The Queue: Portal 2 Mad Men
by Adam Holisky 
Apr 26th 2011 at 11:00AM
According to our Facebook poll, WoW is going to be down today. So why not play some Portal 2?
Video swiped from a post on The 'Stiq yesterday. Also, read their Portal 2 review if you don't have the game yet, you monster.
Anbilow asked:
How many more xpacs do you see in the future of WoW?
As long as Activision Blizzard will make money off WoW, there will be expansions. EverQuest is still getting them, and WoW is much larger than EQ. Someone shove this in my face in 9 years, but I suspect in 2020, we'll still see a WoW expansion in some stage of serious development/release.
Irin asked:
Has it been explained in lore why there are no Outland visitors hanging around Azeroth
There are a lot of space goats and bloody elves dancing around Azeroth. And while some of the other races introduced in TBC aren't present, I admit, everything can't be everywhere. I remember pointedly that there are some in Duskwood, for instance. Keep in mind, though, that Blizzard has admitted that the progression of lore is a little off right now. You jump from after Arthas' downfall, to before his downfall, to his downfall, and then back to after his downfall.
That's confusing for anyone.
Mbhahn asked:
How many wipes will it take to get through ZG and ZA?
I'm expecting the vast majority of PUGs to fall apart before clearing the instances. Guild groups should expect a lot of wiping before they figure things out.
In two months, though? No more than current content.
BlacksenZJ asked:
Adam, what kind of player are you? Hardcore raider? Casual PvP'r? Prot Warrior? Holy Priest?
Back in The Burning Crusade, I was raiding three to four days a week in progression guilds. At that time, I was the main tank and played a prot warrior. Since then, however, my time at WoW Insider and other gigs on the internet have eliminated most of my WoW playing time, so I raid rather casually right now. I know that some people are going to QQ about me running a WoW website and not being Mr. Hardcore anymore, but hopefully that's understandable given the amount of time and energy it takes to pull off WoW Insider every day.
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: News items, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 9)
Devin Apr 26th 2011 11:01AM
With the advent of heroics becoming a weekly reset as opposed to daily and that guild rep has a weekly cap; why do we still have a daily cap on guild XP and not a weekly cap? For my guild we raid 2 days a week and hit the cap on those days no problem, but since we're a smaller guild we only get about a third of the cap other days.
Grovinofdarkhour Apr 26th 2011 11:30AM
We've run into a similar problem. We're pretty evenly divided between raiding toons (including my own) who aren't even that enthused about their daily random heroic anymore, and lower leveling toons whose guild XP per quest is in the high single or low double digits. As a result, with regard to our daily cap, we might hit it on raid night, or on a weekend day when a lot of people log on for some portion of the day, but most weekdays we've been topping out around 25-45%. Compared with how we shout through the first 15 levels, it felt like we absolutely limped into level 20.
Grovinofdarkhour Apr 26th 2011 11:39AM
*shot through
Devin Apr 26th 2011 11:41AM
Actually that raises another question I had. Why do lowere level quests grant such abysmal guild xp? I understand it's a percentage of the actual quest xp but Blizz seems to be hell bent on us playing our alts but doing so does next to nothing for our guild... I don't like feeling "guilty" for playing my other toons.
Noyou Apr 26th 2011 11:55AM
Your guild XP starts picking up in the mid 60s early 70s. I would say even the paltry few guild XP's you can give your guild is appreciated. And 1 is definitely better than 0 in this case. Plus there is so much content out there now you could probably run 3-4 toons through and not get it all.
Saeadame Apr 26th 2011 11:56AM
I'm in a similar situation with my guild, fairly small and raiding two days a week, but we're half way to level 25 now so I'm pretty happy. I think we're there mostly because we would do a "push" sometimes to get a specific perk by spam running 5-people guild heroics for a day. By the way, that's probably the best way to get guild experience outside of raiding (and maybe rated BGs?). At later levels, though, it only gives you like 1% per run though, which is kind of disheartening. If you can organize some extra alt 10m raids (I don't know what your normal raid size is, mine is 25m), that will probably help you hit the cap a little more often.
Reventrant Apr 26th 2011 12:57PM
My guild got server first on Khadgar with only 1 "progression" raid team(10) and 2 two teams that would get 2-4 bosses tops. We would easily reach our caps just by doing dailies and five man heroics. Now once we hit 23 and the cap came off we went nutty with 5 man heroics. We didn't use a single rated battle ground to hit cap.
Chai Apr 26th 2011 2:26PM
Why does it seem like.. after so many years Blizzard hasn't gotten any better at reducing maintenance extensions? I realize maintenance is a necessary thing, and sometimes emergency maintenance arises.. but when was the last time we had a patch deployed, that didn't require the servers being down far later into the afternoon? Yes, I'd rather have a stable patch release to log in to.. but you know as well as I do that hardly ever happens.
