The Queue: Image related

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.

The image above is most certainly related to a question in The Queue today. The question is ... which one!? You'll just have to read and find out! Mwahaha!

... that guy's kinda cute for a disgusting slime creature, isn't he?

Mal asked:

Is it just me or are many guilds dying lately?

I certainly don't have numbers I can provide as to how many guilds have died (or have been born) lately, but if you're experiencing that, there's probably an easy explanation for it.

One, while patch 4.2 is imminent, we've had largely the same content for half of a year now. If you're a raider, even if you haven't beaten all there is to beat in the current tier of raiding, you've been banging away on it since Cataclysm's release. You're going to be really damn sick of that content. I, personally, have not killed Sinestra. However, my drive to get there is almost completely nonexistent. I've been seeing the walls of Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight so often that if I had to be in there for another month or three, I simply would not be interested in playing the game anymore. I think I have a higher tolerance for tedium than most, so people with a threshold of, say ... four months? They're long gone.

Can you think of any other type of game where it's standard practice to kill the same things repeatedly for half a year? To break down for you how long I've been zoning into Blackwing Descent, I have 20 Magmaw kills. That's at least 20 weeks back-to-back of going into BWD. It doesn't matter if I've killed hard mode Nefarian or not -- 20 weeks of zoning into the same place is about 10 weeks too many. With how slowly Blizzard trickles out content, you're inevitably going to reach a point of burnout prior to every tier of raiding.

Two, it's summer -- at least in the United States. Even huge dorks find better things to do during summer. Either they drop raiding (or logging in) completely, or it becomes a weekly song-and-dance to figure out which of your raiders will actually show up and which of them decided to hit the beach or a barbeque or a festival. Some guilds don't want to put up with that so they just call it quits, either permanently or temporarily.

Mal also asked:

Everyone is saying that Dragonwrath is going to be bis for dps casters for this patch and maybe the whole expansion. But in this patch the tier 11 raids are being nerfed so more players can do them. So what will happen in 4.3? Will everyone be raiding the nerfed 4.2 raids for a chance at a weapon better than what 4.3 drops?

Sure. Even if Blizzard doesn't specifically nerf tier 12 content when tier 13 rolls around, the simple addition of tier 13 will go a long way toward trivializing tier 12 content. Legendaries always become easier to acquire after awhile. Val'anyr in Wrath of the Lich King was good for quite a while in the right hands, and you bet your butt it became easier to get when Trial of the Crusader loot rolled around.

Grigor asked:

Maybe this is too early to ask but I'm making my annual clothes shopping trip soon....do I need to pack shorts for Blizzcon or can I get by with just pants? Blizzcon is October after all.

Oh, dear god. Shorts, my friend. Take shorts with you. Even if you take nothing else, take at least one pair of shorts. I'm from Wisconsin, where it's usually freezing over by the time October rolls around, so my first BlizzCon was a huge shock to the system. It's still hot and humid in California in October, and you'll be doing tons of walking around in a tightly packed building full of other nerds. You want to be as cool and comfortable as possible.

Worst case scenario, it's cold and rainy. Pants still won't feel good once you get indoors. You'll get wet outside, then once you're inside ... your wet jeans will get heavy and stiff and cling to your legs. You'll sweat in your moist pants all day long, and with pant legs going all the way down to your shoes, nothing will be able to breathe or dry. You know what happens then? Crotch mildew. Do you want crotch mildew? No. You don't. Bring the freaking shorts.

If you truly and honestly never wear shorts at any other time of the year for some crazy reason, just find one decently fitting pair of shorts on discount somewhere. Hell, go to Goodwill or some other secondhand store. BlizzCon is full of people dressing up like elves, panda bears, and fish men. Nobody cares if your shorts are secondhand.

All you need is one pair. If you got sweaty and gross on day one of BlizzCon, don't even worry about it. Every hotel has a laundry room. Even teeny-tiny hotels have one washing machine. It might cost you a few quarters to get them washed, but that's no biggie. Throw them in the washing machine after BlizzCon day one, wear them again on day two, done.

After BlizzCon 2010, I spent a few extra days in California to hang with Mike Sacco and drive eels to extinction. We stayed at the Sheraton Park (which is absolutely gorgeous; I spent some time there in 2009 as well), and their washing machines were poolside outdoors. While my laundry was running, I sat by the pool ... and hunted snails. I had never seen a snail in the wild before. It was very exciting! I tweeted pictures!

