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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Early access
by Adam Holisky 
Dec 15th 2011 at 11:00AM
Of course the talk of the town this week is Star Wars, and the early access program has gotten a lot of buzz. It's great if you're in already, but is likely the bane of your existence if you're not in.
I hope Blizzard never does anything like that, or if it does, it never does it with WoW. Not because I think the early access program BioWare is doing is a bad decision from a technical standpoint -- it's not, it's great -- but it's a terrible decision from a QQ standpoint. The WoW community's collective rage would burst open unlike no event ever before if some sort of staggered access to an expansion or other game was implemented.
I pray to Elune that never happens.
CDMoller asked:
Do world BoE Epics and Patterns drop in LFR as they would in N or H mode? If so how does the rolling for those work?
Dragon Soul patterns do not drop in the Raid Finder, only in normal and heroic. I'm not sure if world BoE epics drop; I'd assume not, though.
Nyold asked:
Didn't someone (not Blizz, but someone from WowInsider) say that the drops from Hour of Twilight 5 mans are going to look like a recolored version of T13? For example, the cloth drops will look like the mage tier but recolored. Or am I misremembering this?
No. What we did say and what Blizzard has said is that the gear you get from the dungeons has a unified look in its armor type. So all the cloth gear forms a nice-looking armor set, with some variations here and there amongst the individual pieces.
It's the Raid-Finder-level set pieces gear that are recolors of the tier 13 pieces.
Caylynn asked:
So, I write my last final exam for the semester this afternoon (yes, I'm taking a study break right now). How should I celebrate in WoW afterwards? (If it matters, I'm working on a Masters in Applied Human Nutrition)
For me, I'd spend an hour or two questing in a Cataclysm zone and grabbing an easy achievement. Or I'd hop into some randoms with my priest and heal for fun (well, fun most of the time).
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 5 of 11)
eel5pe Dec 15th 2011 11:23AM
Question: can anyone explain why EOTS was taken out of the RBG rotation? Does it's return to the rotation have anything to do with the fact that the zone got "rockier" as in the recent hotfix?
razion Dec 15th 2011 11:58AM
The zone has too much "space" in it. Too much area that allows for people to make abuse of knock-back kills due to "falling off the world" abilities, and Blizzard doesn't like that. For RBGs, you'd practically have to have someone in your flag group to do pushbacks (at least two people to guarantee full knockbacks for center, if you wanted to win in EotS. This problem is made worse when you consider that all of the four nodes are on high areas, giving knockback an even further advantage away from the middle, making such classes incredibly powerful and neigh ridiculous.
tl;dr: The map isn't very well balanced. And no one likes the bubble at the start. It traps the camera and it's annoying and no one likes it, I don't care who you are or where you're from.
downesy93 Dec 15th 2011 12:04PM
@razion , "... don't care what you do, as long as you love me"
eel5pe Dec 15th 2011 1:20PM
* guitar solo... you know which one *
Badmedecine Dec 15th 2011 11:23AM
I wish i could talk that fast and that correct as the girl in that vid does.
Drakkenfyre Dec 15th 2011 12:17PM
Many videos are simply edited together. It could have taken her 50 tries to get every sentence that fast and correct, then simply edited them together. As the video itself was obviously sped up, so at the very least it had some editing. Nothing saying she didn't have a ton of takes to make that one video.
Or, she really could have been that fast.
Skarlette Dec 15th 2011 11:32AM
So, about Wrathion...he seems awfully intelligent for a year-old whelp. Granted, we haven't had a ton of friendly/interactable whelps in game before (Awbee comes to mind, and I believe there's a bronze whelp quest giver in the Well of Eternity) so we don't have too many to compare him to. We also don't know how quickly dragons mature, so it's unfair to compare him to mortal races.
Still...he seems TOO smart, calculating, and organized. I'd expect that level of competence from Nefarian, but Nef was over 10,000 years old and had plenty of experience. Wrathion's still wet behind the ears, and I don't care if he was aware within his egg, that only adds a few months to his existance.
Maybe he's bluffing to an extent in front of us mere mortals, but I just can't help picturing Sabellian showing up, patting him on the head and giving him a golf clap. "Yes, yes, very impressive for a whelp. Adorable. You think you're some master schemer, but you're still a baby. Watch a grown-up show you how it's done."
In fact, whatever the context, I would give a zillion gold to see any kind of interaction between Wrathion and Sabellian. Or any kind of development for the remnants of the Black Dragonflight besides "rawr, evil!" I realize it's kind of early to be expecting anything now, with Deathwing still warm in his grave(...er, exploded into sparklies?) but maybe a hint in MoP or something?
