The Queue: Mists of Pandaria might just be the best expansion

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be the Queue writer you need, if not the one you deserve.

I don't even know how else to say it, really. The story is phenomenal, revealed in some excellent questing and instances. The mogu may be my favorite villains ever, and the klaxxi are the faction I love to hate even as I do quests for them. They treat me like crap, and I sneer in their faces, and we're perfectly happy with the arrangement. The art of the instances and raids and zones is all top notch. And the pandaren themselves are astonishingly fun - I defy you to do Siege of Niuzao Temple and not think okay, these guys are nuts at least once. There are aspects to this expansion I don't care much about, like Tillers dailies and pet battles, so you know what I do? I ignore them. I get on with my super fun bug snark and running heroics for the tanking gears.

This is a great expansion. Maybe the best ever. We'll see how it all ends, but man. So far it's even better than I thought it was going to be when I was running the beta.

Neuromante asked

Q4tQ: I saw during Beta, and then briefly on live after MoP launch, a new char selection background window (in my case it is Orgrimmar for all my chars) but it disapeard shortly afterwards. Is it a bug I have or it hasn't changed yet for good?

There's another bug that's nagging me since beta on that same screen: my tauren DK is about the size of a dwarf, so I guess it all may be bugged.

I just went and checked, and what you're referring to is the new character creation screen background. Everyone except DK's and all pandaren get either the generic Alliance or generic Horde background during the character creation process. DK's get the standard DK background, and pandaren get a generic Wandering Isle backdrop. And while the DK size issue you mention is still present on the character selection screen, it's not apparent on the character creation screen.

eclipticrift asks

Do we have any lore on the Pandaren and the Light? After all, they can be Priests (but not Paladins). I've seen some NPCs named Priestess of the Dawn or similar but not sure about their background or any overarching organization. Maybe they're sun based like the Tauren?

The pandaren do not worship the Light. They do, however, respect the power of light and shadow, and their priests tap into magics that concern themselves with these concepts. In a way, with their tendency towards seeking balance in things and unity of disparate forces, the pandaren are the most coherent and logical to have both light and shadow spells in their repertoire. But the philosophy of The Light that humans, dwarves and draenei share (although differently) is not the same as pandaren spirituality. While the pandaren respect the sun's power (as the myth of the champion of the five suns indicates) they're also not particularly heliocentric in their attitude. Pandaren priests do their own thing. The fact that they use the same spells as other priests from other races and cultures is a game balance issue, not a lore issue.

plusParty asks

Why are the Zandalar and Mogu allies???

Well, they originally were allies because they shared attitudes about superiority and conquest, but weren't close enough to each other to come into conflict - they had separate spheres of influence, and common goals and enemies. Their alliance was strong enough in the distant past that the Zandalari even took part in the civil war when the pandaren overthrew the mogu, and it was to the Zandalari that the secret for returning Lei Shen the Thunder King was entrusted.

As to why they're allied now, partially it's an alliance of desperation. When Vol'jin helped stop the Zandalari efforts in Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, they had to go with plan B. There are several statements from Zandalari in the Kun-Lai quests that indicate that the Zandalar have fallen on some very hard times and need the mogu alliance.

desertfly3 asks

I'm weird, but I like the idea of playing the dungeons in the "correct" place as I level, i.e. if there are quests leading up to the story of the dungeon outside I'd like to do them first. Does anyone know where each leveling dungeon fits in the storyline (like, which quests lead up to them), or are they completely independent?

This is purely my opinion, but based on my questing experience I'd argue that Temple of the Jade Serpent is first, following the destruction of the Serpent's Heart, then Stormstout Brewery as you finish following Chen around the Valley of the Four Winds. Shado-Pan Monastery is next, as it comes at the end of your quests in Kun-Lai Summit but before you quest alongside Taran Zhu and the Shado-Pan in Towlong Steppes. After that comes your raid into Mogu'shan Palace, since that's part and parcel of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and the mogu invasion. As for the heroics, the two Scarlet Monastery heroics aren't particularly rooted to this time frame, they are whenever you go there, essentially. Clearly they both take place after Cataclsym, since a certain undead lady makes an appearance. Siege of Niuzao Temple and Gate of the Setting Sun feel like they come before Dread Wastes, since they would motivate your excursion therein, but again that's just my opinion.

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