The Queue: Hey it's Thursday, and that's awesome
by Adam Holisky 
May 5th 2011 at 11:00AM
This is how most nerd conversations in Fargo go about Star Wars. Except usually there's a wood chipper somewhere in there.
Belated May the 4th be with you, etc. ... etc. ...
Ihrme asked:
How does Blizzard explain the death of bosses lore wise? Who was it for example battled the Lich King when Tirion was playing the worlds biggest ice cube, just a random bunch of crusaders?
You are the hero who saves Azeroth; you are the final and mighty blow to the terrors of the goodly races. It's you, good sir, you!
And sometimes Maiev.
Amanda asked:
Is engineering worth it on a newish alt?
Yes. If you've got an established main who can funnel mats and tons of gold to your alt, then I think engineering is a great profession for an alt. I'm going to get a lot of hate for this, but I don't think it's the ideal profession for very many mains. There's not enough actualized utility for endgame play when compared to the other professions. It's better than it used to be, but it's just not as good yet, in my opinion.
Anjeney asked:
Will Bizzard ever make the fishing hat, the journal and the poles BoA?
I doubt they will. The BoA items right now have focused on leveling, and while those items are useful in leveling fishing in their own way, they don't really increase the speed at which your fishing is leveled. I think we're more likely to see a trinket or something that increases the rate at which profession skill up points are earned than the BoAing of these items.
AlphaBeta asked:
Are we able to receive the other Children's Week pet from Northrend this year?
Yes.
Tonho asked:
How possible would it be for Blizzard to allow the use of apostrophes in character names? I always figured it was some big coding issue, but I've always wanted a troll character to have a name like Rak'ijin or something that looks like a real lore characters' name.
It's a possibility for sure, but that magical apostrophe carries so much weight coding that in a huge closed system like WoW, it'd be pretty dangerous to allow user-input apostrophes for something as critical and as heavily used as a character name. Think of what that one line of a carefully crafted, SQL-injecting name could do at the character select. One mistake and the entire system could come down, PSN-style.
So instead, Blizzard restricts the user names to a relatively small subset of characters, and everything has been fine for the past six years. It's not really broken, so I doubt it will be changed.
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 1 of 12)
Raginghobo May 5th 2011 11:04AM
With the recent change to fire mage dots not proccing ignite, Has haste become more valuable then crit?
laim May 5th 2011 11:08AM
I think it's actually become the opposite... People were stacking haste before the fix, because they were getting too many crits from their DoT's... Now that it only comes from direct spells, I think crit will once again become fires most valuable secondary stat...
Prelimar May 5th 2011 11:53AM
actually, yes - Zythian over at MMOscholar has your answer: http://wow.mmoscholar.com/2011/05/05/4-1-fire-mage-guide/
Pyromelter May 5th 2011 2:56PM
Haste is and always will be good. The thing for fire mages is you want to hit certain benchmarks for haste that will get you extra ticks on your dots. I think it's something like 12% and then 35% haste or somewhere in there that will get you an extra dot tick. I'm sure the EJ people have that stuff figured out, I'd go look there.
Raginghobo May 5th 2011 8:11PM
Thanks for the replys, time to visit the reforger.
Twill May 5th 2011 9:35PM
Q for the Q:
What happened to the White War Talbuk? The hooves and horns are no longer that fun bright gem color.
Nina Katarina May 5th 2011 11:05AM
Urgh, I hate special character names. So many times I've tried to whisper to someone only to find out that they've got a speshul N or E somewhere in there.
Gennifurfur May 5th 2011 11:13AM
I once made the mistake of having my bank alt's first letter be a funky d with about four more funky letters in there. All so I could have the name Dodongo. (Guild name is dislikes smoke, fun times.) It was a huge hassle to send stuff to him that I eventually deleted the character.
Puntable May 5th 2011 11:47AM
Agreed. If you really MUST use special characters, do not use them in the first few letters of the name. Your guildies will hate you, and your guild leader will probaly Gkick you.
Sunaseni May 5th 2011 11:48AM
This a thousand times.
Protip: Make the first three letters in your name normal if you MUST insist on having special characters, then I can at least /who him if I really wanted to get you in my group. (Protip: I don't. Don't use special characters.)
radda May 5th 2011 12:00PM
That's not really a problem anymore since you can whisper to somebody by clicking their name in chat and some addons autofill the names of your alts into the mail window.
Puntable May 5th 2011 12:11PM
That assumes that he sent you a whisper first. What if your name also starts with a special character? Who sends the first whisper?
Bronwyn May 5th 2011 12:23PM
Me, too. My fiance has a bank alt without any special characters, and he actually has gotten hate mail for another bank alt with the same name but a special character in the "i" because the other toon supposedly tried to cheat people.
It's doubly annoying in that case.
Foxfyr May 5th 2011 12:59PM
We mock anyone in our guild with special character until they rename them.
GI_Prophet May 5th 2011 1:44PM
I normally agree about special characters but when I transferred servers after playing on the same name for five years I just couldn't imagine going by any other name. I did make sure the first 3 letters were normal and the special e has a fairly obvious apostrophe over it. I tried petitioning a GM so I could get the name and tried mailing whoever has it but no dice.
Astoreth May 5th 2011 2:14PM
MY pet peeve is people who use special characters without regard to how they affect pronunciation, especially when they want to then argue about it. (I'm looking at you, ßurst...!)
(cutaia) May 5th 2011 2:31PM
My only names with special characters are Renée, the priest; Flambé, the fire mage; and Bjørgen the Worgan, furry fury warrior.
I figure it's OK to use them if it's actually the way a name/word is supposed to be spelled. Right? :P
Nipah May 5th 2011 2:48PM
@Astoreth
Hah... isn't that the... Wurst?
*what, did I do that right?*
Tbah May 5th 2011 3:18PM
Although I agree with 'special' names, I'd rather look at Légolas than Leegolas or Legolaas.
Also I must point out that if the name you've chosen is taken then it is too common to be good name and will cause misunderstandings in the future.
Also I hate that ppl cannot think of names other than those from 5 to 6 most popular fantasy novels / TV series.
Get original.
Tbah May 5th 2011 3:20PM
Oh and also: T'Bah.
I'd love to get the apostrophe too.