The Queue: I like draenei

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) can't decide if this trailer or the Ulduar trailer is her favorite.

Man, I always forget exactly how many chills this trailer gave me when it originally came out. I miss Burning Crusade. I totally loved that expansion.

ScottLeyes asked:

Q for the style editors of the Q: Is Blizzard a Collective, or a single entity? That is, which form is more correct: "Is Blizz going to nerf Paladins?" or "Are Blizz going to nerf Paladins?" And, as a followup of course, why does Blizz keep nerfing Paladins?

Blizzard, or Blizzard Entertainment, is a corporation. As a corporation, it is an it. The developers within the corporation are people, and can be referred to as they, since there are many of them. So technically speaking, none of those statements are correct, because the It that is the corporation does not do any nerfing. To be technically correct, you'd say "Are the developers going to nerf Paladins?"

iqwacp asked:

I am looking for a good looking polearm (not staff) xmog for my draenei paladin. Any sugestions?

There's actually a pretty cool website out there called World of Wardrobes that has visuals for most of the armor and weapons in game, sorted by color -- I like going there when I'm looking for transmog pieces, largely because I usually put things together by color theme. Keep in mind that the site has models for items that no longer exist in game, though. It also links to Wowhead, so you can see where to get said items, or, in the case that it's an item that isn't in game anymore, you can use Wowhead's beautiful "Same model as" tab to find something similar. The site has models for all of the polearms. That said, I always liked Hellreaver from Hellfire Ramparts. It is red, with a lava effect that flows over the blade of the weapon, and it is huge.

Clint asked:

Question on Faction change prices - has it always been $30? For some reason I was under the impression all of those types of transactions (race / name / appearances) were $25 for some reason. I've honestly never really looked at them until I accidentally clicked it while looking at my account settings today. After checking the other prices and seeing them range from $10 - $25, it made me curious....

Yep! It's always been $30. Server transfers and race changes have always been $25. Appearance changes (character re-customization) are $15, and name changes are $10. If you are doing a race change, the character re-customization is included with the service.

AlexGoeldner asked:

Q4Q, do the forsaken have free will ? multiple times during the quest lines through silverpine forest we see a large group of humans being raised as undead for the forsaken army, do they have free will or are they just undead slaves controlled by Sylvanas ? Do i have free will?

The Forsaken are actually a faction of the Scourge that regained their free will and memories of their past lives -- so yes, they do. It's what makes them Forsaken. However, the quests you are referring to show the val'kyr raising mass amounts of undead. Now while the player experience in the Forsaken starting zone allows players to "choose" whether or not they want to serve Sylvanas, the mass raising done by the val'kyr shows the new group of undead as being ... well, mindless servants, to a degree. So which is correct? Are the val'kyr creating legions of mindless undead, akin to the Lich King's Scourge? That's one of those iffy lore things that hasn't quite been delved into just yet. You, however, as a player, definitely do have free will. You're not a mindless zombie, no worries!

iDogtag asked:

Q4TQ: Has Blizzard said if they are considering cross-faction grouping for RealID friends? I'm Alliance and have many friends that play WoW, but about half of them I can't play with unless I roll a Horde. I know there are lore reasons that stop us from grouping up those in another faction normally, but wouldn't gameplay trump lore in this respect?

No. The faction divide is one of those sacred elements that this game was based on from day one. This isn't so much a matter of lore trumping gameplay (although currently, lorewise, I think it would be a cold day in Molten Core before anyone Alliance agreed to willingly work with anyone Horde and vice-versa) as it is a matter of changing the fundamental design of the game. I don't think we'll ever see that happen.

ChrisMcArthur asked:

There are people on the timeless isle who are taking an albatros ride up to the very top of the Huolon bridge. They have been up there for hours (at least 3 huo spawns, that I saw, I believe from watching chat they have been there much longer).

They are killing Huo up there, out of reach of everybody else trying to tag him. Even if somebody is lucky enough to get a tag before they taunt him up there the corpse winds up out of reach. They then spend time in general chat laughing at people who couldn't get the tag in, and talking about how much they miss the days when they could run PuG raids and ninja all the loot and make fun of people who complained about that.

My question is this: is this considered griefing? If so will Blizz actually penalize these players for these actions if they are reported? There are literally hundreds of people who have missed out on Huolon kills beccause they weren't camping on top of the bridge, some of them didn't go up there for the sole purpose of trying to taunt huo down before the group of griefers could taunt him out of reach of everyone else.

They aren't doing this for any reason other than making people lose out on a chance at the kill. There is no benefit to them, and they have blatantly said in general chat that they are actively trying to ruin the gameplay for other people.

This is kind of a tricky question to answer. Is it griefing? Yes, to a degree -- they're deliberately disrupting the gameplay of other people. The fact that they are bragging about this and talking about it in general chat means that yes, you could report them for it -- be sure you mention the time and date that it occurred so someone can go back over the general chat logs. However, I don't exactly know if anything would be done about it, for one big reason -- there's in-game ways to counter the griefing.

You could hop an albatross and ride to the top of the bridge yourself, thus guaranteeing you get the tag. You could purchase a Golden Glider, swim out to the Timeless Waters, mount up on a flying mount and fly in, hitting your glider once you are dismounted and aiming for the top of the bridge. Someone could get up there, taunt Huo, and drag him down so everyone else could tag.

Because there is an in-game solution to the problem being caused, I don't know if it would be considered as dire an offense as say, kiting Kazzak into Stormwind. Back in vanilla, Kazzak would heal himself every time he killed someone. Because there was a mass waterfall of constantly re-spawning NPCs with relatively low health in Stormwind, this mean that Kazzak would constantly heal himself, and therefore could not be killed. This was a definite case of griefing, because there was no way for a player to actually combat the action being taken by the griefing player. Since there are ways to actually get up on the bridge and tag Huolon yourself, I don't know if it would be considered as serious an offense.

So yes, you can go ahead and report the people that are doing this and bragging about it in General Chat. It can't hurt to try! But I don't know if Blizzard would take action to prevent that from continually happening, because there are player actions, things that you can do as a player to solve the issue. Either way, I'm sorry -- some people are jerks.

morvackthemountmimic stated:

This comment was accidentally made

This answer was accidentally given.

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