The Queue: A vote has been initiated to kick your dog
by Michael Sacco 
Dec 10th 2009 at 6:00PM
Patch 3.3, the Fall of the Lich King, is finally here, and you know what that means! Well, I mean, hopefully it means questions for the Queue that haven't been asked a million times before, or questions about new content.
Haha, just kidding. Today's Queue, like most other Queues, has nearly nothing to do with current events.
Khrono asked...
Why is it that my Paladin can wield a two handed and one handed sword, but for some reason he can't hold a dagger? Is there some lore out there that tells the tale of a Knight of the Silver Hand that insulted the dagger gods, so now we can't use daggers?
Cause there are some nicely itemized casting daggers out there I wouldn't mind getting my hand on.
It's all about flavor.
A dagger doesn't fit the "kit" of a paladin in Blizzard's eyes -- much like you don't see rogues using staves or priests using swords. There's no discernable "lore" reason for it, or even a gameplay reason. It just doesn't fit with the profile of a paladin to use a tiny dagger while lugging around a 50-lb shield and tossing holy magic around.
Elish asked...
I still love this column. but seriously were did ask a lore nerd go? I have some weird questions that a lore guy might not be able to awnser. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LORE!?
Ask a Lord Nerd has been rolled into The Queue. You can ask lore-related questions here if it floats your boat.
Drennick asked...
How will grouping for Maraudon via the 3.3 Dungeon System work? I know it's all one instance, but there's three different entrances. The purple side, the orange side, and the inner portal. Will you be able to choose which entrance you take when you get a group, or will it automatically take you to one specific entrance?
You can choose the specific "side" of Maraudon you want to run in the Dungeon Finder tool as of today. This should make getting a level-specific group much easier. It also means you don't have to find the damn entrance. Somebody up there loves you.
Slash asked...
Will Blizzard ever do anything about the amount of names that are available on a realm? as it is, it's virtually impossible to aquire a decent name as literally they are all mostly gone now, but what annoys me is these names are usually taken by people who havent logged in for for like 3-5 years and are reserved probably on level one alts, it will only get worse as time goes on and i seriously think Blizz should free these names up for those who actually play the game.
I get where you're coming from -- my rogue's name was originally Ash, and I had to do some serious finagling to get that name on a server to which I transferred. The issue here, though, isn't necessarily that Blizzard is trying to keep the names from you, but keep them for someone who may come back to the game (or that character) at some point, and would be a little miffed to see that their name was gone.
There are certain rules in place in the Support department in regard to "releasing" names, though; I'm not really at liberty to discuss them in detail, but if you have a specific name you want and you can't find that person on the Armory, it might be worth a GM ticket to inquire about it.
Blondie asked...
What is up with the fog/smoke by entrance to the Argent Stand in Zul'Drak?
I believe the intention of the effect is that lightning has just struck the ground in front of you. You can see the lightning strike the first time you walk up the Argent Stand.
Condor asked...
Who drops the T10 gear? What kind of Armor Token are we looking at? I assume one piece off each wing-end-boss and another off the LK?
Tier 10 gear must first be purchased with Emblems of Frost. The purchaseable sets are item level 251. Once you have a piece of the badge set, you can upgrade it to level 264 with a token that drops off of bosses in the Icecrown Citadel raid. The bosses will drop a better token on their specific Heroic modes, which can be used to upgrade your 264 set to a 277 set.
We don't know which bosses drop tokens yet, but it's very safe to assume that it's the final boss of each wing and then one off of Arthas.
Nerfduken said...
One thing I hope they fix is the ability to skip the intro for Halls of Reflection. Just like TOC, it's cool the first time, then after that it gets pretty irritating.
Readers tell me that as long as everyone in the group has completed the quest for Halls of the Reflection, there's a dialogue option for Jaina that'll skip right to the action.
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 9)
Wild Colors Dec 10th 2009 6:04PM
What level raid of ICC will the armor set upgrade tokens drop from? Are we stuck with the initial ilvl 251 gear if we're running normal 10-man?
Reps Dec 10th 2009 6:27PM
Yes. But I would assume heroic 10 man will drop 264 tokens.
And it has been confirmed that Deathbringer Saurfang (final boss in wing 1) drops the 264 token. I would assume the other wings also drop tokens off the final boss, similar to Naxxramas (although I hate to compare the two instances).
