The Queue: Procs and more on Patch 3.1
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 11th 2009 at 11:00AM
Good morning, ladies and gents! Or afternoon for some of you. Probably evening for a few others! It's morning for me, though. That's all that matters, isn't it? Indeed. Adam is out of the office today thanks to a blizzard murdering his internet connection, so I'll be covering for him even though today is technically his turn to do The Queue. Lazy such-and-such, letting weather get in his way. Grumble.
Ian R. asked...
Do you think the first couple of bosses in Ulduar can be PUG'd on easy mode? Like Sartharion and Vault of Archavon?
I would say yes, but only if you get a group of people who are comfortable doing vehicle fights. If you get a group of people that are going to throw hissy fits because they can't figure out how a vehicle works, Flame Leviathan is going to be a massive cockblock since it's the first boss of the zone. If you can get a group that can handle that, they can probably handle a number of the early fights on easy mode. You probably won't be able to clear the place, but you'll definitely get some bosses down.
Phaelan asked...
Any idea when the Wintergrasp Portal in Dalaran will be fixed?
No.
Hollywood Ron asked...
Will the drops from Uldar 10 be upgrades from Naxx 25?
Yes, actually, but only very slightly. It's not a full 'tier' of gear higher than Naxx 25, it's about half a tier higher. Basically, the gear in 10-man Ulduar will be upgrades from 25-man Naxx, but so small that it's not really that important for you to go and pick it up.
25-man Naxx to 25-man Ulduar is a full tier higher, 25-man Naxx to 10-man Ulduar is around half of a tier higher.
Tharesar asked...
What does "proc" mean?
Well, there are a few different theories as to the etymology of the term. One of them suggests that it stands of "Programmed(or Programmable) Random Occurrence" which is something that is programmed to happen with a degree of randomness. Another theory is that it came from old MUDs, derived from "spec_proc" which was short for "special procedure." Special procedures are actions or activities assigned to players, items, or places within the MUD that triggered when something else happened. For example, you interact with an object, which triggers an effect on another object. Either way, it's shorthand/an abbreviation that sort of became a word itself.
I'm pretty sure you don't care about the etymology, though! The MMO term 'proc' pretty much stands for anything that can be triggered with some degree of randomness. Let's say you have an enchant on your weapon that has a 2% chance to proc on a melee swing. That means it has a 2% chance to trigger, and there's a somewhat random element to it.
Erinorofdarkspear asked...
Question about Heirlooms -- Wouldn't it make sense, that, if you were to be leveling multiple alts at the same time, to buy the Heirloom cloth shoulders so that all of your characters can wear them? What I am thinking of is just mailing them to each of my alts as soon as they are done resting, and when rest xp is up, sending it on to the next one. What do you think, oh fellow Alex?
If you're leveling a lot of alts all at once and don't have enough Emblems/Stone Keeper's Shards to buy multiple sets of Shoulders, yeah, just passing the Cloth shoulders around would work fine. Your gear wouldn't be optimal, but if all you're interested in is the 10% XP boost? Sure. That works. The only drawback is that you don't get great stats for all of your alts on Cloth shoulders, but that shouldn't be much of a problem at low levels.
asmus asked...
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if the woodchuck was nerfed 10% by Blizzard?
Sixty-seven point five.
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!Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Pyornthe Mar 11th 2009 11:09AM
This term 'hard mode' just means the difficulty of the encounter, yes? There's no actual mode that is harder than heroic?
Ronzily Mar 11th 2009 11:22AM
"Hard mode" refers to optional ways to tackle the fights that make them harder than the default fight. Like Sartharion with 1, 2, or 3 drakes up, rather than killing the drakes and fighting Sarth by himself.
You can do these "hard modes" on both normal and heroic, and they either give achievements or extra loot, or both.
bundee Mar 11th 2009 11:23AM
Yes. For example Sartharion, where you have a choice to engage him with no drakes up, all the way to 3 drakes up. 3 being the "hard mode" of the encounter.
bundee Mar 11th 2009 11:24AM
*shakes fist* @ Ronzily
Pyornthe Mar 11th 2009 11:32AM
Alright, thank you. I was beginning to wonder if there was something I was missing out on.
