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The Queue: Random Hodor
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. Today's Queue doesn't feature anything about the Horde or the Alliance. It does, however, have a picture of Hodor. Senusenu asked: I just returned (just in time to NOT have enough time to get that $&%#ing cloak). I started doing Sunreavers on my rogue again, got revered, and got the commendation for rep boost. I did this for the cloud serpent rep and it effected all of my characters, both factions and all servers. I just logged into my Ally shaman and saw she has the Kirin Tor boost from my rogue's Sunreaver Onslaught commendation. Is this new, or has it always mirrored the factions? Cloud Serpents made sense as it was a neutral faction, but this was surprising.
Know Your Lore: Mannoroth
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. We talk about the great evils of the Warcraft universe - your Kil'jaeden's and Archimonde's, your Sargeras and your Old Gods - and of course there's the mortal monsters like Gul'dan, quite possibly the single most evil mortal being ever to live, or Kel'Thuzad who enslaved himself to evil so profound that his transformation into a lich was probably a palliative influence on his malevolence. But what of evil as a corrupting vector? What of an evil so profound that it is part of your blood, that can seep into the souls of an entire race? Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you - what of Mannoroth, king of the Pit Lords, master of the Annihilan? We know little of the Annihilan. They are the pit lords, a massive and powerful species of demons recruited to serve the Legion by none other than Kil'jaeden himself. They were already a powerful part of the Legion when the War of the Ancients unfolded - Mannoroth himself was one of the Legion's elite who came through the portal to help make clear the way for Sargeras to stride forth into Azeroth, doing battle with the forces of the Kaldorei who were attempting to preserve their lives. But as to where the pit lords come from, it is as yet a mystery unsolved. What world did they originate on? What happened to it? We do not know. What we do know is this - few races in all the cosmos can boast so powerful and corrupting an evil nature as the Annihilan. And Mannoroth was for eons first among the pit lords - the acknowledged master of his kind, the most powerful of them all. Not Brutallus, not Magtheridon, not Azgalor, but Mannoroth ruled the Annihilan on behalf of the Legion.
How to make Yosemite look like System 7
Yes, OS X Yosemite is sexy, modern, and a far cry from what Apple desktops ran 20+ years ago, but that doesn't mean there's no value in nostalgia. Way back when Macs ran on CPUs with speeds of 33MHz (or even less), OS 7 -- also called System 7 -- was the best looking operating system most users had ever seen. Today, not so much, but if you long for the look of yesteryear anyway, here's how to tweak Yosemite and make it look it was released over two decades ago. Note: These tweaks were inspired by a guide published on WonderHowTo, so a tip of the hat for the idea. We'll be taking the concept a couple steps further to make this the ultimate retro tweak. For starters, there are a few system changes you need to make to lay the groundwork for the conversion, so take care of the following under your System Preferences menu first: Under General, change the Appearance selection to "Graphite" and the Highlight color to "Graphite" as well. Under Accessibility, toggle both "Reduce Transparency" and "Increase Contrast" on. Under Desktop & Screensaver, select Solid Colors and then choose Solid Gray Medium (or Solid Gray Dark, depending on your taste, both are pretty close). Now that your desktop is looking as bare and basic as it did when Nirvana was at the top of the charts, it's time to give your icons some much needed love. Depending on which versions of retro Mac you hold dear, you may want to find an icon pack from OS 8 or OS 9, but for the purposes of really throwing Yosemite back in time we'll go with System 7's low-res icon art. Download a System 7 icon collection from wherever you can find it. (I found the icons I'm using on a MacWorld forum thread where a kind user has provided four folders worth of ripped retro icons - Thanks Macosnoob!) Now you have the choice as to just how deep you want your retro conversion to go. If you feel like just replacing individual icons with the old school versions -- like the ones on your desktop specifically, while leave the rest of the system's icons alone -- you can do so by doing the following: Select any item you want to change, like your main HD icon or a folder, and click "Get Info." Here you'll see the icon of your object in the top left corner of the new window. Now find the icon file you want to use as its replacement, and drag and drop it on top of the object's existing icon in the Get Info window. A green plus mark will pop up to let you know you're about to replace it, and dropping it there will automatically swap it in. You can do this for as many items as you want, and