Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider'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.

Adam called yesterday's edition of The Queue 'the Extreme edition,' but I'm of the opinion he didn't quite follow through. So I'm posting something extreme to make up for it, which you can see in the video above. Extreme. If you don't feel it's extreme enough, feel free to post your extreme links in the comments below with your usual questions, as long as the links are safe for work (and sanity.)

Eternauta asked...

I have a question, too. I know it's pretty stupid and obvious, but here I go: Why is everybody DPS and why is it so hard to find healers or tanks?

Heh, come on over to my server. We have a glut of Tanks and Healers and I can never find any freakin' DPS for my Heroic groups. I leveled up my Prot Paladin because I wanted to do some level 80 tanking, and DPS simply do not exist on my server. It's horrible.

My server certainly isn't typical of all servers, though. I think the Tank shortage is not nearly as bad as it used to be, but there definitely is a Healer shortage on many servers. It's been that way for a very, very long time, I think. It's not just Wrath of the Lich King. Healing has always been a 'dedicated few' sort of deal, there has never been a lot of Healers. The ones that are around tend to be doing something almost nonstop, because they're so badly needed. As long as they're not awful, they never need to wait long to find a group.

My personal thought is that the next expansion is going to need a Healer Hero class like Wrath brought in a Tank. Death Knights helped the Tank shortage dramatically (when people aren't being stupid and running them off because they're not all Frost), and Healing will need the same treatment. Buff the crap out of the current Healers all you want, that won't attract players to the classes/specs more than adding in something wholly new and exciting. We're going to need new adopters, not people respeccing en masse to help the shortage.

DPSing is just less stress, and more fun for many people. Note that I said many. Not all (or even most), but many. We can hope that Dual Spec will help with this (people more willing to switch to Healing just for one instance or two) but we'll see.

aman asked...

Since Kaplan is stepping down, who is going to be the new head honcho? GC?

While Kaplan is gone from WoW, the team still has Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack. Kaplan refers to them as his partners in crime, and they really are pretty important fellows. If they add a third to regain their triumvirate, we don't really know who it would be, I don't think. I don't suspect it would be Greg Street, but there's a possibility that it could be, I suppose. He seems more of a numbers kind of guy, but he's been a Lead Designer with his previous companies, so it's possible.

Cyno01 asked...

Are they ever going to get Blizzard Authenticators back in stock?

The stock goes up and down a lot. They just sell out really, really quickly. Quickly as in within a few hours quickly. You need to check their store religiously or you can easily miss your chance. Just check frequently and hope that you get lucky.

david asked...

How did the Scourge in Duskwood get so faraway from Northrend and Lordaeron?

Actually, those Undead aren't really Scourge at all. They're simply Undead. There are many horrible things going on in that zone, from the Scythe of Elune to the corruption of Karazhan and the energies of the Nightmare seeping out through the Portal there. Oh, and that Necromancer guy, Morbent Fel. I would guess he has something to do with it!

Morbent Fel is the source of the Undead in Duskwood, primarily. If they have any ties to the Scourge, it's not an obvious one. The Dark Riders of Deadwing Pass tie into all of it somehow, but we don't actually know who they serve. It could be the Scourge, but it could also be the Legion or some other force we haven't seen yet. They could also be serving nobody in particular and were just thrown in because a nod to the Nazgûl would be cool. Who knows?

Tags: authenticator, dark-riders, dps, duskwood, extreme, foror, ghostcrawler, greg-street, healer, j-allen-brack, jeff-kaplan, kalgan, morbent-fel, nazgul, protection, scythe-of-elune, tank, tigole, tom-chilton

Filed under: Fishing, Analysis / Opinion, Lore, The Queue