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: Kittris
by Michael Sacco 
Sep 24th 2010 at 5:00PM
What, Mat thinks he can just post cat pictures in The Queue and not expect retribution? Everyone knows that the only cuter than cats is small cats, or "kittens," in the vernacular. And I have four small cats right now. You can see them above, possibly forming Voltron, or possibly playing Tetris with their bodies.
Sicadastra asked:
Simple question: Do the passenger flying mounts require that the passenger have the appropriate flying skill as well? I assume not, just curious.
Nope, just like someone without normal riding skill can hop on a Nether-Rocket or a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth.
Juanin asked:
Will personal achievements obtained before the release of Cataclysm count towards guild experience?
No, and neither will the personal achievements you get after the release of Cataclysm.
Haimdall asked:
Any word on the rumors that we'll be able to use the old worgen faces when we create them? If not, have any more passive faces for the new models been implemented?
Additionally, I remember hearing about level 50 class quests with unique rewards. Have those been discovered, or was the idea scrapped?
If by "the old worgen faces" you mean the anime lion faces, then no, you won't be able to use them. Like it or not, worgen have received a ferocity pass, and it looks like it's here to stay. There are a few faces available that are slightly less rageful than the yellow-eyed face that's seen on nearly every worgen screenshot, though the face geometry remains the same.
The level 20 and level 50 quests for each class are indeed implemented. They send you into a dungeon (it looks like SFK and BRD, respectively) to complete a specific task, and you get a blue reward for it -- for your choice of spec. Pretty neat.
Bookhouse88 asked:
Any news yet on all the new quests that are being added to Deadwind Pass in Cataclysm?
I'm not aware of any changes to Deadwind Pass so far. At this point I don't anticipate any, given the small nature of the zone and the lack of real story there unrelated to Karazhan.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider 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 2 of 8)
Durinthal Sep 24th 2010 5:29PM
cowfodder: Um.. what? That makes no sense whatsoever. Tacking on a column named "order" and adding the commands to change the values in it will hardly bring a server down.
bretzzzz Sep 24th 2010 5:30PM
@cowfodder
You don't need to change the order of a record in a table to change the order a record is displayed in. The could add a seperate field for display order and provide an up down arrow on the login screen.
Nirva Sep 24th 2010 5:33PM
Well there was that fateful day, I think in early TBC or late vanilla when character lists got slightly jumbled and never went back, as I recall the servers didn't crash.
Grovinofdarkhour Sep 24th 2010 5:33PM
Drag-and-Drop would be nice.
Kinson Sep 24th 2010 5:34PM
@cowfodder
It's easier than you might think. Now I am not a game programmer, but I am a programmer that has to work with databases and user front ends.
The game sends all of your characters to you and then the local software takes over the presentation of that data. You add some buttons to let users rearrange the character screen and when they hit login, or possible a separate save button, it sends that info back to the server and saves that in the character_order table. If a user makes no changes, then don't send a request to write it to the database, simple!
They could even put in an update to keep these changes locally using a simple text file, but I imagine they'd want to retain control on their end.
(cutaia) Sep 24th 2010 5:42PM
Cowfodder,
The game already remembers exactly which order I want the hundreds of items in my bags and bank. How could this possibly be any harder?
Artificial Sep 24th 2010 5:46PM
lol... this blog is full of programming geeks. XD
David Sep 24th 2010 6:04PM
Yah.. hope this is implemented.
Derrek Sep 24th 2010 6:25PM
For a while, it actually looked like this was going to make it into one of the more recent beta builds. During a small period of server confusion in which characters were temporarily unavailable, there were two buttons on the character selection screen, an up button and a down button.
They disappeared when characters became accessible again.
icepyro Sep 24th 2010 6:35PM
It wouldn't even require all that most here are saying...
given that each realm has its own folder in my WTF folder
given that each character has its own folder and settings in my WTF folder
How hard would it be to look for a file(s) with an order preference? The rest is just coding it to work. In fact it already scans all these folders and some of the files inside at the character screen as it is.
Noyou Sep 24th 2010 6:59PM
It is annoying that they can't be moved but I find it even MORE annoying that they keep changing order. Am I the only one this happens to? I mean I made them at different times and they hit 80 at different times. I just don't get it. Maybe I am slightly OCD too. I could see them being in the order that they were created but they are not even in THAT order :(
aoeex Sep 24th 2010 8:19PM
Dont know what you mean about them changing order, my characters have always been in the same order that they were created, never once changed.
I also would love to change the order though, right now my main is my first character, but my #2 and #3 80s (my main alts if you will) are in the (slot 5 and 7 I think).
While they could do the ordering locally with text files as they do numerous other things, I'm sure if they did this they would probably choose to do it by saving the changes remotely in the database, just as they have moved things like macro's and key bindings into their remote database. This way you can pull up wow on any machine and the game is more or less the same, minus addons/some interface options.
Redrum Sep 24th 2010 8:32PM
Theoretically this should be very easy to implement.
I program Visual Basic and work for clients who often have systems put in place that "work" but are terribly designed. With this in mind, I suspect it may not be as easy as it would seem. I've had to modify code that used copy and paste 10 times instead of a for loop. I've seen been dumped with a pile of GoTo spaghetti. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_code so, if this particular part of the game was not designed well, I can picture this being a bigger mess to fix than it should be.
JiBJUB Sep 24th 2010 5:10PM
First at being second. Bravo.
Kilcin Sep 24th 2010 5:11PM
This may be more of a question for Mathew Rossi then the Queue; how viable would it be to level 1-85 as protection spec in Cataclysm compared to the other specs? I did it 1-60 in vanilla then 60-70* after TBC came out and am wondering if I should do it again with a new race or should I try a different spec for leveling.
*He hasn't gotten past 70.
Kilcin Sep 24th 2010 5:13PM
*Matthew
Curse the lack of an edit button.
BitterCupOJoe Sep 24th 2010 5:19PM
If you look at his most recent post, he says that prot is currently the best leveling spec for warriors in beta.
Kilcin Sep 24th 2010 6:21PM
True, but if you take the comment in context of the paragraph, it seems to be about leveling 80-85, which would be vastly different then leveling before then.
Angus Sep 24th 2010 7:29PM
I'll field this one, and I don't even have a warrior above level 10.
With the way the system is going to look in Cataclysm, it should be VERY fast.
1: Prot can level quickly by simply finding a dungeon, getting all the quests for it, and leaving to do other quests. Queue up for the dungeon, you will have the shortest or second shortest wait time. Beat it down, move on. Having the ability to not have to wait around and spam /1 hoping for a group to do the instance is a godsend.
2: As you advance, things only get better. And you will have company. A LOT of people will be leveling new toons, Goblin, Worgen, NElf Mages, Shamadwarves, RetBulls, HolyCowPriests, Trollocks, Promes, Fortards and Humtards will all be around which means your warrior will have a lot of folks helping with those instances.
3: Prot has always been good at surviving the situations that cause the longest downtime. Biting off more than you can chew as a DPS means a GY run. As Prot it means you likely blew 2 CDs and now have to eat before the next pull. Darn.
4: With the new AE abilities warriors have, you will likely see gains in low level grinding or fetching quests. (grind = kill 20 gnolls, fetch = get 20 gnoll tongues) As a tankadin I loved the quests as I would destroy entire sections of a map and then move to the next for those mobs while waiting for the respawn in the first. Warriors look to be as good or better than I was at it in BC in Cataclysm.
I think prot will be very fast at getting to 85. very fast.
Hatchette Sep 24th 2010 5:11PM
I wish Karazhan would make a comeback in some way. e.g. the crypts