The Queue: Hearthstone classes, maintenance, cinematics, and weapon names

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.

Good afternoon, Queuers!

Sorry this Queue is late, some stuff came up that we had to deal with today. But fear not, we've got a Queue full of goodness for you today.

Dustin asked:

How likely is it that Blizzard will release a Death Knight class for Hearthstone? Curse of Naxxramas is the PERFECT place to include it and I feel it is sorely missed from the line up. Also, who do you think would make the best hero to represent the class? I'm leaning fairly heavily towards Darion Mograine, but Thassarian would be neat as well. The Lich King, while an amazing choice, seems like he is too high ranking of a lore character to be used.

I think it's very likely, I just don't think we'll see it for a bit. That kind of content is perfect for an expansion, and Blizzard has a great opportunity to draw upon existing elements to integrate it all into the game. I also think it would be cool if we saw some more of them appear, maybe class ideas that were rejected from the main game but could work in Hearthstone.

Wrathofklubakhan asked:

"WoW maintenance is being extended another 2 hours to 5pm PDT. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."

Someone must know -- clearly they are having problems. But what is that they are doing?

It's not uncommon for a lot of maintenance to take place before expansions release. Blizzard has a ton of servers, and sometimes the safest thing to do is to pull down the game while work on them takes place. Even though we've moved to an era of constant uptime of websites, etc... with as detailed as the WoW's backend infrastructure must be, it makes sense to play it safe and do maintenance without the game active to the public.

I'm noting it like this because the maintenance is going to keep happening for a bit like this. Just be glad that there's signs the expansion is near.

Jdpatrick asked:

When is the expected release date of the WoD cinematic? Using a stockbroker commercial catch-phrase, can "past performance" be indicative of "future results", as it relates to timing of a release?

We normally get it a week or so before the expansion release, so whenever that is... who knows. Can I use "soon" here? I think I'm going to.

We'll see the expansion cinematic soon.

Gazaa asked:

with us being able to rename our battle pets, do you think we will be able to rename our weapons (on a cosmetic level)? like having a 1h weapon transmogged to a Hammer and naming it Mjölnir

That's a neat idea, but I think it present a lot of problems for people figuring out what weapon you're actually using. That's an important part of competitive PvP, and in PvE is super helpful too when looking at the top players and emulating their gear, etc... After all, if you can rename a weapon and transmog a weapon at the same time, you've basically hid what the original was entirely. Only the stats remain -- and that's not good identification.

I'd keep weapon names just to an RP element. My warrior's two-handers that he wields are named something that's not appropriate for The Queue.

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!