Falcom Dec 10th 2009 6:30PM
Of course you are stuck with 251 in 10 man. Blizzard has very little love for 10man raids, no orbs, no legendaries, and twirl gear that is replaced by emblem gear from heroics if you can live with the loss of a set bonus.
Gethe Dec 10th 2009 7:10PM
It's not that Blizz doesn't love 10man, it's about increased reward for increased difficulty. For many people there wouldn't be much reason to run 25mans if you could get the same loot from 10man
The Avatar of Blue! Dec 10th 2009 10:49PM
The only increased difficulty with 25mans is the effort to organize 25 people to work together. 10-mans make you suffer more responsibility -- if one person screws up, much more likely to fail then if 1 person screws up in a 25man.
Carson Dec 11th 2009 1:17AM
Avatar of Blue and johnnytorrance.. it would be appreciated if you didn't clog up the comments with completely incorrect nonsense about the relative difficulty of activities that you have clearly never participated in. Try raiding (both 10-man and 25-man of course) before posting about which is tuned to be more difficult.
Chirri Dec 11th 2009 1:40AM
Keep in mind that, "10 man is harder than 25 man," held true for most of WotLK. After having run 10 man ICC on Tuesday and then 25 man ICC tonight (Thursday,) I'm going to go ahead and say that it is not entirely accurate for the new raid instance.
10 man being harder, but getting lesser gear, was a huge complaint for many players, and it felt tonight like they took those complaints to heart and did something about it.
Trash was much easier for us tonight, but the bosses were not. The number of people present was increased, but so were the challenges - not just boss HP and swing damage, but entire encounters. At least half of the people present for 25 man had already experienced a 10 or 25 man version of the instance already, so it's not like we were failing purely due to lack of experience (though that was certainly the case for some of us).
10 was a pleasantly new experience, but disappointingly easy for our make up that night to conquer. 25 was a less new experience, aside from the face planting. That was new. And while it's never fun to spend money on repairs, finding encounters that ARE a challenge is definitely satisfying. Though if we don't ramp it up next raid night, I might start throwing fits.
Crimson Dec 11th 2009 1:51AM
@ Carson
Guess why your post is grey?
Embraced the fail have you?
10 man has always been more difficult and less rewarding then 25 man
as stated above because you have more people 1 death doesn't mean much
and in 10 man you lose one person that is very hard on the group and if it's a healer
it's usually a wipe.
So 10 mans are more often performed with people from the same guild, so all the loot badges and gold goes to the guild.
25 mans happen in large guilds but more often are pugged because finding 25 people in one guild at one time to devote 3 or more hours to something is rather difficult.
That is the only hard part about 25 mans.
Also 25 mans are usually ran by people who already did 10 man know the encounters and have descent gear
Carson Dec 11th 2009 2:11AM
"Keep in mind that, "10 man is harder than 25 man," held true for most of WotLK. "
Absolutely nonsense.
It wasn't true for Naxx.
It wasn't true for Malygos.
It wasn't true for Vault of Archavon, nor Emalon or Koralon.
It wasn't true for Ulduar.
It wasn't true for Onyxia.
It wasn't true for the Coliseum.
It wasn't even true for Sartharion.. UNLESS you were doing it with drakes up. THAT was the one place where 10-man was harder.. and Blizzard publically acknowledged that it was a mistake, that they tuned that fight incorrectly for 10-man.
But as has always been the case on wow.com .. people who have never raided neither 10-man nor 25-man speculate wildly, and figure that 10-man must be harder because "one death means so much more". Completely ignorant of the fact that all the tanking and healing and dps checks are tuned to be vastly milder in 10-man.
Anyway, enough of this nonsense, I'm about to go and run some of the hardest content in the game - 5-man instances! They're WAY harder than 10-man raids, because if someone dies, it means TWICE AS MUCH to the group!
Imnick Dec 11th 2009 2:41AM
@ Crimson
Guess why your post is grey?
Embraced the fail have you?
I've done 10 and 25 man of every Wrath raid in the game.
10 man is always MASSIVELY easier than 25
EatLedLaddies Dec 11th 2009 5:05AM
Quote: "I've done 10 and 25 man of every Wrath raid in the game.