Many asked:

Is patch 4.2 tomorrow?

I will neither confirm nor deny the arrival of patch 4.2 tomorrow. However, I will request that you lay the patch 4.2 questions on thick in the comments today. For ... you know. Reasons.
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! Tags: blizzcon, facebookfeed, featured, guide, nefarian, patch-4.2, qa, question-and-answer, sinestra, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

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The Queue: Firelands FAQ

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mat McCurley will be your host today.

It's patch day, and with patch days come many questions. Luckily for you, we've gathered some of the most frequently asked questions about Rage of the Firelands in this handy, Queue-sized guide, so that you can embark on your patch day shenanigans without a worry in the world. Well, unless you happen to be on a PVP server; in that case, have fun doing your dailies.

With the extended maintenance and hints to read the patch notes, Blizzard looks to be setting us up for a fiery Tuesday. There's a lot of fire in our future. I know that it is too soon (ha ha, get it?) to start thinking about what's coming next before we've even sunk our teeth into this new stuff, but I have a feeling that after three to four months of lots of fire, whatever is coming down the pike is going to need a hint of refreshment and a fire-lite motif. Nonetheless, I am excited for all of this new content.

Follow along below for the answers to some of the most common questions about patch 4.2 and all it entails.

What's going to happen to my valor points?

All valor points will be converted into justice points. The justice point cap, however, remains at 4,000 points. So you'll be give justice points up to the cap. If you have any valor points left over, they will be converted into currency at a rate of 47 silver per point.

Let's say you have 3,000 justice points and 1,100 valor points. Since you cannot get over 4,000 justice points, 1,000 of your valor points will be turned into justice points, and 100 will be turned into 47 silver per point.

Do I need to be attuned to the new raid instance?

No. The Firelands is immediately accessible by heading to the Sulfuron Spire in Hyjal. Grab nine or 24 of your bestest friends and head in to punch new bosses in their loot bags.

Where do I go to start the new daily quests?

The new daily quests that open up the Regrowth and the Molten Front are available at the Shrine of Malorne in the southwest portion of Hyjal.

What quest do I have to complete to open up the new dailies in Hyjal?

In order to access these new quests, you will need to have completed up to and including the quest Aessina's Miracle, in which the ancient Aessina quenches the fires consuming the western forests of Hyjal. After you complete this quest, you should be able to access the new content at the Sanctuary of Malorne.

There're only like 4 or 5 quests at the new hub! How do I get more?

You start at the Sanctuary of Malorne and have a few quests a day until you get 20 Marks of the World Tree, the new personal currency you accumulate by completing these new dailies. After 20 of them, which is a few days of dailies, you head into the Firelands and the Molten Front proper. Keep doing dailies for more Marks of the World Tree.

How do I get started on the legendary quest chain?

Players must first kill a Molten Lord inside of the Firelands or have completed any one of the achievements for the previous raid tier (clear Bastion of Twilight, Throne of the Four Winds, or Blackwing Descent) to open up the beginning quest for Dragonwrath, which sends you back to your capital city and onward to the Bronze Dragonflight.

Are there any new factions to gain rep with?

Raiders will be able to gain reputation with the Avengers of Hyjal. Reputation will be capped out early with trash kills in the instance, so many boss kills will likely be needed to reach exalted with the faction.

What are crystallized firestones, and why are people so excited about them?

Crystallized firestones are items that drop from heroic mode bosses in the Firelands and allow you to create heroic versions of items that never had heroic equivalents. For instance, items you purchase from the valor points vendors now have a heroic version that you can purchase with the regular item plus a firestone. This is great for relics, tanking guns, and other slot items that have trouble being put on loot lists because of their relatively class-specific nature.

Has the amount of hit rating gone up for bosses?

No. Blizzard originally was tossing around the idea to increase the hit rating needed to hit cap on the new bosses, but this is not the tier that that is happening. Perhaps next tier. Right now, hit ratings are staying the same.

What's the deal with all the hunter "taming challenges"?

Patch 4.2 is introducing 10 new pets for hunters to tame, including lava spiders, an obsidian cat, a metallic crab, a ghost owl, and more. Each potential tame has a gimmick or vulnerability that must be exploited before the hunter can tame the beast. These new unique taming challenges are scattered around the Regrowth and the Molten Front daily questing hubs.

Any 5-man content?

