The Queue: No Sleep Till Brooklyn

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host today.

Born and bred in Brooklyn, the USA,
They call me Adam Yauch, but I'm MCA,
Like a lemon to a lime, a lime to a lemon,
I sip the def ale with all the fine women.

Link Brass Monkey all you want in the comments. You're all wrong.

miller.brian.lee asked:

Could we get a Beastie Boy related queue tomorrow.

Yes.

c187 asked:

Q4tQ - So can we skip tiers in the new talent system? Because currently I only see myself taking 3 to 4 for my Spriest PVE set.

You're looking at this new talent system completely backwards. The point of the new talent system is not to give you options that will make your one playstyle better in a specific type of environment. Rather, talents are fun choices you make that affect your character, not the type of content you are pursuing. While there are options that are associated with PvE or PvP and some that have distinctly superior uses, not taking a talent is just ignoring a potentially useful ability or a new, fundamental change to the way an ability works.

Take warriors, for instance. One entire row of talents is dedicated to changing how the fundamental warrior ability, Charge, operates in-game. The purpose of the talent is not to be great for PvP or great for PvE -- it's about changing and customizing my character in fun ways that alter my game a little bit from yours. Do I want the ability to double-Charge away from enemies, or do I want the added crowd control? I could even just knock off some time from the cooldown if I'm not interested in the other two options. It's supposed to be about fun choices and not necessarily min-maxing -- I know, a hard concept to give up.

I am a huge fan of the new talent system because I don't feel like there are mistakes that I can make. Many people used to think (Blizzard included) that the best way to weed out the good players from the bad was to include tricks or traps in the talent layouts to make you think twice about your point allocation. These days, as it turns out, the best players rise to the top anyway, and hindering the base only serves to frustrate. Inclusion is key, and the best players will always achieve success in the content they strive to complete.

@WowExlucis on Twitter asked:

how bummed were you when the DOTA BG got scrapped?

Not very, and let me tell you why. It's no surprise to anyone that I'm a huge Defense of the Ancients and League of Legends fan and have been for some time, and hearing that Blizzard was finding a way to introduce the laning concepts to a Battleground had me pumped. While you couldn't successfully take the entire DotA/MOBA experience and put it into a Battleground -- matches would take far too long -- there are pieces of the genre that would make excellent features in a WoW Battleground. The minions concept, for instance, works well in Alterac Valley presently, as well as already featuring destructible towers. With some updates to the systems, you could see a fun scenario come out of those concepts married to the WoW experience.

However, I'm not sad to see it go. After thinking about which concepts would be best included in a DotA/MOBA-style Battleground, I realized there is another, better place for Blizzard to spend this energy -- Blizzard DOTA. If you really want a comprehensive Blizzard-themed experience, just make Blizzard DOTA a better, more fully featured game. Don't try to shoehorn in massive concepts into a little Battleground.

In fact, I think a better choice for a WoW Battleground would be a variation on the DotA/LoL/MOBA/acronyms map called ARAM, or All Random, All Mid, referring to a community-created ruleset where all players randomly choose a character to play and ignore two-thirds of the playing field for a faster, more frantic, and forced action-packed game. Some kind of huge bridge over a canyon or precarious jetty out into the sea would make excellent stretches of narrow land for the Horde and Alliance to fight over, using some laning and creep mechanics from one genre and the combat mechanics of another. I think it could work.

Dan asked:

I recently started playing again because of the Scroll of Resurrection stuff. I'm working on getting a few characters to 85 and I've been doing RDF along the way. I was just wondering if you know whether the Justice/Valor Points gained will be usable in the new expansion as they were from WotLK to Cata? It'd be awesome getting to 90 with a bunch of points ready to be spent on sweet new gear. Otherwise I might as well spend them on shinies now, right?

Thanks =)

While we do not know exactly how justice and valor are going to work in Mists of Pandaria in their entirety, Blizzard has stated that its goal is to make it much easier in a variety of new ways, including dailies, dungeons, quests, and more to give players justice and valor. What that translates into is, well, we don't know. However, I would not anticipate a justice point wipe, since there is a cap, but your valor may very well transition down.

I don't see the harm in letting people start with the justice points they collected from the previous expansion. That extra few pieces of gear helps immensely when tanks are first hitting the high-level instances or early raids, as well as making it easier to gear up for those places. Blizzard definitely wants the Dungeon and Raid Finders full of people, and that quick piece of gear when you hit 90 is a good way of giving people an option or two.

Matthew2 asked:

When should I start looking to reserve a Collectors Edition MoP ?

As soon as Blizzard announces it, go and preorder one. In fact, do it right before it's announced. When you figure that piece of the puzzle out, come and get me and then we can go reserve our copies together.

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!