The Queue: Tyrannosauridae

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 your host today.

The Tyrannosauridae are among the most famous dinosaurs in the world today on the strength of their most recognizable member, Tyrannosaurus Rex, but there's a great deal more to them than that one (admittedly magnificent) dinosaur, and since World of Warcraft loves to shovel in the tyrannosaurs every chance it gets (from King Mosh to Oondasta) I decided to take this flimsy pretext and run with it.

Descended from small ancestors like Xionguanlong baimoensis, the tyrannosauridae eventually became the dominant large carnivore of the late Cretaceous in Asia and North America. Members of the coelurosauria, the species of the tyrannosauridae were all fairly large predators themselves. Interestingly, other species in the coelurosauria include modern birds. Indeed, current thinking indicates that it is possible that all of the coelurosauria, from raptors to tyrannosauridae, might well have had feathers.

Some of the best known of the tyrannosauridae besides our friend T. Rex include Albertosaurus, famous around where I live (indeed, my wife once took me to the Royal Tyrrell Museum to look at Albertosaur skeletons) Tyrannosaurus Bataar (also known as Tarbosaurus, although that name is probably invalid) and Alioramus, the tyrannosaurid most likely to be saddled and ridden if I ever come into possession of a time machine. Tyrannosaurus Rex is unusual among the tyrannosauridae for its aggressive and dramatic growth cycle and females tended to be larger and more powerful than the males, both so that they could drive off males they didn't intend to mate with and so that the male could support his weight on the female during mating.

No fossil evidence has yet been found that anyone ever made a tyrannosaur wear a giant armored headdress and fight up to 40 people with loot on the line. But I'm sure that if paleontologists ever find a piece of epic PvP gear in the badlands of eastern Alberta, they'll be responsible and not just equip it.

At this point, I have to stop talking about dinosaurs now. Amazingly, there are other things to World of Warcraft besides dinosaurs, and people ask questions about those non-dinosaur aspects of the game.

Neo_L asks

Q the q: I have played since pretty much the start of Vanilla WoW. I have a job, family and sport which keeps me pretty busy but I have always locked off Sunday to play WoW. I've been able to keep up with the rest of the guild by putting in a 8-10 hour stretch once a week. I've not been a top raider but could always sub in from the waiting list. I have never done dailys before. With this expansion I find I can no longer keep up with my guild mates as I can't play each day. Is there anything I can do or is it time to finally leave WoW

You say you've never done dailies, but you don't say whether or not you don't want to do them. I'm going to assume you don't. If you in fact don't mind doing them, keep them in mind as a possible option. (You can in fact do two sets of dailies a week just running on weekends, which will unlock some valor point purchases for you.) Now, I'm assuming you're asking me if there's any way you can keep up with your guildmates just playing on the weekends. The answer is maybe. I don't know what your guild is up to: is it a 10 man guild, a 25 man, do they run heroic mode content or just normal mode? If they're just plugging away at normal mode stuff, then LFR gear (easily obtainable during that 8 to 10 hour block of weekend play time) and valor points to upgrade that gear will be more than enough to get you to where you want to be, considering that those raids were designed to be run by people in blue ilevel 463 gear.

However, it may be impossible for you to keep up if they're already pushing heroic modes. If that's the case, and you actually want to keep playing despite that, there's plenty to do for the weekend player. You can run Challenge Modes (gear is all normalized in Challenge Mode dungeons, so your raid geared friends will find themselves in gear no better than yours), explore the extensive pet battle system, work on the greatly improved archaeology system, and of course the already mentioned LFR come to mind as things you could do. It really comes down to what you want to do.

fczero77 asks

Q4tQ: so for the past 2 months I've ran all the raid finder raids I could and I've gotten zero drops, but other people I've played with have been getting the same drops 3 weeks in a row. Why is it that I can't get anything to drop for me but other people are getting gear they don't even need anymore?

Random loot is annoying that way. I ran Blackwing Lair for five years before I finally got Ashkandi, and while I didn't clear it every reset, I did clear it between once a month and once every two weeks from the time I was level 70 until it finally dropped during the middle of Cataclysm. That's a lot of Nefarian kills and I never even saw the bloody thing drop until the day I got it. Similarly, the only time Armageddon in Naxx 25 dropped for my raid is the time I wasn't there.

Random loot is random. Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you don't. That's really all it is.

NickVanWaes asks

Q4TQ: Why do people keep asking about adding High Elves as a new playable race for the Alliance? I see how it would make sense lore-wise, but I think the chances of Blizz giving the Alliance a race that has practically identical character models as one the Horde has had for years are pretty slim, right?

Well, with the addition of pandaren to the game, the whole silhouette argument's pretty much outdated. And as far as why people keep asking for it, it's partially old school Warcraft players who remember high elves in WCII as playable units. Since high elves exist in game as Alliance NPC's, people see them and wonder why they can't play one. It's human nature to want what you can't have, especially when you can see it right over there, just tantalizingly out of reach.

Plus it does make total sense. High elves are fighting alongside the 7th Legion in the Dragonblight, they're helping Jaina bring Dalaran into the Alliance fold, why not let us play them?

Scherbaddie asks

Why do people always complain about the golden lotus dailies, which are quick and easy, and then talk up the dominance offensive daily quests? I had to actually switch my talent points and cheese the system (ranged rogue ho!) just to be able to complete one of the quests inside that damned cave.

My main is a warrior, and I never had to do anything like that to finish any of the Dominance Offensive quests. My alt, also a warrior in far less gear than my main, never had any problem like that doing the Operation: Shieldwall quests.

Also, at least for me, it's not the difficulty of the quests themselves (I never had any problem doing any of the dailies for any of the factions) but rather, how they're presented. I really liked how the Dominance Offensive/Operation: Shieldwall quests presented the story of the questlines, weaving in dailies with stand-alone quests to show you how the various faction leaders are reacting to events and unfolding the war between the Horde and the Alliance, as well as how it's changing Pandaria. The Golden Lotus quest grind ends with a pretty sweet bit of story, true, but the DO/O:S quests have those sweet bits of story woven throughout, not just sitting there waiting for you at exalted. (Yes, there were some Golden Lotus stand alone quests as you leveled the faction, but they were in my opinion fairly forgettable and uninteresting compared to the last quests you get at exalted.)

Plus, I just plain hated the Golden Lotus grind. I disliked how it got longer and longer as it went. I disliked going from one hub, to two hubs, to finally three hubs in one day, with a stultifying amount of questing for one faction. And I really hated some of the quests, which were not hard so much as they were tedious, like the quests at the lake.

Subjective, but that's my answer.

Okay, next time I get to write the Queue (which may be a while) I probably won't get to write about dinosaurs, but if I do, it'll probably be a discussion of carcharodontosauridae, the clade that includes Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Tyrannotitan. Man, a Carcharodontosaur needs to show up in WoW.

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!