The Queue: Waffles
by Anne Stickney 
May 17th 2010 at 11:00AM
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. Anne Stickney will be your host today.
Today's Queue is brought to you by Waffles the chinchilla, who thought my cell phone might be a delicious raisin. Don't worry, after he discovered the cell phone was not what he was looking for, I gave him a delicious raisin.
MeanGreen asked:
"What ever happened to that Dance Studio? Ya know, a feature from this expansion we're still waiting on?"
Waffles is holding it hostage for another delicious raisin.
But seriously, no idea -- it may be one of those ideas we simply never see come to fruition, as there hasn't been a peep about its availability in Cataclysm. Apparently teaching tauren to swing it like Napoleon Dynamite is harder than previously anticipated.
Neuropox asked:
"I saw the azshara BG in the alpha... does that mean we get it?"
Nope! The Azshara Crater battleground was something that was discussed back in vanilla World of Warcraft that never made it to live. Players exploring Azshara can still find the caves that would have been the entrances to the zone along the Forlorn Ridge. There used to be maps for the battleground in the game files that were shown in exploration videos here and there, but the battleground itself was never implemented -- possibly you saw the old maps. Given the fact that the goblins have turned Azshara into the world's largest Horde symbol, it's highly doubtful those battleground entrances, much less the Forlorn Ridge itself, will exist come Cataclysm.
cow_lick asked:
"In Cataclysm, will we be able to go from the blood elf areas to the Eastern Plaguelands without a loading screen?"
They haven't said yet. I'd assume no for now, since the draenei and blood elf starting areas are Burning Crusade content. The loading screen is there pretty much for those players who haven't purchased Burning Crusade; they can't play through content they haven't purchased. It seems a little silly that two tiny sections of the map are cut off like that, but it's the easiest way to keep the areas separate from the rest of the world.
Lorsty asked:
"Elune's creations are just plain weird. Worgen, Wildkin, Night Elves... Is she blind or evil? Why did she unleash such abominations upon Azeroth?"
Because she's a naaru. (Not really, I swear!)
manouch0073 asked:
"With Goblins joining Horde in Cataclysm, what will happen to Booty Bay, Everlook and Gadgatzen ?"
This question comes up pretty often; the answer is this: nothing at all! The goblins who are joining the Horde are from the Bilgewater Cartel, which has nothing at all to do with the Steamwheedle Cartel currently in game. The goblins of Ratchet, Booty Bay, Everlook and Gadgetzan will remain neutral as always. The Steamwheedle Cartel is also the largest and most successful of the goblin cartels -- probably because they remain neutral and
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: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
nonentity May 17th 2010 11:11AM
Why do people care so much about this damn dance studio? Oo
I'd much rather they continue working on Cataclysm or a thousand other things rather than this.
Honestly, how important is that thing? Once/If/When it goes live, people will play around a bit with it, everybody will be dancing differente dances everyday for two weeks, then everyone will find their favorite one and use it about as much as now, which is maybe once a day...
I wish people would quit asking about it, jeez...
Sintraedrien May 17th 2010 11:18AM
The answer is obvious: we want to no longer be restricted by racial/classist divisions in the Blizzcon dance contest. I mean really, who wants to see a (fairly tall) fat MAN doing the dwarf FEMALE stepdance? (a short fat male doing the dwarf male dance, on the other hand . . . )
:P
:)
(In case you were wondering, I mean this in jest)
Bulk May 17th 2010 11:21AM
Amen to that!
The Scarlet Mathematician May 17th 2010 11:22AM
You obviously don't play a human female.
duskhawk May 17th 2010 11:29AM
I compulsively /dance from my years as a tauren female. It's very embarrassing on my blood elf alts.
tatsumasa May 17th 2010 11:37AM
why is this so many people's reply any time this is asked? how about the simple fact that it was an advertised feature that still has not been delivered? doesn't matter if you like it or not. you don't speak for me.
joel_robinson May 17th 2010 11:40AM
I don't think it's as much about the studio as it is about not being able to trust Blizzard to deliver promished content. Keep in mind this was not something casually mentioned in a podcast, twitter chat or blue forum post. It was highlighted in the Official Wotlk trailer that was featured at BlizzCon, which to be fair did not say dance studio specifically but did mention new dances. I belive another trailer might have specifically said dance studios. The point is that it is content that was promised and not delivered. I know for many it's not that important but for a lot of people it makes them nervous to see content promised in trailers and wonder if something they want won't be delivered.
