The Queue: Short attention span edition
by Alex Ziebart 
Sep 13th 2010 at 11:00AM
Mondays. Even working from home cannot make Mondays a more exciting day. I think we should just eradicate all Mondays and replace them with a new, more awesome day. Who's with me?
Erinorofdarkspear asked:
Am I going to be able to play through Operation Gnomeregan after Cataclysm comes out, or am I going to need to reactivate my account before Cataclysm hits and do it?
You have to do it before Cataclysm. Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall are limited time events and will likely only be there for a few weeks. It's now or never.
Ravasha aked:
Mount Hyjal or Vashj'ir?
I assume you are asking which one I prefer. After playing through both of the zones, I actually dislike large chunks of both of them. Vashj'ir was my favorite when I had only done about half of each zone, but Vashj'ir really starts to drag along after the first few quest hubs. The beginning of the zone is really, incredibly fun. The closer I was to finishing the zone, however, the less fun I was having there. I also wasn't a fan of Hyjal at all, because I have an irrational hatred of night elf questing zones. The expansion didn't pick up for me until Deepholm. Vashj'ir still pulls ahead for me but there's a lot of content in that zone that is just plain boring to me personally.
Don't let my answer discourage you or take away from your enjoyment of Cataclysm when it goes live. I am a very picky person who gets bored easily. I don't like staying in one zone for too long, so the larger a zone is, the less I'll enjoy it in the end, even if I loved it early on. I know that isn't the case for everybody. In fact, most of the WoW.com team I've talked to about it loved Hyjal and thought I was crazy for finding it boring.
Even if you do end up agreeing with my assessment of Hyjal and Vashj'ir, everything that comes after them is way better, in my opinion.
Galaden asked:
I have recently started a new guild, and we are looking for a voice chat to use. Do you have any suggestions other than Ventrilo? Are there any free voice chat systems that we could use? Money is a little tight, and having it free would be a godsend.
My number one suggestion for voice chat is Mumble, but Mumble servers are not free. Fairly priced, but not free.
If free is absolutely necessary, the two most common suggestions are using either the in-game voice chat feature or using Skype conference calls. The more people you bring into Skype, the worse it will perform, and WoW's voice chat is just plain not good. Unless readers have better suggestions (which they are welcome to post in the comments), I recommend using Skype conference calls temporarily until you have a little funding to put into a Mumble server.
Edit: Yes, you can actually host your own Mumble (or Ventrilo) server. Mumble is open source and if you have the resources at your disposal, you can host your own server for free. I made the assumption, however, that Galaden was looking for an external host.
zeen13 asked:
Any new info on exactly when race changes to goblins and worgen will be made available?
Blizzard is currently stress testing the paid services on beta realms. They're randomly enabling race changes and recustomizations across everybody's characters and encouraging testers to use them as much as possible. Blizzard wants to know that the paid services will be functioning properly under the stress Cataclysm's launch will bring it, so it seems likely it's intended that race changes will be enabled immediately -- if not immediately, very soon after launch. You probably will not have to wait long.
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!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
Runesrus Sep 13th 2010 11:05AM
Will WoW.com get a facebook account? It should get one so people could Subscribe and know like when an article gets posted from their phone.
darkorical Sep 13th 2010 11:10AM
subscribe to the RSS feeds at the top of the page.
Grovinofdarkhour Sep 13th 2010 11:38AM
God I hope not. I like having one place left I can go that's not telling me I'm "missing out" somehow because I don't join the yeah-to-hell-with-privacy-we-didn't-need-it-anyway club.
scotepi Sep 13th 2010 11:42AM
http://twitter.com/WoWdotcom
Maribel Sep 13th 2010 4:37PM
I want to give Grovin's comment four stars. Five. No Facebook!
Darky Sep 13th 2010 11:07AM
I'm the same Alex, when it comes to questing I'll spend more time groaning about having to choose between the equally boring 10-20 zones than I will actually questing through them, that bracket (for the horde) is my 2nd least favourite bracket (50-58 being my most hated).
In the end all zones are way more fun than I think they would be but then again if I went in as an optimist I wouldn't find them any fun at all.
Aaron Sep 13th 2010 11:25AM
With you on that. During 50-58 on a recent alt I ended up just doing PvP and running dungeons. I went to WPL and did maybe 10 quest that whole bracket. haha
Xylaria Sep 13th 2010 11:55AM
Normally I'd agree on the 10-20 zones, I usually grind something to 15 and then dungeon up from there. However, I've recently discovered my absolute, passionate love of Bloodmyst Isle for the Alliance. Every future toon I level will probably do 10-20 right there. Different for everyone, I suppose though.
jbodar Sep 13th 2010 7:11PM
Ghostlands isn't super-fun (aside from the Deatholme chain, IMO), but it is very efficient compared to the older zones. We'll see how things even out in Cata.
Darky Sep 13th 2010 7:57PM
Oh yes I love 10-20 in alliance, pretty much all the zones apart from the night elf areas are easy and relatively fun in comparison to the barrens, silverpine or stone talon peak, ghostlands is tolerable but you can only do a zone so many times before it's monotonous as well.
fatskellybelly Sep 13th 2010 11:08AM
I'm very similar, quests have to pretty damn interesting to keep me involved. However like many people i'm sure Nagrad still has a special place in my heart
Anathemys Sep 13th 2010 5:15PM
I agree. Nagrand has a special place in my heart, too.
Dangling above and acid pit full of lava sharks from a thin fraying rope. That's on fire.
Not to mention the lasers.
Tealdra Sep 13th 2010 11:39AM
@ Galaden:
TeamSpeak is a good choice. It's free and good quality, only downside is that you must your own computer to run the server.
Darky Sep 13th 2010 11:12AM
I need to squish my computer and get the seeds and skin out so all the juices are nice for wine JUST so i can use team speak? Well i think paying for vent isn't THAT bad.
Aaron Sep 13th 2010 11:27AM
@Darky LOL @ wine making jokes. That made my morning. Thanks. =D
/drink
Chris Sep 13th 2010 11:29AM
Vent to me was rather cheap. I come from a very small guild of about 10 people. We have up to 25 channels for $70 a year. That was $7 a person. And if you need less channels than 25, the cost is even cheaper.
Shujin Sep 13th 2010 11:29AM
my 15 person vent server costs me $40 A YEAR... srsly $40 is not much at all... srsly 11ยข a day...
Riptomjones Sep 13th 2010 11:36AM
You can also setup the mumble server (murmur) on your own system. I have done this in a bind an never saw any spike in latency.
Arkkis Sep 13th 2010 4:58PM
Xfire has a voice chat function which I've used with a good amount of success in the past.
Beli Sep 13th 2010 11:53AM
The same is true for Vent... you can download and run the server for free. Of course, any of these options require a minimum knowledge of server operations - if your sitting behind a router, you'll likely have to configure port forwarding on the router, and you'll have to be able to give everyone your external IP address. You may also have to do some configuration if you have a firewall installed on your computer. In short, it's not incredibly easy to set up a local vent server... but certainly doable with a fairly minimal amount of knowledge/google usage.