Boz Apr 26th 2011 11:02AM
Inquiring Dwarf Rogues and Warlocks want to know: Is there any reason that we might be prevented from playing as a Dark Iron from a lore perspective? We're already able to make pseudo-Mag'har with the available Orc skins, I got to wondering with Moira Bronzebeard/Thaurissan sitting on the Council of Three Hammers if we might see Dark Iron Dwarf skins added to the available models for Dwarves.
Amaxe Apr 26th 2011 11:13AM
Yeah, there seems to be one skin tone which *might* pass for a light skinned Dark Iron.
Of course I also wish we had the options for Wildhammer tattoos.
My dwarf character I say is Wildhammer I say "She covers them up when in most places" but it would be nice if this was added.
Schadenfreude Apr 26th 2011 11:26AM
I'd like to see those "alternate" forms added as well-- mag'har for orcs, wildhammer for dwarves, maybe even taunka for tauren...
And tattoos for everyone.
fallemwarrior Apr 26th 2011 11:30AM
The way i see it is you should be able to choose internal factions
Pick to be Bronze, Dark iron, or Wildhammer
And not just wiht the dwarves
Orc could be Green/Brown skin, such as an orc born in nagrand
Tauren could be Grimtotem
But iwouldnt see this as anytime soon, If somthing like this was implemented i think they will need to add new starting zones for the classes.
The Dewd Apr 26th 2011 11:55AM
You would think that they'd at least let the Dwarven Shaman have the option of tattoos. Or even just randomly assign them for them. I realize the official line is probably "You showed signs of promise in Ironforge at an early age and traveled to Aerie Peak/were picked up by a traveling Wildhammer Shaman-finder to learn your craft. You have now returned home to do your part." But yes, it'd be nice for the multi-clan races to actually have that option.
I bet it's something they would like to do but don't have enough free design resources to make it happen - or is scheduled to be part of the original race overhauls.
Noyou Apr 26th 2011 11:58AM
@Amaxe
Great point. I never thought of it until now. My dwarf shaman would certainly like some wildhammer tatts. For all those who want to check out "old Ironforge" that should be opening after the patch ;) Can't wait to get to visit Uncle Magni.
loop_not_defined Apr 26th 2011 1:28PM
I'm hoping Blizzard is just giving time for the factions to mix in, lorewise, before opening them up for players. Or something.
Joe Apr 26th 2011 1:41PM
Actually, this is my guess for the next expansion. Rather than introducing new races, Blizzard will add sub-races for most (or hopefully all) the existing races.
For example:
Dwarves: Ironforge, Dark Iron, or Wildhammer
Orcs: green or brown skinned
Gnomes: flesh or mechagnome
Tauren: tauren or taunka
etc. (though, admittedly, there aren't good sub-race options for every race)
This would seem to be a great way for Blizzard to add options and flavor without adding too much work for themselves.
Specifically, Bliz would make sure that all the sub-races used the same wireframe/animations/etc that their "parent" race uses. So the differences would be be largely cosmetic from a technology point-of-view.
But, to give some custom gameplay, Bliz could tie this in to an overhaul of the racial abilities. Maybe have each main race have two racial abilities in common, but then have one different one for each sub-race.
Anyway, there's my prediction for WoW 5.0.
DeathPaladin Apr 26th 2011 2:30PM
@Amaxe
That tattoo comment sounds like something you'd hear in Goldshire RP.
"I thought you were a Wildhammer Dwarf."
"I am. I have a tattoo of a gryphon on my-"
"Nevermind!"
Brixus Apr 26th 2011 11:03AM
My question for the queue.
Last night my guild had it's 4th kill of Nefarian (my second). Both times I was there our main tank (paladin) was in charge of kiting the adds in phase 3, but he had major problems with movement. After wiping for hours we switched up tanks and got a DK tank on the adds. I play a DK and tanked LK in WotLK and I was always on add duty as well, so my question is why do DKs make better kite/add tanks? In that same line, shouldn't all tanks be able to reliably tank all scenarios?
FiredCylinder Apr 26th 2011 11:11AM
There's a bit more to being a kite tank than what class you are. It has a LOT to do with the person playing the tank, eg, skill, attitude, etc. Maybe your pally tank was just having a bad day?
Xenikos Apr 26th 2011 11:22AM
Why do DKs make good add tanks? Mobile DnD, lots of other utility abilities that help.
Paladins and Druids have the ability to deal with Nef adds just fine, but Warriors and DKs will shine at it due to mobility and other talents (Frost DKs in blood presence are better than Blood DKs, really). Specs all have different strengths. The fight does not *require* either type of tank to complete, however.