The Queue: Thunder Isle, hooooo

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

I'm getting pretty excited for the new raid, especially after the Ra-den reveal (which I'll discuss later).

brendonmiller02 asked:

I want to know what you guys think about how Blizzard is still charging for server transfers. Don't take this as a complaint, but I just find it odd still that they charge for transfers when a good amount of MMO's on the market either launched with no transfer fee, or removed it after a few months in. I have 3 characters on another server right now that I'd love to have on my home server -- but to get them all there it would be almost 170 bucks (as they are Alliance, and I am now Horde)...and I definitely don't have the time to level three more characters to max level.

Thoughts?

I understand why Blizzard charges for the service: it requires support on every side of the service, from the back-end server stuff to front-end customer service, and as I understand it WoW's server tech (and ergo server transfer tech) is a little different than other MMOs. What I do wish is that you could mass-transfer your characters and there was a maximum you could pay -- let's say $50 -- for all of your characters. That's why I'm so tetchy about transferring to a new server nowadays. I'd have to pay hundreds of dollars to bring all my dudes over to a new server, and, well, screw that. If I could send them all at once for a flat fee, it'd be much better.

RyanWilliamVoll asked:

I haven't played my lvl 90 in a while, and jump back on it this week, last playing it before 5.1, and thought to myself, where do I upgrade this gear if I decide to?

The gear upgrade NPCs are by the transmog and void storage folks in the capital city or Vale hub for your faction.

Aubrey asked:

How come certain flying mounts can't be used in ground-only zones, such as the DMF? I would say it's because they lack the proper run animations, but really most of them don't. Protodrakes even have both a walk and a run animation!

My next thought was perhaps their size, but we've all seen how big things like Mammoths and Traveller's Yaks can get, so that seems like a silly reason. Plus these days we can use about half our our flying mounts on the ground, Hippos, Gryphs, and Wyverns at least. The only ones I'm sure we'll never see available are Nether Rays.

So my question is, why the restriction on the others?

It's my understanding that the ones that are restricted are ones that don't have jumping animations.

Geekboydotca asked:

Do the epic tailoring patterns drop in LFR? Or do you have to be in the traditional raid format? The loot table comparisons aren't entirely clear on that. Or maybe I'm just clueless, I dunno.

They only drop in regular or heroic mode.

Connelallison asked:

So it looks like Ra-den is a captured Titan. What does everyone think of this?

He's a captured Keeper, which is slightly different, but I think it rules. I was hoping for a story turn like this to explain what the deal with the mogu was. And I loved the Keepers of Ulduar.

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!