The Queue: Garrosh, Gul'dan, and other madness
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
For a Sunday, you all sure were talkative yesterday! That's a good thing and I appreciate it.
MasterX asked:
I'm interested in why Garrosh didn't slaughter Gul'dan when he had the chance in WoD. He should know full well he's solely responsible for betraying the Orc, their culture, and later their entire race to the Burning Legion. Just because Garrosh stepped in, doesn't mean he won't betray again.
I suppose this isn't really a question here, but I like it anyway. I'm pretty interested in Garrosh's role, too. He's been totally downplayed so far beyond his actual escape to Draenor. We don't know for a fact he has a position of leadership in the Iron Horde. We know that he won't be a boss of any variety and he isn't our Big Bad out there. It's possible he shows up on this alternate Draenor, tells the Iron Horde what's coming, and then they discard him like an oily rag. After all that's happened, the actual warlords of Draenor still might not see him in the best light. Maybe Gul'dan shanks Garrosh rather than the other way around. Or maybe Garrosh sees some need for Gul'dan -- perhaps only Gul'dan would know how to open a portal to Azeroth at all.
It'll be interesting to see for certain.
LarGand asked:
I'm wondering what happens with the character I boost when I pre-order. If the Xpac brings the introductory quests, do I HAVE to wait to play my new 90, or can I play right away and learn as I go?
You'll be able to play your 90 immediately.
DanielHudson asked:
With the cuts in budget and staff and articles, will we also see a significant drop off in articles per week?
Not significant, no. I won't say for a fact that there won't be any fewer articles (you'll notice our Breakfast Topic went up an hour later today than it usually does) but the difference in volume will not be significant. You'll see 11 articles from us today instead of the usual 12. Some days you'll still see that 12. You might even still see that 12 today, depending on the sort of news that comes in today. Not a big difference. In the comments, I saw that people were using Saturday and Sunday as an indicator of the site going forward. We've always posted half as much on the weekends as we do the weekdays -- every other hour, rather than every hour. That's been true for years.
The only real thing that will change is that you see fewer names writing a narrower spread of recurring features -- features being a different beast from news, editorials, so forth. Most seem to be under the impression that every article we post is equal in the grand numbers game. Not true. Some things are more expensive than others, and the things that are expensive are not necessarily the most successful. Sometimes the niche things costs the most to produce. I also see people using comment count as the primary metric for gauging the popularity of a piece. In many cases, it's often the opposite. Sometimes nearly no one comments on a runaway hit that blows everything else out of the water. Sometimes solid information doesn't provoke commentary. Likewise, something that gets a small group of people fired up is going to generate tons of comments, but they might be the only people reading it at all.
Overall, our volume won't change much. As Adam Holisky mentioned in the comments yesterday, we often receive far more articles pitches from our staff in a day than we actually use. Going forward, we're likely to use more of them to fill in the gaps that used to be class columns and the other features we had to let loose.
arixian697 asked:
Wait the level 90 boost includes boosted professions? I hadn't heard this. What level will you start at for the professions?
Don't feel bad, I missed the specifics of this for a long time, too. As far as I know, there hasn't been an easy-to-find official source for all of the details, just bits and pieces that trickled out here and there combined with testing on the PTR. That's why I asked Matthew Rossi to post exactly what we know about the character boost.
If your character is above level 60 (I would assume being 60 with some experience gained toward level 61 counts) then your learned professions will jump up to 600 skill. If your character is below level 60, they will not get a profession boost. I suppose it's meant for those who are not getting the full benefit of boosting to 90 from level 1.
@SylleeMage asked:
how is a raven like a writing desk?
Dwell on the riddles of madmen and you are likely to fall mad yourself.
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!
