The Queue: Super-Soldier-sized edition
by Michael Sacco 
Jul 22nd 2011 at 11:00AM
Looks like Captain America is getting good reviews, so I am beyond pumped to see it. Finally, an outlet for my all-consuming man crush on Chris Evans. In honor of his bulking up for the role, I have bulked up The Queue today. Enjoy!
KrazyKorean728 asked:
As we're getting towards the time when we can complete all the Molten Front achievements, my question is about the achievement "Ready for Raiding II."
We access the Lieutenants of Flame by recruting both the Wardens, Druids & the Ancients. We get to fight against the Lieutenant as the last quest named "Strike at the Heart." Does the Lieutenant change based upon which groups quests you do (i.e. if I do the Wardens, is there one set of Lieutenants that will spawn with them versus which ones spawn with the Druids)?
There's a random lieutenant each day, and which one spawns is entirely unrelated to the dailies you choose to complete.
Lolz asked:
Why does fear still agros?, I though blizzard had made that change for all cc.
Fear isn't really a CC in the same sense as Banish or Polymorph or Hex. I think old-school EverQuest players would probably call it a "mez," right?
Interficio asked:
I just now had time to play my lowbie shammy. I raided in woltk and new the gear for the shamms, intellect main for elemental, Agility main for enhancement, and intellect/spirit for restoration. While doing dungeons and raids i never found a piece of mail with intellect without spirit. I soon found out that both elemental and resto can use spirit due to a new talen elemental got. Why did blizz decide to combine this? Was it because they are the only intellect mail, or are they just lazy?
Basically, since only two specs use mail armor with intellect on it, it made sense to let both of those specs utilize spirit in some way. This way, there's less of a chance that an item will drop that no one in the raid can use. I'm looking at you, spell plate.
Haro asked:
A couple of days ago, my friend and i were running stonecore. Right when we started, a new guildie got the lvl20 achieve. During the run he got the lvl30 achieve, and before we beat the final boss, he got the lvl40 one.
After the run, we were a bit... puzzled. So we asked him how was it possible to gain so many levels so fast. He replied that he was using the recruit-a-friend advantages, so we kinda let it go.
Today my friend reminded me about the matter, because we had agreed to check what advantages were those... and after checking, it really doesn't look like you can earn 20 levels in around 40 mins. We checked his wowarmory, and all of the achieves were got in the same day, including "can i keep him?" up to lvl40. Also he hasn't played since that day.
We fear someone might be using hacks in our guild, but we need to know first: is it possible to ding 40 in a single day? is it possible to go from 20 to 40 in less than one hour, through legit means?
A bonus feature of the Recruit-a-Friend program is the ability for the "baby" account to grant the "adult" account levels. For every two levels the baby account earns, it can grant one level to a character below its level on the adult account. A level 80 character could level a friend's level 1 character to 41, as long as the levels were gained with an RAF partner. Trust me -- it works, and it's legit. Using RAF, my elemental shaman (my current main) was leveled from 25 to 60 almost instantly.
Shabumbler asked:
After the posting of Basil's "Meet the Bloggers" post this week, the posts within the comments section were incredibly harsh IMO. Ranging from name calling to empty threats about no longer reading Basil's column, a portion of the community seemingly had just crawled out of the cesspool that is the official WoW forums just to spread on some hate.
It seems to me like a correlation could be made between what Basil (and undoubtedly many of the other bloggers) has experienced from the community and what Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street experienced not more than a few months back.
My question is this: Have you ever had a situation where one of your staff has quit/taken a hiatus from blogging due to the extremely rude comments made by the folks who frequent this website?
Negative comments are definitely only a very small portion of the comments made on this site, and in fact, the majority of comments here are positive in some way. We have a pretty active community of regular readers who appear to be nice, emotionally stable people.
But you're right in that negative comments can and sometimes do have an effect on morale, and we've had writers who weren't able to get past them. It's unfortunate, of course, but some people just have the not-unreasonable expectation of not being verbally attacked at their place of work. Me, I read every comment anyone posts on my articles. I respect that some other writers choose not to.