doing so will only alter the specific items you choose. If you want to go all out with your retro devotion you can completely replace the icons your computer uses by default. Note: There is always a chance that when altering system resources you could mess something up, so be sure to do a system backup before doing this. Your system's icons are tucked away within a resource file, so go ahead and copy and paste this path into the "Go To Folder" field under the "Go" menu: /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ Here you'll see the icon files OS X uses for virtually every file on your computer. In order to permanently replace the files with the retro versions you can rename the System 7 icon files so they match the ones you wish to replace, then swap them out. Once you do this you should be able to restart your computer and see your new (old) icons in action. If any of them look odd or distorted you may need to tweak the a bit in an image resizing program like Skitch so they render correctly, but for the most part they should be plug-and-play. To wrap up the entire conversion and give your Mac the old school feel it deserves, be sure to auto-hide the Dock, and hide the toolbar in folder windows by right clicking and selecting "Hide Toolbar" on the title bar your folders. Ta-da! Now you can compute like it's 1993!
Know Your Lore: The lost tales of Pandaria
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Mists of Pandaria was packed with a lot of story, each of its 'acts' dovetailing into the next. It wasn't quite as expansive as the myriad plot points that were introduced with Cataclysm, but Cataclysm also included a revamp of almost every level 1-60 zone in the game, with both quests and the stories of the zones themselves getting a shot of new story content. When Cataclysm was winding down to its inevitable end, I reviewed several of the plot points left in the expansion -- story hooks that we might or might not see addressed later. There are still many out there left untouched. It only seemed appropriate, in the waning weeks of Mists, to do the same. Although Mists didn't have quite the variety as Cataclysm, there were still moments of potential story that were left unanswered -- tales without an ending, problems or puzzles we still don't have an answer to. And as we move forward into Warlords of Draenor, we can only wonder if, or when, we'll see these elements pop up again. Please note: The following post contains some spoilers for the novel War Crimes.
The Queue: I might be just a little excited
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. Maybe I should mention how many times I've watched the trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron over the course of the weekend. I'll just ... leave it here and let you guys watch it, too. And watch it again myself another couple dozen times or so. Let's see what we've got for Warcraft questions today, shall we? gazaa07 asked: Q4tQ: Speaking of the Toybox, Is there anything you wish were included for it? I would have put Innkeeper's Daughter back in there, since in the beta it was in there and it serves no other purpose then being a HS. There are actually a bunch of older items -- old trinkets, mostly -- that I wish would just be moved to the toy slot. Obviously, they are items that can be equipped, so they don't technically count as a toy -- but that was pretty much the only option for fun items back then. Things like the Piccolo of the Flaming Fire, or even items from old world events, like the Argent War Horn. Those old world event items can't even be obtained anymore, but they do cool things that are more suited to a toy than a trinket. I'd be happy if I could get them out of my bank, I don't want to simply because they can no longer be obtained and they're neat.
The Queue: Things to do
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. Patch 6.0 brought several new things to do, but I've been finding myself revisiting old dungeons more than anything, these past couple of weeks. In particular, both mounts in ZG have eluded me for far too long, and I'm hunkering down to do some serious farming and add them to my collection. With the new troll models, it's like ZG has gotten an update all on its own. Kinda cool, really! cgilm2526 asked: So I was doing the dailies at the Argent Tournament on my horde toon. I went to buy the Sen'Jin village banner since its a toy. When I learned the banner, I also learned the Ironforge Banner. Is this a bug or is Blizzard making it easy to get two banners for the price of one? I don't believe it's a bug. The way all the items worked at the Argent Tournament was that if you obtained an item -- say a Silvermoon banner -- and then at some point in the distant future decided to race-change to Alliance, that Silvermoon banner would automatically change into an Exodar banner. The same applies of course to mounts, but it also applied to the armor models and tier obtained from ToC as well. I have to admit, having just finished farming for those banners myself, it's nice that I only have to do them on one faction, instead of both.
