Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Close the floodgates again, please
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 25th 2009 at 11:00AM
Hi again, everyone! I may be covering The Queue for the rest of the week while Adam Holisky flees from a righteous flood. We usually trade off days, but he's kind of a wuss and can't take a little water, so I'll spare him the tragedy of needing to toddle through a puddle or whatever.
pants asked...
"I know that they are taking away the proto-drakes for the raid achievements in 3.1, but will the title "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" be gone as well for it's respective achievement?"
I just hopped onto the PTR to see if the title was still listed for the achievement, and it appears to still be there. It doesn't look like it will be going away in patch 3.1, so you'll still have a chance to earn Champion of the Frozen Wastes.
Deargchief asked...
"How come a lot of the cloth gear in Ulduar looks the same as the Mage set? Why can't they use the Warlock set also!"
Because the Mage set rules.
restodrood asked...
"Will the fragments for the legendary mace work like emblems? For example, in your loot box one or two emblems show up, but everyone gets one or two. Or will we have to roll on them, only getting a total maximum of one fragment off of each boss?"
It's one fragment per boss, period. Only one person gets to loot it. It's not like Emblems. They're most certainly not going to give a Legendary Mace to absolutely every single member of the raid all at once. You're going to need to focus on getting one person at a time, get them all of their fragments, then work on someone else.
Drow asked...
"Hard mode, is that just doing achievements, or is there an actual button that is pressed in game before an encounter? I know it sounds stupid, but I've heard this rumor a couple times and would like to snuff it out."
Well, there are achievements for the hard modes, but that's not all they are. By intentionally doing a fight differently, you make it more difficult and thus you get better rewards. Most of the Ulduar bosses have these. Sartharion also has this, times three.
For example, for the basic Sartharion kill, you kill all of the sub-bosses first before ever pulling him, then the fight is easy epics. If you don't kill the sub-bosses first, they enter the fray while you're fighting Sartharion and the encounter becomes much more difficult. Depending on how many sub-bosses you left standing before pulling Sartharion, you get better loot. That's the Hard Mode. It exists in both 10 and 25 man versions of the encounter.
Brouck asked...
"What is the most successful strategy for Heroic Oculus, other than don't PUG it?"
Umm... don't PUG it? Okay, sorry. My groups use one Red Drake, one Green Drakes, and three Bronze Drakes if we're not going for the achievements. Red tanks everything, green heals the red, the Bronze rotate through their timestops. Easy sailing on the final boss. All the bosses before him? Learn what explodes. Avoid those explosions. That sums up the entirety of those encounters. In each of them something explodes, and there is somewhere to stand that will not explode. It is recommended that you go to the place that isn't exploding.
The Oculus isn't that bad as long as people stick together and actually look at the abilities their drakes have. People start dying when they zoom off by themselves on the drake and get owned, then fall to their death and everyone gets anxious while waiting for that guy to corpse run. People get annoyed, people get sloppy, people die endlessly. It's silly.
molimo asked...
"Here's a question, why is Gamon killable at all? I just don't understand it."
He's part of a Rogue quest called The Shattered Hand. They must pick pocket him for a key, and since in order to pick pocket something it needs to be able to be attacked, Gamon has the unfortunate fate of being an attackable target in the middle of Orgrimmar.
Rahl asked...
"So where's all the news, info and guides to the Argent Tournament?"
Well, there hasn't been much news about the tournament beyond what we've covered. It's there, it's pretty cool, there are new mounts, et cetera. It gets some polish and bug fixes each patch, but that's about it!
As for guides and information like that? We're working on it. By the time patch 3.1 hits, we'll have a set of guides to the Argent Tournament quests and daily quests and all of that. It's a bit silly to release full blown guides to things that aren't finalized yet, but the Tournament seems to be nearing completion, so it wouldn't hurt for us to kick up production on those. And we have. You'll see them soon.
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, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 7)
vazhkatsi Mar 25th 2009 11:53AM
I know on my server, my guild raids 3 hours later than everyone else, because of our jobs/etc.. and theres also a french guild that raids two hours after us, and an australian one that raids 4 hours after them at 4 in the morning(we have a lot of australians.)
so, post on your forums with your situation, you might not get flamed/trolled, and if you're nice, they might even direct you to a GM of a guild that fits your needs. (tho it might not be a top of the line raiding guild.)
thats how i found a guild for my twink.
