The Queue: Ink Spots
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 3rd 2009 at 7:00PM
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.
I've run out of quirky ways to kick off The Queue on a day of pure miscellany. I had you guys vote on what I'm eating for dinner far too recently, so I can't use that one again. I'm going to fall back on another reliable tool instead: Music! The music video embedded above is the soundtrack for today's edition of The Queue. I didn't even like Fallout 3, but it helped me find the name of this song, and for that I will give it credit. Enjoy.
Maxpowr asked...
"Do you know if Blizzard plans on upgrading the Kirin Tor rings again for 3.3? I'm assuming the same sort of things would apply (1k gold and old ring turnin). I tried looking for something but no luck."
There aren't any new rings on the PTR yet, but I suspect patch 3.3 will be there for a good, long time yet. So I'd say there's still a chance they'll show up, considering both patch 3.1 and patch 3.2 saw an upgrade to them.
industria asked...
"Why does everyone hate Dire Maul so much? There's nothing but contempt for the place on my server, and being someone who came into WoW halfway through Burning Crusade I've never really gotten to experience the place. I've gone in with my girlfriend a few times to do the book quests and just look around, but it's not the same as a full fledged run.
It seems like a really interesting and fun zone to me, not to mention pretty, and seemingly very lore heavy. Lots of bosses, unique elements to get to the bosses and several different sections of the instance itself. I'd love to see it revamped so I could experience the real thing."
You know, I have no idea why people hate it! Personally, its one of my favorite Vanilla WoW instances, right next to Stratholme and, to a lesser extent, Blackrock Depths. I'm a big fan of the "connected, but separate" way those instances were done. They were winged instances, but you could move seamlessly between them, and it felt like a true city. For some reason, just having a hallway that connects two instances together makes the experience more immersive than needing to backtrack, step out the portal, and step into a different one right next to it. Sneaking through the little hallways to move between Dire Maul North and Dire Maul West was more interesting than walking out of Botanica, and flying over to Mechanar. It was a fun design, and I'm sad they abandoned it for the very much separated instances they do now.
It also came at a time when Blizzard was learning a lot about encounter design. There are a lot of great mechanics in there that were refined later on. Dire Maul is definitely a cool instance, and I'd like to see more dungeons like that in Cataclysm than the short, isolated romps we have now.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against instances that only take 30 minutes or so. I only wish the dungeons weren't so isolated these days. Take, for example, Stratholme. Most groups probably only ran Undead Stratholme or Scarlet Stratholme, right? A single hour long run. But if you wanted to you could move seamlessly right over to the other side of the city and storm that, too. That was cool. I want more of that.
JR asked a pair of questions, but I'm only going to answer one because I have no idea what's up with us wearing Saronite all day long. He asked...
"Who the hell are Talandra and Adder?"
In the case of Adder, an adder is a snake. So the herb Adder's Tongue is basically Snake's Tongue, probably named that way because of the shape of the plant. In the case of Talandra, I'm not really sure where that name comes from. It might be a play on the name of a real plant, and if that's the case, hopefully somebody will tell us. What do I look like, a plantologist? If it's not a play on a real flower's name, I'd say it's probably either named after somebody with Blizzard connections or it's a pop culture reference.
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 3)
VSUReaper Nov 3rd 2009 7:10PM
The reason for the DM hate was how easily someone could screw up a tribute run and screw the group out of some much needed started raid gear. I never played during that era of the game, but my best friend and former roommate used to tell me horror stories of how some careless person could screw the rest of the group.
The other reason why is even after it wasnt quite as relevant, everyone and their mom had to clear the place for a warlock quest. I know I had to do it at lvl 70 for my Gf's lock, and just recently for another friend's lock (wanted to do it before the mount level change went active).
Is it a beautiful place? Yeah. Is it lore heavy? Yeah. Is it a lil tedious? OMFG yes.
Nizari Nov 3rd 2009 7:36PM
In my experience, very few people ever wanted to run DM. I think it had to do with the gear level; it was so close to the 60 level, that most people just grinded to 60 and then ran strat, scholo, and UBRS.
chipersoft Nov 4th 2009 12:55AM
Additionally it is just out in the middle of no where. In order to get to DM you had at least a 10-15 minute trek.
Finally, DM has a LOT of trash to have to kill, trash that fears you into other trash. At level 60 the pulls sucked for the meager rewards the instance offered.
lumacman Nov 4th 2009 11:17AM
DM was awesome for the ver reasons the author stated. a connected all together instance, that you could truly explore. if blackrock depths was more like this i think some of my nightmares about the place would have been lessened. but the reason why we all hate DM is the gimmicks you had to go through to get the good loot. we spend 60 levels bashing the crap out of bosses to get loot. then you make us sneak past them? not to mention you had to have people in your party that had high level professions.
all in all it is different and in a good way when it comes to layout but not when it comes to mechanics and requirements.
