Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

My friend Emily is at Comic-Con this weekend, so I'm taking care of her 12-year-old cat, Artemis. You can't see it in the photo, but he's standing on top of my fridge, apparently warding off intruders with his fierce squeak and his Left Eye of Sauron (no, it's not a lighting trick; he has heterochromia). A true catgoyle.

ProffesorOrc asked:

Why doesn't blizzard release a massive, canon, lore encyclopedia? The only thing that's close are the old RPG books that came out years ago and Blizzard themselves said those were non-canon and shouldn't be used for serious lore reference.

I feel that we're only able to learn small amounts of lore from off-hand comments in quest texts and the rare Cdev forum posts. And the books can only address the lore to a certain degree without deviating from the main story.

I'm not asking for a book that would spoil future story lines but instead something that would give context to the many cultures seen in the game.

What I'm imagining is a book that I could open up, look up the entry on Arakkoa and find a 2-3 page info on them, describing their customs, leaders, famous historical stories and what not.

It would be pretty difficult to create a work like what you're describing, due to the fluid nature of the WoW story. Blizzard creates lore to fit gameplay, not the other way around, so any info you get is bound to change or be added to at some point, any characters subject to Old God corruption or retcons. And when Blizzard does attempt to publish lore, you run into issues like the RPG books, where the information contained therein may not even be accurate anymore when a new patch or expansion lands, if it was ever really accurate at all. Hell, Blizzard couldn't even keep the game manual updated to say that no, you can't play a dwarf mage (well, you can now...).

As cool as a nice hardcover encyclopedia of WoW lore would be, I really doubt it'll ever happen. WoW's lore is just too malleable, too ongoing.

Shepherd57 asked:

How many servers does one realm have? I think there is a server for Kalimdor, E Kindoms, Outland, and Northrend. I assume they have separate servers for instances, but do you know the break down? Is there a raid instance server and a dungeon server? Are there servers for each individual dungeon?

On any given realm, each continent has its own server. Then there's the server for instances and raids (which may be shared among several realms, since the battlegroups merged) and then a server for battlegrounds (again, which may be shared by several realms). Those are the only ones I'm aware of, though it's very possible that back end stuff like the auction house has its own little server, too.

Styopa asked:

I'm not super-clear on how the RAF works. We have 2 WoW accounts in existence. Is there some way that I could use these to get RAF benefits, or since we've had these 2 accounts since forever, are we basically not eligible? It'd be great being able to skip 40 levels of stuff I've seen many, many, many times.

In order to be eligible for Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, you either have to be the account that sends an invite for an RAF trial account or be the account created by that invite. Two old accounts can't take advantage of the bonuses together.

You could each send each other invites to start new accounts and take turns powerleveling each other's characters, though.

leitniear14 asked:

What language do the wounded Hyjal defenders speak? Because as a horde I can understand them when an alliance character heals them, and I assume the same goes the other way around, so what do they speak that both factions can understand?

It's implied that most every race can speak Common, hence the name. Opposing factions just tend not to do it around each other. It's a gameplay thing, not a lore thing.

Whiplashmtb asked:

Today I pre-ordered SWTOR and expect that I'll be giving up WoW to play it . I am a huge fan of WoWinsider and check it multiple times daily . Is there a website similar in format to Wowinsider for SWTOR that you know of?

(P.S. Even if I quit wow. I can't quit you wowinsider. =P )

Our sister site Massively should provide you with the coverage you desire.

---

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!

---

Tags: patch-4.2, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news

Filed under: The Queue