The Queue: Costumes and Mounts, Where are we going next, and should we lose?
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Let's Queue it up, my friends. No time for love, Doctor Jones! (With apologies to any doctors named Jones who might be reading this.) bushkanaka86 asks: QFTQ: What is the purpose behind limiting mounting with certain costumes and not with others? When I am Trick-or-Treating and I get turned into a leper gnome, or a pirate, or a ghost, I am able to mount. But when I become a geist I am not. It comes down to whether or not that specific costume is of a model that has a mount animation. The ghost and pirate just use human models, and the leper gnome is just a gnome model, they have mount animations. Geists don't.
The Queue: Nerfing legendary, reagent tab, mounts, and Meechum
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. I'm a little late on the Queue today, so let's jump into it head first. Jpec asked: So why are they nerfing legendaries again? Isn't a legendary weapon supposed to be sort of, I dunno, legendary? Meaning you want to hold onto and use it forever, if not for a really long time? In Diablo, I was holding onto legendaries 10-15 levels after I got them, because the stats were that good. Since the squish, using a legendary has become somewhat viable again - at least at 90. So why the nerfs? It's not like they're suddenly BiS, and they're still a pain in the tuchus to get, so why not let them be used? When will Blizzard let us have our cake and eat it, too?
The Queue: Swimming kitties
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. Today we address the real issues. Issues like kitties on broomsticks. aldristavan asked: I'm very upset. My feline familiar isn't riding on a broom. Kitty's just floating in air! >:( Is this a bug?
WildStar's megaservers shouldn't impact addons much
Carbine Studios took to the forums earlier today to address how player addons may have been affected by WildStar's recent megaserver merge and name changes. The good news is that "most third-party addon users" will not be impacted whatsoever. For addons that were impacted by the transition, Carbine posted tips on how to bring broken addons up to par. The team encouraged those dealing with broken mods by saying that the data is still there and that recovering it won't be difficult at all. This post is somewhat technical and relevant only to addon creators, but important to everyone who's mods are borked.
The Queue: I never get to go to BlizzCon
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Have never been, not going to get to go this year either. Ah well. Hopefully it'll still be a fun time for everybody that does get to go. Me, I'll be at home. My prediction is that there won't be any news about a new WoW expansion, but rather other Blizzard games instead. ScottLeyes asks: Soooo... Argent Tournament Dailies? Frustrating or FRAKKING Frustrating? I swear there are more players in Icecrown than there were on the ENTIRE server pre-patch. "Get Kraken" quest took me NINE times to count eight spear tosses. On the podcast Anne Stickney said much the same thing. It seems that the quest damage is scaling with iLevel much as the Gunship in ICC is, and the Kraken dies with one or two harpoons, exacerbated by the sheer number of people doing those dailies for pets and heirlooms. I agree it sounds very frustrating and I'm sorry you're not having a pleasant time.
Know Your Lore, Tinfoil Hat Edition: Light of the naaru
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. First featured in the Burning Crusade expansion, the enigmatic naaru have been a constant, benevolent life-force in World of Warcraft -- strange creatures with some sort of eternal crusade against the darkness of the Legion. It was the naaru that saved Prophet Velen and his people when they were on the cusp of being claimed by the dark promises of Sargeras, the naaru that helped them flee, the naaru that taught them the Light. And it was the naaru who seemed to be playing a much, much longer game than anyone else, when Burning Crusade reached its end and the full scope of M'uru's plan was revealed. Burning Crusade marked the second known occasion that the naaru willingly stepped into the lives of mortal races to pull them away from darkness and reach salvation -- although it's entirely possible they have done this before with other races, on other worlds we've never seen. This has always been presented as the noblest of causes. Yet despite all these altruistic actions, we really know very little about the naaru, where they came from, or ultimately why it is that they feel they must fulfill this task. Yet while Warlords of Draenor largely concerns the orcs and the Iron Horde, there are still a few clues -- just enough to expand that perception of the naaru a little more and raise a few more questions in the process. Today's Know Your Lore is a Tinfoil Hat edition. The following contains speculation based on known material. These speculations are merely theories and shouldn't be taken as fact or official lore. Please note: The following Know Your Lore contains several spoilers for Warlords of Draenor.
