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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Relaunch
by Michael Sacco 
Jun 10th 2011 at 11:00AM
I'm pretty sure I'm the target audience for the DC Comics relaunch -- someone who liked superhero movies and subject matter but didn't care overmuch about the cape books themselves. And now I'll probably buy a bunch of the new #1's day one thanks to the fresh continuity and the new costumes.
Anthony asked:
They said (somewhere) that purchasing the PVP weapons in 4.2 requires you to reach some type of honor amount before purchase, does that mean your total since 4.2 or your total since cata?
It's your total points earned since the beginning of the arena season, not since the beginning of the expansion.
Stevepete asked:
What is the name of the actual individual quest that a character would have to progress up to in the existing Hyjal zone in order to be able to access all of the new Firelands content dropping in 4.2?
I believe Blizzard said that the new patch 4.2 quests become available if you've successfully regrown Hyjal; if I'm correct, that means that the quest in question is Aessina's Miracle. If I'm wrong and you have to complete the whole dang mountain, then the quest you need to complete is The Firelord.
Mem0ryburn asked:
Why doesn't Blizz make the AH inaccessible for anyone under, say, level ten or whatever? I don't think that would really get in the way of gameplay and I think it would maybe deter some gold farmers, no?
That wouldn't really curb farmers at all, given that most farming, gold selling, and other illicit activities involving the auction house are performed by compromised high-level characters, not lowbies.
Blizzard has sort of reached the point that any further limits on gameplay for low-level characters would cause new players to get turned off to the game; they already can't whisper, use several chat channels, etc. And Blizzard knows this.
Trilynne asked:
What level of gear will we need to start raiding Firelands on normal difficulty? Will we need gear from t11 normal or heroic modes?
It would be best for you to have mostly i359 gear. You shouldn't need gear from heroic T11 raids to enter Firelands. Guilds capable of downing most heroic mode bosses are the exception, not the rule.
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 2 of 9)
aerrae Jun 10th 2011 11:07AM
As far as turning off the AH to deter farmers also makes it harder for people who have a bank toon that just does their auctions. I hate having to run to the AH all the time when my bags are full, a mailbox is more easily found, and it saves me time from running back to a city. Then I just need to log the character and put up the auctions once.
Noyou Jun 10th 2011 11:24AM
I think it wouldn't effect game play all that much for beginners. I didn't learn to use the AH until I was in my mid 20's or later on my first toon. Of course I was an engineer and at the time there wasn't a whole lot of money to be made anyways. But since most of the people farming are using stolen toons, it wouldn't matter and only inconvenience the honest people who are on their lvl 1-2s.
renork Jun 10th 2011 11:35AM
@noyou You're missing the point. It would inconvenience the rest of us that us AH toons that are ONLY AH toons. I have a level 1 human rogue and a level 1 orc hunter that the only thing they've done is walked to the SW/Org AHs and then posted auctions for all the junk I collect on my main toons. Would it be better for us to have to level those toons to level 10 just to use the AH?
Regardless of whether it would offput new players (and it would) it would certainly inconvenience quite a few players that aren't doing anything wrong.
Noyou Jun 10th 2011 11:49AM
I think you skipped the last couple lines of my post :)
mem0ryburn Jun 10th 2011 12:21PM
yeah i myself have lowbie bank alts and wasn't really thinking. the response said they can't use particular chat channels (which seems perhaps an ideal solution) but I see level ones in SW all the time yelling about gold sales
MattKrotzer Jun 10th 2011 12:39PM
New players aren't likely to even encounter the Auction House until at least level 5. Before that, they're likely to be in their own starting areas.
Level 5 is the first time you need to go into a major city, to find profession trainers. (And even then, that's only assuming you know about them.)
Arrohon Jun 10th 2011 1:24PM
@ Noyou
"But since most of the people farming are using stolen toons"
I'd like to see your proof. A very good strategy to get easy gold at low lvls is to pick up gathering professions and work on them as you level. I just started on a new realm and have over 1k gold on a lvl 50 just from herbs, ore, questing, and dungeons. Your comment is very prejudiced and likely without proof.
loop_not_defined Jun 10th 2011 1:38PM
Arrohon, I don't kow if it's true regarding farmers in general, but Blizzard has stated that most purchased gold comes from hacked accounts, and that many high lvl toons using speed or teleport hacks are from legitimate accounts that have been hacked.
