Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Blood and glory
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 10th 2009 at 3:00PM
I was going to kick off today's edition of The Queue by embedding Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta Feeling (slightly NSFW) since I mentioned it was a guilty pleasure of mine on yesterday's Moviewatch. Unfortunately, the official Black Eyed Peas Youtube channel disabled embedding and I'm not going to be a jerk and hijack it from somebody else's channel. So you get a Dragon Age screenshot instead. Hooray! Blood!
No, we're not getting paid to plug this game constantly. We're just nerds. Nerd gamers. This is what we do.
Ilmyrn asked...
"Any word on whether we'll ever see a non-Arena frost wyrm mount?"
Well, there's a frost wyrm model in patch 3.3, but I assume that's to go with the latest arena season. So I'm going to say... no. The Gladiators get Frost Wyrms, the PvE players get Invincible.
Cyanea asked...
"Where does that picture come from?"
The picture used on yesterday's edition of The Queue is a time warp image from Zach Yonzon. On the left is his wife, and on the right is his daughter wearing RL heirloom items. Very trippy.
Bob Dewane asked...
"Illidan was the box cover bad guy for BC. Arthas is the box cover bad guy for LK. Illidan was NOT the final boss for BC, Kil'Jaeden was. Is there any chance that Arthas is NOT the final boss for LK and that another enemy awaits? I only started playing after BC had been out for a while so I have no idea if it was known that Illidan was not the end of the BC story."
The plan was always that Illidan would be the final boss of The Burning Crusade, but they ran into a situation where they put Burning Crusade's raid content out too quickly for how far off Wrath of the Lich King was. To keep people interested and buy some time, they put together patch 2.4, which included the Sunwell Plateau to keep people busy.
They've said they didn't want to repeat that mistake again, so Arthas will hopefully be the absolute last raid encounter of Wrath. Of course, things can happen that cause plans to change, so if they need to delay Cataclysm for some reason, we might get another raid zone to keep us busy.
nieboh asked...
"I know these questions are supposed to be game related, but I don't know where else to ask. Is there any chance we'll be seeing a revamped comment section to this site soon? I would absolutely love an edit feature and the ability to delete your own posts would be marvelous.
Also, what's with all the "gold spammer" posts infesting this site lately? I dutifully click on the "report" button every time I see them but I don't know if that works."
For your first question, probably not anytime soon. In the future, maybe. Right now? Unlikely. Like I've said before, we have limited resources. When it comes to fixing things up and improving things and implementing new features, we have to work under something of a triage system. We would love a fixed up comment system, but there are a lot of other things that we (and the rest of the network) need and use. You won't see everything going on that pushes the comment system to the side, but trust me when I say they make both your experience and ours much better.
As for the comment spammers, such is the price we pay for being a pretty large site with an open comment system. We deal with them as quickly as we see them, and yes, reporting the posts does help. We ban who we can, we block what we can, but determined individuals will keep knocking their heads at it. If you see a spam post that's been sitting around for a particularly long time, let us know via our tipline and we'll deal with it ASAP.
Jack Spicer asked...
"Here's another quick question. The glyphs that a scribe learns from the books that were introduced in patch 3.1 (?), are those totally unique to those books, or can they be learned from ordinary Northrend Inscription Research?"
I believe that is the case, yes. You can only learn them through those books. I somewhat expect that will change when Cataclysm hits, though. Nobody will want to farm books in Northrend for glyphs when we're all in the new content.
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, Inscription, The Queue, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
busuan Nov 10th 2009 4:36PM
I do see Blizz publish a patch 3.4 (or 4.0) of new content as a transition to Cataclysm.
No new big bad bosses needed. They could simply update and retcon BWL; we raid BWL to drive off Nefarian. Or they could make a 'Battle of Gnomeregan' to make it a new capital city and include Moira and her son into new lore.
They did that before. Technically, 3.0 and echo of doom were not part of WoTLK, but a content patch to TBC.
Verakum Nov 10th 2009 4:56PM
you mean something like the event we got before WTLK???
they said they would do something like that.. but i don't expect anymore instances.. nor raids..
probably the taking of gnomeregan will be part of the event.. like the plague was part of lich king.. (the moving of naxxramas from eastern plaguelands)
Leviathon Nov 10th 2009 4:45PM
The armored Frost Wyrm is a reward from a quest in Icecrown according to what has been datamined thus far. My guess is that the item will be off hard mode Sindragosa to keep it a bit rare.
Matt Nov 10th 2009 4:48PM
"The plan was always that Illidan would be the final boss of The Burning Crusade, but they ran into a situation where they put Burning Crusade's raid content out too quickly for how far off Wrath of the Lich King was. To keep people interested and buy some time, they put together patch 2.4, which included the Sunwell Plateau to keep people busy."
This is a myth. As early as 2005, before the expansion even came out, Blizz had planned to patch in the Sunwell Plateau later in the expansion cycle. It was mentioned in an interview with Computer Gaming World. That magazine no longer exists, but you can see the relevant text here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Quel%27Thalas
Taladan Nov 10th 2009 5:04PM
Yes. A belf blond guy and a draenei.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliobiason/4093164655/
alpha5099 Nov 10th 2009 5:05PM
OK, I'm a little confused by the answer to the Illidan question. Black Temple was introduced in patch 2.1, right? Did Blizzard really think BC would only have one major content patch before Wrath came out? That doesn't seem right.
