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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Portalclysm 2, the Portalening
by Mathew McCurley 
May 3rd 2011 at 11:00AM
There has been a lot of news about portals recently. First, I finished Portal 2. Second, Blizzard has added portals back to Dalaran and Shattrath to each faction's respective capital. Finally, I can set my hearth back home in Shattrath, the best capital hub city ever. Hate all you want, haters, but my Scryer buddies and I have a lot to catch up on.
Kar On E asked:
Now then, a question: given the changes to Children's Week, do you suspect to see any other holidays undergoing changes (outside of just adjusting level) for Cataclysm? If so, which ones and how? Show all work.
Hallow's End is likely to change dramatically, with potential new story elements involving the Forsaken and the Gilneans. Personally, I hope for some really excellent Greymane and Sylvanas lore, moving the Gilnean story forward, and finding out what is going on with the former humans of Lordaeron. Hallow's End is the best place for that type of content, because it sets the perfect mood.
On a side note, I loved the new lore moments in Children's Week this year. I'm glad that Blizzard is pushing the story forward with these events, and I'm still very skeptical about Sylvanas' answers to the orcish orphan. It would be very nice to get some more information on that side of the story, but we may have to wait for more leader short stories.
Ilmyrn asked:
Question: Why do the servers reset on Tuesday? It seems like Sunday or Monday would make more sense, being the beginning of the calendar and work week, respectively.
I believe maintenance happens on Tuesdays because it is when the least amount of activity is happening in game. People just aren't logging in on Tuesdays the way they would on, say, the weekend or after work. So maintenance is done when a majority of people are at work and on a day that historically is not very trafficked.
Andostre asked:
Dear The Queue,
I still have not done any 80+ Cataclysm content. The expansion came out shortly before my son was born (he's adorable, thanks for asking), and I've been having a blast with my limited playtime levelling in the revamped vanilla content. Now, I'm hearing about about how patch 4.2 is going to change Hyjal, but I also hear that Hyjal is heavy with the phasing mechanic.
So, I'm wondering if 4.2 change Hyjal to the point where current quests are lost, or if 4.2 will just add another layer of phased quests. My question is, should I dust off a level 80 to go do the quests in Hyjal before patch 4.2 permanently changes things?
I am fairly certain that you will not be able to do the new Hyjal stuff until you reach a certain part in the zone, namely securing the Regrowth area of the zone. They have to keep the zone the same for the level 80s traipsing through, so it will be more or less the same for you. The new daily content in the Molten Front and the Regrowth are for level 85 characters.
Kolonus asked:
I'm a veteran DPS player working on some healing and tanking alts in this new, much friendlier Cataclysm era of accessibility. Even though I'm very familiar with Tank Spot, Elitist Jerks, and other sources of guides and strategies, is it strange that the Dungeon Journal Boss Descriptions are giving me a great amount of peace of mind in my future tanking career?
Not at all. The aim of the dungeon journal is to make explaining the fights easier and not have the oft-reviled experience of "Did you watch the video?" or "Did you read the strat?" The whole point of the journal is to facilitate easier tanking, healing, and DPS in PuGs because of the sheer amount of information that key group members aren't necessarily responsible for sharing. Now, everyone has that information in front of them. Good tanks can still do some explanation, but linking abilities and showing people things will be vastly easier and exactly what the system is designed for.
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 4 of 11)
Neirin May 3rd 2011 12:09PM
For several races if you just follow the appropriate bread crumb quests you can stick with a particular race's story from one zone to another for a significant portion of the early 1-60 content. However, almost every single zone that got the Cata revamp has a self-contained story. For example: Loch Modan and Searing Gorge both have excellent Dwarf-centric stories, but the two have very little to do with each other.
I 'm not sure about horde, but for alliance:
NEs go from Teldrassil to Darkshore to Ashenvale, then Stonetalon, Desolace, and Feralas before popping back up to Felwood and (to a lesser extent) Winterspring. You can basically do 1-60 engrossed in only NE material without straying from Kalimdor.
