The Queue: I demand a recount

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. Michael Sacco will be your host today.
I'll be taking over The Queue periodically for Alex and Adam, and thus I've been given this soapbox. Well, guess what! I'm usin' it.
I demand a recount on the alleged outcome of the Rossi vs. Sacco arm-wrestling match. I don't know where the results came from, but I bet if we looked in Adam's basement, we'd find a Diebold machine that "fell off the back of a truck." Rossi may have the burly chest and body hair that give him the makings of a champion, but I've got really good hair and I can guarantee that one look at me and Rossi would give up the ghost right there. Unless we're playing by standard rules, in which case he would literally murder me.
And now, reader questions.
Sean asked...
"A question about the new Random Dungeon feature. Let's say you sign up for the first random dungeon of the morning, and you get a place that you just can't stand. (Think OK or Occ) If you bail on the dungeon, then wait out the Deserter debuff, have you messed up your shot at the Frost Emblems for the day?"
We've had a lot of questions about the new Dungeon System lately, which is good, because it shows that people are (at least) interested in it and (at most) excited about it. To answer your question, you don't miss your opportunity to get your Emblems of Frost if your first random dungeon of the day goes down the toilet. You get your Emblems upon successful completion of your first random dungeon of the day.
Tyler asked...
"O read that the wyrmrest accord will have some involvement in the new zone, twilight highlands....i would think the wyrmrest accord would be all over the place in the next expansion. they are somewhat prominent in WoTlk and malygos isn't the main villian. the main villain of cataclysm will be D-Wing himself. i would think they'd be everywhere. your thoughts?"
I haven't heard anything from Blizzard intimating that the Wyrmrest Accord faction itself will be making a return, and following patterns from previous expansions, there's almost no chance that an obselete faction will be reintroduced. What you can probably expect is a new dragon faction similar in name or function to the Wyrmrest Accord, a la Cenarion Expedition or Argent Crusade.
Lidstrom asked...
"Any chance Blizz will get rid of the rest bar? it seems to be an outdated idea, and since many of their recent changes have been to speed the leveling process, it'd be nice to be leveling an alt and not have the rest bar go from blue to purple and slow down the process."
The rest bar is simply your reward for taking a break for a while. It's not meant to be something that's there all the time, unlike the baked-in 30% cut for experience necessary in Outland, for instance. While there certainly have been lots of ways that Blizzard has handed out to help you level alts or help you decrease the time you spend in old content, those are all separate entities built to function differently than the rest bar. I don't see it going away, and for one big reason -- if a player logs in and sees that their alt has a full rest bar, there's a pretty good chance that they'll say to themselves "Oh, neat, maybe I'll level for a while. I'll get double experience, after all."
It's a pretty neat psychological mechanism, and it works.
Mort asked...
"When Cataclysm hits, will Blackwing lair and Molten Core stay raidable as level 60 instances? I've been planning to roll a Tauren Paladin , and I'm really hoping I can get a hold of a Judgement set for him for the sake of RP and pure awesome. Have we heard anything about the fate of the Vanilla raids once Cataclysm hits? Are they going to remain standing, or are they only going to be a nostalgic memory once 4.0 hits?"
Blackwing Lair was actually shown in some shots at BlizzCon, but only the bit that you could feasibly fly up to if you were able to fly in Azeroth proper. It's the entrance to one of the raid instances, actually. But since they said specifically that the non-instanced portion would be the place with the raid portal, I'm led to believe that the 60 raid isn't going away.
That said, Nefarian is honest-to-God back and alive somehow for Cataclysm, unlike his sister, so it's possible they'll change Blackwing Lair in some way. But we won't know until Blizzard tells us.
As for Molten Core, I mean, I understand you want some old gear, but man. Why would you willingly go into that place, almost five years later? It's awful.
Shade asked...
"Is there a map out there, somewhere, of what Azeroth looked like BEFORE the Sundering? I searched high and low for an official one, but I came up completely empty on that front and I ended up just cobbling one together for use in my blog."
Nope, unfortunately, the oldest map of Azeroth that exists is the world map for the venerable original Warcraft game. If we ever get some crazy Caverns of Time expansion that takes us to pre-Sundering Kalimdor, though, I'm sure they'll give us a fleshed-out map for it.
Filed under: The Queue
Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria news





Reader Comments (Page 6 of 6)
Kantom Nov 6th 2009 6:14PM
Can anyone tell me if the "race" gear will change faction if it is moved over the neutral AH?
For example if i were to buy http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47586 on the horde AH could it be turned into the Alliance version in anyway way?
RJC Nov 6th 2009 7:43PM
Last February it was mentioned that Blizzard was working on a storage solution for tabards. (http://www.wow.com/2009/02/07/tabard-storage-solution-incoming/) Have there been any rumblings about progress toward this goal?
Iskande Nov 7th 2009 7:02PM
Question:
I was leveling an alt today and redid the Wrathgate and Siege of Undercity questline. I was wondering if there was a reason why when the Horde goes to take back Undercity, Thrall, Sylvannas and Vol'Jin are there, but Cairne Bloodhoof and the leader of the Blood Elves were not there to help.
foe Nov 7th 2009 10:11PM
With the new LFG system, would it be possible to select only Heroic Violet Hold and constantly chain running it made possible by no lockouts from random groups?
Lobstar Nov 8th 2009 2:56AM
Actually if they ever do an Emerald dream Xpac we'll get a view of pre-sundered world, since the emerald dream is just like ancient Kalimdor if there were not Sentient races IIRC. So there would be no sundering.
Druanna Nov 8th 2009 3:48AM
@Foe's comment made me wonder - if you get a pug group randomly that you like, and the group would like to run a few more heroics together, would it be possible to do that without everyone dropping out of the group, queueing for the new instance and hoping beyond hope that they get tossed back in together?
I'd also like to know the answer to Foe's question. That stupid 5x/hour lockout is... well... stupid.
Also, the bonus buff you get from joining a pug - does that go away if you desert the pug or get summoned out of it? Some raids now have their members queue up for a BG, get boocoo buffs, then get summoned away from the BG into the raid instance with all their pretty buffs intact. (Leaving the BG group hobbled with that person gone.) Are we going to be seeing this same crap going on to utilize the bonus Pug buff? Because let's face it - some raid leaders are too paranoid to allow even ONE pug member into their raid to give everyone the buff; they'd rather jerk around a bunch of pug groups and leave them hanging so all of their "proper" raid members have the buff.
Mr. Tastix Nov 9th 2009 9:03PM
Alrighty, thanks for the clarification.