The Queue: Stuck on dancing
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. On the discussion of dancing in WoW, Nocjin and jonmynard reminded me of the existence of the above video, which is still pretty awesome, even with the old models implemented. I'm just wondering what it would look like if it used the newer models. Far less flipper hand, for one thing! ISO1600 asked: QftQ: Why oh why do old, easily-soloable raids still have weekly lock-outs? They obviously want us to farm them for transmog, and I REALLY want a Hammer of the Naaru, but only being able to run the Lair once a week sucks. Because all that stuff is still content to be completed. We are powerful, yes, but our characters are not gods, and should not be able to just mow over all prior content with no limitations in place. If you were able to just run in for a four hour stretch and smack bosses around until you got your hammer, that would pretty much eliminate any reason for you to go back and continue to do that content. Transmog managed to create new uses for old content that didn't exist before -- they aren't going to remove that aspect of the feature, not when it's so wildly popular.
The Queue: Okay so now can we have a Dance Studio?
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. You guys, I couldn't be happier with how the new models look. There are a few weird anomalies here and there, but overall the effect is a vast improvement to the game. It looks way, way better than it did only a week ago. Of course the blood elf models still need a touch up, but that's on the way after the expansion launches. So how about we dream big -- I mean really, really big -- and consider the thought of maybe, just maybe seeing a Dance Studio in the game? I mean, the models are all fresh and new. And if the old blood elf model looks this good doing the pandaren female dance as-is, things can only go uphill from here, right? Right? Devin asked: So what's your favorite change that you didn't discover until live? I just realized that changing my active talents will automatically update my key-bind. I previously had a macro for this that was accomplishing this but only passably. I was pretty delighted to discover that dialogue has its own volume slider in the game options now. I'd completely forgotten that that was a thing that was going in. I'm also pleased that the grass physics from Draenor seem to have made their way into Azeroth, too. Go try walking through some tall grass and see what it does.
The Queue: PvP Power, More subs, Transmog by color
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Patch 6.0.2 allows you to basically kill Nefarian, Onyxia, Sinestra and Deathwing solo. You can basically wipe out the entire ruling lineage of the Black Dragonflight save for Sabellian and Wrathion in one evening, if you're so inclined. Ineptone asks: Is pvp power and resilience still left on pvp gear effective? I'm not sure if its just omitted from the character screen just in preperation to display level 100 stats or if its plain turned off. Let's ask Brian Holinka. .@williebuchan PvP Power is still on level 90 gear and still works. It is gone from the character sheet as it's gone from future gear. - Holinka (@holinka) October 15, 2014 So the answer is yes, those stats are still on the PvP gear, and they still work, but they won't be on PvP gear in Warlords and aren't on the character pane.
