The Queue: Gold, mounts, and features past

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.

Ah, memories.

NickVanWaes asked:

Has anything been said about giving us a small amount of gold with our boosted lvl 90? I want to start a toon on a new server, but having a lvl 90 and zero gold seems pretty annoying.

I haven't heard anything about being given gold. The feature is semi-live on the PTR, but last time I tried using it, my boost got stuck at processing. It might not be entirely functional yet, or was bogged down when the PTR first went live. Personally, I don't think I'd have too much beef with not being given gold -- getting a starter pool of gold is relatively simple. A round of quests will give you a few hundred to get started. That said, it probably would suck if you ended up breaking all of your armor while learning how to play at 90 and not being able to repair.

There's likely an assumption that if you're boosting to 90, you already have a 90 with some gold you can mail over.

Zebu asked:

I still have never understood why so many hated underwater in Cataclysm. It is a unique change of pace. Were people having seizures? Where they getting confused? Was the quest line just too long? That I think had more to do with the hatred than it actually being underwater.

A little of this, a little of that. Some people have a difficult time navigating 3D spaces. There were complaints about it in The Burning Crusade in some of the daily hubs that had mobs flying around to pick on you on your flying mount. When most of the game is on a mostly 2D plane, everything dangerous is on the ground, it's a headache for some people to adjust to moving up and down and watching out for threats that could come from any angle. That isn't the case for everyone, but it is for some people.

Vashj'ir also had some questing hiccups where it felt like the zone had reached its conclusion, but you still have multiple quest hubs left ahead of you. A flow issue, for the most part. It made the zone feel as if it overstayed its welcome.

I liked Vashj'ir, the navigation wasn't a problem for me, but the quest flow was certainly its low point. Being put up against the much shorter, much simpler Hyjal didn't work in Vashj'ir's favor, either.

gazaa07 asked:

Will Ask a Faction Leader ever come back?

Probably not. That was Mike Sacco's personal playground and he grew bored of the toys.

Liopleurodon said in response:

I was thinking a bit earlier about the Two Bosses Enter series.

See, I personally liked doing that one, and people ask about it from time to time, but the unfortunate reality is that its performance was abysmal. It ended up being a big waste of time and front page real estate. I always maintain the possibility of it coming back, but for a feature based around reader interaction, it failing to hold peoples' interest isn't great. My attempts to ... spice up the feature never went over well, either.

Kelthador asked:

How excited would you be if Blizzard announced a new feature that allows you to summon your mount next to you, as opposed to instantly mounting it?

If I remember correctly (and I must be because someone else mentioned it in the comments), this was their original concept for how mounts appeared when you summoned them. We're talking pre-beta here, I don't think the idea ever reached the eyes of the general audience. When you summoned your mount, it would run up to you rather than appear beneath you. They changed it because players/playtesters hated waiting around while their mount tottered over. If you're mounting up, you want to get somewhere quickly. If you wanted to wait around, you'd walk.

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!