The Queue: An ongoing debate

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) likes to bake the occasional pie.

See that pie up there? That's a chocolate pecan pie. My sister makes one sort of similar to it, only she just adds chocolate to the melted butter, rather than chucking chocolate chips into the pie. But that's really beside the point. Mostly I want to know how you all pronounce pecan, because there seems to be some sort of pronunciation war going on here that I wasn't aware of, as vicious as those soda vs. pop vs. coke wars. I'm sure this is just a regional thing. Right?

NathanO asked:

Are the WI writers all convinced that WoD will save WoW?

Well I can't really speak for the whole staff, but I guess I can speak for myself!

To me, using the word "save" sounds like WoW is in some sort of super-crazy danger zone on the brink of shutting down entirely. While it has seen some major subscription drops over the last year, I don't think it's time to put the ship on red alert just yet. But it would be nice to see an upswing in those subscriptions again, and yes, I think Warlords will do a fine job of bringing in new people, and bringing other people back. Going back to the characters and history of those old RTS games seems incredibly appropriate for WoW's 10-year anniversary, and those that remember or played those old games may feel a yearning to return. The whole free level 90 at the outset is nice, too -- it means that new players that come in aren't going to feel like they have to play for months and months just to get to the new content that they paid for. We'll see!

FenrisUlfr asked:

Do you think Hemet Nesingwary is going to be a part of our WoD Adventures? Since he was in Nagrand, would he find the parallel world too nostalgic, or look for extinct species?

Since we've seen Nesingwary in one form or another in almost every expansion, that doesn't feel too far out of the realm of possibility.

ganzaa07 asked:

When WoD comes out, Hit and Exp will be gone on gear as well as Dodge / Parry so my Q4tQ is this: If you could get rid of one feature from WoW forever, what would it be and why?

Reforging. But I'm getting my wish in Warlords, so I'm happy with that. Reforging was a really, really cool idea that quickly went from fun to a gigantic pain in the rear end. Every time I get a new piece of gear, I have to go in and shuffle every piece of gear I have. It's getting a little expensive, and it's time consuming.

alpha5099 asked:

Is there an option I'm missing that will have quests show me all of the rewards I'm eligible for, not just what I've set as my Loot Specialization? I appreciate now that all the quest rewards are things I can use, but it's annoying to switch my LS to Resto when I don't need the Enh reward. I'd much prefer it if they just showed me everything my class can take.

Not that I'm aware of, but I play a rogue, so this doesn't exactly apply to me in the same way as a class with multiple roles. Maybe someone with more experience in this matter can throw you an answer in the comments. And ... scratch my reforging answer to the last question, because this thing is something I'd like to see gone. I liked having multiple options for quest rewards. Even if I couldn't use a caster dagger as a rogue, sometimes the model was cool enough that I'd pick the reward simply to use it for transmogrification. I missed having that option in Mists.

HemttTanker asked:

Why does the new battle.net launcher only try to sell current Blizzard games instead of all Activision games?

Because Battle.net is a system designed by Blizzard for Blizzard games. Activision Blizzard is a holding company, but Activision and Blizzard Entertainment are still two separate entities, publishing separate game titles. There isn't any crossover there.

CRtheMighty asked:

I thought of an actual WoW question! Since dragons as we know them are not native to Draenor, and thus the Dragonmaw clan wasn't a thing until they invaded Azeroth, where would all those guys be hanging? I kinda want to run into Zuluhed (and ask if he is wiggity-whacked or just regular type). As a tangential aside, I wonder what they'd make of Zaela.

I don't believe we're going to be seeing any of the Dragonmaw around in Warlords. If we do, maybe they'll have a different name altogether. I'm guessing that technically, the clan didn't even exist in this altered Draenor, but honestly that's just a guess. They could write it off in a multitude of different ways, if they wanted to!

@Maoclavijor asked via Twitter:

is the forsaken cata lore quest line ends in silverpine or does it continues at hillsbrad?

It continues in Hillsbrad ... sort of. You don't see any more of the fallout from Silverpine in Hillsbrad, but you definitely get more information about the Forsaken and what they're up to. Hillsbrad is one of my favorite zones in that area -- it starts out really goofy, and then dovetails into this far more serious storyline. Plus, you get to see Drek'Thar eventually. Drek'Thar is pretty cool.

@soulseared asked:

Why do the Paragons fight against the Sha of Fear (Empress) which is technically a breath of Yor'sahj when they serve Yor'Sahj?

Because the cycle of mantid life was disrupted, and if left to her own devices, the Empress -- who had clearly lost her mind as far as the Klaxxi were concerned -- would wipe out mantid civilization altogether. The Klaxxi wanted to restore the cycle so that the mantid could continue to thrive and grow, and that meant getting the cuckoo Empress out of the picture.

Keep in mind, as far as the Klaxxi knew coming into Mists, Y'shaarj was dead. The Sha may have been evidence of its last breath, but the Old God itself was gone. They didn't know about the heart of Y'shaarj. Nobody did, until Garrosh decided to go dig it up. And once the heart was retrieved, I suspect the Paragons figured that Garrosh could somehow resurrect their Old God, since the heart was still whispering away.

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!