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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Dala-ran out of portals
by Mathew McCurley 
Sep 27th 2010 at 12:30PM
The portals are gone! Run for your lives! Actually, I don't really care -- that's what mages are for, right? To boss around and hound for hours until they take me to the Undercity? What's that? You want a tip? Oh, come now, it's just pressing one button, and I'm thrifty and mean. Start casting, slave! Hey, it's Queue time!
Pyromelter asked:
What's going to happen with soul shard bags, like the Abyssal Bag? It's 32 slots so I can't image they'd just convert it into a normal bag, but I haven't heard what will happen to them.
So far, soul shard bags are turning into regular bags of lower slot count. You obviously won't be getting a 32-slot bag out of the conversion, but hey, you're totally getting more bag slots! Like, real bag slots! That can hold items! Isn't that awesome?
Quill2006 asked:
Sooo ... regular or collector's edition? Which one, and why? I'm torn.
I've been buying the WoW Collector's editions since the beginning, so if I ever stopped, they would look weird on the shelf. Blizzard has me, for totally cosmetic reasons. The collector's edition has got:
- art book, 176 pages
- Lil' Deathwing in-game pet
- Cataclysm soundtrack
- Deathwing mousepad
- WoW TCG cards
omedon666 asked:
Upon looking at the worgen female screenshots, I noticed some circular icons next to the customization options, focusing on her two faces. Is this a toggle between the two forms? Can we actually customize our worgen's two forms separately now?
Currently in beta, the choices you make for one form affect the other form -- kind of like how tauren/night elf skin color affects the color that your bear or cat comes out as. This could change, but we don't currently have that information.
JiBJUB asked:
What's with just the one "t", Mat? Please 'splain. No -- not enough time. Please sum up.
My mother liked one "t" instead of two, for purely cosmetic reasons.
Devo_AS asked:
Will those silly people that don't purchase the expansion get full access to the new (and improved?) post-Cataclysm 1-60 Azeroth?
If you do not purchase the expansion, you get access to all the new content in old-new world Azeroth. You will not, however, be able to create worgen or goblin characters, potentially may not be able to fly in Azeroth and will not have access to the new 80+ content.
Michael asked:
Hey Mat! Long time reader, first time questioner! I have officially begun Kyle Watch! With the coming of the new Azeroth, I was curious if we've gotten any word from the blues if the various make-a-wishes and memorials would remain after the sundering. It would be a shame if the game, with such a rich history of recognizing the memories of the players and creators, were to lose these small touches. Having them in there is one of the major factors of my continual play. It made Blizzard awesome.
I don't think even Deathwing is evil enough to hit these memorials and monuments.
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!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 6 of 13)
Sithril Sep 27th 2010 1:26PM
MikeLive, I have to correct you:
Blood/High elves aren't addicted to fel magic, they are/were addicted to the power of the Sunwell (which back then was primal/arcane, now is joint Holy Light/arcane). And yes you are right that High elves differ from their Blood breathren only by politics - but it's the Alliance that booted them, not that they left willingly. :/
MikeLive Sep 27th 2010 1:35PM
My bad, it's been a while since I refreshed myself. I just knew the separation was a political one.
Though I can't figure out why they were booted by the Alliance. After all, some were allowed to stay. I know a group, lead by Kael'thas, was rejected by a particularly racist Alliance commander (Garithos) and they allied themselves with Lady Vashj and the Naga, eventually fleeing to Outland after the Alliance sentenced them to death. Why Silvermoon and the majority of the population left the Alliance as well I can't seem to figure out.
