The Queue: The prodigal editor
by Alex Ziebart 
Sep 29th 2010 at 11:00AM
I did it. I finally did it. I managed to wrest control of The Queue back from McCurley. It was horrible. Horrible. The things he did to it ... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, everybody. It won't happen again, I swear. (Until I find myself incredibly busy with other WoW Insider projects again, that is.)
Siaperas asked:
With Zul'Gurub going the way of the dodo, is it still possible to rep up with Zandalar?
Nope! As a few commenters pointed out, Hero of the Zandalar Tribe is becoming a Feat of Strength. You will not be able to get exalted with the Zandalar anymore. If you're interested in the Zul'Gurub reputations, achievements or mounts, I highly suggest you get in there and start grinding away. It won't be around much longer.
jasonablackburn asked:
Is there anywhere I can purchase all of the WoW soundtracks without trying to find collector's editions?
For the most part you're going to be looking at iTunes, as Debesun pointed out. The soundtracks for vanilla WoW, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King are on iTunes. You can get the original WoW soundtrack in a physical form from the Blizzard store, but the other two were exclusive to their collector's editions in physical form; only iTunes for those two.
Nastybutler asked:
Where does WoW Insider get all of its screenshots? You seem to have a lot that are hard to get and organize.
We get our screenshots from all over the place. A lot of them are taken by us by hand. Our writers are borderline obsessive with screenshots, both because of the hobby and because it's part of the job here. On a weekday, we post 10+ articles each day. We go through a lot of screenshots.
We also get a lot of very strange screenshots from readers, which you will see in Around Azeroth all of the time. We also borrow from Wowhead (which we always try to credit/link where applicable) when we're showing off a specific item or piece of gear.
Deathfern asked:
How do I cook a turkey?
With fire.
semmerman asked:
Why do a lot of quest items have arbitrary cooldowns? Why do I have to wait 10 seconds between using my hammer to free baby mammoths in Borean Tundra when they're so close together that I could do three in the length of the cooldown?
I imagine many of these cooldowns are mechanics put in place to prevent quest griefing and to help alleviate some stress if there are many people doing the same quest at one time. If you just ran around spamming that hammer without a cooldown, it might prevent other players in the area from finishing their quests. That 10-second cooldown forces all of you to take turns somewhat.
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: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 11)
Finnegan Sep 29th 2010 11:07AM
Is there any word on what's happening with the paladin and warlock epic mount quests? Are they staying as they are, getting redesigned as level 40 quests for Cataclysm, or just chopped entirely? I'd love to grab a flamey-spikey-horse-of-doom for my goblin warlock the old fashioned way, and I'm curious if the little guy will have that chance.
RogueJedi86 Sep 29th 2010 11:31AM
Most of those dungeons have been scaled down to level 40-ish, so here's hoping Blizz simply lowers the quest levels and that's all. No sense messing with such awesome quests beyond that. They're long, but worth it, and show the very essence of what it is to be Warlock/Paladin.
Brian Sep 29th 2010 11:56AM
The Charger quest for paladins is gone so I am going to assume that the spikey horse of doom quest is also gone. I had to double check this, but until this new build my premade Paladin didn't have the Charger spell on the trainer. I was freaking out that it had been removed, and then i went to verify for this post, lol.
Elmo Sep 29th 2010 12:57PM
On a slightly related note, what happens to Draenei Paladins with the Charger quest complete?
do they just get the Elekk instead of the Horse or do they get both, or prehaps only keep the charger?
Mattimus Sep 29th 2010 2:08PM
@Elmo
No offense to my Cloven-hoofed brethren of the Light, but I actually hope you guys lose your horse. You're getting a spankin' new Holy Elekk, and if you want a horse, there are plenty of other horses (Argent Charger comes to mind).
I assume you guys would still keep the Feat of Strength for doing the quest, though.
aunion Sep 29th 2010 3:09PM
And can you still get the blood knight tabard you get for doing the level 60 charger quests with blood elves? Would also be nice if there was a silver hand tabard or sth for ally pallys (yes, I'm horde to the core, but someone needs to take pity on those pore allys ;))
Rando Sep 29th 2010 3:49PM
@ Finnegan
I can't be sure if the quests r still there, especially with paladins, but I know that my warlock was able to buy the dreadsteed from the trainer at 40
Puddlefoot Sep 29th 2010 6:50PM
@ rando
(cue Roger the alien voice) I'm pretty sure he meant in Cataclysm.
Gorthol Sep 29th 2010 8:37PM
Do you know when we will lose the ability to get the Kingslayer title? is it on 4.0 or when cataclysm drops?