RogueJedi86 Nov 3rd 2009 7:13PM
So we're never getting the Queue column you wrote last week before deciding to do the "Alliance Horde 9/11"(As it will be remembered in 20 years) Queue Topic?
Psiwave Nov 3rd 2009 7:16PM
Do you think cataclysm is really just a sneaky way to release WoW2 without us noticing?
A full talent rework for classes, a rebuild of the world for all levels of play and a reworking of stat allocation to name but a few changes. I get the feeling that cata will play more like a sequel than an expansion.
Ringo Flinthammer Nov 3rd 2009 7:23PM
What you call sneaky, I call brilliant. If Sony could go back and do it over, I'm sure they'd prefer to have retained their EQ1 numbers with EQ2, instead of fracturing the player base in two just as WoW was released.
ash Nov 3rd 2009 7:52PM
If this a sequel, though, it feels kind of lacking. One of the things I always wanted/expected from an expansion is a bigger more immersive world. In the case of WoW that would mean increasing the relative scale of things so that you would have more space and more stuff to put into that space. Like the cities, they should really feel big, but right now they feel more like towns and the towns are really just a few huts scattered in an area. You really don't get the sense that people live in these areas.
Mike Nov 3rd 2009 7:53PM
World of Warcraft 2 was released in January 2006, dude. It was called "The Burning Crusade".
The term "expansion" is really only used for WoW because you're required to have the previous instalment in order to play it, but given the amount of work and new content, I wouldn't put TBC/WLK/Cata on the same level as Sims: Pets.
Mike Nov 3rd 2009 7:56PM
And yes, I realize my mistake: January 2007.
Psiwave Nov 3rd 2009 8:07PM
Perhaps sneaky was the wrong word :-p
burning crusade and wrath were different to the plans for cata, they consisted mainly of a bolt-on continent with only minor changes to the old world, wheras cataclysm will change the entire game, you can't install vanilla and play the old (current) Azeroth.
Ringo Flinthammer Nov 3rd 2009 7:21PM
I've been playing since before Dire Maul was available, and haven't really heard any Dire Maul hatred. Indeed, it was one of the few dungeons that people still wanted to do, all the way up to Outland being released.
Now, people mostly just wanted to do North Dire Maul runs, which were the fastest and most lucrative things to do in the dungeon (and now are very familiar to everyone who's tried to power-raise goblin faction), not the other two wings, which had a much worse risk:reward ratio. Each wing has a possibility of bobbling things pretty badly, and ninjas loved NDM runs, but every WoW era has those dungeons and those ninjas.
Of course, I only knew a few warlocks (and got the awesome gun that only drops during the warlock epic mount quest on the first try) and the paladin mount quest in Dire Maul is very easy in comparison to the clear-the-whole-wing warlock quest.
Quidamtyra Nov 3rd 2009 7:25PM
so what DID you order?
Neirin Nov 3rd 2009 7:25PM
"plantologist"
Botanists everywhere are crying because they're being called that. It's even in the game (High Botanist Freywin in Botanica). Of course, that sorta plays into your whole point.
Succulent Nov 3rd 2009 9:19PM
"What do I look like, a fucking botanist?"
-Marcus Fenix
JR Nov 3rd 2009 11:53PM
Damn it Jim, I'm a botannist not a plantologist!
And thanks for answering my question. I'm still wondering about that saronite though...
Zhiva Nov 4th 2009 7:23AM
I once saw "LF inscriptioneer" in /trade...
Malkavos Nov 4th 2009 9:49AM
I've personally said "LF Inscriptioneer" in trade. It was sort of a joke, but it's always funny to see people take it seriously. I also like the terms "Inscribifier", "Inscriptionist", and "Glyph Production Drone", though they don't seem to go over too well either, hrmm.
Turtlehead Nov 8th 2009 4:52AM
A guy making glyphs got miffed when I called his profession Bureaucracy. Don't think he got the joke or he'd've been even more annoyed.
Nathanyel Nov 3rd 2009 7:26PM
If only Adder's Tongue was black, then it could be an obscure reference to Black Adder :P
Talandra seems to be a rare (or just foreign) female first name, hard to find anything on Google, as every second entry is a mention of the item, even when you use -warcraft...
http://names.whitepages.com/first/Talandra mentions 22 Talandras in the US, google-image-searching their names comes up with pictures of black women, without further checking if those are really the Talandras, I assume, without offense, that this might be one of those made-up names that you usually only ever hear in satiric comedy because some of them are unintendedly funny.