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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Exploits and dirty cheats
by Alex Ziebart 
Aug 11th 2009 at 1:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
The video embedded in today's edition of The Queue isn't a silly music video this time around, I'm afraid. No funny business today. Today is for game faces. Today is for serious business. Today is for italic letters.
Sashay asked...
"I have found a glitch that has caused many people to have their hearts broken.
This glitch is the "underground" mining technique that people use so they will not be attacked by enemies. Does this happen because they found a "Under Stormwind" glitch somewhere in Northrend? Maybe they put their toon in the tourney castle before it was built and now they are under everything?"
This is an exploit that many gold farmers are using these days to stripmine Wintergrasp, Sholazar Basin, etc. It's basically the same technique they use to get themselves killed in capital cities to spell out their website URL. It's something of a teleport "hack" that lets you warp short distances. If you see someone doing it, just report them to a GM. It's a bannable offense. The video I embedded up above from Youtube user LostShard will give you a pretty good idea of what the movement is like.
Arrowsmith asked...
"Why is it that whenever I open a GM ticket, I'm given a big text box to type in but can only use 5 lines of that box? Wouldn't it make more sense to give a text box the size of the amount of letters or lines or whatever I'm allowed to use?"
What a silly gripe! The box is big because when you first open the GM report UI, it shows you a whole lot of other information before you can actually fill out your ticket. Since filling out the ticket uses the same UI element, it doesn't resize.
hokiebuddy asked...
"Not sure if this has been asked before but what's the deal with the Ebon Blade at the Argent Tournament? Do they offer quests, partake in NPC conversations or anything like that?"
They're specifically there for Death Knights. All of those Champion-level dailies most of us pick up from the Argent Crusade in their tent? Death Knights get them from the Ebon Blade instead.
ch0ke asked...
"Because of my limited playtime and my in-game preferences, I never completed a single quest with the Argent Tournament. I have no reputation, token or whatever badge they give. Will I be able to join the 5-10-25 man Argent Coliseum's instances like anyone else in my guild, or to I need to grind something before I can enjoy that new 3.2 content?"
You'll be able to go into the 5, 10 and 25 man instances in patch 3.2 without a problem. There's no prerequisites to them besides having the appropriate gear to match the difficulty. You won't be able to get some of the new items off of vendors, which do require reputation and tokens, but you can go into the instances just fine.
Terethall asked...
"Is the depiction of Lady Vashj in the most recent comic on worldofwarcraft.com not disturbingly sexy? ...I'm just sayin'..."
Well, that's actually Queen Azshara. And... yes. Yes.
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, Death Knight, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 8)
RogueJedi86 Aug 11th 2009 1:53PM
@emperor webrunnr
Yes, but that phasing only applies to the Revenants, not the players. You can see the players fighting invisible revenant if you ever come across them. Any player that is in Wintergrasp is visible(unless they're hackers under the ground).
Ben Aug 11th 2009 1:30PM
It's unbelievable how long this mining hacking has been going on. Google it. People have been complaining about since early in the year. Well over six months. Come on, Blizz.
I noticed it at first because I have enemy name plates on and would see the nameplate of the opposite faction character mining the node. I got lucky once and the character was low level enough that a frost touch crit + dot killed them.
I have no way of knowing what sort of action results, I have been regularly reporting anyone that I don't see AND I'm not in a phased area where I legitimately might not see them. (Sons of Hodir questing area, for example)
RogueJedi86 Aug 11th 2009 1:52PM
@Drool
No offense meant to you. You're not a low level teleport hacker in Wintergrasp, so your ore doesn't count. I have 2 miners in Northrend(one 80), so I don't need ore off AH anyways. It's hard to tell which sellers are legit players and which are gold site sellers. Those bots are why your ore sells for jack. Cobalt sells for twice as much as saronite on my server, because the hackers flood the market with Saronite.
RogueJedi86 Aug 11th 2009 1:54PM
Wrong reply, sorry.
Darthregis Aug 11th 2009 1:34PM
Are they EVER going to fix the bug where the Alliance can get insta-sieges right at the start of Wintergrasp? (Although I hear on some servers that it's the Horde that gets this exploit.)