Robin Torres Jun 10th 2011 1:51PM
Arrohon, what Mr. Sacco and others have said is absolutely true:
"most farming, gold selling, and other illicit activities involving the auction house are performed by compromised high-level characters, not lowbies"
And you can read this old interview with a scammer article, to get that straight from the scammer's mouth: http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/06/06/an-interview-with-a-scammer/
Noyou Jun 10th 2011 2:22PM
@Arrohan
It was in relevance to the original post AH farmer/goldseller. They aren't going to farm on a lvl 10 toon when they can get around a lot faster on a max level toon with flying. Like Matt said and I agreed - it won't affect new toons one bit. It will only annoy the level 1-4 AH toons. If they did anything and you had to be level 5 it would take you all of 20 min to get there. So It would be a mild annoyance at best. Anything they do to deter it at this point would be better than saying it wouldn't.
Sally Bowls Jun 11th 2011 2:17AM
I think you just don't understand the AH situation. Back in the day I had to have three level one bank alts just to keep up with all the glyphs. There were even sites on the gold blogs as to which were the quickest/best. ( Before Cata, human > dwarf since it was closer and you did not have to go through the tunnel. ) A recent article is
http://coldsgoldfactory.blogspot.com/2011/06/ideal-alts-series-building-better-bank.html
The proposal would harm people who are leveling and want a toon to mail stuff back to and people who are doing AH PvP. It would not inconvenience the crooks as they would use the stolen high level toon.
It is not at all worth the effort to program.
airfric Jun 10th 2011 11:08AM
Question for the Queue:
I'm planning on taking my lowly mage through Cataclysm content, collecting gear specifically to be used at level 84, and then PvPing for a long while. There are quite a few pieces in Twilight Highlands which are appealing, and since most of these quests can't be accessed until you ding 84, my question is this; can you turn off experience on a particular character, complete these quests for the gear they provide, and then turn experience back on? I understand that I won't get the extra gold kick-back that level-capped players receive from completing these quests, but gold is not my objective.
Thank you!
aerrae Jun 10th 2011 11:12AM
you can turn xp off and on, turning it back ok costs gold, but other than that, you can do it at will. So I would see no problem with your solution.
Amak Jun 10th 2011 11:22AM
Many moons ago there were PvP twinks. Carefully gathered BiS gear allowed them to rape the BGs. Then Blizz made BGs give experience. They also allowed players to turn off experience gains, but those toons can only queue for BGs with other experience-locked toons. And the queues last for eternity.
You won't be able to PvP at 84 because there won't be anyone to fight.
Vael Jun 10th 2011 11:35AM
@Amak: My plan is to turn EXP off, simply to acquire the gear, then enchant said gear, and turn EXP back on, and level from 84 -> 85, solely from PvP experience gains. :)
renork Jun 10th 2011 11:43AM
@Vael Certainly a viable route but be warned you're going to go through a LOT of effort for very little return. BG leveling is pretty quick and you're going to level from 84-85 in like 30 BGs at most (less if you win and less if they're all higher xp ones).
Vael Jun 10th 2011 11:49AM
@Renork:
I think your numbers may be off, mate. I'm currently doing this on my hunter, I've already won about 20 BGs, some of which have been IoC and AV. I've also lost about 10. My EXP bar on that toon isn't even to half, yet.
Noyou Jun 10th 2011 11:54AM
@Vael
They must have altered the XP gains considerably then. I haven't run any in cata from 80-84. Was primarily getting between 4-8% of my XP bar running AV pre-cata. That is before having heirlooms and guild perks.
Vael Jun 10th 2011 12:01PM
@Noyou:
That, or I'm way off on my BGs played, and win/loss ratio. I'll try to keep better track and see if 4-8% is accurate. Also, most Heirlooms aren't BiS for 84 EXP-on twinks, so that's not an issue for me.
Shadowwind Jun 10th 2011 12:27PM
Quite a few people have already told you it can be done, but I thought I'd go ahead and reinforce it, lol. I did something very similar with a then-baby paladin of mine a little before Cata's launch. Since the Argent Dawn faction was going away and I wanted her to be exalted AT LEVEL (plus there's some pretty cool gear out of those places), I turned xp off at...I think it was somewhere around lvl 58, and used the dungeon-finder to run the heck out of Scholo and Strat. Once exalted, I turned xp back on and let her level naturally. So far as I can tell, the ONLY thing that turning xp off affects is your battleground queues.