Humans have Elwynn, Westfall, Redridge, and Duskwood straight out of the gate. You should also go check out Dustwallow Marsh and Southern Barrens, but you'd probably go through STV before hitting those. I'm not really sure where it fits into the leveling curve, but Swamp of Sorrows is also pretty interesting for humans. Arathi has human stuff too, but it's just not a very interesting zone.
Dwarves get Dun Morogh, Loch Modan, Wetlands, then bit of a break before Searing Gorge. There's also Hinterlands, but despite my like of the Wildhammers I didn't find that zone very interesting.
Gnomes: they get the shaft here in a major way. Their story basically stops once they leave their starting zone and enter Dun Morogh proper - not even a full zone to themselves. They do get Gnomergon, I suppose.
Worgen: As everyone has complained, Worgen get their starting zone, the Undead starting zone, and Duskwood. Hardly a cohesive storytelling experience.
Draenei: before OL, you really just have the Draenei starting area. They pop up in a few other places, but not in any major storyline. OL is super full of Draenei stuff, though.
Cambro May 3rd 2011 12:17PM
I took the MMO Champion level flow map and added tooltips when hovered over a zone to display the name of the zone. And notice the legend that MMO Champion included, it pretty clearly indicates flow by race, beginning with starting zones. :) (Goblins go from their starting area to Orgrimmar to Azshara, Worgen go from Gilneas to Darkshore.)
http://www.invictussanctum.net/cataclysm_zone_map_by_level.html
Beyond level 20 though, I don't know of any particular guide that walks through lore by race. Once you're 20, you're learning to be part of your faction and the races meld together. It would be interesting, though, to see a race-centric quest guide.
Luci May 3rd 2011 12:26PM
I looked at the level flow map and thought JOHN FUCKING MADDEN!
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e388/vertidog/catdps.jpg
LynMars May 3rd 2011 12:51PM
The new level flow is meant to have far less time-consuming--and many times pointless--travel all over the world than the original versions of those quests had. Like, to finish a quest chain in Un'Goro, one had to go to Feralas and Winterspring. A chain in Feralas sent you to the Hinterlands (as did another quest, not even a chain, in STV). Those are just a couple examples.
Originally, this was meant to get you to explore the entire world. Travel was a lot more time-consuming then, with fewer portals, no player flying, and no mounts until lvl 40 (and it cost 100 gold, with gold harder to get then; epic ground riding seemed an insurmountable cost to me at the time, and it was common to not have an epic mount).
Heck, they've even cut down travel across zones. Duskwood's chains had you bouncing between Raven Hill and Darkshire all the time--and there was no FP in Raven Hill, and you didn't have a mount yet. Now, the two places are separate questing hubs with quick access back and forth anyway.
Streamlining the level flow as they have has been very nice and makes questing go by much easier and faster. It is possible to level 1-60 on one continent and follow the storyline of a single race by taking the breadcrumb quests in each zone that point pretty directly to the next leveling zone. I ran my high level main through the revamped content to see it, get new RP stuff, etc. and noticed I skipped all the Dwarven zones (Wetlands included) and one or two others; had to go back and grab those.
Noyou May 3rd 2011 1:20PM
I would say follow your heroes call board. There is a small outpost in Wetlands for the Night Elves. Not sure of level. At some point in Eastern Kingdoms they send you to Theramore and southern Barrens for some human lore. The southern Barrens is particularly good to get what happened to camp Trujaro.
Joe May 3rd 2011 11:28AM
On the Alliance side, the human orphan asks you to visit 3 new locations (replacing the 3 that you previously took him to). They are:
- visit Malfurion Stormrage (who is back from the Emerald Dream, see novel "Stormrage") in Darnassus
- view Magni Bronzebeard (who has been turned into diamond, see novel "The Shattering") in Old Ironforge
- and take a tour of some of the effects that the shattering had on Westfall
Then there's some stuff with ice cream and kites in Stormwind.
