Michael Sacco

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Stories By Michael Sacco

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    News By Michael Sacco

    A lot can change in six years

    I worked at Blizzard from 2006 to 2008. After a year of working overnights as Belfaire the talbuk on the WoW customer service forum, the stress and screwed-up sleep schedule and lack of support got the better of me. I got let go right before Christmas 2008, just after Wrath of the Lich King launched. As I sat in my apartment and wondered what I would do to support myself and my then-girlfriend, who also got let go from Blizzard just a few months before, a lightbulb went off. If all I know right now is WoW, why not try to leverage that? I emailed WoW Insider through the tips line and asked about writing opportunities. "I'm sure you get these emails all the time," I said, and I'm sure they did. But I guess they saw a special opportunity in me. Within half an hour, then-Managing Editor Dan O'Halloran emailed me back and asked if he could call me. Within two hours, he had sent me the AOL contract information. Within a week, I was part of the team.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: I'm a Skrull

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. That's right! And I've been a Skrull all along! Now my master plan of writing Sunday's Queue has come to fruition! hyde_v asked: Have the San'layn been eliminated or did some of them escape? Unless I am mistaken, there were only a small number of them. Maybe less than ten. A very small number indeed, and as far as we know, we killed them in all in the Northrend campaign. Even if some are alive, without Lana'thel, it's probably not possible to make more San'layn. That was a poem, accidentally.

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    The Queue: Zzzz

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. What's it called when you fall asleep writing the Queue? "Bad"? JeffLaBowski asked: Is there anything particular I am missing about Anduin and Wrathion being either gay or wanting to have relations with each other? Or is this all wishful thinking on certain individuals? Nah, there's nothing in official media to say that Anduin and Wrathion are anything but friends. Also, they're children. But for many fanfic writers and fanartists, well, there's nothing more beautiful than two boys in love. Even if one of them is, for all intents and purposes, a toddler.

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    News By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Queue straight

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Happy Sunday, everybody. itsdeeps asked: so what do you guys think/hope will be the next race model previewed? I think there are two answers to this. The "I play this one a lot and want to see how great it looks" answer for me is male draenei. The "I have to see how the hell they're going to fix them" answer is human males.

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    News By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Return of the Mike

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. But I queue, but I queue-queue-queue~ MTA asked: What's your opinion on the news that Alpha has been postponed? This is obviously bad for Blizzard but how do players view it? The more you wait the more you want it? Or is it "meh, lost interest"? Well, as someone who genuinely likes WoW but is basically through playing until 6.0, obviously I'm sad I don't yet have access to an alpha or beta, but I get. Certain things need to be done to make the alpha worthwhile to open to the public. Blizzard is making me less and less confident that we're going to see the game go live before its "on or before" date, though.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Zandali lessons

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. A question about in-game languages! My favorite! Lenneth asked: When tromping through ZG the other day I noticed something odd. One of the Zandalari Hierophants mentioned a certain MoP inspired dino boss we all came to know and love. Here is what our troll buddy said, those of troll ancestry feel free to translate; "Deh dem riva tinG bwoyar Ju wassa cyaa oondasta fu ju dim iman is ir machette" Since ZG was revamped and was part of Cata content I thought that name was interesting. Possible foreshadowing of our future Isle of Giants' all star? Most threatening word in the Zandalari dialect Blizz could adopt for the bad dino? Perhaps "oondasta" was the dying curse thrown at the player going through ZG and that curse finally manifested when we arrived in Pandaria? /dons tinfoil hat :P The truth is much more boring! Each race's in-game "language" is actually just a set of specific words used in the place of English words with the same amount of characters. For example, if you type a six-letter word and set your language to "Draenei", then you'll get one of these words in its place: Arakal, Azgala, Kazile, Mannor, Mishun, Rakkan, Rakkas, Rethul, Revola, Thorje, Tichar The word "oondasta" has been in the game since launch as part of the Zandali (troll) language. It's just one of the eight-letter words. Occam's Razor tells me that when looking for a name for Oondasta, the devs simply looked at the list of Zandali words and found a fun one.

