hammers and a look at how hard it is for the three different clans to work together. I'd like to see more from the dwarves in particular, because the dynamic of the Council is so interesting -- but we'll have to wait and see on that.

As for gnomes in a cinematic, man, I'd love to see them. I think it'd be a matter of the cinematic department's being able to animate them in a way that wasn't completely cartoony or over the top, though. We'll have to wait and see!

@Muscratt on Twitter asked:

How many Qs can a Q writer QQ if a Q writer can QQ Qs?

42.

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!