Riltia Nov 10th 2009 6:08PM
I know, it's never added up for me, either.
I think they may have implemented it, but not expected people to manage it so quickly (i.e. like Naxx 40)
dengarsw Nov 10th 2009 5:22PM
Is there a good site to find other people to play with in WoW (or other MMOs for that matter)? Or a good place to find out about trends on certain servers/BG groups?
Maybe my server just sucks (US, Dragonmaw, Horde side if it matters), but I've tried looking at guilds, individuals I meet in game (which is hard to do with instances and cross-server BGs), server forum (AKA troll paradise), and a certain popular arena site (hard to stand out as an arena player when you can't find a stable partner/team).
Andrew R. Nov 10th 2009 5:24PM
What are those green portals in Duskwood, the hinterlands and a few other zones? I know I've seen an outdoor raid boss there but did Blizzard have plans for those portals at one point and then moved onto a different idea?
Riltia Nov 10th 2009 6:10PM
Portals to the Emerald Dream, and they have world bosses as guardians (they're dragons).
http://www.wowwiki.com/Four_Dragons
Chris Anthony Nov 10th 2009 6:17PM
Those are portals to the Emerald Dream, guarded by four world-boss dragons. At the moment they're just non-interactable props; Blizzard supposedly has plans for the Emerald Dream, but nothing concrete has been released yet. (Note that there's a supposed "projected lifespan" document floating around that claims that the Emerald Dream will be part of the expansion after Cataclysm, but the document failed to correctly predict Cataclysm, so take it with a grain of salt.)
Nizari Nov 10th 2009 5:29PM
"Riiight, so everyone running the cookie cutter spec(which I do agree with) automatically gets a 2500+ rating? No, they beat all the other comps and strats because they know the comp better and have the ability to beat those same comps."
No, I'm not saying that every cookie cutter spec team wins. I'm just saying that at the high end, you're going to mostly see the power classes of the moment. There's not an even 10% chance of each class showing up.
"And the whole drummer bit, we'll have to agree to disagree because I won't even go into how dumb that sounds? A pvp player isn't going to be good at pve because he is too twitchy not to stand in the fire? They are not 2 different skill sets"
Wait a second, you just got done saying how PvE players don't have the skills to compete with PvP players, now you're arguing that they're the same skill set?
"whatever anecdotal evidence you have of this is simply that, your limited experience."
And what exactly is your evidence based on other than your limited, anecdotal experience?
Lemons Nov 10th 2009 7:32PM
"Wait a second, you just got done saying how PvE players don't have the skills to compete with PvP players, now you're arguing that they're the same skill set?"
You're correct that it is the same skill set. Moving out of fire requires a twitch reflex which honestly PvE players DO NOT have to utilize as much as PvP players, thus PvP players would be better at it.
In PvP you're constantly moving, and constantly ready to move. In many PvE fights you can more or less sit in one position and wail on a boss.
Stop making your pathetic arguments, PvP is harder than PvE. Deal with it.
furry Nov 11th 2009 12:56PM
"Illidan was the box cover bad guy for BC. Arthas is the box cover bad guy for LK. Illidan was NOT the final boss for BC, Kil'Jaeden was. Is there any chance that Arthas is NOT the final boss for LK and that another enemy awaits? I only started playing after BC had been out for a while so I have no idea if it was known that Illidan was not the end of the BC story."
It will be mal'ganis. remember how he showed up at the end of the Ebon Blade questline?
Hoddie Nov 10th 2009 6:20PM
Thanks you beat me to it. I thought it was assumed that ZA was added to cover the gap between BT and SWP?
Stormscape Nov 10th 2009 6:33PM
Question for The QUEUE:
Have there been any rumblings, at all, about what's to be done with Quel'Danis?
-
As someone who really loves that zone, it seems like a tragedy that it's pretty much the most-ignored zone in the game now. It's a beautifully designed zone, and the center of the entire Sunwell/Aveena storyline, and some people don't even know its there.
Personally, I feel strongly that blizz has to do SOMETHING with Quel'Danis. My thought was, with Cataclysm, to reinvent the zone as a level ~65 leveling zone. They wouldn't even have to change that much. Rebalance Sunwell Plateau as a 5-man, and rebalance MgT and the rest of the island for level 65 as well. AND, importantly, re-implement the "capture the town" event with phasing, rather than as a server-event, tweak the quests a bit, and you've got a Northrend-caliber attraction on you hands, that brings the story of the Sunwell to the forefront for players leveling through outland.
Stick Chromie next to the portal in Shatt if you must, and say it's Quel'Danis in the recent past. I just hope SOMETHING is done with Quel'Danis so that it isn't forgotten completely.
Scomparsa Nov 10th 2009 7:42PM
This.
flawless Nov 10th 2009 7:47PM
Can't be that great if you keep spelling the name of it incorrectly.
It's a nice place, but it's a daily hub, on par with the Argent Tournament. Except less vanity pets.
Zava Nov 10th 2009 6:33PM
Is it possible to buy the new pets with gold from other players?
If a guildmate buys the pets in the store, I pay him using golds and he gives the code to me, it it against the EULA and we risk a ban?
Scomparsa Nov 10th 2009 7:41PM
You can't do this as the pets are account bound.