How professions are changing in Warlords of Draenor
Like with every expansion before it, Warlords of Draenor will be shaking things up. Professions will get their skill caps increased to 700 and you'll find new recipes (and new epic gear) waiting for you in Draenor. But it's not all business as usual: some major changes in Warlords will be shaking up how professions work and how they fit in with the rest of the game. Blizzard's goal here seems targeted to opening up player choice: you shouldn't be forced into a profession or be penalized for not having or leveling one. This doesn't mean that the advantages of having a profession are going away, but come Warlords some unique bonuses will be gone, people without a profession will have additional access to it, and leveling professions will be more straightforward for players who might not have focused on professions in the past. Here are the biggest changes: Profession-based bonuses are gone. And, though we may be losing some perks, with the stat squish and resultant rebalancing in Warlords, this is the ideal time for Blizzard to make this switch. The end result is that you won't have to pick a profession for a specific combat bonus... but can have whichever professions you most want. You can gather anything in Draenor, regardless of skill level. We saw this happen with mining and herbalism in Pandaria in patch 5.3, and now it's expanded to cover all gathering professions, making it easier to level up a gathering profession from zero. Players with higher skill levels will gather more materials than players with lower skill levels. In addition to gathering professions being easier to level, crafting professions all have catch-up recipes that will let you level from zero onward using Draenor materials. This will probably make it more expensive if you plan on buying materials (since everyone will be looking for the same new-world materials), but less of a nuisance if you're gathering your own. Garrison buildings will allow you limited access to professions you don't have... or improve your abilities in professions you do have. Want to know all the details? Read on to see just what's happening for professions in Warlords of Draenor.
Know Your Lore: Garrisons and the story of Warlords
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. We are about to kick off the beginning of Warlords of Draenor's story when patch 6.0 releases in a couple of days here. It's an explosive beginning, and there's plenty of story to be had, but we won't see things really pick up and get going until the expansion releases in November. Everyone has their own way of leveling through an expansion, whether it's a race to the finish, or a more leisurely stroll through content, taking one's time and experiencing all the story the expansion has to offer -- and Warlords has a lot of story to tell in its opening chapters. However, there seems to be some apprehension about garrisons and how they're going to work with the game, how they are set up, whether or not they require a massive time sink, whether they can be ignored entirely, or if the story hinges on completing garrison content, and whether or not garrisons are actually going to pull people out of the story and expansion experience. Today, we're going to step back from the usual lore presentation and instead look at garrisons, how they work with the story being told, and why this feature is actually one of the better storytelling devices Blizzard has put together.
The Queue: Rexxar is the best
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. Rexxar is really strong. And brave. And cool. And the best, pretty much. He's Draenor's superhero. Jammy asked: Wtf, how does a 583 rogue die in a 5 man? Painfully. No really though, trash was easy, but the first boss of Mogu'shan Palace is actually three bosses rolled into one and bandages don't exactly do a lot of self-healing these days. Any other boss and I likely would have been absolutely fine. I also wasn't really prepared for or paying much attention to anything beyond a quick test run to see if I could bowl over heroic bosses as easily as I murdered my way through the Firelands the other night.
The Queue: Fine Draenor cuisine
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. I always kind of wondered how one cooks clefthoof meat. Apparently it involves throwing the entire clefthoof on a campfire. This seems like it would be a particularly entertaining addition to any mystery basket on Chopped. Chrth asked: Q4TQ: If you were to have a social* dinner with anyone from Azeroth, who would it be? Wrathion. I mean, come on. His table manners are likely impeccable and if I'm lucky there'll be some kind of temper-tantrum floor show or at the very least some really juicy dirt about some dignitary or another.
Guide to hunter pets in Warlords of Draenor
Warlords of Draenor is introducing five new hunter pet families -- hydras, riverbeasts, stags, clefthooves (exotic), and rylaks (exotic). That brings the grand total to 48 pet families. Many pet abilities have also been changed to fit the buff and debuff changes in Warlords. Exotic pets are more differentiated from standard pets in that they all have a total of three special abilities or buffs instead of just one or two. You'll be able to start taming pets from the new families with patch 6.0.2 (except for riverbeasts and rylaks which only exist in Draenor). Perhaps the most exciting hunter pet addition is the new spirit beast, Gara (pictured above). In order to tame Gara, hunters must embark on an epic quest that takes them all over Draenor to reunite Gara with her former master and ultimately save her from the Void. I've written a detailed guide on how to do it, but you'll want to avoid that post if you want to figure it out for yourself. Let's begin with a breakdown of the new families.
