The Queue: Rolling the bones
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
I'm in the mood to answer some WoW Insider behind-the-scenes questions this week ... so I will. If you're curious about the inner workings of WoW Insider, feel free to ask your questions today -- what it's like to work here, the state of your favorite feature, whatever you'd like to ask. I can't answer everything, but I'll certainly try to answer what I can.
You're still welcome to ask normal questions, of course! I'll just be seeking out a few behind-the-scenes questions to answer, too.
Kar On E asked:
What do you suppose the common folk of Azeroth do for fun and entertainment? It doesn't seem like there's much for them to do outside of the Blue Recluse...
Likely, many of the same things people on Earth did in the middle ages. No, there was no television and no video games, but there's plenty to do. Dice is one of the oldest games in existence, so you'd see quite a bit of gambling. It wasn't always played with the six-sided die we see today -- it was often played with knucklebones from animals. Various forms of dice actually exist in-game as pieces of loot:
Azerothians would have board games, too -- not Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders, no, but games like chess and draughts (checkers in America) have been around for most of written history in one form or another. Chess, especially -- we actually play it in Karazhan! Backgammon is a solid 5,000 years old here on Earth, too, so Azerothians may certainly have a form of that.
Then there are sports. Football/soccer, golf, hockey, bowling, and cricket all existed in some form. In a European village in the middle ages, when there was no work to do, kids could get together and play a game of pickup soccer. Except their ball would be an inflated pig's bladder. Or a pig's stomach. Or a Norseman's decapitated head.
Don't underestimate how much fun these guys could have at a place like the Blue Recluse, either. There would be more to do than get drunk and barf in the gutters afterwards. The local inn, tavern or pub would be a bustling community hub. You'd go not only for food and drinks, but music, stories, and other small-scale performances as well.
Pretty normal stuff, really! Oh, and you can watch a game of Footbomb, where goblins kill each other with circular saws whilst riding giant robots. If you can't watch it in person, you could always listen to the play-by-play on your buzzbox.
Azerothians cheat.
antieuclid asked:
In raid finder, gear occasionally stays on the boss until the person who won it loots it manually. Why is this?
If you win a loot roll, you need to be in the same zone as the item to receive it. If you dropped group or ported out of the zone too quickly, the game can't give you the item -- you need to go back and get it. Alternatively, the player's inventory may have been full. The game only tries to give you the item once. If you had no room for the item, you need to make space and manually loot your spoils of war.
Cole asked:
After the Arthas was killed in WOTLK what happened to Tirion? He was the major lore character leading us to the death of Arthas. I know cataclysm did not deal with the Light at all and much more about the aspects but it was kind of weird how Tirion just fell off the map. He was such a powerful character lore-wise, considering the power the Ashbringer wields, you'd think he could help out when a giant fire breathing dragon of death tries to destroy all of Azeroth.
He's in the Western Plaguelands, repeatedly failing to foil a saboteur in his midst that your character discovers and executes in like 10 minutes.
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!
I'm in the mood to answer some WoW Insider behind-the-scenes questions this week ... so I will. If you're curious about the inner workings of WoW Insider, feel free to ask your questions today -- what it's like to work here, the state of your favorite feature, whatever you'd like to ask. I can't answer everything, but I'll certainly try to answer what I can.
You're still welcome to ask normal questions, of course! I'll just be seeking out a few behind-the-scenes questions to answer, too.
Kar On E asked:
What do you suppose the common folk of Azeroth do for fun and entertainment? It doesn't seem like there's much for them to do outside of the Blue Recluse...
Likely, many of the same things people on Earth did in the middle ages. No, there was no television and no video games, but there's plenty to do. Dice is one of the oldest games in existence, so you'd see quite a bit of gambling. It wasn't always played with the six-sided die we see today -- it was often played with knucklebones from animals. Various forms of dice actually exist in-game as pieces of loot:
Azerothians would have board games, too -- not Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders, no, but games like chess and draughts (checkers in America) have been around for most of written history in one form or another. Chess, especially -- we actually play it in Karazhan! Backgammon is a solid 5,000 years old here on Earth, too, so Azerothians may certainly have a form of that.