Kylenne Sep 27th 2010 2:07PM
@MikeLive: I think you keep getting stuck on booted out vs. walking away, and admittedly it's a blurry issue that I think cuts to the heart of the High/Blood Elf schism. For one thing, numbers play a big role in it. Pretty much all of the small handful of High Elves you see walking around nowadays were the minority of people who were living outside the borders of Quel'thalas when Arthas attacked, in places like Dalaran. The vast majority of High Elves were living in Quel'thalas at the time, and thus got slaughtered (I forget the numbers exactly, and it depends on how canon you want to take the tabletop books, but IIRC it was something like upwards of 90%). The High Elves who are still in the Alliance didn't see any of that up close and personal, they just started feeling the illness and the withdrawal. It could be argued that being far from the immediate situation, they didn't understand the desperation that drove their brethren to fel magic, and thus it was very easy for them to sit back and judge from the lofty towers of Dalaran.
From the Sin'dorei perspective, it's a no brainer, though: they were minding their business, when suddenly one of their ostensible allies (Prince Arthas of Lordaeron) showed up on their doorstep with a massive zombie horde at his back, razed everything, took a giant lich dump in the sacred thing that sustained them and powered their whole civilization (making everyone ridiculously ill in the process), and no one showed up to help. To his credit, Kael still reported for duty with the small handful of survivors who were well enough to be in fighting shape--and then Garithos treated them like shit, and sentenced them to death for treason because the only way they could survive his ever-moving goalposts was getting help from naga. One could make a good argument that hearing this, the Sin'dorei said screw this, and left the Alliance--it's not like they were getting helped, anyway. Naturally, the Quel'dorei see this from an entirely different perspective (they shunned the Sin'dorei for sating their withdrawal using fel magic), and thus you have the political schism. As usual for these kinds of things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but this conflict isn't going away any time soon. Rommath turning heel is probably just going to rub salt in the wound, from the Quel'dorei standpoint, especially given that he's the one responsible for all those fel crystals hanging around Silvermoon.
Al Sep 27th 2010 3:34PM
Conviently ignoring how the Elves ragequit the Alliance after the Second War. Or how they sat back and let Lordaeron fall to the Scourge.
Boobah Sep 27th 2010 6:15PM
There are two lines separating the Blood Elves and the high elves. First, and probably more importantly, is the political line. The Blood Elves stayed loyal to their king, while the high elves stayed loyal to the Alliance. Secondly, there's also the whole (later) thing where the blood elves chose to replace the energies of the Sunwell and feed their addiction to its arcane energy by stealing fel energies from demons. The most obvious effect is that, as can be seen in-game, high elf eyes still glow with the arcane energies we saw in Warcraft 3 (and possibly earlier, though I've not spent much time with the earlier games.) while blood elf eyes have the green glow associated with demonic energies.
Artificial Sep 27th 2010 6:45PM
Lore confusion head explosions usually result from people who can't seem to separate lore from game mechanics. There are lore reasons why certain things are more common or uncommon among various races. Because of this, the game mechanics prevent *players* from choosing certain options. There is and never has been any lore barrier for individuals of any race from choosing any class. Since characters in lore are not players dealing with a video game's character creation screen, they do not have the limitations players do. They may face other difficulties due to their choice, but there is no lore barrier that utterly prevents anyone from any race becoming any class.
Hasselhoff Sep 27th 2010 1:04PM
Was the twilight drakonaar in Arcatraz a foreshadowing of the twilight dragonflight? I never ran Arcatraz in BC and noticed that this mob was in-game before any mention of a twilight dragonflight. Its abilities are similar to those of the chromatic dragons that existed in Vanilla WoW, so that implies that it's related to the experiments the black dragonflight was performing (which ultimately culminated in the twilight dragonflight)...but it was being kept in the Arcatraz seemingly before any twilight dragons existed. Has this ever been addressed? If any of my information is indicative of a misunderstanding, I'd appreciate any clarifications.
ruggerjj Sep 27th 2010 1:06PM
I think a problem may come up with getting ports. When I am in queue to get into a dungeon in my BG... it could take up to an hour sometimes to get into a dungeon as DPS. I doubt I would drop out of a group to port someone...to get back at the end of the dungeon finder queue and start all over again.
Moghar Sep 27th 2010 1:08PM
what memorials?
