The Queue: Superbeard
by Matthew Rossi 
Aug 25th 2010 at 11:00AM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column in which the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. The hairy fellow above will be answering your questions today.
Behold the beard. My wife likes to take pictures of me. Her artistry is pretty amazing, although I dislike the subject matter. I kind of like this one, though. I could almost imagine that guy prospecting out in the mountains or something. Turns out he's a ridiculously sedentary geek, but whatever.
windstalker668 asks:
What is the lore behind the ogres in Kalimdor? There are several tribes across the southern part of the continent, and I was just wondering how they got there? Ogres are not native to Azeroth so it seems odd that there would be full tribes of them, especially in Kalimdor.
It's fair that I be the one to answer this. An extremely short answer would be to link to the KYL I did about ogres. Since I see that commenter Morbid has already won this, I'll sum up.
Ogres are like big, stupid rats. They breed fast, they infest everywhere that can hold even a small ogre mound, and once they're in, it's extremely hard to get rid of them. While they are indeed often tremendously stupid, they're also very physically powerful, so it's hard to stamp them out. (These are guys who survived the Gronn for years.) As for what the ogre females look like or where ogre babies come from, I don't know, and I don't want to know.
Behold the beard. My wife likes to take pictures of me. Her artistry is pretty amazing, although I dislike the subject matter. I kind of like this one, though. I could almost imagine that guy prospecting out in the mountains or something. Turns out he's a ridiculously sedentary geek, but whatever.
windstalker668 asks:
What is the lore behind the ogres in Kalimdor? There are several tribes across the southern part of the continent, and I was just wondering how they got there? Ogres are not native to Azeroth so it seems odd that there would be full tribes of them, especially in Kalimdor.
It's fair that I be the one to answer this. An extremely short answer would be to link to the KYL I did about ogres. Since I see that commenter Morbid has already won this, I'll sum up.
Ogres are like big, stupid rats. They breed fast, they infest everywhere that can hold even a small ogre mound, and once they're in, it's extremely hard to get rid of them. While they are indeed often tremendously stupid, they're also very physically powerful, so it's hard to stamp them out. (These are guys who survived the Gronn for years.) As for what the ogre females look like or where ogre babies come from, I don't know, and I don't want to know.
Mike asked:
Is there a set formula for stat conversion for pre-Cataclysm items? Like a weapon with 300 spellpower and 60 intellect becomes a 360 intellect weapon in Cataclysm?
I don't think we can say with any certainty what the final system for pre-Cataclysm items will be. For one example, here's Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas on live. It has int and SP on it. In the current beta, it has completely different itemization: no int at all, 224 more spellpower, nearly half as much physical DPS (not that many casters would care, I suppose) and close to twice as much stamina. So clearly, spellpower on items isn't just going away. Looking at various ICC caster swords (which seem to be to be a good option, as they're usually mage/paladin weapons), we see again no int and heavy spellpower on them.
So keeping in mind that there are months to go yet in the beta, the answer to your question seems to be: "If anything, they dump int on current raid weapons and jack up the spellpower." Hope that helps.
Kriegle asked:
Where exactly is the Pit of Saron? I've flown all around ICC and Southern Icecrown, and I can't seem to find what should be a pretty conspicuous giant floating skull and quarry of slaves.
A wizard did it.
Seriously, as several of your fellow readers commented, it's best to treat the whole issue of where instances are in the world with a bit of suspension of disbelief. While it's possible, say, to estimate which of those platforms outside the ICC spire are ones the gunships dock on or the one you fight Deathbringer Saurfang on, they clearly don't match up in scale, and if you fly to the top of the Citadel, the Frozen Throne is curiously unfinished. There are places in Icecrown Glacier that would be suitable for the Pit of Saron, but they lack things like free space into which to fit a huge saronite quarry, because there's just no room for them on the existing map. I mean, where does the final escape from Arthas in the Halls of Reflection take place? You can see Malykriss floating there as you run down the pathway, but when you fly to Malykriss in the world outside the instance, it's very difficult to see where in the Citadel that path could possibly exist.
Again, it's best to just say, "a wizard did it" and move on.
My beard asked:
When are you going to trim me again? I'm getting ridiculously snarly-looking here.
Never, my faithful face friend. Or at least "never" as loosely defined by me, which means "until my wife complains enough."
threesixteen asked:
Any word on what might happen with Badges of Justice? It'd be great if they'd make that gear BoA so we could attire our alts in cool lvl 70 epics, even if they only get used for like a week or two while we level up.
In fact, I'd love to be able to grind some of token/emblem that would allow me to "upgrade" my complete T1 and T2 sets with stats comparable to near-endgame gear ... Any chance of that happening?
No, no chance of that happening. (This has been Matt pretending to certainty he cannot possibly possess.) More seriously, I can't say that it will never happen. I would never have predicted race changes, faction changes, paid realm transfers or purchasable mounts or pets. But I would be willing to say it is extremely unlikely that you'll see anything like Badges of Justice being usable for BoA gear or instance tokens or emblems to allow you to upgrade your older tier sets.