AyaJulia Mar 25th 2009 12:18PM
I originally rolled on an Oceanic server, because my friend who got me into the game is an Aussie. As someone who lives squarely in North America, it was a bad decision on my part, and we ended up spending $75 to transfer my two mains and my husband's character to a realm in our time zone (Terenas).
Aman'Thul tended to raid anywhere from midnight mountain time (5 PMish server time?) to 7 AM. Kara needed a LOT of Red Bull and I could only raid on weekends. I spent a while looking for a "Euro time" raiding guild so that I could do things, but couldn't find one on Aman'Thul Horde, so I wouldn't recommend trying there if you're Horde.
And as for "who plays on Oceanic realms" -- I'm really not trying to sound snarky here, and I'm going to fail miserably and seem like I'm just trying to make you look stupid, and for that I apologize -- but you do realize people outside the US have heard of this game I hope? Right? WoW is popular in Australia and New Zealand, so a fair number of people from those countries/that area do actually play the game. You'll also meet military personnel in places like Iraq, and the stray North-America based Canadians and Americans (I met more Canadians than Americans by far, believe it or not, mostly from BC).
alpha5099 Mar 25th 2009 11:30AM
Why are trolls so unpopular? I mean, I get that (for some reason) a lot of people want to play the "pretty" races, so you end up with humans and both of the elven races being the most played. But then you get past those people, and you have all the other races, and so few people are playing trolls. Are trolls really that much less appealing a race than the undead or the orcs?
Yeng Mar 25th 2009 11:35AM
In my experience trolls are quite popular....just not the race ;).
My guess is because compared with the other races, troll racials are not that good. And possibly because they have annoying Rastafarian voices :D
Oustedian Mar 25th 2009 1:31PM
Frankly, I just don't like the way they look in gear. I just don't think I'd like looking at big green ears sticking out of an epic looking helm or big blue shoe-less feet.
Eternauta Mar 25th 2009 11:45AM
Same question here.
Trolls look good imo, but I don't like their animations.
Braundo Mar 25th 2009 11:45AM
I like trolls, but I agree that they seem to be in the minority. I'd rather be a Troll than a Night Elf any day of the week.
zappo Mar 25th 2009 11:58AM
Some people like shoes. No seriously, it's annoying as hell. I also hate the undead bones showing thing, but you can mostly hide that on casters.
Kylenne Mar 25th 2009 12:02PM
I have no idea, trolls are awesome. Especially troll females. I love their dancey animations. And their hairdos! They have the best dances, too. Could take or leave the running, though. My main troll is a enhance shammy and were it not for the fact leveling in the old world is boring as hell, she'd probably be my main. Blasting Shakira's Spanish-language music while running through Durotar in GW? Fun. I grew up and still live in a predominately Caribbean area of NYC so the Darkspear culture makes me giggle really hard, too. I probably wouldn't eat a Troll-made beef patty, though.
Trolls are a huge reason why I always wanted to play Horde, and finally rerolled once I broke up with my Alliance-4-lyfe partner that got me into the game. All my Horde are either Belves or Trolls.
Kilcin Mar 25th 2009 1:04PM
I love trolls except for two things, their body posture (it hurts my back staring at the back of a male troll) and their voices. My first main was a troll mage that I had a ton of fun with but he just got on my nerves. Course my two issues could be mostly resolved with playing a female troll, but I'm not into cross-gender playing.
Balius Mar 25th 2009 2:28PM
Historically, troll racials have been the weakest in the game, no troll armor includes shoes (which frustrates some people) troll males have an extremely hunched posture that other people don't like, and other people don't like the troll animations.
Basically, trolls are least popular for a combination of tiny nit-picky issues.
Ben Striegel Mar 26th 2009 8:56AM
Lorewise it makes sense, as the Darkspears were nearly exterminated by the other tribes in Stranglethorn and then again by murlocs.