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    News By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Bitter rivals

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I can't believe I only just found out there was a new Sleigh Bells album released last year. What the heck. Hyde_v asked: We know that gnomes and dwarves originated from their electronic and stone forms via the Curse of Flesh. We know that humans are descendants of the Vry'kul. We know that night elves evolved from trolls. But where did the trolls originate from? Azeroth was home to the Old Gods and their Elemental armies. Were the trolls a slave race? Azeroth had indigenous humanoid races, or at least ones not created by the titans. Trolls appear to be one of those races, at least until we hear otherwise.

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    The Queue: Talk nerdy to me

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Lot of y'all fired up about tier sets being removed from LFR! Weekend queue comments are always a wasteland for actual questions. Fussypants asked: So, I saw this mentioned somewhere a little while ago, but was wondering if it was still a thing. Is Blizzard going to allow people to go back and solo Raid Finder difficulties of raids? With all the unique colorization of pieces that are available only in Raid Finder, it would seem almost a waste otherwise. Thanks! Yes, Ion Hazzikostas mentioned recently that they're likely going to let you solo queue for Dragon Soul and all of the MoP LFRs at level 100.

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    News By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Sure. Fine. Whatever.

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Sure. Fine. Whatever. braellyn asked: I missed something...what's this about LFR, tier bonuses, and transmog? Are tier pieces not going to be available in LFR in WoD? LFR will have its own sets of gear, though they're only "sets" in that they have a cohesive look. There aren't any set bonuses to chase. If you want tier sets, you need to go to normal mode (or higher).

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    The Queue: Thin hamster

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. A very informative video. michaelm517 asked: Today, I received the notification allowing me to choose a reward from the Recruit-A-Friend system. With the recent tease of the fiery mechanical steed, and the message, "Fiery mechanical steeds are best when they can be used with friends," I have a good feeling that it could be a new RaF mount. If I am wrong, then whatever, but if that is the case, can I save my current RaF reward token and use it on the new mount if it ends up being one? You sure can! Hold onto that token.

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    The Queue: What the heck

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Guys, over 500 comments yesterday and barely any questions? This is my weekend hell. Moonwhisper asked: So I was looking on mmo champion and I saw a lot of names from files such as: kil'jaeden , cho'gal, *HIGHLORD* bolvar fordragon. Do you think we will see them in this expansion? Maybe Cho'gall and Kil'jaeden? They could be around and doing stuff in this alternate timeline. I don't see any reason or contrivance that would make seeing Bolvar make sense, though. Highlord Bolvar Fordragon was always his name.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Azathoth Choppers

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Vote for which motorcycle you want in the game: the cosmic horror bike, or the seething nuclear chaos bike! Also, despair! BrianLuzovich asked: do you think we will eventually see hearthstone for cell phones? and would there an offline play mode? There are definitely Android and iPhone versions of Hearthstone coming; Blizzard announced it not too long ago. As for offline mode, I highly doubt it. It appears to be an online-only game and all of its systems tie into that.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Tonari no Garrosh

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Do you think Garrosh would've been better adjusted if he had a big magical friend as a kid? bcf_80 asked: Here's a newbie question, but how do you get to the Isle of Giants? Is this the same thing as the Isle of Thunder (and how do you get to that if they're different)? I've been away for too long :) It's north of Kun-Lai. You can fly or swim there, but be careful if you're flying -- the island is a no-fly zone and you'll get dismounted when you get close. Once there, you can grab a flight path and you won't need to manually fly there again. Unless you want to, of course.

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    The Queue: Pick up the pieces

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I spent many hours today cutting, gluing, and assembling pieces for my board game prototype (again). Amarettosourz asked: Is there such thing as an allotted RNG luck for drops? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of RNG itself? Well, "true random" means you could possibly go forever without seeing a single drop you could use. That's not very fun. It certainly brings high highs, but also very, very low lows. There are safeguards for many types of loot, from bonus loot coins to Garrosh heirlooms, to make sure that you do get something given enough time. Diablo 3 has a similar system in place now if it detects that you've gone quite a while without seeing a legendary drop. I'd rather my chances get a nudge in the right direction than rely on "true randomness".

