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The Queue: I am cow, hear me roar
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert is your host today, because Alex and Adam are off fighting Romulan time-travelers while she is on academic probation pending an investigation from Starfleet. It's a cruel world out there for creative problem-solvers.Yes! I am going to break the cycle of YouTube videos with a silly picture. A few PvP-related questions today, which I believe is karmic payback for stealing the column, because I loathe PvP. Oy!Elry asks...Is there any hint that anytime in the future Blizzard will implement a harsher sentence than no honor points on high level players ganking much lower ones?Something like this was actually part of the classic game in the form of the Dishonorable Kill, which went the way of the dinosaur in Patch 2.0.1. You can argue that the problems with Dishonorable Kills arose entirely from execution rather than concept, and the implementation of a Dishonorable-Killesque punishment on gankers is a pretty common request. Let's be frank -- nobody really defends ganking, Blizzard included. But, as any GM could tell you, as long as there's a "PvP solution" (read: getting your own faction's players to hunt down the jerk who's camping you) to your problems, there's not much they can or will do unless the player concerned is definitely griefing.
Hunter Q&A released
Eyonix posted the initial version of the Hunter Q&A today.Please note that there will be another version of this coming out later today. We'll bring you both versions, as well as the differences.Some of the highlights of the Hunter Q&A: Ammo removal is still on the table. More details brought to light as to why it can't be implemented just yet. "Dead Zone" in its current form is not going away completely. Auto-Shoot should not work while moving, moving is a penalty. Possibly an announcement at BlizzCon concerning Hunter's reliance on mana. A new system, removing the need for mana? Pay attention at BlizzCon! Hunters are too cooldown limited. Blizzard is not happy with the current solutions to keeping pets alive. Avoidance mechanics "just don't work well." Available number of pet action bar slots will be expanded. No plans to expand the use of Tranquilizing Shot. Magmadar is scared! Oh noes! The full Q&A after the break.
The Queue: Snape, snape
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.In celebration of the recent release of the new Harry Potter movie, I've decided to expose the two of you out there that have never seen the above video to... well, the above video. I'll say no more, folks. Watch it, then read on! Probably in beat with a metronome!Mannas asked..."With the new feature to switch factions, will we finally have a way to "mail" items across factions by making a toon, sending the item there, switching factions and then mailing on? Or will they somehow limit this?"
The Queue: Guest introduction
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.On the last edition of The Queue, I requested that readers write me an intro for this thing, and I would pick my favorite of the bunch to use to introduce the column. So here we go, an intro from Teregwynn:"Each end every day, except those days when he doesn't, Alex Ziebart takes time out of his busy schedule to sift through your annoying, and often repetitive, questions to find those worthy of answers. Once selected, he conjures answers for these questions which baffle the minds of mere mortals, endowing them with a level of insight which they could not, but for having read earlier editions of this very column, have ever imagined."Search asked..."I have recently started on getting Loremaster and find it quite frustrating that I don't know how many quests I have accomplished in each area. Is there any way to see how much I have already done in an area and how much left still to do? Maybe some sort of clever addon that has eluded my search."
The Queue: Wherein Alex renames himself Nostradamus
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.After a year of writing this thing, I've run out of quirky ways to introduce this thing that don't reek of veiled desperation. So screw the veil. Along with your question in today's edition of The Queue, I want you to write an introduction for the next edition of this column that I write, which will be the day after tomorrow. I will pick the best of the bunch to use. Keep it clean!crusherkid asked..."I've read reports that because of the servers going down in China that World of Warcraft has dropped down to only 5 million subscribers. Is that correct?"
The Queue: WoW 4.0
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.People responded quite well to the Patches of Yesteryear column that I started up yesterday, so I thought for today's Queue I'd use one of the screenshots of the old UI that I dug up on the internet. A few old readers (yes, you're old farts) noted that the UI featured above likely came from an internal alpha build or something way before the beta 4* when WoW went into "public" beta mode. So the above screenshot and yesterday's screenshot are quite old. Possibly as old as 2001 when WoW was first announced.And for next week's Patches of Yesteryear column we'll either look at how the models have changed or examine a couple dozen talents that have gone through some pretty amazing metamorphosis. But enough about that old column, time for Queue!Siaperas asked..."WoWHead's PTR site lists a heroic achievement titled: "I've Had Worse". The achievement made me giggle a bit; is that really an achievement on the PTR?"
