The Queue: Oh hey, it's Wednesday

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) has sometimes been compared to Wednesday, for inexplicable reasons.

It's Wednesday, so I typed Wednesday into Google and found this odd video of a decidedly perky Wednesday teaching Lurch how to dance. Look, it's better than the silly camel commercial.

mcoppelmans asked:

Question: Does anybody know if the remove of dodge and parry will just be for the new expansion, or for all item sets?

Usually when they say something is gone, it's gone. Completely gone. You don't see spellpower on old gear anymore, or armor penetration, or any of the other stats they've removed from the game. Ghostcrawler is pretty serious business when he says stuff's gone. It's gone.

EWOKinLA asked:

Why is Garona so loved and Medan so hated?

Garona was introduced in lore quite some time ago. She's a half-orc, she's an assassin, she kicks butt, and by and large people tend to agree that she's pretty cool. Her son, Med'an, was introduced in the Warcraft comics series by brute-forcing a love story into a place where there was none before, all for the purpose of introducing a super-kid that could save the world. He has the powers of several different classes, and everyone gushes about how amazing he is.

Basically he's like your run-of-the-mill superhero, with all the godlike powers and kind, benevolent, caring disposition one would expect. In short, he works okay in comics. He doesn't really work within Warcraft, and his story boiled down to "Oh look! Azeroth's totally in danger of annihilation! Uh-oh, who's going to save us now? Wait, here's a kid that nobody's heard of before, and he just so happens to have all the powers and qualities that we need in order to save the world! Hooray!"

... really, he was just an awful character. You remember how annoying Wesley Crusher was in the early seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation? He's like that. Only worse.

Netlive asked:

When WoD goes live and the new raid teir will be flex sized, will we still be able to cross relm it by using OQ or whatever blizzard's new in-game OQ?

Yes and no! You'll be able to use cross-realm for all raids except for Mythic difficulty.

demon.within.x asked:

Q4tQ: What qualifies as a "toy" item in game? just the fun on use items? or can we see the ones we have to equipped to use be added as well?

That's a good question, and one I don't really have an answer for! I know for sure that items that are not equipped, like the Puntable Marmot and the other things you find on rares in Mists, all definitely count as toys. I don't think they'd count items that you have to equip, solely for the reason that you have to equip them to use them -- but that's just conjecture. We really won't know for sure until we see the beta come out and get a good look at the new system.

eelynek asked:

QFTQ: What does "maintenance" entail every Tuesday? I am clueless, but I always imagine Orgrimmar and Stormwind being shut down. Then armies of janitors come through and sweep every corner of the city, restocking the lakes and ponds, and giving the shopkeepers a smoke break.

Well ... there's a lot of reasons for maintenance. Sometimes it's to apply hotfixes or bug fixes, sometimes it's to set things up in preparation for a patch, or to release a patch. Sometimes it's just a realm restart. The realm restarts hardly take any time at all, and I imagine they're for the same reason that people recommend occasionally restarting electronics every now and again. Even my cell phone yells at me if I don't restart it once a week, for reasons that remain a mystery to me.

PaulLouis-Seize asked:

QFTQ: Do we know if they will be updating druid forms? I know they did them recently, but I'd still like to see an update of my troll kitty form.

Maybe they will at some point in the very, very distant future, but I doubt it's really any kind of a priority. They just redid them all not too long ago.

Dopefreshan asked:

I just took a three month break due to school, and now I'm back but trying to maximize the small allotment of time I've set aside for wow. Any advice on what's best to do? I have 4 90's that are in 5.1-ToT gear, plus alts, but can't bring myself to start on the new dailies for four separate 90s. I stopped right as SoO dropped, if that helps. Thanks for your advice in advance.

Get thee to the Timeless Isle. Bind-on-Account gear tokens drop like crazy over there for characters that are visiting the zone for the first time. It shouldn't take you too long to amass a pile of new gear for whatever alts you'd like -- and there's only one daily quest on the island.

SallyBowls asked:

Q4Q: how much do you think the books are complicating the game/product? E.g., there are some people who think you should learn about game lore in the game. but mostly I am thinking about stories/dates. After knowing the title of the book, I knew who I was betting on for leader of the horde. And now we have the June book date. Shipping the book after the expansion would seem a bit odd and not having a new patch from sept thru june would be very bad. Software is problematic enough without also having to coordinate dates with paper publishing.

I don't think they really complicate the game at all in terms of release dates. Keep in mind the dates listed on Amazon or Barnes and Noble are malleable, they can change if necessary -- they aren't set in stone. The books are a side product. If anything, in terms of release dates and whatnot, I'd say the game complicates the process of writing/publishing the books, rather than vice versa. Books aren't just something you can crank out and publish on a moment's notice. Authors need time to write, and editors need time to proof, printers need time to print -- it's a time-consuming process. Trying to line all that up with the release of a video game isn't easy.

As for titles giving away information, I don't think any of Blizzard's titles have really given away information. The Vol'jin book was pretty much expected because the end of the Dagger in the Dark scenario was left really open-ended, and the perfect place for a novel to fit in. The novel itself didn't mention Vol'jin thinking about being the next Warchief at all, really.

john14 asked:

With regards to the real-id cross realm zoning, how is the realm everyone ends up on determined? Example, Ysondre's Galleon is up, but Kel'Thuzad's isn't; how do you ensure you end up on the realm with the world boss up? This assumes there is at least one person from the "target realm" present in the raid group. Have seen some confusion in groups over this, so a little clarification would be nice.

Generally speaking, the party leader or raid leader determines the server. In larger raids, however, it's whatever realm the majority of the players in the raid are from, I believe. So if your raid leader in your example is from Ysondre, the raid will be formed on Ysondre -- unless your raid is one dude from Ysondre and the rest from Kel'Thuzad. In that case, you're going to be on Kel'Thuzad.

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!