Ice asked:
I'm randomly getting authenticator screen when I log - and this is not after maintaince. Since it was disabled to not ask the code unless I change positions should I be worried that someone is trying to access my account from somewhere else? Or does my IP magically change when I sleep and work..
You'll be randomly prompted for your authenticator code at least once a week, though it can happen more often than that. I've been asked three times this week, and my computer hadn't been turned off or disconnected from the internet in that time. I'm actually pleasantly surprised when it happens.
koolguyry asked:
I have a question for the Queue: Why do people hate Richard Knaak so much?
There seem to be two different camps of Knaak haters. The first camp says that he's not a good writer because his prose is bad, which may or may not be correct (objectively, anyway).
The second camp doesn't like him because of perceived slights against the game's lore by him. What this group utterly fails to understand is that anything you read in the WoW novels is either directly requested or approved by Blizzard. People can get emotionally attached to WoW lore, so it's hard for them to divorce the writer from the events happening -- but these are licensed novels, people. And you know how seriously Blizzard takes its licensing, especially when it comes to lore. Don't blame a contract author for a bad new character. Blame Blizzard for either asking for it or okaying it.
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 11)
Hawk Jul 22nd 2011 11:07AM
I hate all of you writers, not just Basil!!! Just kidding!!! Seriously, some people take stuff too serious!!!
EaterOfBirds Jul 22nd 2011 12:43PM
why were all the asshats getting down on him?
Touphemia Jul 22nd 2011 2:41PM
If I'm being completely honest, I have to say, on the first read, I was a bit off-put by Basil's interview. The use of irrelevant, the sort of coldness about the game in general, it was enough to make me cringe, just a little. Upon a reread, I found it much less offensive, noting his exact word choice. He was simply saying what he liked to do in the game, and what he didn't do at all.
So, while none of the nastier comments were justified at all, I can definitely understand someone being a little miffed by their initial impression of the overall attitude of the post, and making comments related to that.
Angus Jul 22nd 2011 3:27PM
"Appear to be emotionally stable people."
Now I know they weren't talking about me...
I was less than impressed with Basil's interview, truth be told. He did come off a bit like a dick in some parts, but he is completely entitled to have his opinions and be a dick if he wants. His comments about Horde vs Alliance seemed almost designed to piss off people. And you know what, that's fine,
I have the right to express myself as does eceryone else. I do not have the right to not be offended. People need to learn that last bit.
Stephanie Jul 22nd 2011 3:46PM
When I felt a repugnance to what appeared to be Basil's attitude, I stopped reading and started skimming. He has different goals in game than I and though I feel his answers came off harshly, I attributed that to surveys. I hate filling out "get to know you" surveys it only seemed logical to me that some one else out there might as well.
I personally liked his Alliance/Horde response. For many reasons, but mostly because he is a staunch Alliance supporter and they seem so hard to find.
Drakkenfyre Jul 22nd 2011 4:17PM
It wasn't just his article they were criticizing, it was Chase Christian's "How to be an asshole ganker" article, too.
Seriously, the article reads as one big "I'm a douchebag, and your goal is to inconvenience other players as much as possible."
You can't expect to put out an article like that and not get negative comments.
Seriously, the article is one big griefing manual, and he explicitly says "your goal is to inconvenience them as much as possible, even if you don't kill them."
And the only excuse is "They're on a PVP server."
No, you don't get to excuse being a douche and a griefer simply because you are on a PVP server.
Vorken Jul 22nd 2011 4:40PM
Imo, people misunderstood basil, but most of the people who flipped out were madder about the alliance thing. Which I love cause its exactly how I feel, and so many vocal people are in the whored.
vinniedcleaner Jul 22nd 2011 9:47PM
@ Drakkenfyre
Glad to see I'm not the only one that thinks this way. Another MMO will not be the death of WoW, ganking and griefing will be its death. As the iLevel gap grows with each expansion, so does the asshattery. What better way to drive away new players than to have douchebags be able to kill them just by looking cross-eyed at them. If Blizzard was truly concerned with gameplay balance, they would address this immediately.
