The Queue: Patch 4.3's release date
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 23rd 2011 at 11:00AM
I think every last one of you will want me to jump straight to answering this first question, so I'll ditch the clever intro today.
Yurgen asked:
Some sites are saying patch 4.3 will release November 29th, some sites are saying December 6th. Which is it??
We can't say definitively one way or the other. We've been leaning toward Dec. 6 because Blizzard usually ends the Arena season a week (or more) prior to the release of a content patch. Patch 4.3's landing on Nov. 29 would mean the Arena season ends the exact same day the patch releases. Season 9 was the first Arena season that ended the same day as the patch launch, so it could it happen with season 10, too. Nothing says it can't. Prior to season 9, though, Blizzard never did that.
Personally, I'm leaning Nov. 29 purely because the patch has seemed more or less ready to go for quite a while now. I feel that if Blizzard held it until Dec. 6, it would just be artificially delaying the patch. Of course, there's a U.S. holiday tomorrow, so maybe that artificial delay would let developers get back home from holiday trips or whatever else. Who knows?
Either way, here at WoW Insider, we're getting our patch prep done now so it'll be ready to go Nov. 29 regardless of whether that's the day it lands or not.
Rodrigo asked:
Sorry if this has been asked before, but are there new daily quests unrelated to the Darkmoon Faire in 4.3?
Unless I've forgotten something obvious, no, there are no new daily quest hubs in patch 4.3 outside of the Darkmoon Faire.
Bapo asked:
Do you think blizz will ever inforce a rule on the AH where you have to undercut by a certain %, rather than just by whatever you want?
Never. Love it or hate it, World of Warcraft's Auction House is a fairly free market. Blizzard monitors it for cheating and abuse, but otherwise ... purely player-driven. Some people simply aren't cut out for playing a cutthroat market, just like some players aren't cut out for endgame progression raiding or hardcore rated Arenas or Battlegrounds.
WanderingNomad asked:
Are we going to have anything new to spend our saved up Marks of the World Tree on come 4.3 ?
Nope. You probably never will. Daily quest hubs like that are generally self-contained within their own patch. You finish the content, you get all the items you want, and then you move on with life. It is very rare for the developers to go back to that sort of content and add new items or quests. When it's done, it's done.
@Mayjest asked:
What's the better name for a baby, Thrall, Varian, or a different character? Not actually happening, just spawned from a drunken conversation.
Ugh. Don't name your baby Thrall. You'd seriously be naming your baby slave. In my opinion, Varian doesn't make the fantasy-to-modern-day transition very well, so I wouldn't use that, either. If you're going to use fantasy names to name a child in the current era, you need to pick ones that can be easily shortened into a nickname that won't be embarrassing, or pick a name that sounds like something modern. You could use Anduin for a boy, that shortens easily into Andy. For a girl, go with Jaina. Jaina is fancy Jane.
Fun fact: There already is a baby Jaina, though I suppose she isn't a baby anymore. She's nearly three and a half years old now. They grow up so fast!
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: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
SR Nov 23rd 2011 11:02AM
While I love Varian, you can't beat the name Dovahkiin for your newborn.
That is, if your baby was born on 11/11/11.
SR Nov 23rd 2011 11:08AM
http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/11/16/dragonborn/
MattKrotzer Nov 23rd 2011 11:17AM
Actually, pretty much any name beats that. What a damn terrible name for a child. "Hey, my parents whored out my naming rights for video games!"
I'm sure they won't be even remotely fucked up as a teenager...
MattKrotzer Nov 23rd 2011 11:17AM
Ah crap. WTB edit button to remove F-bomb. Stupid sleep deprivation.
Pyromelter Nov 23rd 2011 11:33AM
hey matt, fortunately wowinsider is pretty free with allowing people to write what they want, cursing text and all. And I thank them greatly for that, because sometimes dropping an f-bomb is quite appropriate, and I would say that your statement regarding that poor, poor baby was definitely appropriate.
MattKrotzer Nov 23rd 2011 12:00PM
Thanks. I was worried I might be coming off a bit surly today.
I got absolutely no restful sleep last night. My wife got out of bed at 3:45 this morning, hoping I'd stop tossing and turning, so she could go back to sleep. Instead, I just sent her back to bed and went downstairs to play DCUO until it was time to get ready for work... and now I've felt miserable all morning.
...wait... this isn't my journal...
O.o
Nagaina Nov 23rd 2011 12:11PM
Man, there's nothing at all wrong with 'Varian,' whether or not it makes the "modern sounding" cut -- after all, "modern" names include "Madison" and its forty million rock-chewingly stupid replace the vowels variants and anybody with no Scottish antecedents naming their kids "McKenzie/Mykynzy/MacKenZee".
Don't get me started on bad baby names.
Snuzzle Nov 23rd 2011 12:37PM
I got the impression that the poster was asking "Whose mom named better, Thrall's or Varian's?" But forgetting that Thrall was originally Go'el.
Sorro Nov 23rd 2011 12:49PM
We named him Dranosh...
Ostentaneous Nov 23rd 2011 1:05PM
Madison is the name you want to get all pissed off about? What about names like Shawnita, where the dad just had to name the baby after himself even though its a girl. Those are the ones that get to me.