The Queue: Full of it
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Since today's first question in Maelstrom-themed, we've decided today's edition of The Queue was a good time to link the supposed leaked trailer of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, to be announced at BlizzCon '09. We haven't embedded the video to try and dodge waking up to a DMCA tomorrow, so just check it out on YouTube. We'll let Google deal with the mess, eh?Revan asked... "What instances would you suggest for a Maelstrom expansion?" All of the things you suggested yesterday would work pretty well. Nazjatar and the Tomb of Sargeras would definitely be raid zones in a future expansion. I suspect we would also have a hella fun time in The Eye of the Maelstrom, which is the center of the whole storm there. Maybe we'd even visit Mak'aru, which is where all the gross crab people live. It probably wouldn't be a raid, but I could see a 5-man there. That is, if we don't ally with the gross crabfolk. Did I mention they're gross? Gross. I'd also lay down money that we'll get an Onyxia/Gruul/Malygos-style raid with a sea monster of some sort. The Lurker Below v2.0, now with eye lasers?
The Queue: Crossroads
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.This queue is certified Panadaran free. Enjoy it while it lasts.Today's reading music The Crossroads by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Every time I'm in the Crossroads I think of that song.Yokumgang asked..."Why can't we bandage while bleeding?"
The Queue: You are slightly more prepared than you were
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.That's a trailer we haven't seen in awhile, huh? It's relevant today, I promise! Besides, a little nostalgia is always fun. If I have one grievance with Wrath of the Lich King's cinematic, it's that they didn't give us an incredibly corny catchphrase to spout for nearly two years. Discolando asked... "Is there any substance to the rumor I've recently read that patch 3.3 will contain another yet unknown raid instance, and patch 3.4 will contain Icecrown Citadel? It does seem more logical to 'finish' the expansion with the advertised antagonist instead of a deux ex machina like patch 2.4 gave us."
The Queue: RaF'd dailies are delicious
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.I have to admit, o' faithful Queue readers, that I considered pawning off answering questions today to someone else so I could have more time to catch up on other work. Patch days can get quite busy around the WoW.com head quarters. Last night for example. Alex, Mike Sacco, and I had heard that there was a new raid lockout extension feature in place, so we rushed onto the Patch 3.2 PTR to grab some screenshots. Of course that meant we had to deal with the thing crashing every few minutes. And once we finally did make it into ZG to get a quick boss kill, Sacco disconnected and the server announced a shutdown in 5 minutes. But hey, we got the kill off and the screenshots captured with 15 seconds left until the shutdown. We won!Aideros asked..."When are more "hero classes", like the Death Knight, coming out? What are the speculations? Has anything been said about them since WotLK?"
The Queue: Goodnight, sweet prince
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.This weekend marked the end of an era, my friends. A champion (cheater) of the people (Gnomes) has fallen from grace (the thumbnails at the top of our site). The people (you guys) have shouted to the rooftops (our comments), "Down with oppression (martial arts techniques)! Down with corruption (GM lewts)!"So it is done.JustSaying asked..."Can someone please change those 4 pictures near the top of WoW.com's page? I'm tired of seeing that stupid gnome head every time I come to this site."Since you asked so nicely, Karatechop has been replaced.Spidey asked... "I've been leveling an alt (Troll Hunter) recently and decided to go mining/engineering, mostly for the bow/gun enchants and the like. I just leveled engineering to 200 and decided to go grab my Goblin Engineering membership. While doing the quest for membership I realized that the Alliance have Gnomes as a playable class, but how come the Horde doesn't have Goblins? In fact, Alliance has two "small people" races (Gnomes and Dwarves). Any chance the Horde will ever get Goblins or anything smaller than the Forsaken? I think Goblins would be cool, or dare I say, Murlocs as playable races."
The Queue: The holy cow it's a crab edition
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Half of our questions today are actually about WoW.com rather than... you know, WoW itself. Which is odd, but am I going to complain? Not really! It means you guys care, and that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Well, I guess that could be food poisoning. My crab rangoons were a little odd last night. Oddly delicious.Of course, if you don't really give a hoot about the inner workings of WoW.com and strictly want questions about the game, the other half of our questions cover that, so we have things for you, too. Read on!brasilnut13 asked..."Do you think Blizz will ever put class related titles in the game?"