VegetaPrime Sep 29th 2010 11:11AM
What is the purpose behind making some weapons Main Hand or off hand only? For instance, the Heirloom one handed sword is main hand only as are various other weapons. I get the idea behind shields and spell book type off hands, but weapons that you can easily equip in your off hand realistically?
Tom Sep 29th 2010 11:29AM
My priest can use a Main hand weapon and an offhand weapon. Can you imagine the repurcussions if all weapons could be held in either hand? You'd have healers running around dual wielding Val'anyr, or mages with a couple of spell power daggers. Spell weapons being main hand or offhand only is very important.
So far as physical dps weapons - standard swords and daggers etc. There is probably less reason for it, although it does still have some impact as usually offhand weapons are faster - which has ramifications for rogues, warriors and shamans where weapon speed can be important.
Neyssa Sep 29th 2010 11:29AM
I guess it has a right-handed grip, and since everyone's main hand in WoW is right, it would not be convenient the other way around.
Heather Sep 29th 2010 11:31AM
In the case of Spellpower weapons, all Spellpower weapons are main-hand only because of a hybrid spec early in Wrath of the Lich King where Elemental and Resto Shamans were dual wielding Spellpower weapons because the total stat boost exceeded anything you could get with a main hand weapon + Spellpower shield.
Matt Sep 29th 2010 11:43AM
Tom, you would not have any of those things, as characters need to train the DW skill to put weapons in the offhand. Now, caster offhands can be placed in the offhand, but they are not weapons, as they do not auto attack. You need no training to equip those, and they mostly exist to balance out stats gained from a staff.
As Neyssa suggested, mainhand/offhand only weapons could be a model issue (like almost all fist weapons). If the OP is referring to the Venerable Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge, that's probably mainhand only because it is based off of Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge, which was a mainhand weapon in vanilla because it was part of a set with a similar-looking, offhand sword.
Firestyle Sep 29th 2010 11:45AM
There is also the art design component. Some weapons were made with certain artwork that doesn't look appropriate when held in the other hand. This is the case with the Crimson Steel MH fist from Sartharion. I think these cases are limited though. Most of the MH requirements stem from the dual wield chain heal shaman spec as stated by other posters.
Matt Sep 29th 2010 11:48AM
Heather raises an interesting point, but I am pretty sure there were mainhand-only spellpower weapons back in vanilla. A weapon like this may have been why: http://www.wowhead.com/item=19903 That would have been a tempting Rogue offhand, for example, despite the lack of stats and fact that there were more suitable weapons.
However, I do seem to recall something about an Enhance subspec to DW spellpower weapons, so maybe I'm getting that bit mixed up ... Does anybody remember if vanilla had MH caster weapons?
Boobah Sep 29th 2010 12:03PM
"In the case of Spellpower weapons, all Spellpower weapons are main-hand only because of a hybrid spec early in Wrath of the Lich King"
That'd be 'in Burning Crusade,' not Wrath. All the caster one-handers became main-hand only because enhancement shaman were better ranged DPS and heals than elemental or resto thanks to the insane spellpower stacking from two weapons.
Fist weapons are restricted because of issues with how the models work.
Some off-hands are limited because of how the costs and availability of gear through the badge/emblem/points system works; off-hands are usually way, way cheaper than main or one hand weapons, and usually set so a main + off is about the same cost a two-hander.
Some are limited to specific hands (Dal'Rend's Charge is one of these) because they're a set; the heirloom merely inherited this property.
Finally, some seem to be limited because of reasons lost to the depths of time, which is to say that some of vanilla's itemization was just screwy.
Jeffrey Sep 29th 2010 12:09PM
The biggest reason I've seen for having weapon's designated as mh/oh/1h is to indicate to players what the weapon is intended for. Tanking and caster 1h weapons are always mh only, since that's the only place block tanks and casters can use them, and it prevents dual wielders from exploiting the stats. Fast dps weapons are often identified as oh, though not always, and slow dps weapons are almost always identified as 1h, for the sake of dw specs that use slow/slow.
jonas Sep 29th 2010 12:17PM
Actually, in Vanilla (and early BC too, I think) there were a LOT of mainhand or offhand only weapons of all types. Some time in BC they changed almost all physical weapons to one-handed (except some fist weapons, some set weapons, I think the BS BoP epics, etc). At that time, dual-wielding spell damage weapons started cropping up among shaman, so they made all spellpower weapons mainhand only.
Zaros Sep 29th 2010 6:34PM
Tom IS right. The change was mainly because of resto shamans. They could spec into Duel Wield Enhancement and wear 2 spellpower daggers.