Then there are sports. Football/soccer, golf, hockey, bowling, and cricket all existed in some form. In a European village in the middle ages, when there was no work to do, kids could get together and play a game of pickup soccer. Except their ball would be an inflated pig's bladder. Or a pig's stomach. Or a Norseman's decapitated head.
Don't underestimate how much fun these guys could have at a place like the Blue Recluse, either. There would be more to do than get drunk and barf in the gutters afterwards. The local inn, tavern or pub would be a bustling community hub. You'd go not only for food and drinks, but music, stories, and other small-scale performances as well.
Pretty normal stuff, really! Oh, and you can watch a game of Footbomb, where goblins kill each other with circular saws whilst riding giant robots. If you can't watch it in person, you could always listen to the play-by-play on your buzzbox.
Azerothians cheat.
antieuclid asked:
In raid finder, gear occasionally stays on the boss until the person who won it loots it manually. Why is this?
If you win a loot roll, you need to be in the same zone as the item to receive it. If you dropped group or ported out of the zone too quickly, the game can't give you the item -- you need to go back and get it. Alternatively, the player's inventory may have been full. The game only tries to give you the item once. If you had no room for the item, you need to make space and manually loot your spoils of war.
Cole asked:
After the Arthas was killed in WOTLK what happened to Tirion? He was the major lore character leading us to the death of Arthas. I know cataclysm did not deal with the Light at all and much more about the aspects but it was kind of weird how Tirion just fell off the map. He was such a powerful character lore-wise, considering the power the Ashbringer wields, you'd think he could help out when a giant fire breathing dragon of death tries to destroy all of Azeroth.
He's in the Western Plaguelands, repeatedly failing to foil a saboteur in his midst that your character discovers and executes in like 10 minutes.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue







Reader Comments (Page 1 of 9)
ejunk Jan 30th 2012 11:04AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farkle
you're welcome.
loop_not_defined Jan 30th 2012 11:06AM
Does WoW Insider feature a system similar to transmogrification? So like, if it's cold out, you can put on the dirty old hoody buried in the back of the closet, but then transmog it with your favorite denim jacket without getting too cold.
Ilmyrn Jan 30th 2012 11:07AM
Poor Tirion. He was so cool for so long, only to ruin his entire reputation with a poorly planned Tournament (seriously, you didn't even CHECK for Scourge infestation beneath your stadium?) that lasted waaay too long.
And of course the guy forgets to equip his PVP trinket for ONE fight and suddenly he's lost all the respect he'd so carefully garnered over years of sitting in the Plaguelands with his horse.
Saltypoison Jan 30th 2012 11:16AM
Its even worse because it's his racial! He doesn't even need the trinket. Oh Tirion... so fail.
loop_not_defined Jan 30th 2012 11:32AM
Well, some boss abilities do trump trinkets. Off the top of my head, Queen Azshara's two domination abilities can't be escaped.
Also, Lich King on unholy ground > Tirion on unholy ground, by quite a bit.
/overanalyze {joke}
(cutaia) Jan 30th 2012 11:35AM
Every time I get ice blocked on Hagara, I end up blowing my racial to try and get out. Obviously, it never works, but I just keep holding out hope for some reason.
Someone play Journey for me...
Gordal Jan 30th 2012 11:41AM
Heh, I like to annoy party members by using Master's Call on them on snares that can't be broken by it.
This is of course when I'm not using MC for it's true purpose; namely getting my pet closer to a certain target when Dash and Charge are on cooldown.
