The Queue: Missing the little things, faster expansions, models, and circular goats

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

So how many of you were up late and got your Diablo 3 wizard (best class, if you disagree you're plain wrong) to 70?

Chris asked:

Q for the Queue: Does anyone else miss the "Little things"? Now I'm talking about I just today was looking forward to April Fools day, but then I realized Blizzard didn't do anything last year for it. I got quite sad. Did you also know we have had (as of now) two summer olympics and three winter olympics, yet only one time was The Spirit of Competition and the Tabard of Competition available? I'm aware that all of these things are content, and they are constantly working on things to bring out expansions, but these "little things" are the things that make the difference, in my opinion anyway. I'm not sure there is a question anymore, but your thoughts?

I agree entirely.

I think that Blizzard has grown a bit "too big" for these little things, and that's kinda sad. When WoW was starting out the designers would toss stuff in all the time. Sometimes there wasn't a rhyme or reason to their madness, and that was cool.

But now it feels like if they wanted to release new content, they'd need to get it very early into a patch (well in advance of the event) and avoid millions of players downloading a 200kb patch. That makes sense in terms of data costs. And it makes sense in terms of business planning. And it even makes sense in terms of sites like Wowhead and MMO-Champion datamining everything.

But ... just because those things make sense doesn't mean we can't miss the little surprises.

Maybe someday we'll get that again. Even though Blizzard is developing more for the long term, they are becoming more agile, so there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

Nick van asked:

Q4tQ: Does it seem likely Blizzard came back from its desire to deliver "faster and smaller" expansions? Faster clearly isn't going to be the case and "smaller" also implies "cheaper", but it seems unlikely that they would first raise the cost of an expansion and then lower it back for the next...

Blizzard never promised to deliver faster and smaller expansions, just faster.

Now, do I think they're retracting from their intent to deliver the fast expansion? Yes, I do. I know there's a lot of people out there that are going to argue with me about it, but right now unless the beta is very short, we're going to see an expansion in development either as long or longer than previous expansions.

And either way, it's been six months since anything substantial has come out about Warlords, which in terms of content and access to new information, is the longest we've gone between the final patch of the game and a release of new information.

I'm kinda at a loss as to what Blizzard is doing right now... My feelings have been pretty clear that they need to release some major stuff (or information) to keep the player base engaged. It could happen any day now. Let's hope.

How asked:

What new race model are you most looking forward to? I'd really like to level a troll shaman, but I want to see the model first. I'm also looking forward to the male night elf models (I'm pretty much happy with the female night elves).

I'm looking forward to the night elf model the most too. I'm guessing that Blizzard will knock it out of the park, given their success with the currently release models. The night elves occupy such a unique stance in WoW's lore, directly akin to the other elves in high fantasy, and seeing such an iconic form take shape will be great.

TKC asked:

in the west part of the valley of the four winds sometimes the goats herd in a circular formation. What is up with that?

I just noticed this the other day too, and I thought it strange. Part of me wonders if it's just a glitch in the matrix, that the creature code pathing isn't working right.

It also might be intended and just here to make people raise an eyebrow. In which case, well done, Blizzard.

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!