Blake Aug 11th 2009 1:48PM
It would be nice. But both sides do it. I'm alliance, so to me it seems like Horde does it all the time, but it's on both sides, not just Allies. (Cenarion Circle-US)
Ben Aug 11th 2009 2:17PM
It happens to both sides. If you have a high level of tenacity when you kill an enemy player/npc, you get more credit. I've seen times where we zone in with 20 tenacity and there's one unfortunate enemy player nearby and the entire group around you simultaneously gains 1st Lt rank.
I imagine this is much less of a problem since the number of players in the zone is now capped. I haven't seen such high levels of tenacity since 3.2 on my pvp server where it happened frequently.
Jealouspirate Aug 11th 2009 1:35PM
I have a question, but maybe this is more for Ask A Lore Nerd, we'll see.
In Icecrown, just because the Argent Tournament, there's a little area with a sparkling sword halfway through the ice and I little shrine kind of thing around it. What is this place, or what is that sword?
Neirin Aug 11th 2009 3:51PM
That is Quel'Delar's Rest
http://www.wowwiki.com/Quel%27Delar%27s_Rest
Quel'Delar probably refers to the sword (similar to Quel'Serar) and that's about all we know. Perhaps it will somehow be involved in the Sindragosa encounter in Icecrown as it seems to be related to killing dragons.
ch0ke Aug 11th 2009 1:37PM
Here's my question for The Queue:
On the in-game character sheet, the Expertise stat is displayed in a fraction format, like 18/18 or 26/26. Why? Why use a fraction format, if the numerator and the denominator are always the same (from my experience as a rogue, anyway)?
ty
Iriya Aug 11th 2009 1:43PM
If I'm remembering correctly, it's not a fraction, but simply showing the expertise of both your MH and OH weapons.
Ommadon Aug 11th 2009 1:47PM
Actually those stats represent each 1h weapon. So if you have 18/18 then your main hand has 18 expertise and your off-hand also has 18 expertise.
yokumgang Aug 11th 2009 1:49PM
Because of racial bonuses.
Humans have +5 expertise to 1h Swords, as an example.
If a Human Rogue equips Hailstorm (1h Sword) in the MH and Webbed Death (1h Dagger) in the OH, and they have 0 expertise base (not counting the racial) they will have 5/0 expertise.
If you were wielding one weapon, then you'd only see one number.
theghost Aug 11th 2009 1:44PM
its that way becaus its give ing the expertise rating of both of your weapons
hacknstabber Aug 11th 2009 1:46PM
This was happening to me in WG the other day... A node would just disappear as I landed to mine it. I assumed that I was getting some kind of weird lag since we were just a few minutes away from the battle starting.
Insomniax Aug 11th 2009 1:49PM
Any word from Blizzard or speculation on how they'll handle established players wanting to switch their characters to the new playable races next expansion pack? Seems silly to make people with 10 entrenched toons reroll just to enjoy them.
danawhitaker Aug 11th 2009 2:22PM
This is the downside of leveling a bunch of characters in a game that's always expanding and changing, and one of the risks you take. Next, people will be asking for a paid service at 80 to turn their warrior into a mage and whatnot. While I'll admit that race isn't exactly the same as completely changing classes, there's no reason people should just be able to hop into one. They didn't do that, to my knowledge, with draenei and blood elves. I dont' think they should do it now, even though there's a 20 level difference between 60 and 80. For all we know, they might be planning to start the new races at higher levels, like with Death Knights (although I'd hope to frell they'd make this an option, I'd prefer to start from the ground up).
usagizero Aug 11th 2009 3:13PM
I hope they never do this, but then i'm mostly a leveler. If they do i would hope they put the instant 80s on their own server, doing something like guild wars does with the pvp max level instant character. (not sure how that works exactly though)
The new races are generally awesome to level, the starting areas get better each expansion, with the only really "boring" times are from when you leave the new area and get into old world, then until Outland where things get better again.
Also, having to start over would mean more people looking to do old world dungeons or quests. (if they aren't being powerleveled with RAF or heirlooms, which if you hate leveling so much, just do those, would take no time at all)
Insomniax Aug 11th 2009 3:17PM
The difference being that this time around, with their Paid Faction Change, they have (at least in theory) the technology to make a race switch convenient. Who's to say that when BC first rolled out, there wasn't a faction at Blizzard that wished they could offer a race change to players?
Almoderate Aug 11th 2009 1:50PM
I actually ran into 2-3 people in Sholazar the other day using this technique to mine. I figured it was an issue with my lag, but now I know... I'll have to start reporting.