The Queue: Gee wiz
by Michael Sacco 
Jan 20th 2012 at 11:00AM
I'm on the fence about some of the Diablo III system changes announced yesterday, but at least half of 'em are pretty good changes, so I'm definitely continuing to look forward to playing my wizard (best class) when the game comes out some time this year.
Erik asked:
What do you feel the odds are that Blizzard will still add the older tier content to Raid Finder? Have them on Normal modes, after the nerfs it should be possible for 25 random people to handle these days. I ask because if there really is no more content patches left, that is a long time to go until Mists.
Couldn't say. Blizzard devs have expressed a desire to hook up the Raid Finder to older raids, but with cross-realm raiding, you don't really need the Raid Finder at all for really old raids. For stuff like Firelands or BoT or BWD, I'd imagine there are some issues with figuring out how many people you'd need for a "full" group -- 25 is probably overkill with BoT and BWD when everyone's in 378+ gear from 4.3. And would they need to have a Raid Finder difficulty mode as well? Would you just play them on normal mode? That would defeat the Raid Finder's purpose as raiding with training wheels on. If it did have a Raid Finder mode, what item level gear would drop? 346 would make the raids even more pointless than they already are; leaving them at 359 would mean no difference from the loot that already drops in normal mode.
Lots of considerations; no easy answers. As much as I want people to see previous tiers of raiding, I'm just not sure it's worth development time that could be spent giving us Pandaria, which will ship with all its raids hooked up to the Raid Finder.
Jerry asked:
A random person told me the other night that MoP was going to be the last WoW expansion. I've looked around on the internet and can't find any information to support it. Any truth to the rumor?
Blizzard's nowhere near the giving-up point on WoW; it just makes too much money. Keep in mind that the original EverQuest is still releasing expansions to this day, and WoW has more subscribers than EQ by an order of magnitude (or more). We'll see more expansions.
chris111803 asked:
So, I'm new to raiding and have a question on rolling for loot. After a boss is downed and the loot pops up, say I passed on all of it. I go in, during the same week, and kill the same boss that I passed on all his shiny purples. Would I be able to roll on anything that comes up?
Unfortunately, no. The way that the Raid Finder's loot system works is you only get to see loot drop off of a boss once per week, even if you don't roll on any of it. Passing doesn't give you a second (or third, or more) chance at loot.
Cbeefman asked:
have a question about "The Classifieds" weekly feature. Where is it? the last one posted was on November 2nd last year and I would very much like it to return. My guild was advertised on it last year around maybe Feb and with it came one of the GREATEST additions to our guild in a very long time. I'm hoping to repeat this as we're trying to form our second raid team.
We decided to discontinue The Classifieds, as we sometimes have to do with columns.
Brian asked:
Any word on when we might get a new WoW Archivist article? The last new one was on November 14th.
This one, on the other hand, is not canceled; it's just been back-burnered for a while since Alex took on the duties of editor-in-chief of our fair site. I'm sure it'll return, though; it was always a popular (and well-made) column.
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 7)
alzeer Jan 20th 2012 11:02AM
Q for the Q:
in the last two expansions we got "Chill of the throne" & "Sunwell Radiance" to counter the tanks`s high dodge value by the end of expansion.
but in cata we didn't get smiler buff (yet), was the dodge formula changed so it is not needed any more?
Nina Katarina Jan 20th 2012 11:07AM
There is so much environmental damage and spell damage in most of the fights that high dodge, while nice, isn't the only thing that will keep your tank alive during the crunch periods. Some tanks are stacking dodge/parry, but there's an equal or greater amount who stack stamina or threat.
Revynn Jan 20th 2012 11:12AM
Sunwell and ICC were 4 tiers into their expansions, which means gear had scaled far above and beyond what was intended. DS doesn't have that problem.
Killik Jan 20th 2012 11:23AM
The introduction of hard modes in WOTLK meant that gear levels inflated beyond what was originally planned. Thus avoidance nerfs were still needed, despite diminishing returns, or ICC bosses would have to hit unfeasibly hard and risk one-shotting tanks.
With Cataclysm's tanking model, boss damage is proportionately lower, apart from huge, scripted abilities that require cooldowns. As Celeanum says, if Blizzard nerf anything, it would be tank Mastery - and chances are they will in MoP.
kingoomieiii Jan 20th 2012 11:30AM
Blizzard didn't create the Wrath rating values expecting hard modes. In fact, they expected 25m ICC to drop gear at about 245 itemlevel. Instead, the popularity of OS+3 caused them to add hard modes to Uld, and the ball got rolling from there. We ended the expansion with stats a third higher than they expected, and tanks were basically unhittable brick shithouses.
DarkWalker Jan 20th 2012 11:43AM
Blizzard actually managed to plan for the gear increase this time.
Sunwell Radiance was needed because Blizzard added a whole new tier of raiding after what they meant to be the last raid tier in BC. One extra gear tier meant Tanks could get too much avoidance, breaking the combat math.
Chill of the Throne was needed because Blizzard apparently changed (increased) how much of an improvement each tier was late in WotLK development, in order to accommodate normal and hard modes for both 10 and 25-man content (so, 4 different gear levels per tier). Again, this resulted in Tanks having just too much avoidance and breaking the combat equations.
