Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Clearance
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 10th 2011 at 11:00AM
I'm going to use the intro of The Queue to clear something up from Saturday's WRUP. I said that "Oblivion is Fallout in Fantasyland." I do know that Oblivion was released first, despite what some of you thought! I was saying that I played Fallout first but enjoyed Oblivion much more, despite their being basically the same game in two different settings. You dig?
Stormblade asked:
Does WoW Insider take applications? Can you email in example articles or ideas?
When we're looking to fill a specific position, we'll do a call-out on our front page and welcome interested individuals to apply. In general, we don't take applications outside of those periods, but it's not unheard of for us to hire people who mail us specific proposals or ideas. It doesn't happen very often, but it has happened.
As someone pointed out in the comments, the page you want to get the details of our hiring process is our Contributing to WoW Insider page. If you plan on applying for any of our future openings, pay attention to "How to apply" section. Not including the requested information can (and most likely will) get your application completely thrown out.
Mojo asked:
What was that chat company that had a giveaway this year? I want to use it for my raiding guild.
You are most likely thinking of MMO-Mumble. Good choice! Mumble is good stuff, and MMO-Mumble is good people.
Bernie Roscoe asked:
Why did they make Ahn'Qiraj its own zone? Is anything going on there?
All of the outdoor dungeons/raids in the world are now reflected as such in the overworld. Lost City of the Tol'vir works this way as well, even though you still have to go through the instance portal to actually fight the bosses. That's the only reason Ahn'Qiraj is its own zone. There's nothing you can actually do in there if you fly over the Scarab Wall. Consistency and nothing more.
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
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 12)
Suzaku Jan 10th 2011 2:46PM
Lilian is nowhere in sight because none of the combatants are wearing Tabards of the Scarlet Crusade.
Brann Bronzebeard is off looking for Titan artifacts and could care less.
Darius is high-fiving 16-year-old Alliance players for their efforts to imitate a nearly decade old meme so that they can have their own Saurfang to brag about.
Saurfang is literally Saurfang, and cleaves the imitator, then returns to Warsong Hold where he broods and watches spiders spin webs.
Daeolt Jan 10th 2011 6:41PM
Sacco's hair.
Josin Jan 11th 2011 12:15AM
@Daeolt: Get off my schtick! ;)
ZeroDesu Jan 11th 2011 7:32AM
For the sake of throwing in a bit of Zen, Matthias Shaw cannot be on that list. For Matthias Shaw is a rogue. And, as all rogues know, rogues aren't badass. They just "are". For, if we allowed rogues to use the word "badass" in reference to themselves, there wouldn't be enough "badass" to make it's way around to the ranks of non-rogues. It would be akin to bringing a knife to a gun fight, with all the rogues having high-powered semi-automatic rifles, and Saurfang bringing a butter knife. A plastic one, at that.
Levi Jan 10th 2011 11:15AM
why have the Queue's been so short lately? There actually seems to be fewer posts in general, going back to the domain change.....conspiracy, do I smell, hmm?
Alex Ziebart Jan 10th 2011 11:26AM
You're crazy. We post 12 posts about World of Warcraft every single weekday, every hour from 8 AM to at least 8 PM Eastern, sometimes even later. We do every other hour on weekends and holidays.
That's at least 72 blog posts per week, many of them feature columns of over 1,000 words, and none of that includes the breaking news posts from Blizzard posting something interesting in a blue post, putting up the PTR, or whatever else may happen.
What more do you want?
Ringo Flinthammer Jan 10th 2011 11:20AM
Not a lot to discuss until 4.1 is announced, hmmm?
Gossamer Jan 10th 2011 11:22AM
A moose. We want a moose. And a pony. No, two ponies. With cake. Mmmm, cake.
Josin Jan 10th 2011 11:23AM
Not all questions require, or deserve, lengthy answers. I have noticed a bit of brevity of late in the answers, but I don't think that any of them neglected to answer the question adequately.
Grovinofdarkhour Jan 10th 2011 11:40AM
Hey Levi. Pro tip. Don't piss off the Z-man.
Stephanie Jan 10th 2011 12:23PM
@levi
It's ok sometimes I feel that way too. But then I remember the days when the Queue wasn't every day and I remind myself it could be like again anytime they wanted. So I take the small queues with the big ones and hope by the Light the next one will be written by Fox Van Allen.