I do look crazy awesome in my old tier 2, though. Only set I've ever held onto.
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 9)
niko Aug 25th 2010 11:05AM
Whoa. Only one thing we need to know, Rossi:
Is there a fist behind that beard?
oh yeah, the Queue needs to know!
Grovinofdarkhour Aug 25th 2010 11:31AM
Clearly, it's a coded message to all members of the Jeff Bridges Fan Club that the time has come to rise up against our clean-shaven oppressors.
Zaros Aug 25th 2010 11:47AM
Most of the men are in the emerald dream (ensnared in the Nightmare) so perhaps in some patch or future expansion they will all be freed!
Maybe after that we will actually see some Night Elf children walking around.
brian Aug 25th 2010 12:27PM
Was this based off you, Rossi?
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/429765
Baneraven Aug 25th 2010 6:06PM
Speaking of beards, why can't we have uber flowing wizard/biker/barbarian beards? That would be awesome.
Dreyja Aug 25th 2010 7:22PM
Clearly, Rossi has some Dwarvish ancestry. I wonder how he holds his liquor. X-p
Deadlysteve Aug 25th 2010 11:06AM
Is there any lore reason that the sentenials (gaurds) around teldrassil are all female? IDK why but its been bugging me for some reason.
Stone Aug 25th 2010 11:14AM
if you played warcraft 3 you'd notice how all the units are female except for the druids, giants, and animals, night elves are a race similar to amazons IMO, all their warriors are female and the men are just for..well ill leave that to your imagination.
Aquizit Aug 25th 2010 11:15AM
In lore (lolore if you must): in night elf society, the men are usually the casters, and the women are the warriors. Night elf sentinels are women because, for the most part of 10,000 years, all (or nearly all) of the men were druids and sleeping or doing... druidly things.
jealouspirate Aug 25th 2010 11:20AM
Traditionally in Night Elf culture women are either warriors or priests, the men are Druids, and its rare for these roles to switch.
Hefren Aug 25th 2010 11:24AM
In Warcraft 3, the males were all druids while the females were most all sentinels. They guarded the forest while the males slept in the Emerald Dream. That's my recollection at least.
Killik Aug 25th 2010 11:49AM
In Night Elf society, the women work while the men sleep all day.
Aaron Aug 25th 2010 12:07PM
My female druid is a bit of a rebel. ;-)
Oni Stardust Aug 25th 2010 12:46PM
As a side note the Night Elves take a fair amount of inspiration from the Drow of Dungeons and Dragons.
In Drow culture, females are considered to be superior to men and because of such females have greater rights and opportunities than males. This is mostly due to the influence of their goddess Lolith who isn't particularly fond of men.
Although in the case of the Drow the females tend to be casters and the males are usually warriors while it's the other way around with Night Elves. Although in both cases the priesthood is run by females.
Basically, if you take the good alignment and nature loving aspect of traditional elves, add the dark, goddess worshiping, female dominant aspects of the Drow, and throw in the female warrior culture of the Amazons and you'll have Night Elf society in a nutshell.
Rando Aug 25th 2010 4:21PM
It is because thousands of years ago, for whatever reason, the males became Druids but they had to promise they would sleep and go to the emerald dream. That meant it left only the females to protect the land and the Druids.
Prissa Aug 25th 2010 4:35PM
Rando has it most correct as far as I can see.
If you go back to the original story of Malfurion and Tyrande, Ysera (the green aspect) did them all a huge favour but in return all the druids (including Malfurion) had to devote years to the Emerald Dream, which is Ysera's realm. They went to sleep and the females who were all priestesses and warriors took up the charge of looking after their culture. They were named the Sentinals because they were watching over the dreamers.
At that's the way I remember it from when I read it...
Des Aug 25th 2010 6:09PM
In Night Elf Azeroth, girl hurts you!
Vaeku Aug 25th 2010 6:33PM
Not quite Aquizit. The men are the druids, while the women are everything else (sentinels, wardens, priestess), because of the pact the druids made with Cenarius/Ysera/whoever. In this pact, they would be given the power of nature magic, but in return must slumber in the Emerald Dream. So when they did that, the women were the only ones awake and thus it was left to them to guard the night elven lands. I believe it was known as The Long Vigil.
Cure4Living Aug 26th 2010 3:41AM
A few of the class/race/gender/ability combinations exist purely for gameplay mechanics i.e. its fun so lets allow people to do it or its too much effort to modify an existing class to fit an existing race just because to lore says so.
Bristae Aug 25th 2010 11:15AM
I've held on to my tier 2 set as well on my mage. That was back in the day when it MEANT something to have that gear.. Gear wasn't get handed to you for doing heroics. It inspired awe to stand in your gear in a town. it was an achievement to have that gear.