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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Horsewhipping
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 31st 2009 at 1:00PM
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.Afternoon, ladies and gents. I have a follow up from yesterday's question regarding casinos, with further information straight from Ancilorn, a Community Representative over in the EU. Hopefully he doesn't end up getting horsewhipped for a fortnight over it like the last few Blue posters that decided to write to us!
Ancilorn says that, essentially, casinos that take an up front entry fee (whether it be gold or items) are against the Terms of Use and will result in action being taken on the casino owner. Casinos and competitions that do not require an upfront fee are legal and legit. Collecting an entry free is the violation here.
Now we know! Thank you very much, Ancilorn. You are my hero.
enthusedii asked...
"When the new Arena season arrives, will the arena points I have currently be reset?"
Yes, when Season 6 begins, your points from Season 5 will be reset. When Season 5 ends, there will be a week before Season 6 begins in which you'll be able to finish spending your points. Then? Bam, pow, gone!
Rodrigo asked...
"When will all the imprisoned goblins/children/arakkoa/(other imprisoned creature in WoW) go to the innkeeper and get a free hearthstone, like the login tips tell us to?"
Well, it's a little too late for that now, isn't it? They're already imprisoned! That's what they get for not listening to the login screen. That thing isn't there for fun, you know. It's important! Life or death! Everyone should listen to it and get a hearthstone. If you don't, you'll be the Hyldnir's next prisoner.
...you know, that might not be so bad.
Hal asked...
"Why were consumable weapon enhancements (oils and stones) removed from use for higher level equipment? Are there any plans to add in some sort of substitute in the future?"
They wanted to cut down on how many consumables high end raiders had to farm up on a weekly basis to take to raids. It's the same reason they took away the Leatherworking drums. As fun as those things were, they had to be taken into account when balancing raid encounters. Taking them into account means designing the bosses with them in mind, which essentially makes those consumables mandatory. If they pretended you didn't have them, the encounter would be far too easy for those that did have them.
Their existence essentially forced you to use them unless you were overgeared for the encounters. For people who had time to farm those things up every single week, they weren't a problem at all. In fact, they were probably fun for some people. I know I felt sort of special being the person that mass produced Wizard Oils for my raid group, it gave me a role besides 'Shadow Priest.'
It did make it much, much harder for people with less time to play break into raiding. I hesitate to use the term 'casual' for those people because I have a few members of my raid that didn't have time in their week to do it that I would still categorize as pretty hardcore, raiding with us multiple nights per week and riding their Amani War Bears.
They just eliminated this element from the equation, and while the game has lost some of its flavor, it's made things a little more convenient. While I fully understand their reasoning for removing them, I'd still love to see them come back, personally. Like I said, I felt kind of special mass producing them for my raid. I was helping!
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: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 6 of 6)
Cleverly disguised as normal Mar 31st 2009 8:07PM
Hey sorry for the repost but I thought you might have missed my question as it was on the tail end of the last queue. So here it is again.
Question: Just wanted to ask if you think it would be feasible in the future to add the Exodar's flight path to the rest of Kalimdor's flight paths? (If this hasn't been done already, pretty sure it hasn't) It seems unfair that Silvermoon is connected to the flight paths of the Eastern Kingdoms and has an instant teleport to Undercity. Maybe I'm biased as my main is a Draenei but I think the Exodar is a great city and would be a lot more popular if you could just fly there. Also spreading the population out would reduce lag in capital cities. (I imagine)
Thanks.
Ultranator Mar 31st 2009 8:25PM
I was wondering if there are any community sites out there specifically for resto shaman?
RandomDude Mar 31st 2009 9:29PM
How hard will Algalon "The Observer" (AKA "The Raid Destroyer") be?
Astroglide Apr 1st 2009 2:00AM
Why does Blizzard allow 40 vs. 10 Alterac Valley BGs , or similar ratios in other BGs? These are basically impossible to win for the outnumbered team, and not even a challenge for the fully populated team.
Even if the intent is to avoid long queues by starting a game before the majority of the players show up, the head start provided by such an imbalance often weighs heavily toward the outcome of a win or loss.
Is it too much to ask to not start the game until the numbers are somewhat close?
Ultranator Apr 1st 2009 11:51AM
Two things to take into account.
1, AV is now the least popular BG. Not do to the fact that it really penalizes people for PVPing instead of racing to the end and killing a PVE boss. Not even do to the fact that because it's a 40 man (or woman) BG that can be easily one sided when people don't join.
But, rather because there's no rewards that you really get from it. It used to be the best honor, but now with SotA, you can get honor much faster there. The marks used to be used in the consolidated effort repeatable, but now it uses SotA. The only really point of playing AV (aside from for fun) is if you're trying for the mount achievement. You need lots of AV marks to get the AV mount, as well as the PvP mounts that you get from SW or Org all require AV marks.
2. Just because people queue for AV, they don't have to join it. There could be 20 or 30 people that might queue up for AV, but also queue for other BG's. Then when blizz see's that many, they start an AV, but instead of 20 to 30 people joining, only 10 do. Probably the other 10 or 20 decided to stay in a better BG, or were busy doing something else, or anything. There's no way to tell whether people will actually join a BG when the queue pops until they actually do.
And that's why you're stuck in so many bad AV's. My advice is to not do it unless you're farming marks for mounts. Even if it's the daily PvP quest, you're probably going to have better luck farming honor in other ways.
Astroglide Apr 1st 2009 7:38PM
Good point about people entering the queue for multiple BGs!
But the AV 40 vs. 10 is just one example of the player number disparity. I've been in plenty of EotS, AB, and WSG games with similar ratios. When you're trying to cap flags in AB in a 7 vs. 15 game, there's no way to win.
I guess the only answer is to play nothing but SotA?
Teaspoon Apr 1st 2009 5:00AM
I'm planning to apply a high level enchantment to an heirloom item (eg, sticking Lifeward on a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper) and then give it to an alt (my level 30 retadin, perhaps?). The enchantment says it needs a level 60 item or higher, so what happens to it if the ilvl drops because it scales down to fit the lowbie it just got mailed to?
Ice Apr 1st 2009 12:02PM
This has been answered for thousand times so I just do it again.
You cant enchant heirlooms with BC or WoTLK enchants. None. Nada. Nil.
Heirloom is and "always" will be ilevel 1 weapon. You can only enchant old world enchants to them. No BC nor WoTLK even if you were 80 and wield it.
Vacasta Apr 1st 2009 10:21AM
Do skills and glyphs that buff an unholy DK's "perma-ghoul" (glyph of the ghoul, etc.) buff the ghouls which spawn from Army of the Dead?