There are no new 5-man dungeons coming with patch 4.2. You can still get valor points from doing your seven weekly random Zandalari and heroic dungeons.

Does the new arena season start tomorrow?

No. The new arena and PVP season begins usually one week after the current season ends. After Season 9 ends, the numbers will be crunched and rewards will be given out, including titles and drakes, to the winners of the PVP season. This usually takes about a week. Once that is all done, PVP Season 10 will start up.
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! Tags: facebookfeed, faq, featured, firelands-faq, guide, patch-4.2, qa, question-and-answer, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

Filed under: The Queue, Cataclysm

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The Queue: Frightening little things

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.

Ah, patch 4.2. It's nice having something I can do solo on a high-end character. Kick back, relax, kill some mobs at my leisure. I only wish the first tier of Firelands dailies wasn't so ... limited. Two quests per day until the next unlock is a bit boring! It gets better, though.

Skar asked:

Where's my /map animation?

It isn't /map. You have to actually open your map (or your mail) to see it. Though if you have your map open ... you probably still won't see it.

Knob asked:

Now that Firelands is coming, let's speculate on future raids in this expansion. Do you think we'll see a War of the Ancients raid? I know it was hinted at during Blizzcon (Afrasiabi said that we're going to see the Infinite Dragonflight in action), but with Firelands having been pushed from 4.1 to 4.2 and Abyssal Maw being cancelled, do you think WotA will end up on the chopping block as well? And will we ever hear about where Deathwing is holed up? We always knew that Illidan was in the Black Temple, Kil'jaeden was waiting to be summoned in the Sunwell, the Lich King was on top of the Icecrown Citadel....but where is Deathwing? It seems like he doesn't have an iconic place to call his lair.

Cataclysm has made me very unwilling to rely on things Blizzard says at BlizzCon. I'm fairly certain that almost every major Cataclysm feature discussed at the past BlizzCon(s) ended up either changing so much as to be unrecognizable or were straight up canned. That's understandable to some extent -- some of those features just weren't working out -- but this expansion has reached nearly comedic levels as far as how much hasn't happened/won't happen.

I would love to be able to say, "Yes, absolutely, we're getting War of the Ancients," since Blizzard talked about it at BlizzCon, at a fansite gathering, and to the press, but the reality is that we have no flipping idea what Blizzard is doing this expansion.

Deathwing ... who knows? Maybe we haven't seen his lair because we'll fight him in an instanced version of the overworld. Showdown over Stormwind City?

Neroh asked:

I was excited about the new roar sound effects in patch 4.2...but they sound horrible. What's the deal!?

Fun fact: Those /roar sound files have been in the game files since the very beginning, back when the game launched. They were just never used. Those recordings are probably six, seven years old. They were most likely never used because they sound absolutely awful. Players liked the worgen roar so much, however, that they decided to enable them for everybody.

If you play a draenei or a blood elf, your roar isn't actually a roar. It's a /charge emote reassigned to /roar. Why? Because Blizzard didn't have a roar recorded years in advance for you guys, and it didn't record anything new for anybody when implementing these /roars. You guys get a recycled sound file, and everybody else gets one from 2004.

bebop6275 asked:

Why is one of Hakkar the Soulflayer's nicknames The Faceless One?

I think "Faceless" is just one of those stock titles to make something sound evil. It probably has no relation at all to other Faceless-styled things in Warcraft.

Things that are faceless are scary. See: The Slender Man internet phenomenon. Unless you're easily creeped out like I am, then don't look into the Slender Man at all. Really. Don't.

My question to you:

Is it just me, or is World Shaman a super-lame and awkward title?
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! Tags: facebookfeed, featured, guide, patch-4.2, qa, question-and-answer, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

Filed under: The Queue

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The Queue: Panda ... nope, not going to do it

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.

Every time the pandaren get mentioned in The Queue, we end up with a week straight of pandaren headers, themes and puns. I'm going to break that trend and completely avoid the topic of the pandaman in this edition of The Queue and hopefully end the horrible cycle of pain.

riley asked:

Do you think Warcraft ever seen an ending to its story or will Blizzard keep adding content and lore until they subscriber numbers drop below profitability? Will we ever get to fight Sargeras or will the servers just shut down in the middle of the 6th expansion?

