The Queue: Happy belated day, Canada
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.
Sorry we missed your day, Canada. We'll remember next yeah, eh?
Paul asked:
Question : Timeline wise, when did the outlands world explode in to the floating land masses it is today? Pre warcraft 1?
The end of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. As Erebhir said ion the comments, things went to hell for Draenor (Outlands) after Ner'zhul tried to open too many portals. Ner'zhul isn't a nice guy.
JDPatrick asked:
I recently made a set of Fel Armor for a guildie as he leveled his alt. He asked me the age-old question, "Why can't I transfer soulbound gear to another alt after I am done using it?" I thought, with the advent of transmogrification, Blizzard has already made it possible to change certain properties of items for in-game gold. Why not have an in-game way to buyback "BoE" status for soulbound items? Of course, I'd love to have account-wide gear transfer ... but that is another issue entirely.
The idea of BoE vs BoP (Bind on Pickup) is to prevent the really good gear from destroying the economy, and moreso to ensure that the best things are mainly recieved via skill-based play. Now whether that skill is in PvE or PvP is of no concern, because the best gear requires it in some form.
I have to imagine that gear will truly be Bind on Account soon -- that ever sought after cross-realm transfers, either through an account bank or an account mail.
I doubt, however, that blizzard will ever allow the BoP distinction to be removed from gear. It's needed there, and the inclusion of some of the better pieces in the black market indicates that they're (at least for now) okay with leaving the old pieces BoP as well.
JDPatrick also asked...
Queue: With the advent of flexible raiding, is it possible that Blizzard will scale content for a three-person group in a 5-man dungeon? Will it scale down that far? Of course, my read on things is that full implementation of flex raiding will come not with patch 5.4, but with the next expansion. Thanks in advance (to the smart readers of the Queue that already know the answer).
This is a great idea, but the 5-man dungeon is sorta a staple of the WoW experience. In some ways I think that they're more likely to remove 5-man dungeons entirely than implement some sort of scaling to them. Also scaling 10 bosses in raid environment is a lot different than scaling 40 bosses in a whole expansion's dungeon crawl.
Flex raiding will be fully implemented in 5.4 I think. There's no indication that Blizzard is skimping on it. However I'm sure that the next xpac will bring about more iteration on it.
Junito asked:
Do you think WoW could benefit from having even more solo content? Such as having every instance and raid offer solo versions of themselves so players can get to explore everything in a more personal way.
Do you ever see Blizzard releasing an expansion the size of the original WoW with as many levels?
To your first question, no, I don't think WoW needs more solo content. If anything I think there needs to be a bit more forced group content. I like the new daily hubs and everything, because they require random strangers to work together -- much like it was back in Classic. However... while the solo leveling is nice, I don't like that my experience is mainly alone when leveling. Granted I could jump into a dungeon, but when I'm not forced to, I'm more likely to take the path of least resistance, and that's soloing. When there is a greater reason to group, and if I'm forced, I'm always more apt to be happier and more connected with my character.
What I'm looking for isn't lack of flexibility in content; just a return to that awesome feeling of your first Deadmines at level 16. That was an awesome feeling, and I really miss that.
To your second question... yes, I do. I think at some point Blizzard is going to need to push the rest button on all of WoW's content. I have a feeling this might start at level 101, and go until 160. More on this in another article...
Rode asked:
No Canada day Themed queue? I am disappointed in wow-insider, hey!
Matt Rossi took the day off yesterday to celebrate his beloved Canadia. Sorry, eh?
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!
