The Queue: Garrison stables are no joke

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.

Sometimes I think about how weird it must be to have hooves and ride around on an animal that also has hooves. Imagine if horses had feet like us, only four of them. Wouldn't that weird you out just a little?

Welcome to Saturday. Let's get to the questions.

Jalamenos asked:

If you could choose one minor character currently in WoW to be used in a future patch or expansion and be fully voice cast, who would it be and who would you like to voice him/her?

Lorna Crowley. Bring in Billie Piper and make her a sass monster.

DespicableBrad asked:

Aside from the new threat from the Dark Portal (that we shut down in the first 3 quests of the intro scenario) why doesn't Khadar just send us through the weak portals he uses to bring all of our Garrison followers from Stormwind/Orgrimmar and instead just send us back thru to our Stormwind/Orgrimmar?

Because it would only be a matter of time before the Iron Horde found another way in, and this time they'd be even angrier. By the end of the Tanaan intro we still don't know exactly how big the Iron Horde is, or what they are capable of -- but the brief glimpses we got were more than enough to suggest it would be well worth our time and energy to completely stomp the stuffing out of this particular threat before it has a chance to grow any larger and retaliate, rather than retreat, wipe the sweat from our brows and say "Well, that was certainly an adventure wasn't it?" while going back to our normal routines -- only to be overrun at a later date.

It's a horde of angry orcs that seem to be solely dedicated to wiping out our world. Do we really want to leave any of them alive or capable of doing so? Wouldn't that be ... incredibly stupid?

Jeff13 asked:

How long does it take to develop a trailer like WoD's from start to finish? Tin Foil Hat time, if it takes a significant time from the start of an idea, does the trailer prove that the original story was so Orc focused that WoD was delayed to add in more Dranei story?

The trailer for Warlords of Draenor was likely in the planning stages right after they finished hammering out how the story was going to work and where it was going to go. It highlighted the moment that turned the orcs of Draenor from a threat against solely the draenei to a threat to our present-day world, the one we've been fighting all this time to defend. These are the bad guys. That's why they're being highlighted, to illustrate how those bad guys managed to get Azeroth in their sights.

No, there are no draenei in the trailer. There is plenty of draenei story to be found in the beta, however. But if the trailer were simply about watching the draenei go about their daily business, that would do very little to explain who the Iron Horde are in relation to our world, how they came to be, or why it's important that we leave our world to go fight them.

pvpscrub asked:

QFTQ: Since Challenge modes are going away, is the brawler's guild going away too? Will it perhaps be updated to level 100 content, or is it now or never?

It's going to be updated at some point, or at least it seems to be in the works judging by the changes to Brawler's Guild achievements. Keep in mind that the Brawler's Guild was never really about leveling or end-game progression content, though. It's just something super fun to do, with no gigantic gear rewards or anything like that. Because of that, it's probably not on the super high end of priority at the moment, unlike things like zones and quests for leveling, PvP balancing and rewards, raid tuning, dungeons, and everything else that needs to be touched before Warlords goes live. Brawler's Guild stuff could be added in a later patch after everyone's done leveling to 100 and the developers have time to play with the feature.

jpec asked:

Where do you think Blizzard is going with this expansion? Will our actions and the events that unfold have any bearing on the Azeroth we know and love? Is this expansion going to progress the overall Warcraft narrative, or is it tantamount to an anime filler arc?

It's really way too early to say, but the developers have certainly hinted that the events that play out in this expansion will lead into the next one, and probably the one after that. If nothing else, we now have new draenei and orc heroes that could very well follow us back to our Azeroth once this expansion is over and have sweeping story arcs of their own.

Captain Cakewalk asked:

Q4tQ: Seeing as at the start of the trailer it says "35 years earlier" will we be going 35 years back or will we see things 35 years later as the Dark Portal is not complete 35 years ago yet we use it, and so too do the Iron Horde, to get to their Draenor? This is rather confusing or am I merely overthinking this?

Garrosh went back in time, and in doing so arrived on an alternate version of Draenor. It's not the world he was born on, it's a different version of it. The events of the trailer play out 35 years ago, but it's 35 years ago on that alternate world. That Dark Portal the Iron Horde are constructing is one that is going to connect the Iron Horde's Draenor to our present day Dark Portal that already exists -- which is why our Dark Portal is suddenly going from the familiar fel green to a menacing red.

greenhooves asked:

QftQ Exactly how long with the 10th anniversery stuff be available? I really don't want to have to crunch through ten levels in order to enjoy it.

We don't actually know that just yet! Usually it's two weeks, but this year is the 10th anniversary, and they have a lot of planned content just for that, so I imagine it may be sticking around a little longer. We haven't heard any official announcements about that yet, though -- the in-game calendar is still reflecting the usual two-week span that the normal anniversaries have. It hasn't been updated for what we'll see this year.

Armenius asked:

4QTQ: Post-Siege, is Garrosh completely Sha-free? No Sha bits stuck stuck in his teeth? We completely beat the Sha out of him, so to speak?

Garrosh was using the Heart of Y'shaarj to fuel his power, and we beat the stuffing out of him -- he pretty much drained all the power the Heart had, and when we defeated him, it was snuffed out. No more Sha, or Heart, or Y'shaarj.

Duskpaw asked:

Q4tQ: With all the advanced tech that Garrosh brings back to the past Horde, why did they not just go to their "past" Azeroth and take it from there? It seems like a waste to go to ours and try taking it, unless its just to spit in the face of the people that beat him.

It's pretty much that last thing you mentioned, except he doesn't so much want to spit in our faces as he wants to conquer our world and everything and everyone on it and grind our faces in the dirt beneath his boot.

... he's just a little teensy bit annoyed about that whole defeat thing.

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!