Thanks for responding to my noob question. :P
Jay in Oregon Mar 11th 2009 11:39AM
"Hard mode" refers to boss encounters that can made be more challenging under certain conditions: the most obvious example is leaving one or more drakes alive when fighting Sartharion.
The majority of Ulduar's boss encounters will have optional hard modes (although they hopefully will not all consist of leaving one or more minibosses alive).
I have a question about Ulduar and hard modes:
A raid leader that I run with regularly is convinced that the existence of optional "hard modes" means that you will be able to run Ulduar with groups of varying sizes. If you have a 10-person group, you run Ulduar 10-man easy mode: if you have a 13-person group, you run Ulduar but you do the equivalent of leaving one drake up for the boss fights. Is that possible?
Anhydrous Mar 11th 2009 11:57AM
No, Jay. Your raid leader is dumb. If you're taking 13 people into Ulduar, that means you're in the 25 man version, which would make it a very hard mode indeed. In the 10 man version, the instance is limited to 10 people ONLY.
Urosh Mar 11th 2009 11:10AM
cockblock. LOL!
lexic0n Mar 11th 2009 1:50PM
I was thinking the same thing. Um, what?!?
Keyra Mar 11th 2009 11:10AM
He let "a" blizzard knock out his internet connection, or he let Blizzard knock out his...um...never mind.
I always thought "proc" was shorthand for "process"?
rosencratz Mar 11th 2009 12:16PM
Indeed, a lot of people do, myself included. I'm happy with "procedure" though, it means more or less the same thing. "Something that is triggered by something else"
The "Spec_Proc" theory though does make a lot of sense. Not that i ever got involved with that mud business myself.
peagle Mar 11th 2009 12:24PM
Agree, from my early programming years, "proc" is just shorthand from when a defined process is called. In this case the defined process being whatever the special item action is.
Chris Anthony Mar 11th 2009 1:00PM
"Procedure" makes the most sense to me, since it's a name for a reusable subsection of a program (they're also called functions, subroutines, etc.). When an ability procs, it calls the appropriate procedure. "spec_proc" is just an extension of that.
"Programmed Random OCcurrence" is almost certainly a back-formation from "proc" and not the origin of the term.
Throck Mar 11th 2009 1:22PM
I agree with Chris Anthony. "Proc" is short for "procedure", which is a well-delineated, callable block of code in various programming and scripting languages, including Pascal, DikuMUD, and Transact-SQL. That fact shouldn't really be in dispute given all the coders familiar with procedures and also given all the text MUDders who play those newfangled graphical MUDs nowadays...
"Programmed Random Occurrence" seems to be a poor backronym that people spread around for some reason. Wouldn't that acronym be PRO? Also, a proc doesn't have to be random.
But as Alex implies, etymology doesn't matter as long as you know what it means now.
Daniel Mar 11th 2009 2:12PM
It's processing. This is the way we always used even in the early 1980s. I remember even using the term in PnP games. The question always came up, "what are the odds of X ability (climbing a wall etc) processing?". I have honestly never heard of procedure before; it makes no contextual sense. And as for it being an acronym, that has all the silliness of post-hoc artificiality.
Nimangma Mar 11th 2009 2:29PM
Paladins
Rely
On
Chance
elstor Mar 11th 2009 4:03PM
"Proc" = "Procreate"
LostOne Mar 11th 2009 11:14AM
I got the cloth PVP heirloom shoulders (better stamina, which helps all classes when dealing with suboptimal shoulders). I get a few weird inquiries about it on my DK, but most people understand once it's explained.
Genius Jones Mar 11th 2009 11:14AM
I have one set of mail shoulders and one set of cloth shoulders, and I just mail them back and forth to whichever toon I am working on at any given time. I don't see any reason at all to have more than one of each.
Nakabeast Mar 11th 2009 11:15AM
Okay here's a big question. These heirlooms and similar items are listed as "Bind on Account." Not wouldn't this make more sense if these BoA items actually did what their tooltip lists, and let us trade these through out entire ACCOUNTS, not just one SERVER. I'd love for my DK on my friend's server to have Murky and the Big Blizzard Bear.