The Queue: Irrelevant
by Alex Ziebart 
Oct 14th 2009 at 6:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
Embedded video has absolutely not relevance to anything in this edition of The Queue. Why did I use it? Because I like the music. Do I really need more of a reason than that? Nope! Now let's jump into the questions. Some of them came from right here on WoW.com, and others came from Twitter.
Lavoz asked...
"With Cataclysm, the blood elves will finally have access to the warrior class. Is there any information as to what order they will belong to? Will they be a part of the Blood Knights, or will we refer to them as Spellbreakers?"
We haven't heard anything about whether or not blood elven warriors will have any special sort of story behind them. As far as we know, they'll just be generic muscular thugs wielding large clubs. Or majestic, skilled bladedancers... however you want to look at your warrior. That's your thing, not mine. There's nothing official about them so far, and I'm sure we'll talk about it here on the site if that ever changes.
metal_slime asked...
"What is considered the easiest/fastest way for a new 80 to gear up for Arena PvP?"
A lot of people will probably recommend the crafted blues you can get from various tradeskills, but I'm going to say avoid them unless your alternate gear is greens. It's better than questing greens, but that's all. All that you can really do is grind out battlegrounds, make sure you queue for Wintergrasp, run Vault of Archavon whenever you get an opportunity, or suck it up and weather through losing 10 arena games a week for awhile, just for the point gains. Allison mentioned to me that you might want to look into buying the previous seasons' armor via Conquest/Triumph badges, but that's a whole lot of badges and I don't know how interested you are in PvE.
The arena is pretty hard to get into, especially when we're a few seasons deep in the expansion. You're going to need to suck up substantial losses before you win anything. Wintergrasp and Battlegrounds until your eyes bleed is definitely my suggestion.
sinizuh asked...
"With the simplification of stats in Cataclysm, are websites/communities like Elitist Jerks going to have nothing to do?"
Elitist Jerks predates the dark voodoo that is the math behind Armor Penetration. Coding arcane magicks into World of Warcraft isn't what fuels theorycrafting and places like EJ. It's the drive to get the absolute most out of your game. As long as there's a game, there will be people that have fun reaching the highest heights of it. There are websites online that teach you how to get the most out of playing Connect Four. It would be pretty hard to turn WoW into a game that gives Elitist Jerks nothing to do.
Mconniff asked...
"Why are Tabards cut off at the waist when you put on a robe? Is that good?"
It doesn't look very good, but it's a victim of World of Warcraft's graphics engine. If the bottom of the tabard were displayed with robes, the two layers would mesh together and become some pixelated abomination of fabric.
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, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
kubien Oct 14th 2009 6:06PM
While killing Worgen in Silverpine Forest the other day, it occurred to me I can skin them. When alliance play Worgen, can I skin them? Please!
Nick Oct 14th 2009 6:11PM
Not until I can skin Tauren.
Pantyraider Oct 14th 2009 6:16PM
Deal on the Taurens. As long as we get Gnomes, too.
RogueJedi86 Oct 14th 2009 6:23PM
Skinning a worgen should aggro every worgen, after all you're skinning their best friend.
Sumanai Oct 14th 2009 10:26PM
I think he means:
Skinning a worgen should aggro every worgen in a 40 yard radius.
Volker Oct 14th 2009 10:29PM
Skin Worgen + Crafted item from said skin = Permanent PvP flag when wearing said item
Jay Oct 15th 2009 1:19AM
We're aligned with the Tauren?
Fantastic!
Steak for dinner every night.
Anaughtybear Oct 15th 2009 2:10AM
How mad are worgen going to be when they find out that orcs use their cousins as mounts?
Mutak Oct 15th 2009 9:29AM
Worgen are cursed humans, so actually you are their cousin and ewwwww...you let orcs mount you?!?
OMNOMNOM Oct 15th 2009 9:52AM
I love this line of thought. Make uber-buff food with mats only accessible from Taurens and Worgen both.
Then make them skinnable.
Then make Drums that utilize Tauren or Worgen skins. That make you sleep.....ON THE FLOOR!
Hendrata Oct 14th 2009 6:08PM
Two questions: (sorry they're not related)
1. Regarding the recent changes in AOE cap, then my question is: why does AOE have to be capped at all? What's the rationale behind it?
2. What happens with quest achievements such as The Seeker or Loremaster if you switch to another faction? Do you get to keep the titles? or do you lose everything if you're like 10 quests away from The Seeker, etc?
Golis Oct 14th 2009 6:27PM
re: AOE Cap.
I am not sure if your question is Why did blizz cap the damage (which I assume is the name of all that is holy and balanced... pause for comic effect), or can we come up with a rational "real world" reason why the cap should exist.
I know "real world" and MMORPGs are not really supposed to be used together, but bear with me.