Cataclysm unified gear between 10 and 25-man content, avoiding the WotLK gear scaling problem; and apparently won't have a new, unplanned raid tier, avoiding the BC extra tier problem.
srodrigueziii Jan 20th 2012 2:57PM
@kingoomieiii --> Lol!
On the contrary, though, I would think a brick shithouse would be decidedly easy to hit.
Zayd Jan 20th 2012 11:05AM
I've a question about BGs.
Which, in your opinion, whine the most when losing? Alliance or Horde?
Hard one to call for me.
razion Jan 20th 2012 11:19AM
I play both factions heavily, and I can assure you, they both complain precisely the same amount when they lose.
Hob Jan 20th 2012 11:33AM
I can confirm Razion's comment.
Danny Morales Jan 20th 2012 11:52AM
i just went horde for the first time and play at the level cap and mid level bgs and can vouch for razion's comment as well
Aika Jan 20th 2012 12:07PM
All I can say is, when I played Alliance, they always seemed to lose, and now I play Horde, they always lose.
This may or may not be a coincidence.
Glaras Jan 20th 2012 12:40PM
@Aika: I observed the same thing. After some thought, I think I've found the answer to this. The bottom line is that, for any "non-professional" player, you're likely to experience more losses than wins, since you're less likely to keep plugging away at it. Winning in BGs isn't a random event. While the proc of a certain ability is RNG-based, the entirety of the win/loss is not. It's based on the actions of the players involved.
As such, it's more likely that if you run into a losing streak, if you're like me, and not all that great at PVP, or if it's not as important to you as say raiding, you'll stop queuing. The number of wins will never equal the number of losses over time, so you'll have the perception that you "always lose".
A few weeks ago, I ran BGs for most of the 4 hours I played that day. It was a phenomenal run; I was 8 straight victories. The next day, no team I was on could get anything right, and I had 11 straight losses. The victory high I got from the one day didn't last more than a few hours, but the "FFS ALLIANCE BLOWS AT PVP" feeling from the next day colored my perceptions for days.
cygnus Jan 20th 2012 2:01PM
"Horde/Alliance sucks!"
"We never win this BG"
"Only baddies at this hour"
Losers happen to be very vocal about their loss, while winners just smirk and keep on. Both my alliance and horde chars have an average of 50-50 wins vs. loss, but if one were to believe the whinners one would think no one ever wins a BG; like, there's a 3rd faction pwning everyone everywhere.
cygnus Jan 20th 2012 2:03PM
"Horde/Alliance sucks!"
"We never win this BG"
"Only baddies at this hour"
Losers happen to be very vocal about their loss, while winners just smirk and keep on. Both my alliance and horde chars have an average of 50-50 wins vs. loss, but if one were to believe the whinners one would think no one ever wins a BG; like, there's a 3rd faction pwning everyone everywhere.
Kaphik Jan 20th 2012 5:18PM
I've found in my experience it's not the kids who are whining, it's the college age crowd (18-25) who seems to complain the most. Stop blaming kids already.
Aaron Jan 20th 2012 8:19PM
Real whiners don't wait until they've lost; during the last Isle of Conquest weekend, I frequently heard folks complaining right out of the gate because we didn't all rush for [Workshop/Hangar/Docks]. Their strategy was so obviously brilliant (though it generally consisted of nothing more than "30 TO HANGAR OR WE LOSE"), and we were all "bads" for going the other way. Then we'd have to listen to nonstop complaining until the match was over. If we lost, they'd be sure to get in a parting jab before leaving. If we won, they still complain that their way would have been faster, or that we only won because the other team was even dumber than us.
I even had one guy causing problems before the gate opened, because somebody dared to question his authority: "TO THE RANDOM SCRUB CHECKING OUT MY ONE DAY OLD ALT'S GEAR, STEP OFF".
mibu.work1 Jan 21st 2012 2:16AM
@ Kaphik
Seems to be a reasonable claim. However, I'm a college student and my comments are usually in the neighborhood of:
"I'm on D, any other D see if you can meet me at Iceblood pass and we'll hold 'em off there before retreating to Tower Point.'
'Okay, let's take BE and FR as usual, put a couple in the middle, then rush Mage Tower while they swarm in the middle.'
'Stealthers knock out their glaives after they take docks, and let's see which seige we get. Make sure somebody grabs refinery and quarry, god knows the allies aren't going to today.'
'I'm escorting FC, gonna need at least one healer there too. Everyone else, see if you can secure middle, and call incs.'
'Okay, I'm rushing LM, secure farm and BS, then we get to work on stables. Call incs whenever you see one.'
'Oh good god not strand of the ancients AGAIN! We never win here!'
Hate that place so much...
andrews Jan 21st 2012 7:16AM
I don't mind losing on either side. I HATE that I seem to lose with teams on both the horde side and alliance side when I play on my servers where I have those toons. I wish they were swapped around at least some of the time.
I could be the sole reason the team is losing, but I think it is far more than just me in someplace like Alterac Valley....
radix Jan 20th 2012 11:23AM
Q4Q
I'm looking for a machinima video that was featured on WoW Insider a while ago. It had a guy reciting a bizarre story about self-loathing and self-consumption. It had some arrakoa and probably some cockroaches in it. Does anyone have any idea where it went?