Debesun Sep 27th 2010 1:23PM
@Moghar
Blizzard created places around Azeroth to remember those that have passed away. For an example of but a few of them;
Dedicated to Michel Koite-
http://www.wowwiki.com/Shrine_of_the_Fallen_Warrior
Dedicated to Anthony Ray Stark-
http://www.wowwiki.com/In_Loving_Memory
Dedicated to Jesse Morales-
http://www.wowwiki.com/Decorated_Headstone
Kylenne Sep 27th 2010 1:23PM
On live, there's a number of little in-game shoutouts and tributes to people in the WoW community who've passed away IRL, both players and devs. In Hillsbrad Foothills, there's a monument to a friend of some devs that died. And there's a number of quests that are memorials to people (the Crusader Bridenbrad chain in Icecrown being the most recent example of that). Ezra's probably the most famous example, though.
You might not know about Ezra if you play Alliance, but he was a very sick kid who played a Tauren hunter named Ephoenix, and Blizzard granted his wish through the Make-a-Wish Foundation a few years ago to create a quest and put it in the game. In the Tauren lowbie village in Mulgore, there's a young Tauren NPC named Ahab Wheathoof who gives you a quest to find his missing dog, Kyle (the name of Ezra's real dog). He also got the world first Al'ar mount and named a pvp crossbow in the game (the phoenix was sort of Ezra's personal totem).
Sadly, Ezra died a couple of years back. But he got another tribute in the game when he did. During the Lunar Festival, a new Elder was put in Thunder Bluff, named Ezra Wheathoof, with a phoenix pet.
Drakkenfyre Sep 27th 2010 5:47PM
Kylenne, I am fairly certain if you read anything about the game, you knew who Ezra was. His story was widely placed on these websites. Your faction does not matter to know him. The quest, however, might.
His middle name was also Phoenix.
DeathFern Sep 27th 2010 1:12PM
How do I cook a turkey?
Cromlech Sep 27th 2010 1:21PM
Summon it near a Basic Campfire. They sense their own destiny, apparently.
semmerman Sep 27th 2010 1:20PM
Question:
Why do alot of the quest items have arbitrary cooldowns? Like, why do I have to wait 10 seconds between using my hammer to free baby mammoths in Borean, when they are so close together that I could do 3 in the same amount of time?
Kylenne Sep 27th 2010 1:28PM
My best guess is that it's one of those relics from Wrath's launch that were put in to help congested quest areas. The cooldown might be a pain now, but in the first few weeks of Wrath when everyone and their cousin converged on those zones at the same time (especially Borean Tundra, which was the starting zone of choice on my old server), the fact that you couldn't spam the item meant more people had a chance to get the quest done at the same time. And then they never took the CD away.
Klausse Sep 27th 2010 1:20PM
With questing in Azeroth changing so radically in Cataclysm, will characters that exist before the expansion be able to do all of the new lower-level quests, or will this be restricted due to phasing/Blizzard design choice/etc.?
E.g., can a level 85 go back to do all the revamped 1-60 content for fun, reputation, XP-to-gold conversion from doing quests at max level...?
MikeLive Sep 27th 2010 1:26PM
You sure can! The only exceptions are Goblin and Worgen starting areas (Kezan/Lost Isles and Gilneas City/Gilneas, respectively). Gnomish and Troll starting areas might also be on that list, but I'm not sure.
Boobah Sep 27th 2010 6:40PM
That's a maybe on the origins that aren't locked in the past (i.e., phased). When WoW launched, only Undead could do the quests in Deathknell, though that was opened up in BC. And even now, only Blood Elves can take the quests on Sunstrider Isle.
I think I'd be happier if the 1-5 areas were racially locked; the quests/stories there are intended as an introduction to that race, and it's always kind of awkward doing them as another race.
Drakkenfyre Sep 27th 2010 6:51PM
Some Draenei starting quests are also unable to be done by anyone else.
There is a Night Elf who you help to wake out, and she freaks out a little at you. That's has to be race-specific.
The last quest of the area is also specific. If you see someone wearing a Tabard of the Hand, they have to be Draenei or race-changed.