Let me put it another way. What if the Wrath trailer had said "Player and guild housing" and not new dances? Would that have been worse?
osteenq May 17th 2010 11:56AM
I really don't care if they ever put in new dances, either.
I've used the /dance emote maybe three of four times since I started playing 3 years ago. I can get (not really, but I'm being nice) why some people have fun with it, but I really don't get why they obsess over it like some of them seem to.
Promised or not, there are a lot of other things I'd rater see implemented first.
nonentity May 17th 2010 11:58AM
Still, the dance studio is definitely not the first thing Blizzard has promised but not delivered yet it's the most prominent one.
You see far more people asking about the dance studio all the time than for the player housing (they never officially stated they'd never deliver it, it's always 'we'd like to but ... ' etc., same as the dance studio). Ghost, the Azshara BG, Emerald Dream, whatever there's tons of stuff but nothing seems to be as important to people as this dance studio.
And I don't get why. /dance is very very minor part of the game, why are people so hungry for it?
I definitely understand and support Blizzard not putting a lot of ressoures into it.
I actually thought it was a prank when they first announced it and I believe they've since come to the same conclusion. That there are more important things to be developed and put into the game than this extension of an emote.
People have stopped asking for the housing. We know it'll never come. It's the same for the dance studio, on the list of priorities it's way down, and rightfully so.
I wish they'd man up and officially cancel stuff like this though. They cancelled Ghost, the cancelled the Warcraft Adventure. Why don't they just say they no longer plan to implement this stuff. It may suck right now but long term people don't have to wait for it year after year.
I get it that people want some features and keep asking for it when they get delayed time and time again but I don't get why so many seem to care about this dance studio. It's among the least important things for the game I can imagine...
Darthregis May 17th 2010 12:00PM
I use my /dance every time I'm in Culling of Strat. There's something about a disco dance on the tables of the Inn that is strangely compelling.
Okay, not really.
There's nothing strange about it!
RetPallyJil May 17th 2010 12:43PM
Death to the Macarena!
cendrekai May 17th 2010 12:47PM
I keep Noggenfogger on my Undead Female for the sole purpose of allowing me to do the male undead dance. Man, I love that mosh pit dancing and hate my idiotic "liquid/trance dancing".
Darasen May 17th 2010 12:54PM
If a Dance Studio is the biggest thing Blizzard promised that never came to fruition then they have a really good track record.
Todd May 17th 2010 12:53PM
@nonentity
I understand your point of view. Aside from the achievement, you may not even use the barber shop any. That's fine.
Some people really love these extracurricular activities in WoW to have fun with, aside from the repetitive dailies, raiding, and PvP. The holiday events are there to spice up the gaming life, and so is the barber shop and (hopefully) the dance studio. Enjoy these little tidbits of flavor... some MMO games unfortunately don't have them.
Amaxe-1 May 17th 2010 1:00PM
This may sound silly but I wanted my draenei to have the male troll "capioera" [I forget the spelling] dance style to imply a knowledge of martial arts. So while it isn't a deal breaker for me, i do wish they had given it to us, or had just kept silent on it to begin with.
nonentity May 17th 2010 1:11PM
I get that but honestly, how much do you or does anyone dance? Raiding, PvP etc. have you doing stuff, you're active. Even RP does that.
The dance studio as they advertised it, unless I'm forgetting something, just let's you create or mix up dances. Yeah, that may be fun for a while, but there will be a fairly limited number of dances to choose from (guess the segments of all rance dances + a couple others) unless they invest a lot of time in developing it. Developing the dance styles, doing the animation work for 12 races etc. takes a lot of time if they want to do it right which they will.
Creating the dances may be fun, yeah, but when you're done? You hit /dance and watch your character do its thing, no further action needed from you.
The barber you brought up may be a very good comparison to this dance studio. You play around with the hairstyle/dances till you get what you want, then you're done, you have it/use it/ /dance. Every couple days or weeks you may come back and change it but that's it.