Mark Dec 15th 2011 12:00PM
If I recall Nef was the smartest aspect of them all, they looked upto him for advice n guidance. Seeing how the black dragonflights aspect is/was the smartest dragon n existence and therefore Azeroth I would assume his flight would be incredible intelligent. If I recall correct of course, can't remember if tht was the case
GuyverIV Dec 15th 2011 12:10PM
Am I the only one that thinks that Sabellian would be an awesome recurring schemer for WoW? Technically, while Wrathion's shadow crusade killed (as far as I understand) the last black dragons on Azeroth, Sabellian t'ain't ON Azeroth...
And honestly, I think a game of oneupmanship and Xanatos Gambits between Wrathion and Sabellian lasting several expansions would be AWESOME.
But Bliz just isn't that good with it's stories. (Now, I enjoy Blizzards work, don't get me wrong, this is criticism with love.) There seems to be an institutional problem with keeping track of storylines that last more than a few levels or an expansion. We'll probably see something with Sabellian right after we find out what happens to Neptulon, Danath Trollbane takes back Stromgarde, Alleria Windrunner and Turalion arrive to rally the Alliance, and Calia Menethil leads a crusade against Sylvanas to restore Lorderon...
Killik Dec 15th 2011 1:29PM
Just hope Blizzard hasn't forgotten about Sabellian.
Skarlette Dec 15th 2011 2:09PM
@Mark - You're thinking of Neltharion, a.k.a. Deathwing. Nefarian is his son. But you're right that he was considered to be very clever before the Old Gods scrambled his brains.
@Guyver - A longstanding rivalry of oneupsmanship between Wrathion and Sabellian would be AWESOME. Too awesome to ever happen, most likely, but fun to think about. We could get duped into helping one side or another from time to time, without realizing it, only to have to them pop up at the end and thank us for making the other guy look like a moron.
Pyromelter Dec 15th 2011 2:12PM
I dunno guys, I look at Wrathion like Michael Corleone, who didn't even want to become The Don at first, but he is super smart, and eventually becomes very cunning and ruthless in taking over the family business. I mean, you go around assassinating people on Wrathion's orders, just like the end of Godfather. (Also, if that's a spoiler for you, shame on you.)
Also, there are plenty of examples in history of young, energized, smart people topping older formerly powerful individuals. Plus, it's a fictional game... go with it?
Skarlette Dec 15th 2011 2:27PM
@Pyromelter - I think that's the vibe Blizzard is going for with him, but the difference is that there are no Godfathers in preschool (or if there are, they just make the other kids eat paste and their enemies wake up with teddy bear heads in their beds.)
I see three explanations:
1. Although there was been no indication of this in earlier lore, dragons are mature at only one year of age.
2. Blizzard goofed.
3. A Bronze dragon/wizard did it.
Killik Dec 15th 2011 3:20PM
Explanation 4: Level 40 happens a few years before level 85. The levelling process is longer and the Cataclysm was earlier than we had assumed.
Al Dec 15th 2011 3:37PM
Didn't Rhea scramble the egg's personality?
austin.heisch Dec 15th 2011 11:33AM
What would the better dungeon set be for a shadow priest? The grey (healer) set or the red (dps) set? The main difference between them is that the grey/healer set has haste while the red/dps set has crit/mastery. I'd normally assume the dps set would be better, but my understanding is that haste is better than crit/mastery for shadow priests, so wouldn't the grey/healer set with haste be better for us?
I'm mostly confused since Fox has in the past said that haste is our best stat (after int, of course), but included the crit/mastery set on his dungeon gear article instead of the haste set.
adamjgp Dec 15th 2011 12:03PM
how much spirit does the healer set have? Is it so much spirit that it puts you way over the hit cap? If that's the case, then the spirit (hit) is a wasted stat on the healer set, meaning its stat budget is partially useless to you. In that scenario, the dps set would be superior, because you're benefiting from the entire stat budget of the item.
Boobah Dec 15th 2011 1:56PM
Good thing you don't have to grab one or the other entire set; you can mix and match, and it doesn't even have to look stupid anymore.
Vegetaprime Dec 15th 2011 11:36AM
Questions for the queue:
What happens to the LFR version of Dragon Soul when we've moved on to MoP. Sure, once we hit MoP we'll be geared enough to go back and kill regular and heroic fairly easily, but I ask for grabbing items for transmogrification purposes. The weapons from DS have very different looks on each difficulty and the LFR versions may match future gear sets better than others. In the same vein, will the class restrictions be lifted at some point so transmogrification can be used by other classes (No'Kaled on other axes for example.)
What do you think are the most popular items are for transmogrification? Maybe someone will create an API that will read that for each class and what not.
razion Dec 15th 2011 11:52AM
LFR is likely going to be an evolving beast, only giving rewards and being available at the end-level, and being applied to the current raid tier. I imagine in MoP, Dragon Soul will not be an option, and the newest raids will be the option for Dragon Soul. They'll likely be making new difficulties for LFR for new raids, but they won't be going back to make new difficulties for older raids like Firelands/BoT/TotFW/etc due to the sheer amount of legwork that would have to be done (they also probably figure that the content is very PuGable now, with all the overgearing you can do for it now).