To ease your suffering: Get onto Wow Insider (WoW.com - whatever you call it so the world doesn't fall down because they've changed their name/domain, again). Browse all the article headlines. Open any that interest you in a new tab. Keep going until you come across an article you are sure you've seen. Ta da! No missed Queues for you!
Kia Jan 10th 2011 12:25PM
Gasp, what's this, another critic being voted into oblivion by the apologist hordes! I am so very surprised! God, this site's community is worse than fucking Jezebel.
Levi Jan 10th 2011 12:35PM
and exactly what i thought - wow insider forums are getting to be like the wow forums. thank you to those who actually promote free thought, but any dissenting opinions are getting blasted out of the works. to the wow insider staff, thank you for the excellent writing you do produce, but it does seem like the length of posts have gone down. post X times per day, but if those posts are half the length they used to be, it's still half the content.
Alex Ziebart Jan 10th 2011 12:38PM
Kia, I'm personally more than happy to receive legitimate criticism, but suggesting we've been posting less since the domain change is either a misconception that I can easily clear up by providing numbers, or a desperate attempt to stir up controversy and conspiracy. We don't post less now than we did before. In fact, our staff is larger than it has ever been and with the exception of the holidays, we post more than we ever have under any of our various domains.
It's not criticism at all. It's just wrong.
Levi Jan 10th 2011 12:48PM
Alex - since you have numbers to back you up, i'll say that you are correct sir - your staff has been posting just as much as they were before, if not more. however, my original question - "why have the Queue's been so short lately?", is a valid question, and is NOT an attempt to stir up controversy.
Gossamer Jan 10th 2011 12:58PM
It's also a question they answered in a recent Queue. If a question can be answered briefly, do you really want them to artificially, synthetically, unnaturally boost, add, expand upon the number, count, total of the words, discourse, communications of the answer, acknowledgment, comment of the questions, queries, point just to satisfy, appease, assuage some arbitrary, irrational, unreasonable idea, thought, belief you have that the answers should be of a certain length.
Alex Ziebart Jan 10th 2011 1:02PM
The length of The Queue is generally determined by the number and quality of the questions asked. If there's a question we can't answer because only Blizzard knows the answer to it or some other reason, we skip it. If there's a question we've already answered previously, we (usually) skip it. If there's a question that we know internally we're already working on a much larger feature that will address it, we either skip it or say, "We're working on it."
Once we've gotten through that, if there isn't much left to work with... well, whatcha gonna do. Sometimes I'll poll Twitter for extra questions, sometimes we'll just leave it short and sweet and hope the next day is better.
Monday's Queue is usually especially difficult to write because its the recovery day from the weekend. The Queue gets far fewer questions on Saturday/Sunday than it does on say, Tuesday or Wednesday.
Grovinofdarkhour Jan 10th 2011 1:20PM
My contract requires me to utter something non-idiotic at least once each month, so let's take some shots in the dark and maybe get January out of the way.
1. These are regular people who enjoy this game just like you and me. They certainly have access here and there to some information we might not, but they aren't necessarily the Keepers of All Secrets, doling them out from on high a wee nibble at a time. Just because one of us can think up a question doesn't mean one of them MUST have the answer.
2. Sacco answered 5 questions each of the last two days. There's no slack in that Sack.
3. As the Z-man sayeth above, less said on Sunday means fewer replies on Monday.
4. A page back, in the midst of a "who's the best" question that included a couple of warriors among the contenders, Rossi was seen talking up a ROGUE. I'm not kidding. Go back and look for yourself. How's this relevant to the question? It's totally not.
5. No matter what you think, deep down, Kia's probably a really nice person. And she just wrote a post that doesn't include the word "fanboy", so I think I owe somebody 5 bucks.
Hollow Leviathan Jan 10th 2011 1:25PM
When ever was posting numbers, not opinions, but facts, to disprove an allegation stifling 'free thought'? No one is even being uncivil or rude to you, outside of purely aesthetic downvoting. Just because your post was downrated doesn't mean it was deleted or ignored. Far from it, you have more than one nutbar agreeing with you...about your opinion about facts being more important to you than the facts themselves.
You being wrong is not the same as your opinion being repressed.
loop_not_defined Jan 10th 2011 1:27PM
Levi, is it considered "promoting free thought" when you blast people for expressing their opinion? Both you and Kia came across as tools (seriously...conspiracies? apologists?).