The Queue: In which stuff got weird

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.

This week has been kind of strange. I put together an image in Photoshop last year of Elsa in the Lich King's armor, because it was kind of funny. Then I stuck the image on Twitter, and a lot of people liked it. This week, it popped up on a news site with an article about how Elsa dolls have dethroned Barbie dolls as the dolls of preference this holiday season. A lot of people told me about this, I found the whole thing very amusing, and then the image was pulled.

Ah well. I still have the mental image of Barbie resigned to a Bolvar fate in my head, and that's enough for me.

Lamneth commented:

The dungeon system I miss from WoTLK was the Frozen Orb. They should make savage blood available via the LFD system. Even if it was just 1 or 2 at the end that everyone got to roll on. Would encourage people to stay for the whole dungeon and give me a reason to sign up for them when I already outgear them.

If they put Savage Blood in as a drop reward for completing a heroic dungeon, I would start doing heroics again immediately. Without question. As is stands, the amount of time I have to spend in queue as DPS and the lack of any rewards that are at all currently useful to me make heroics largely useless as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure there are plenty of other people still getting use out of them, I'm just not one of them.

gan7114 asked:

Is anyone else feeling burdened/inundated by garrison missions with ilvl requirements? I recently just used all my saved armor/weapon tokens and made the (VERY wrong) mistake of using them on only 4-5 followers, instead of spreading them out. Now half of my missions are lvl 100 with 630+ ilvl requirements that give boat loads of EXP or Highmual caches (which come with counters I'm too red for, thus fail), or sub 100 missions that give lousy EXP and rewards (which I don't understand, since all my followers are at lvl 100). I feel like I'm now paying the price for a bad decision by using tokens "improperly" and now the system is swamping me with either too low or too high missions.

Here's what you need to do. Get yourself a salvage yard, and a war mill. Both of these things will produce items to upgrade your follower's ilvl. It's not the fastest process in the world, but it will speed things up considerably from just waiting for the right missions to come along. I've managed to outfit most of my followers this way -- and if you've got a Salvage Yard, you can do pretty much any mission on the table and come out on top. I still send level 100 epic followers on solo missions that reward XP. They can't use the XP, but I can certainly use the salvage they come back with.

Loco asked:

Q4tQ with a spolier if you have not finished Nagrand: In the cur scene with Grommash he says that Thrall selected him and made him what he was. Small problem - his skin is not green, so is it Grommash from Azeroth or from Alternate Draenor? Something does not jive.

That's Garrosh Hellscream, not Grommash -- and his skin has always been brown. But as to your question, that was answered in the short story Hellscream, which I really recommend reading if you're interested in what Garrosh was up to when he arrived on Draenor with Kairoz.

Razwick82 asked:

QftQ: Traditional or otherwise, what's your favourite dish that you typically only get to eat around the holiday season? I think mine is probably the dip I made for this potluck (typically made by someone that isn't me). That being fiesta dip, which is a boatload of cream cheese, cheddar, tomatoes, peppers and garlic, baked. Yum. For dessert I think it'd have to be poppycock, which is candied popcorn with almonds and pecans.

My sister makes these amazing sweet potatoes -- hear me out. I'm not usually a huge sweet potato fan, here. But every holiday, she makes this thing, this concoction, and I have no idea what the heck she puts in it, but it's sweet potatoes with this kind of caramelized pecan crust on top and the stuff tastes like it should be in a pie crust instead of on my plate. I would happily eat it with some ice cream.

BaronOfTheLake asked:

Lore question: Why is the element of earth is always evil? Deathwing was bad enough by himself, but now the poor earth elementals in Nagrand. When will we realize that it's really water that is the true villain?

Hey now. Therazane isn't evil, she's just kind of angry -- mostly because people keep messing with her stuff. Keep in mind that Deathwing was evil not because he was the Aspect of the Earth, but because he had been in contact with the Old Gods, who quietly managed to get inside his dragony skull and convince him that ending the world would be a really excellent idea. A lot of what happens to the earth, and in kind the earth elementals, isn't really the fault of the elementals themselves. It's usually a byproduct of either corruption, or something else going on -- in Nagrand, it's kind of a combination of both, as the darkened naaru out there was slowly corrupting the orcs with the void, and that eventually led to the pale orcs enslaving elementals (with the help of Cho'gall, because that's just the kind of evil that is right up his alley.)

ScottLeyes asked:

Are followers that you recruit from the Inn permanent, or do they leave at the end of the week?

They are permanent -- they'd be pretty useless if they weren't, because they are level 90 when you recruit them. Or at least, every follower I've recruited from the inn has been level 90.

maestertk asked:

Q4TQ: Are the opposing factions starting zones phased? Attempted to break into Karabor today to see what it looked like, ended up getting frustrated at seeing no entrance and logged out on the roof.

Karabor is just the exterior -- there is no way to get inside, and even if you could get inside, there wouldn't be anything in there to speak of. At one point in the beta, you could get in and it looked as if they were building something, but that seems to have been scrapped. The doors are permanently closed, regardless of whether you're playing Alliance or Horde.

akmagrath asked:

So I changed my Garrison guards to Pandaren. How in the gods' name do I tunn it back to default guards? I am exalted with Orgrimmar, but there is no org rep in my Garrison as far as I can see.

If you ever want your default guards back again, your default racial representative (Stormwind for Alliance, Orgrimmar for Horde), is in your barracks, rather than in your town hall. Why, exactly, they stick around in the barracks and herd everyone else to the town hall, I'm not exactly sure about, but that's how it works!

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!