Blizzard won't end World of Warcraft until it becomes financially irresponsible to keep the game running. It certainly isn't going to write a definite ending in. Blizzard will keep churning content out as long as the game sustains itself. If we end up fighting Sargeras in WoW's lifetime, it will most likely just be revealed that something even worse is around the corner.

Scooba asked:

What's up with poison gas storage sitting in the back of the ruins above undercity? Is it supposed to imply sylvannas is up to something?

Imply? We are way beyond implications, brother. Sylvanas is riding the crazy train as fast as it'll go. Just look around the Eastern Kingdoms in Cataclysm. Sylvanas is actively wielding plagues in battle, obliterating Gilneas, Hillsbrad, et cetera, and raising the dead as her servants. She's dag nasty evil. Remember the plague that Putress used at the Wrathgate? It only existed because Sylvanas told him to create it. Now that Putress and Varimathras are out of the way, she's happily using it wherever and whenever she wants, all according to plan.

I would not be surprised for one single moment if we learn that Sylvanas is current holder of the shards of Frostmourne.

Goblinsgoboom asked:

On the topic of new playable races: what do you think would be the next races for Horde and Alliance? I know we just got new races, I'm just wondering. Arroka would be nice for Horde. I love those little bird men. :)

Frankly, I think there are plenty of races -- Blizzard isn't even utilizing the potential of the ones it has. There needs to be some focus on the less-loved races of the Horde and the Alliance before Blizzard thinks about adding more. Because of that, I haven't put a lot of thought into which races it could add.

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The Queue: Rude Dog

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.

Tell me you remember this rude dude. He was probably on a pair of shorts or a T-shirt you owned. RIP, Rude Dog.

zach.l asked:

if a gamemaster had a ticket from a person who belongs to his guild when hes not a gamemaster is he allowed to answer it or would it be moved to another person?

If I understand your question properly, you're asking if GMs are allowed to answer tickets from their guildmates, and the answer to that is no. In fact, they're not allowed to answer tickets from their play server(s) at all.

Polydorr asked:

What was the last indication Blizzard gave (if any) about adding a new hero class to the game? Back before WOTLK they were talking about how they wanted to add one every or every other expansion.

I know that balancing issues are difficult, more work than intended, not a focus, etc etc. But I personally would love a new hero class (or two!) in the game.

Maybe since they just added new races they will add a new class in the next expansion. Holding out for a new healing class!

Blizzard has said that it's open to adding new classes, but after the balancing nightmare that was the death knight class, the devs want to be very careful about it. That's not to say that there isn't room for more healing or tank classes, because with only four tank specs and five healing specs, there definitely is, but the issue here is less "could Blizzard make another class" and more "should Blizzard make another class." Classes need to be worth playing, to provide a unique experience compared to other classes.

We're admittedly running a little low on untapped potential class ideas in lore, too -- most units that existed in Warcraft 2 or 3 have all or most of their abilities already in WoW, just spread among a few classes. Rogues, for example, have abilities from Blade Masters and Wardens, among other units. They already had to put two Death Coils in the game -- one for warlocks, and then another for death knights, who had the ability in Warcraft 3. That's not to say that Blizzard couldn't just invent spells; it does all the time.

Honestly, the only good sign for a new class at this point is that each expansion has seen some big gameplay hook. This is different than a content hook. A gameplay hook is "two new races" or a "new class," whereas a content hook is "you get to go to Northrend/Outland." We're pretty much full to the brim on possible races at this point, so it seems highly unlikely that we'll get two additional ones in the inevitable next expansion.

The real thing to keep in mind here, in any event, is that WoW's designers can and will do whatever they want if they feel like it's good for the game. If they believe a new class is what the game needs, then they'll figure out a way to make it work -- lore, mechanics, everything.

Shizzle asked:

Does Blizzard have plans to release a Kharazan 5-man or Raid? I've noticed that in the new (read: Cataclysm) model of the Kharazahn tower, there is a zone portal behind iron bars up at the top that is not the main entrance (which is down below) nor is it the side door (which is in the middle of the tower). This entrance is on the top of the tower, on the north side and appears to have the beginning portions of what can easily turn into a flightpath (i.e. grifon nests, but no NPCs, etc). Any Idea what this is foreshadowing?

That upper entrance was actually always there. The original plan was to have a flight path up to there to make accessing the second half of the raid easier, but they opted out of it in the development cycle. Don't get me wrong; I'd love a new Karazhan. There just isn't any indication of its coming back just yet. 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!

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