10 man is always MASSIVELY easier than 25"
---
These arguments are stupid when they come from people who "have done both raids". You might think that "I know what im saying" when you say that you have done both..but its not valid point, its bad point. Specially if your role is dps.
I mean of course 10mans are "massively" easy WHEN YOU OUTGEAR IT by WHOLE TIER.
Lets see.
As we know Naxx 10/25 = 200 ilvl/213ilvl gear
Ulduar desing wise? Uld10 is desinged for 200 ilvl geared people. Uld 25 is desinged for 213 ilvl people. If you went to Uld10 with maly and OS3D 226+213 gear stop freaking whining "ezmode" and you know why.
Toc raid same thing. 10man is for 10man progress not for people who outgear the entrylevel reguirement with their 226+239 gear.
You guys need to realise they are 2 totally different progress levels. Has blizzard ever said 10mans are "lol they are just for loot and to learn the fights". No, they even made achievements like "herald of the titans" and "dedicatly insane" that encourages to use propriete ilvl gear for encounters. It might be learning/loot place for 25man guilds that use like algalon10 as learning curve to 25. But still theres strict 10man guilds and they can spend same amount of time as any 25man guild on ICC now.
I tanked ICC10 with 10m Toc gear and it was reasonably scaled. MT had 25man gear and he didnt barely have to do anything while I might've needed some cooldowns there and there.
If you want challenge, do 25man with toc10 and 10 ulduar hard gear as non-dps. Trust me, tanking with that was cooldown chains.
Imnick Dec 11th 2009 9:52AM
You can't talk about it being unfair to compare the raids if you've done both and then say how hard it is to tank a 25 man in 10 man gear >_>
ZMES_Matt Dec 11th 2009 10:34AM
@Carson
...Have you ever done -anything- in 10-man, honestly?
The only way someone that has done both would think 10-man is easier is if they went back to 10-man after clearing and looting up fully in 25-man, at which point they're way overgeared and already know the fights of 10-man. Try running 10-man first and in the previous raid's 10-man gear and tell us what you think then.
Akhilesh Dec 10th 2009 6:06PM
Saurfang dropped a token in 25 man ICC last night
Bylak Dec 10th 2009 6:07PM
So I think everyone was expecting to see "Lavaman" as a boss in Icecrown, but so far other than the leaked pic from mmo-champion we haven't heard a thing. Is it safe to assume at this point that he's probably going to be apart of the Lich King encounter in some way?
Cataca Dec 10th 2009 6:19PM
Without giving away too much to those that don't want to see *****spoilers*****
Yes. Current speculation states that he is someone very popular that you should know about that was killed recently by the Lich King.
But this is still all speculation and nothing can be confirmed yet.
Cataca Dec 10th 2009 6:22PM
Well, not really "killed" and it wasn't by the Lich King himself but...eh, hopefully you get the point...
Amelyra Dec 10th 2009 6:35PM
If you'll have a look at the achievements, it doesn't seem like the Lavaman is in any way a boss all of his own. Perhaps he's part of the Lich King encounter, but a lot of speculation has him placed differently.
For example... SPOILERS BELOW
Many people think that's Bolvar Fordragon, which would make sense since the armour seems to match up and he DID get bathed in dragonflame, or so it seems.
Nonetheless, he's currently Prime Candidate #1 for who gets to be the new Lich King after we pop open this one.
Neofox Dec 10th 2009 6:58PM
!*!*!*!*!*!*SPOILERS*!*!*!*!*!*!
So, we know that "Lavaman" is not a boss all on his own...
If you study his armor, from shoulder to toe, he is undoubtedly Bolvar Fordragon...
If you'll remember, in the event where Uther appears and talks to Sylvanas (or Jaina, if you're Alliance), he mentions that killing the Lich King is impossible, because the scourge would run rampant and destroy all of Azeroth, and that it is what little bit of Arthas that is left inside him that prevents this from happening already. So, to stop this Lich King, Uther states that another brave soul must take up the mantle of the Lich King... The text that mmo-champion posted pics of shows that Bolvar isn't quite ready to break yet... Might Bolvar Fordragon (the Lavaman), be the new Lich King after we defeat Arthas?
ladeezluvlarry71 Dec 10th 2009 7:32PM
I know he's been identified over on MMO-Champ, but I can't find the post. Anyone else?