Gamewise, I love trolls. Male trolls have the best sit and idle animations in the game. Kneeling lithely to inspect the ground, like a hunter intent upon his quarry? HELLS YES. I can understand the gripes about male troll casting animations (wtf dragonball?) but every Horde race has poor posture (belves ftl), which is perfectly inline with their self-esteem after being persecuted incessantly by a bunch of whiny pansies (NELVES: OH NOES WE NOT IMMORTAL NO MORE?!?!????? NOW WE ONLY LIVE FOR THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF YEARS QQ)
Furthermore, if you can make their faces look half-decent (which is no mean feat) female trolls have the sexiest models in the game if you can forgive the feet. Female belves are too bitchy and trashy to be truly sexy.
WoWie Zowie Mar 25th 2009 11:34AM
"It is recommended that you go to the place that isn't exploding."
i loled at this =)
vazhkatsi Mar 25th 2009 11:56AM
see. this is the definition of every raid fight in the game. Don't stand in fire/ice/water/lightning/acid/goo/lava and its why the illidari council was the "superbowl of not standing in things" the last two BT pugs i was in wiped on council(thats also where my guild was stuck pre 3.0)
Ian R. Mar 25th 2009 11:34AM
So was the bug with Ebon Plaguebringer ever fixed? Is it fixed in 3.1? Or if there are more than one Unholy DK in a raid, is one of them getting nerfed : /
vazhkatsi Mar 25th 2009 11:58AM
just like the same bug with all the lock spells? they fixed those, i imagine they'll fix this
Boaz the Dwarf Mar 25th 2009 11:36AM
What is the origin of the 5-man dungeon group build (a tank, 3 dps and a healer)? Were there originally instructions in the game that suggested that we have one player stack up as much armor and defense as they can and try to hold all the mobs while others stack up damage dealing abilities and healing abilities?
I've never seen anything in game to suggest this and i was just curious who came up with it and how it was derived.
Yeng Mar 25th 2009 11:39AM
This goes all the way back to D&D. They focused on having class roles such as tank, healer, damage-doer. After that came MUDs (multiplayer text adventure games) that followed the same concept. And finally MMOs in essence are just MUDs with fancy graphics and inherit many of the same concepts.
Kylenne Mar 25th 2009 12:27PM
@Yeng:
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I say this as someone who teethed on AD&D 1E and GURPS, and played MUDs for 10+ years. The concept of "roles" as we know them today (tank, damage, heals) has no basis whatsoever in old school tabletop RPGs. Specifically, the concept of a tank is a thoroughly modern one, though the idea has been there in theory almost from the beginning. The breakdown of combat roles was really more about how you did damage rather than if (and even with their relative lack of direct damage spells, priests--particularly in the Forgotten Realms setting--had things like debuffs and whatnot so they could help without healing). The "five man" concept is also a modern one. Back in the day in D&D it was four (fighter, mage, rogue, cleric).
Back in the day in D&D, everyone was "DPS", or heals. Combat encounters back then were mostly about beating down the monsters before they could beat you down, and hoping you have a cleric. The closest you would see to a tank is letting the Fighter or Paladin get closest because they had the most HP and were able to use heavy armor. Thing is, pretty much all their abilities, even in AD&D 2.5 (Combat & Tactics system) were about damage dealing rather than damage mitigation. MUDs are where the "tank/dps/heals" thing really evolved from, because aside from MUSHes, combat became the focus of the game rather than the full scope of adventuring.
The fact that you see class roles in the current D&D 4.0 core rules is a direct result of the popularity of WoW.
Yeng Mar 27th 2009 5:03PM
Well I never played 1st ed. But I did start in 2nd (never moved beyond that to the newer editions). And the concept of tank, healer, dps was there, even if not a '5 man' group...that came down to more of how many people were in your D&D group. But you still would have the plate-wearer up front getting the mobs attention while dps and healers were in the back healing and blasting.
As you said though, the role positions really became more evident in MUDs (which I have been playing since '94 and coding for last 8 years). MUDs further developed the 'tank classes' in front and blaster/healers in back.
I can't really attribute any of these mechanics to WoW originally. Blizzard took what was already out there and possibly polished them up a bit for their own use. And while I never played the MMO predecessors to WoW (Everquest/UO/etc), I can guess that they had this mechanic as well, so WoW definitely didn't define it.