The Queue: Minnie the Moocher
by Alex Ziebart 
Jun 4th 2009 at 5:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com'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.I'm not much of a Jazz person, so when I set out to counter the John Coltrane that Adam used in The Queue yesterday, I was a little worried. Fortunately, while digging through my music collection to find something useful, I remembered that I had a trump card up my sleeves. Old Betty Boop cartoons, some of the most disturbing things you will ever see in your life. All of the best ones come packed with some incredibly old school Jazz. Now, some candy for your eyes and ears: Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher in a Betty Boop cartoon.
Docp asked...
"What happened to the Hunter column, Scattered Shots?"
I'm glad you asked! It just made its glorious comeback yesterday, with a brand new writer that some of you may recognize. Go give the latest Scattered Shots a read.
Binge asked...
"I'm going to let my account lapse for the summer (maybe longer). Will my armory profile and ability to comment on the official WoW forums end when my subscription expires?"
As mentioned in the comments by kalatash, you'll immediately lose access to the forums when your account lapses. Your Armory profile won't disappear immediately, but it will eventually become hidden if they haven't changed anything in the last few months. When you resubscribe, both of those things will come back.
0756 asked...
"Do you think that Blizzard will take the soulbinding aspect off of either Vyrkul Bones or the Fate Runes they are exchanged for in a future patch?"
I don't see why they would. The Fate Runes are just a little bonus you get while questing in Icecrown, to make questing in Icecrown easier and more interesting. I'm pretty sure they don't want them sold and traded or anything like that.
AyaJulia asked...
"Around Azeroth has a disclaimer at the end of each article: "Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran." When are you going to put one in THIS column that says "Please, no more questions about pandaren"? You obviously need one."
You're right.
Please, people. No more questions about Pandaren. Just look around the site, you'll find your answer.
Komorado asked...
"How many hits does the wow.com website receive everyday?"
Enough that I've come to learn that Alexa is pretty inaccurate when compared to internal figures. I don't think that I'm allowed to give those numbers, though. It's higher than what Alexa says, that's all that I'll say.
Hyacinthe asked...
"Why are there so many poo-related quests in WoW?"
Because everybody poops, Hyacinthe. It's only natural.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com 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, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Dharmabhum Jun 4th 2009 5:07PM
best. boop. cartoon. evar.
ahh let me tell you a story about minnieee the moocher
she was a low-down hoochie-koochah
PvtDeth Jun 4th 2009 7:09PM
I have to recommend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-arBMWSD9s the Betty Boop Snow White cartoon. It Cab Calloway singing St. James Infirmary Blues, the song from which Minnie the Moocher get's it's tune. The whole cartoon is great, but the musical segment alone makes this probably the best cartoon ever made. Koko the clown is rotoscoped, which is when they film an actor, then trace the cartoon character over the top for exactly matching movement.
Hard to imagine the crazy stuff in this cartoon showing in a theater in 1933, not to mention music by an all-Black jazz band. There's a really good one with Louis Armstrong, too.
Shealtiel Jun 8th 2009 5:19PM
You briefly discussed the Vyrkul Bones and associated runes. I realize that this would be largely speculation, but is there any chance these runes might be useful in the Icecrown raid scheduled for 3.3?
AyaJulia Jun 4th 2009 5:45PM
I would bet against it. There are similar buff items for Storm Peaks that aren't usable in Ulduar. Blizzard tries to limit the buffs you can get so they don't have to balance content around the assumption that you have those buffs, and so the hardcore guilds can't make those buffs mandatory and ruin their players' fun.
tom99k Jun 4th 2009 5:16PM
Was recently questing in Grizzly Hills and came across the poop quests there, you could argue it's about time! Holding that in since level 1. The fact they added sounds to it however really does worry me.
boogaloo Jun 4th 2009 5:18PM
whats the deal with Pandaren?
Heilig Jun 4th 2009 5:43PM
Yeah, will they ever be playable?
Heilig Jun 4th 2009 5:55PM
Glad to see so many people with a sense of humor around here.
Remen Jun 4th 2009 6:00PM
Pandaren are no longer funny. Beating a dead horse is only entertaining for so long.
Heilig Jun 4th 2009 6:05PM
Unless the article makes a joke about putting a disclaimer on it. Then it's (to use your equally overdone metaphor) a revived horse that we can laugh about again.
Magus Jun 4th 2009 6:23PM
Speaking of revived horses, why doesn't Arthas ride Invincible?
He seems to hobble around during The Battle for Light's Hope Chapel and the Wrathgate sequence.
Kyo Jun 4th 2009 5:55PM
Is there a more PvP-focused version of wow.com?
matt Jun 4th 2009 5:24PM
This is probably more of a question for Ask a Lore Nerd, but I'm wondering why Blizzard loves corrupting good guys. Is it supposed to be some type of social commentary? Practically all the major bad guys were, at one point, the best of the good guys. Sargeras, Kil'jaeden, Archimonde, Azshara, Deathwing, Malygos, Illidan, Kael'thas, Ner'zhul, Arthas, Loken... the list literally goes on and on. They started out 'good', but were slowly corrupted and fell from grace. Is Blizzard saying the fall is inevitable? That it is hard being a good guy? Or are they just too lazy to come up with new bad guys, and they like recycling the good guys? Just about the only case I can recall of a 'bad' guy pulling a Vader in the end is Grom Hellscream.
splodesondeath Jun 4th 2009 5:31PM
Blizzard likes to keep everything not black and white, i.e. good vs bad, but a nice, old cream-cheese gray colour. Everyone has a bad and a good side (like in real life, obviously), and some of them go well on bagels.
Horri Jun 4th 2009 5:34PM
Its like the saying, "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain."
Naix Jun 4th 2009 5:33PM
Because everyone likes to see the good guys fall from grace. Like two face from batman.
Leandar Jun 4th 2009 5:34PM
Few things are made bad, theres old gods but im not sure what they were like before the titans started fighting them but were they bad back then or are the just pissed at what happened? the people you mentioned were corrupted or did what they thought was right so were good at the start.
Heilig Jun 4th 2009 5:45PM
Leandar has it right. There are only truly evil people in movies. Real world "Bad Guys" never started out trying to be bad, they all had good intentions for their actions (unless they are just plain crazy, like Hitler) and eventually just get carried away with their own righteousness and lose touch with the consequences of their actions. A "fall from grace" isn't just a storytelling device, it's more realistic.
Candina@WH Jun 4th 2009 5:50PM
The fall of a hero from grace, his eventual over throw and return to 'the righteous' is one of the oldest story Arcs known to man.
Examples: Sampson and Delila, Oedipus, etc.
This is not to say that Blizz's lore is 'good literature'. Some could say that Blizzards doggedly returning to the same dramatic theme reeks of hack writing. Not me, of course, Pride Goeth before the fall, after all.
AyaJulia Jun 4th 2009 5:52PM
In these days of RPGs and super villains, seeing someone who's bad for the sake of being bad with no backstory about why he's bad is kind of trite, particularly in a lore-filled game like the Warcraft series.
I can understand that the fallen-from-grace angle gets annoying, but Blizzard wants the reason for everything out in the open so you feel that emotional connection to the whole situation. And like Leandar said, few things are bad because they're just malevolent by nature. Most of us grow out of the urge to pluck the wings off of flies and start feeling sorry for said flies by the time we hit our teens. Barring the occasional sociopath, it takes a strong twist of fate to turn a person to evil.