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    The Queue: The questions we share

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Hello WoW Insider. How are you? I am fine. Please enjoy these questions, as well as their answers. waitwut asked: I keep hearing how "savage" being used when talking about WoD. Where did this come from? The devs used the word a lot when describing Draenor and WoD in general at BlizzCon. It's sort of the expansion's keyword. And a running joke, now.

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    The Queue: Pink Zeal

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Magenta...the color of righteousness! Drewbob asked: Agree or disagree: group quests are okay for current expansion content, and should be returned to the game. While I think that it's okay, mostly, that former group quests in wrath era content and prior have been made solo-able, I think the lack of these quests in the open world definitely take something of the spirit of it being an MMO with a community away from the experience. As I was leveling my eleventy-billionth toon in Zinth'alor the other day (and cursing the developers for not retuning respawn rates), I remembered back when it was elite, and you needed at least a couple other party members to make it to the top. While I don't think the rewards offered for that were ever quite commensurate with the effort, I think that that's easy to remedy, and having more opportunities in the world to take down moderately more difficult quest and zone content beyond world bosses would be awesome. I think that the open tagging system is a good compromise between group questing and soloing. You don't necessarily need to assemble a group for it, but anybody can pop over and participate if they're on it too (and especially early in an expansion, other people will be on it). I do kind of miss group quests -- there's something about putting a team together and tackling a tough mob -- but boy was it a pain. I don't know if it was the same for everyone, but there were quests I simply never got to do in vanilla because I could never find a group and they were literally impossible to solo.

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    The Queue: Mildstar

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I got into the WildStar beta after...what, three years of waiting? I've really been looking forward to it, but under all the (admittedly lovely) art and animation, it's...just another kill-ten-rats MMO. I wonder if I'm outgrowing this genre. DeanofWhoopass asked: Is there any announced "catch up" mechanism for WoD? If they truly do get rid of valor/justice gear, getting alts up to speed will be a royal pain. I shudder to think how many weeks of LFR it would take to slowly get geared up enough to viably raid current normal/heroic raids. Expect there to be mid-expansion dungeons this time; beyond that, we haven't had any concrete information on catch-up mechanisms yet. It's likely something we won't hear about until it becomes relevant.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: To Zanarkand

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. No, you're getting emotional over the intro to a video game! JediExcel asked: Question on the changes removing certain stats from armor and weapons in WOD. Does this mean I could basically switch between enh/ele shaman or feral/boomkin druid? Or have I grossly misunderstood the concept? This is precisely what you can do, but with a few caveats: It only applies to items made for WoD It doesn't apply to certain item types, like weapons and trinkets So you could feasibly switch to your offspec wearing the same gear and be okay, though you'll still probably have a set of trinkets and weapons/offhands for your offspec as well.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Zap Luftrauser

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Anybody else playing this and/or Final Fantasy X HD this weekend? I AM PLAYING BOTH. Nurph asked: With all the talk of the price of the 90 boost being so high, what do you think the possibility of it lowering once Warlords comes out? Is it possible the high price is simply temporary until the new game drops? Tough question. On one hand, the price does seem high (to me, anyway). On the other hand, we said that about realm transfers, and those prices have never changed. I don't see the price going down, especially not right after launch. But I can't see the future.

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    The Queue: Welp

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. That was one hell of a Titanfall game. michaelm517 asked: I have been playing Hearthstone since it released officially. I was wondering if it is possible for me to run WoW and Hearthstone at the same time using two different computers. Does this break the Terms of Service regarding Battle.net accounts? I tried logging into both, and it let me, however I don't want to break any rules. Is this allowed? It would be great to play Hearthstone while I wait for LFR queues! It's definitely allowed. You're fine!

