The Queue: Plants are pretty awesome

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) is answering all kinds of questions today.

I've been in the Warlords of Draenor beta since it began and there are still environments that completely take my breath away. Whoever was doing all of the plants and trees and grass and mushrooms and other assorted flora of Draenor deserves a crate or two of cookies.

Klok asked:

For what reason(s) does one need 5 Warriors?

Well I imagine when being attacked by a rampaging army of bloodthirsty orcs, the more warriors you have, the better off you'd be.

But seriously though, I think we can just safely say that Rossi really, really, really loves the class he plays.

CTR_Aldineri asked:

How do "average" raid teams handle a raid tier that is...well, tiered? WoD will launch with two raids in its first tier (Highmaul & Blackrock Foundry). These two different raids will offer loot at different iLvls. With a raid team that only raids six hours a week (and likely won't really start progression until January since the raids launch in the middle of retail hell), how should we go about tackling the content? I suppose a good example would be how your teams handled Mogu'shan Vaults, Heart of Fear, and Terrace of the Endless Spring. Thanks!

My raid guild at the beginning of Mists raided slightly more often than yours -- we had nine hours a week vs. the six you guys are doing, but honestly I think we approached it the same as any other guild was doing. You just take it a step at a time. If I'm remembering correctly, with Mists, we hit Mogu'shan first, and once we had cleared the place, we spent two nights clearing Mogu'shan and then hopped to Heart of Fear for the third night. Eventually we got to the point where we could clear Mogu'shan in an evening, so we did that, then hopped to Heart of Fear. And then nobody really needed gear from Mogu'shan, so we just concentrated on Heart of Fear until we completed it, and started the same process with Heart of Fear and Terrace.

Warlords only has the two raids in its first tier, so I'd just approach it the same way -- begin with the one that has the lower ilvl rewards, keep working on that until you clear it, and once you've cleared it, go try working on the other one. You might want to spend a couple of weeks simply clearing the first raid out before you attempt the other one, though, especially if you're only raiding six hours a week -- give your raid group a chance to get a little more geared before you hit the harder content.

stellarleader asked:

Q4tQ: It has been said since day one that the Timeless Isle appears and goes away just as easily. Do you think we will see it 'go away' anytime soon?

No. The story behind the Timeless Isle was pretty much there both to explain why the heck that island wasn't there at the beginning of the expansion, and to provide some important plot elements for the story as it moved from Mists into Warlords. Blizzard isn't exactly in the habit of removing giant swaths of content, and there isn't anything on the Timeless Isle that is "limited edition" and warrants removal. So I'm pretty sure we'll see the place stick around, at least for now.

Eliza asked:

Since we'll be able to mine and herb anything anywhere at any skill level...how will the skillups work with that? Can we level herbalism to 600 picking peacebloom, or will those still grey out eventually and we'd have to upgrade to briarthorn?

You could, in fact, level up to 600 picking Peacebloom if you wanted to. Plants no longer need a minimum level to pick. Your skill level instead determines how good you are at picking something -- so a lower skill level will get you petals that you can assemble into an herb once you've gathered enough. But once your skill has been sufficiently progressed, you'll get the full herb, instead of just pieces of it. You never really "outlevel" an herb.

thilithedruid asked:

Okay, this is being asked with a little gulp - is the Green Fire quest going away? I don't remember reading anything about it, but not sure I am going to get it done before WoD (unless it's going away).

It will still be attainable, but there's a special achievement and title for completing it before 6.0.2, so I would say if you've been dragging your heels on getting this particular task out of the way, you might want to get a move on!

Teslacöil asked:

Q4tQ Just resubbed after about 4 months off, to get ready for WoD...spent way too much time on Timeless Isles...anything I should be doing to get ready? Not a big achieves guy, and I never progressed much on the Cloak...not worried about it

If you're not really into achievements or anything like that, I'd say take your time, check out the things you haven't seen yet, do some LFR or maybe even some Flex raiding to get yourself some better-than-average gear for leveling in Warlords. If you've got any Mists items you've been meaning to sell, this would also be a good time to go through your stock and get rid of the stuff you aren't going to need. There's some stuff that's going away when 6.0.2 comes out, but it's all pretty much achievement stuff, and if that's not really your bag, you don't need to worry about it. Gear, on the other hand, is always handy to have when you're starting out in a new expansion -- not having to worry about replacing anything for a level or two is always kind of nice.

xeraphax asked:

I'm curious if the lack of flying impacts on game play on WoD. Are there frustrating areas where you have to go around long ways to get to where you want to go or is the flow so good that you don't even notice or care that you can't fly?

I think the only time I have ever wished that I had flying was when I had to get from Gorgrond to Talador and didn't feel like riding through the southern path. But honestly, a quick trip on a flight path would have taken care of that problem, I just didn't feel like riding back up to the nearest area with a flight point only to fly back down. Otherwise, the only times in which I've noticed the distinct lack of flight are those times in which I look around and go "Huh, there are no dragons or other assorted flying creatures loitering overhead."

The zones are pretty well laid out in terms of there being paths that go from point a to point b. And in Nagrand, at the very least, there's some really cool moments where you're kind of glad you can't fly, in a way. Now maybe this is just because I've been playing the game since vanilla, but there are out-of-reach areas in Nagrand that pretty much actively encourage you to do all the wall-climbing and jumping and hopping around that was discouraged back in those days.

We did it anyway, but it was discouraged.

I like how that sense of exploration has been tucked back into the game. In Cata, all of that jumping around and finding strange hidden places was pretty much stripped from all the vanilla content. Exploration in flight-enabled expansions didn't really feel as cool because you didn't really need to work at getting anywhere. You could just fly there. I kind of like the challenge of having to climb stuff again -- I missed it.

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!