The Queue: Judgement of Light & Day
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Today's music comes from a viewing of Scrubs I was, at the time, forced to watch by the girlfriend Katie. They had this great band playing at the end called The Polyphonic Spree. Today's featured reading music is the aforementioned band performing Light & Day ("Reach for the Sun").It really doesn't have anything to do with anything, but they're hippies and jump around a lot while making some rather cool and unique music. Plus they have this cultish vibe to them. The Leader is good, The Leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date.Hey look! World of Warcraft related things coming up now...Many people asked... "The PTR you download from the official WoW site is still 3.1! How are people getting on the Patch 3.2 PTR?"
The Queue: Patch 3.2 and Beyond the infinite
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Patch 3.2 is bringing about a lot of questions. Many cannot be answered yet, however we know the general direction of things from comments left by Ghostcrawler and others. I don't think that we have heard all the surprises in Patch 3.2, and we probably won't for a little bit.So today's Queue questions are compiled from comments left around the site. Hopefully the answers will help clear some things up.And today's reading music has two selections. One is Johann Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz, and the other is Pink Floyd's Great Gig in The Sky. They are connected, and have to do with today's content.Jjbrophy111 asked..."What will happen to saved Emblems of Heroism and Valor whit patch 3.2?"
The Queue: Clap hands
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.I clapped hands with Kil'jaeden pre-Wrath. He wasn't very happy about it.Maybe if he heard today's reading music he'd think differently.DoIt asked..."I've taken an extended break from WoW and am planning to come back and level some alts when Patch 3.2 drops, anyone have an ETA on it?"
Ask a Lore Nerd: Of Nerubians, Dwarves and Titans
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition. I'm going to get this out of the way right off the bat since I know I'll get a dozen people asking again this week: Yes, Know Your Lore will be coming back, it is not gone forever. I promise. I will pinkie swear on it, even. Come on, who wants to pinkie swear? Anybody? Anybody?Aler asked..."On the topic of the Nerubians and the Qiraji, is there any relation in the lore between the two? Or are two insect civilizations coincidental?"There's absolutely a relation between the two. They hold a common ancestry. Both the Qiraji and the Nerubians are offshoots of an even more ancient race, the Aqir. Way back when Azeroth was still very primal, and Trolls were the top dogs. There were three major players in the world: The Amani Trolls, the Gurubashi Trolls, and the Aqir. They warred for thousands of years. Thousands. It was a war of attrition on the grandest scale possible, and all involved more or less broke under the weight of their losses.
The Queue: All your fault
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.You know, I was getting bored of that whole musical intro thing, but having it around certainly made these preambles easier to write. What do you write here every day about a daily Q&A column? Guess what, guys! We're A'ing more Qs! Shock! Awe!So you've broken me. Congratulations. I am now a hollow husk of a man that can do nothing but uphold the status quo. I hope you're proud of yourselves. Here it goes again. WootZoot asked... "Any word on if Blizzard is working on a new novel or RPG book?"
The Queue: The day the music died
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Long long time ago...I can still rememberHow that music make me smile, Alex.And I knew if I had my chanceThat I could make those people danceAnd, maybe, they'd be happy for a while, Alex. Tim asked..."When discussing new content coming out, why does Blizzard always play so close to the chest? For example, the mount changes are due to be "in the next major content patch" which everyone knows is going to be patch 3.2, why don't they just say it?"
The Queue: Buzz buzz
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Today's edition of The Queue is a pretty short one, but it's an important one. I'm making a change to the format of this column, which will be explained in our very first question of the day. Why is it so short? When you read the answer to the question, you'll understand. I just ran out of steam after pulling that off. elstor asked... "What's with the music lately? Why did you have to start this?!" It's something we did for giggles once, people liked it, we kept doing it just for kicks. I'm pretty bored of it though! We should pick a new Whatever of the Day instead of songs. Extreme Stunt of the Day?Read this edition of The Queue while doing a kickflip out of a burning building and through the moving blades of a helicopter, then land in the middle of the ocean where you will wrestle a shark. While covered in bees.
The Queue: You can't take Spell Power away from me
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. There's a great question about the mechanics of spell casting when a proc / buff is or is not active. It's a very fine point that most people don't consider, and it's a mechanic that has been reiterated by Ghostcrawler and company recently. Take a few minutes to read it, you'll be glad you did.Today's reading music is Frank Sinatra and Natalie Cole singing They Can't Take That Away From Me.I love the way we dance 'till three.Mortur asked... "Now that the Battle.net conversion has been released for a while and bugs have been being dealt with, do you feel that there is much reason anymore for holding off on converting your account to Battle.net? Have the authentication issues after a patch been going away?"