And the barber was just pretty much putting part of the already existing character creating into the game and creating a couple models, the hair, which is static. So a minor undertaking compared to the dance studio.
Look how long it took them to get around to changing the druid forms, and even then only two of them. And those are only enhanced versions of the models, they still use the same animations.
Trees will come with cataclysm, I'm *pretty* sure it'll be the same animations. Moonkins or even travelform.. Maybe the expansion after Cataclysm? And that's just changing/enhancing a very limited number of models, there are only so many druid forms.
To get the dance studio right they'll have to adapt all dances for all races, currently they'd probably not work too well with some skeletons (tauren doing the undead dance would look like folding in on himself everytime he headbangs I guess). Also they'd have to make sure all segments fit together, if you put one segment of the undead dance next to one segment of the blood elf dance the transition has to be smooth. And then they'd have to add new dances/segments which I'm not even sure they'd do. Look at the barber, they just gave some races hair styles of other races, nothing completely new.
And so on. It's a ton of work for something that in my opinion can easily wait.
You don't see druids asking for updates to their forms as much as you do people asking for the dance studios and imo those forms are more important as druid players have to look at them at least 60% of their time ingame if they do PvE/PvP.
DJ May 17th 2010 1:43PM
It really has to do with blizz saying there going to do something and they don't, wow is the mose expensive mmo to date not counting newer ones with the same price, and for the amount of money they make, them promising us something and then pulling back is wrong its not so much the dance studio as it is the principal of it, someone said above(sry can't check on phone) that it'd be the same with guild housing or player housing, and when you think about it player housing PLAYER not guild is really just an rp aspect something that couldn't alter the game too much do to the high demand they would have to get one but people would still want one, its like the "ghostcrawler promised me a pony" people wanted to see it happen not wanted it istelf, now when it was released obvoiusly people wanted it but, the major point is blizz doing what they say there going to do, why should we pay them if we don't?
RogueJedi86 May 17th 2010 1:51PM
nonentity, but your same logic they should never create new mounts because they'll make those new models and skeletons and textures just for us to use them the same way we use all our other mounts. Dozens of ground mounts and they're still just riding us from place to place. Dozens of flying mounts and they're still just riding us from place to place via flying over terrain. Not everything has to have some useful longterm purpose. I find raids boring but I love dances and pets and mounts.
Basically joel_robinson answered this topic as best as anyone could. It's about how Blizzard promised something in the very first WotLK and failed to deliver it. Imagine if they'd promised "Fighting the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel!" but you never actually got to fight him in WotLK, but instead maybe got it delayed to the next expansion or whenever Blizz felt like it. Sure Lich King encounter and ICC are much bigger than New Dances, but imagine if something you cared about was promised for this expansion but not delivered.
I hate to be "that guy", but that's a big reason I'm excited for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The developers never even so much as casually off-hand mention something until it's in the time and working and there for screenshots. That means no empty promises because you can see the screenshots of the thing they just announced. Like every planet announced for TOR has came with a page on the TOR website showing 4 screenshots, 4 concept arts, a multi-paragraph blurb on the planet's history and current situation, plus a 15 second flyover video of the planet. Every class announcement came with the class' page on TOR's site plus big press junket play sessions and a dozen screenshots and videos. I believe the only things they've mentioned without showing are Space and Crafting, and all they've said is they'll be in the game, and have refused to say more, because BioWare doesn't announced anything until they have something to show.
That kind of attitude is refreshing for those of us who've been waiting 2 years since the WotLK announcement trailer and heard absolutely nothing since then about a feature promised in said trailer.
Alchemistmerlin May 17th 2010 3:00PM
*Gasp*
You mean not everyone enjoys the game in the same manner that I do?! And some people have different priorities than I do?!
THIS REVELATION IS EARTHSHATTERING!
Eric May 17th 2010 3:24PM
I'm sort of wondering what can happen to Blizzard if they don't provide features they promised such as the Dance studio or the Ariel combat (which is on my Wrath box as a feature though dance studios aren't). Could a lawsuit be filed against them or because the expansion never ends and neither does the game development do they not have a time line. that must be enforced. Just a thought.