Joe May 3rd 2011 11:30AM
/sigh
reply screw up, please downrank...
(and yes, wtb new commenting system)
Irin May 3rd 2011 11:30AM
I'm asking this again today since yesterday's responses were lacking...
The Alliance's symbol is obviously a lion but what is the Horde's symbol on its banner?
Boydboyd May 3rd 2011 11:47AM
Blood-raged awesomeness made into a symbol.
You're welcome. :)
Bapo May 3rd 2011 11:54AM
It's... the horde symbol...
Tirrimas May 3rd 2011 11:55AM
Badass.
Seriously, IIRC, it's an Orc "runic" symbol. What it symbolizes, I don't know.
VioletArrows May 3rd 2011 11:55AM
I'd say what it looks like to me, but I don't want to be the one responsible for saying what everyone else is thinking and thus owing anyone eye-bleach. :p
Anyway, it's a stylization of the Mag'har orc symbol, which looks like a spirit being (ancestor) with horns or a halo depending on where it's seen/drawn. I guess the Azerothian orc symbol is a spirit of battle?
Sunaseni May 3rd 2011 11:56AM
I always thought it was something of a tribal war symbol, the kind you'd smear onto your shield with your enemy's blood to show that you're not effing around. Probably over the years, it became more prominent and stylized, from a simple curve and dot to the more stylized version of today.
Cephas May 3rd 2011 12:06PM
It's just a cool-looking symbol. There's no explanation for why the Horde chose it to be their symbol or what if anything it's supposed to represent (other than the Horde). It doesn't look even remotely close to anything on Draenor or Azeroth or even Earth for that matter. If somebody tells you what they think it looks like you could probably use their response like a Rorschach test and psychoanalyze them.
Luci May 3rd 2011 12:20PM
I've actually heard before that it is representative of a shield.
Grovinofdarkhour May 3rd 2011 1:02PM
I always thought the arch with the dot in the middle symbolized the original passage of the orcs through the Dark Portal.
StClair May 3rd 2011 1:08PM
@Violetarrows:
Tempting/amusing as that comparison is, I think it's actually something else which betrays the Orcs' true origins in modern culture: the Lidless Eye of Sauron, blurred just enough for the sake of trademark and/or copyright.
(Warham, I mean, 'craft I was hardly the most *cough* original story.)
Noyou May 3rd 2011 1:26PM
What you didn't like the anchovy answer? No soup for you one year!
Amaxe May 3rd 2011 2:10PM
I assumed it was like a primitive rune or glyph.
I gather it was used in the old horde, but since before the orcs were united under Nerzhul the orcs didn't think of themselves as one but in terms of tribes, I'm thinking it did not exist until the Old Horde was formed.
If so, one could see the Alliance becoming as perturbed by it as if modern Germany began to adapt the symbols of the Third Reich.
chaosdefined May 3rd 2011 11:30AM
Why is it that when something like, say less than half of the player
base complains that dungeons are too hard etc, Blizz nerf them about a
week later. But when more than half of the player base complains about
a certain achievement (School Of Hard Knocks) being somewhat unfair
and not making sense, Blizzard completely ignore this, or on the odd
occasion just turn around and say "Well you don't have to do the
Achievement."?
I mean, every year I see pages and pages of complaints on the forums
about this Ach, and more so because people fail to get it due to the
limited time it's available, competing with 90% of the BG who are also
trying to get the Ach and unwilling to help and also the regular PvP
players who hate this holiday and will actually go out of their way to
stop the Ach Hunters from getting it. Thus leaving someone waiting an
entire year before they can try for it again?
I mean why is it Blizz are completely ignoring this issue?
(also, as a side note that I've discovered from ingame and the WoW
Forums, anyone who replies with "You don't have to do it" or "Learn to
play." etc are just as bad as those ingame who refuse to help or try
to stop you getting the Ach.)