The best reason was given by someone else here a few days ago (sorry, couldn't find the reference, but shout out if it was you). Imagine a hand grenade goes off. it could easily do max damage to a bunch of people standing in a circle around this holy hand grenade. But there becomes a point of diminishing returns... fire off that grenade with 50 people swarming around it, and just the proximity of the other bodies will mitigate some of the damage... everyone still gets hurt, but it spreads out.
So okay, maybe that doesn't quite explain why 50 murlocs will take only 20% of the damage that 10 murlocs caught out in the druidic rain will suffer, but I like the analogy.
AmazonLily Oct 14th 2009 6:32PM
I don't have the Loremaster nor the Seeker achievements complete, but I can say that when I switched factions my progress on Loremaster was the same.
Lab Oct 14th 2009 6:45PM
Re: Loremaster Achievement
I just recently swapped over from Alliance to Horde. Before the switch, I had completed the Loremaster Achievements and had earned the Loremaster title. Post switch, I still have the title, but the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms and Loremaster of Kalimdor Achievements are incomplete.
You can check this out on my armory.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-achievements.xml?r=Thunderhorn&cn=Darqin&gn=VooDooz
Losnar Oct 14th 2009 6:58PM
The AOE cap is something that BC (might have even been Vanilla) WoW had to invoke. Back in the day it wasn't uncommon to see a frost mage in the Plaguelands grouping up entire fields of mobs and blasting them down without so much as a scratch. Without the cap you could pull an infinite number of mobs and do equal damage to all of them. It was used by gold farmers a lot.
The FaxMonkey Stupid Mage videos are some good examples of what was previous possible. In one video he solos roughly a hundred undead mobs in Tanaris during the first Scourge invasion.
This is also why AOE snare effects like Frost Nova only hit so many targets.
emberdione Oct 14th 2009 10:31PM
Loremaster:
When you switch if had earned the title you keep it. If you had not any neutral quests, ie - Alliance and Horde can do the same quest (in code it has the same id) they carry over. You do lose all of your opposite side quests toward your total.
juusu Oct 14th 2009 7:43PM
I sort of miss the Dark Age of Camelot AE model. The center of the circular area takes full impact, but the damage dealt decreases the further from the center the target is located.
I don't think it would work for all classes, nor should it be implemented for all; however, it would be interesting for a certain class-spec with a lackluster or non-existent AE abilities to have their AE revamped to work as so.
It basically works in a way that the center is scaled closer to being a single-target ability, but the outer rim is fairly pitiful. In many circumstances the player could benefit from being able to focus on beating a primary target down while laying damage to surrounding adds/players.
Frank Oct 14th 2009 11:56PM
I can tell you from direct experience, I switched a Druid from Alli to Horde and I was working on Seeker and Loremaster. I was less then 200 quest from seeker. There were 5 zones that I had less than 10 quest to complete between Outland and Northrend ( I had about 200 quest to do in Kalimdor). At first the numbers stayed the same, I switched over the first weekend it was available. Over a period of weeks my quest completed in each zone dropped. Now I've over a thousand quest away from seeker and I have hundreds of more quest to do in zones I'd almost completed. Every achievement earned stays but unless you have comleted a zone every side specific quest is taken away from you. On the flip side Honor is transfered over to an equivalent faction and you get to do quest that yield honor again so raising your honor up with different factions is easier. I would HIGHLY recommend getting seeker and loremaster done before you switch, unless you enjoy running around doing quest in starting areas.
Evelinda Oct 15th 2009 7:50AM
i didnt have loremaster on my main when i switched, but i was creeping up on 2000 quests at the time. Once i'd switched, however, i was down to a little over 800... bummer.
An interesting side note is that despite doing all the early druid class quests, i can now do them again, because i did the alliance versions. Weird, huh?
Akhenaton Oct 14th 2009 6:19PM
Surely I'm not the first to notice that this "stat simplification" isn't going to be that simple? the way that i see it is that: there are only going to be a certain number of stats, but those stats equate to different things for different classes (and hopefully will tie into the mastery spec system) so you'll actually end up getting the same amount of theorycrafting but with a simplified system so you don't actually have to do the theory crafting and you can understand things from a much lower level.
If the above was confusing don't worry! i'll give you an example:
I play a hunter, we "do" agility. But that agility might not be as valuable as say stamina in a survival spec (with the stam/attackpower talent) at some point and the cap will be determined through teory crafting, mastery statspon gear will determine how much mastery i need to be at a good point to not stack anything anymore; for example a chest has 100 stam 100 agi and 100 int on (for pure example and not actual stats) but it also has 15 mastery given theory crafting and spread-sheeting i find that another chest with less mastery and more stats is alot better because of the values it entails). I hope i'm not being idiotic about this and i'm sure i've missed some stuff out but hey, that's what comments are for please add to my thoughts and disprove my ideas ^_^