(cutaia) Nov 23rd 2011 1:07PM
Wait...you're saying (cutaietta) was a bad name for a girl?
loli.gigis Nov 23rd 2011 1:08PM
For the love of all that is the Light.... don't replace every vowel with 'y'! Most people don't think about it but by having crazy spelling names every time you go to the hospital or government office you are going to have to spell your name, then people yell at the poor workers that are only trying to get it spelled right.... *sigh* I worked in an ER for a long time... and people would get so mad at me for not knowing how to spell Yyzykial - True effing story. It's pronounced Ee - Zeke - Eel but spelled like *that* and I was expected to know this spelling... not only did I get yelled at but they actually lodged a complaint with my hospital.... thankfully others understood that it was outrageous of them to be so upset when they have a crazy spelling to a name.
So while I am all about 'choices' when it comes to names.... at least be nice to those who don't know your child or how to spell their name...
Ilmyrn Nov 23rd 2011 1:34PM
My mom's a nurse, so growing up we got to hear all the stories about crazy baby names, especially when she worked in the hospital nursery. Some of them were clearly the result of a new mother on WAY too many painkillers to be responsibly naming a human being. One mother named her twins off the hospital food menu: 'Lemongelo' and 'Orangello'.
Another story she told involved a VERY angry young woman who felt the need to name her daughter 'Shitanya'.
LiquidChaos Nov 23rd 2011 2:02PM
My daughter's name is Celes, named for Celes Cher in Final Fantasy VI. She is going to hate me down the road when she always has to say "My name is Celes, no T E."
Nagaina Nov 23rd 2011 2:04PM
@ Ostentaneous ~
There are three little girls in my son's class named "Madison." Each one has a sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightly different spelling of the name, most of them involving cruel and wretched abuse of the letters "y," "e," and "c."
Your humble authoress is, herself, a victim of the very beginning of the "must make a name more unique by replacing a perfectly phonetically correct 'i' with a 'y'" phenomenon that has blighted the lives of so many. My mother also insisted on naming me after a Shakespearean character and I thank the gods daily that my father rejected every option except the one actually hung on me, for I cannot imagine what horrors my mother would have wrought attempting to make "Desdemona" or "Ophelia" look *more* unique. My middle brother briefly had the middle name "Bullfrog" (first name: Jeremiah) before sanity reasserted itself. My youngest brother is permanently embittered by the fact that he's the weirdest of all of us and yet has the most normal name, after our grandfathers.
In my day job, I work in paratransit -- which means I see a *lot* of strange names. *A lot,* people. The weirdest are always the people who insist on hanging female names on their sons and then get indignant with you when you use feminine pronouns when referring to them over the phone. I'm sorry, but no, "Gabrielle" is *not* a unisex name and it's not going to become unisex because you insist. You have given your son the feminine variant of a gendered name. Similarly, we see a great many bog-standard names given spellings that make the generational y-abuse look tame and cause the baby Jesus to cry tears of blood, all in an effort to make a child's name unique. Redundant vowels at every opportunity, hyphenation, randomly inserted punctuation marks, nonsensical diacriticals -- I swear, sometimes I think the WoW Random Name Generator was stolen directly from our client files. Every time I see one of these names, I want to reach through the screen and smack the crap out of the parents, *because the apostrophe diacritical mark actually changes pronunciation and not in the way that most of these people seem to think.* GAH.
....Dammit, you got me started.
Drakkenfyre Nov 23rd 2011 2:05PM
Assuming you don't mind your daughter being associated with a scantily-clad woman, Alexstrasza would make a good name. Shortens down to Alex. Sounds sort of Russian if people later on in life wonder, and if she's curious, I doubt she would be upset at being named after the queen of the dragons.
loop_not_defined Nov 23rd 2011 2:28PM
Times like these make me glad we went with a family name.
Although it's funny, whenever we tell someone her name, they immediately ask us, "Oh, is that from a family member?" Because the alternative is that we named her after the Wizard of Oz.
Pyromelter Nov 23rd 2011 2:33PM
This is about the worst baby naming I can think of, ever, and it's in the news lately:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/parents-boy-named-adolf-hitler-won-t-receive-custody-newborn-son-article-1.981331?localLinksEnabled=false
As far as fantasy names, I think they are fine, as long as they aren't so insanely ridiculous or anti-gender. Take Sylvanas for example. I think that would be at least okay for a girl (can shorten to "Sylvie"). But if you give a boy that name, you should really have your head checked, that is just not cool. Jaina another good example. Before there was Jaina Proudmoore, there was Jaina Solo. Solid name for a girl if you are a wow or star wars fan... but please, don't name your boy that. For everyone's sake.
Oteo Nov 23rd 2011 2:41PM
If I have a daughter, she's going to be named Zelda. No ifs, ands, or buts.
My boyfriend wants to name his/our future daughter Thaliana, after the scientific name for the (model organism) mustard weed Arabidopsis thaliana. I told him no. z_z
Phaelan Nov 23rd 2011 2:45PM
@Nagaina, completely understand, and it also goes the reverse, my son's name is Addison, which literally means "Adam's son". How the HELL does this become a girls name? oh...that's right because of lame producers/writers decided it was good for a female character, now people think he is a girl. ggrrr.