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    The Queue: Rodeo

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I got Titanfall last night. I don't even really like shooter games, but here I am, hooting and hollering, riding giant robots and shooting their innards out while double-jumping and wall-running. I am having a blast. Go figure. JackJesson asked: My current preoccupation is, is it Hearthstone as in 'earth', or Hearthstone as in 'Arthas'? This isn't actually one of my questions, what I would like to know is, does it even matter at all? (Seems it does to me right?) is there a specific way to pronounce these things anyway? Or, as I'm starting to think, is it possible that me, trying to render a proper noun with my British accent as a West Coast American working for blizz would say it, just going to ruin the structure of the words and the poetry of the environment? in the same way that no one would expect me to pronounce Moscow asin a 'grazing, milk making, Mulgore resident. It rhymes with Darth Stone. There is usually a specific way to pronounce the names of fictional places/people/items; the creator undoubtedly has it in mind when crafting them. As to whether or not you use their pronunciation, well, that's up to you. The creator of the GIF recently explained that it's pronounced with a soft G, but you have people really adamantly against it who still pronounce it with a hard G. Death of the author and all that.

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    The Queue: THE QVEVE

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. My jam of late. CatrionaShadowleaf asked: What's your favourite starting area and why? I dislike the back-and-forth of Azure/Bloodmyst so I hightailed my new paladin out of there post haste, and now I'm doing the dwarf/gnome area just to try to level mining (not working btw, it's picked clean). Years ago I probably would've said the draenei starting zone, but having done it again recently, hell no. So much running around, back and forth. Ugh. I'm all about Gilneas now. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, it's also fairly brisk.

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    The Queue: Untouched

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Yesterday was "load up music you listened to in 2007 on Spotify" day. Here's a relic from my not-so-distant past. BlackSeal asked: I've always felt the biggest disappointment of Cata (which I think many would agree was not Blizzards biggest expansion success) was the large reuse of already existing assets in the game when it came to locations and bosses/skins/models. (especially boss models). It really came across to me as if they didn't have the time or money to put into creating new assets for the game. Pandaria I've largely enjoyed being that it's a whole new world and culture to see and discover along with many unique creatures and models and architecture. Do you worry they are in danger of repeating this with WoD? Especially considering we are going to what is basically Outland once again, with an obviously completely similar map and set of locations along with the fact that I have even read of them redoing UBRS/Possibly LBRS? Do you believe we about to be delivered "Cata 2" in these regards? Its got me a little worried! Good question. I wouldn't worry, though. A lot of the creatures we saw in TBC straight-up didn't exist on Draenor prior to the calamity. There were no naga, no demons, no lost ones, no broken, the arakkoa looked different, etc. We'll be seeing a lot of orcs and draenei, for sure, but also lots of new or remodeled faces.

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    Smartphones
    Smartphones By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: PDA

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I remembered this song last night in bed and it's been stuck in my head ever since. Twowolves asked: How long after Garrosh's arrival are we arriving on Draenor-2? Apparently enough time has elapsed since he halted the drinking of the blood to forge the Orc clans into the Iron Horde and begin their march of conquest. Do you think it's a few months or a year later? We don't know exactly how long yet, but at BlizzCon the devs said it would be "a few years". Definitely enough time to get that crucible of war heated up.

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    Gaming By Michael Sacco

    The Queue: Twitch Beats Pokemon

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Where were you when thousands of people beat Pokemon Red by jamming random buttons for 16 days? dafino asked: Going forward, will the WoW Insider podcast still be offered as a download? I know it takes time to edit and I hope recent events won't interfere with it's availability. The WoW Insider Show must go on. We still plan to record and make the show available every week. That much hasn't changed.

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    The Queue: Light it up

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I've had this song stuck in my head for like an entire week, so now I deliver it unto you. SichasStudios asked: In today's Breakfast Topic, the header image says "No Veteran Bonus" on the form to boost to 90. What's that bonus, and how do you get it? The veteran bonus is a reward for using the 90 boost on a level 60+ character. It boosts the character's primary professions and first aid to 600.

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    The Queue: Everything is awesome

    Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Well folks, I held out as long as I could, but there was a BOGO sale on Lego sets at Toys-R-Us. I am now nine years old again. morvackthemountmimic asked: I have a two part question. When you make your character, it shows them in a certain set of gear. Are these gear sets obtainable? If so, where? Those sets are usually riffs on existing sets (the warlock one is a retooled Nemesis, for example), but they're not available in the game, much to my chagrin. You'll notice the texture resolution on them is quite high, and the shoulder models are brand new in most cases. Sad we don't get to wear them! They'd make great heirlooms!

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