Oh and the 'it's a PvP server' argument is just a refuge for epeen strokers.
Tfish92 Jul 23rd 2011 1:32AM
If I'm not supposed to kill people then what is the overall purpose of a pvp server in the first place?
Drakkenfyre Jul 23rd 2011 7:39AM
He wasn't telling you how to kill people.
He was telling you how to stop them from questing or doing anything else. In addition to killing them. He was tellling you where to avoid letting them go to get back into guard's range, and where you could go if you were having trouble. He was actively encouraging you to get someone low, and let NPC's kill them, costing them repairs. He was saying you should frustrate the shit out of the players.
If I go play paintball, I know I will be shot. Does it bother me? No.
Does that mean it's ok if someone on the opposite team runs up to me, and unloads 2000 rounds, at point-blank range on me? No.
Jidan Jul 23rd 2011 11:09AM
In regards to Christian's article, I agree he was a bit heavy handed in his "stop enemy progression at all costs" mentality. However, I thought that stemmed from the idea that ganking sparks world PvP. For example, if I'm getting torn up and call for help, and then Christian calls for help, suddenly a small brawl may be happening.
Or Christian just likes to gank teh noobs. Just playing devils advocate.
rhorle Jul 22nd 2011 11:08AM
Glyphed fear is as much a "standard cc" as any other form. Seduction is as much a "mez" as fear would be, and seduction is allowed. Besides the reason why base fear still causes aggro has nothing to do with the "roleplaying" of the spell and every thing to do with
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/173458/42-biggest-pve-nerf-ever#post79
(cutaia) Jul 22nd 2011 11:12AM
Haha...I'm glad you linked that just so I could re-read Zarhym being totally awesome in that thread. Specifically:
"Someone needs to take away your keyboard until you're better able to read the explicit meaning in sentences without implying whatever you want in order to be contrary."
What a great quote.
AudreyR Jul 22nd 2011 11:21AM
Ladies and gentlemen, my new forum signature.
dl3mk3 Jul 22nd 2011 11:47AM
By definition if something is afraid of you they would "be aware" of you..i think that Fear causing agro is fine.
rhorle Jul 22nd 2011 12:09PM
And yet blind, shackle undead, bind elemental, and entangling roots make the target any less aware then a fear? Blind only blinds a target, there mind and hearing are intact. Bind elemental, Shackle undead, and entangling roots only freezes them in place.
Squelchy Jul 22nd 2011 12:39PM
Never mind fear causing aggro. Why don't their friends notice the mob next to them has TURNED INTO A FARM ANIMAL?
http://www.thedailyblink.com/2011/05/the-future-of-crowd-control/
(cutaia) Jul 22nd 2011 12:42PM
All kidding aside, the CC change is never going to make sense from a "lore" perspective. It's a gameplay mechanic and that's it.
All we need to know about fear is this: If it didn't cause aggro upon pulling, it most certainly still would once it wore off (aside from sap, I believe, once a CC's duration is over, the group will pull). So, in that scenario, a feared mob could be near a second group of mobs when the fear ran out and end up pulling them, too. That's directly contrary to the ease of communication they were going for with the CC change. RNG shouldn't decide whether fearing a mob results in a wipe.
So, it makes sense from a gameplay perspective to add the no-pull method to glyphed fear, which is why they've said they may do that. But the run-crazy version of fear will never be able to work that way.
Squelchy Jul 22nd 2011 12:43PM
I'm not so concerned about fear; I'm kinda wondering why the CC'd mob's friends don't notice when their friend is TURNED INTO A FARM ANIMAL.
http://www.thedailyblink.com/2011/05/the-future-of-crowd-control/
Squelchy Jul 22nd 2011 12:45PM
Goldarn it. I need to be patient. Sorry for the double.