Caden Reigns Jan 30th 2012 11:58AM
Tirion was never cool. He spent vanilla and bc hiding in a cave, then spent wrath being a douche. Every accomplishment in wrath he and the argent losers take credit for was really the doing of the players and the Ebon Blade. he could have killed arthass when his heart was out in the open, but blew that and had to be saved by the EB. When the argent's first base in icecrown was under siege, it was the EB who killed the leaders of the seige. The only thing the argents accomplished was fighting a never ending war against some worthless trolls that didnt aid the story at all and giving us a bunch of dailies no one liked.
All Tirion amounts too is a name with some followers slightly less fanatical than the Scarlets, who kill steals and goes against peoples dying wishes.
Tender Burntfuse Jan 30th 2012 12:40PM
"Kay guys we can pull now, I just got my sandwich outta the Microwa- -
Oh Jeez, He One SHotted Everyone! and with Such Little Health Left.
Time to Reap in the Glory Old chum."
BY THE LIGHT!
?hand of freedom
Srsly. Tirion, Trinket AND Racial AND several Paladin Powers.... Golly.
loop_not_defined Jan 30th 2012 12:47PM
You kick around the Argent Crusade because the real power was the Ebon Blade and players...but you realize most of the Ebon Blade work was done by players as well, right? o_O
Welcome to MMOs. You'll be doing most of the heavy lifting for just about everybody...which makes sense, because it'd be completely boring otherwise.
Grovinofdarkhour Jan 30th 2012 12:48PM
For those of us who didn't play the earlier Warcraft games, the only Tirion we've ever known was the old guy showing he's still "got it", but since we weren't there during his "real" glory days, it's hard to assess exactly what it is he's still got. It's like if the only Rocky movie you ever saw was the one where he came out of retirement to teach Tommy Gunn a lesson.
cygnus Jan 30th 2012 10:08PM
Don't worry Tirion Fordring doesn't feature in any RTS, not as a major character at least. His story is told in Chris Metzen's "Of Blood and Honor" a short story about this alliance hero whose past deeds (yeah, you don't even see his best years here either) gave him an influential position, after the second war (just before Thrall's new Horde). He meets this cool orc, Etrigg, and the story develops.
The only reference of his heroic battles against the 'old horde' is recorded in the comic 'Ashbringer', where he appears in battle with Alexandros Mograine.
Jeff Jan 30th 2012 11:11AM
Worth pointing out that sometimes loot just plain doesn't get put in bags, as well. Morchok is notorious for this, and last night it happened with a pair of shoulders my Hunter won off Beth'tilac - no zoning out, no dropping group, no full bags, nothing. So, it's by no means limited to LFR, either.
loli.gigis Jan 30th 2012 11:16AM
I have to confirm this, Morchok in RF never seems to actually auto give loot. I have always had to actually loot the item off of him to the point that I wait until I know if I have won something to even go on my way.
edeesis Jan 30th 2012 11:29AM
Also, when it's a chest, and someone is currently looting it (like on Madness Deathwing), it won't be looted.
edeesis Jan 30th 2012 11:30AM
It also doesn't happen when someone is looting a chest (like on Madness).
Wilk Jan 30th 2012 11:32AM
The issue with the first three bosses of the first half of RF is that there appears to be a maximum distance you can be from the boss for the loot to automatically go into your inventory. This distance is exceeded when you go from the corpse of one boss to the rooms of Yor'Shaj or Zon'ozz, or take a drake up to the top of the Temple.
Faith Trust Jan 30th 2012 11:34AM
My guess is someone "looted" the boss but without autoloot enabled, so it would prompt the roll but not the distribute stuff to bags, so if you win the roll you have to manually loot it to get the distribution going on.
danny.stout723 Jan 30th 2012 12:00PM
My best guess, and it's just a guess, is that it's a client/server issue where someone is interacting with the corpse when the item is being auto-looted so it generates a hidden "that object is busy" error. As for Morchok, he's the only boss you defeat and go past instead of turning around or interacting with an NPC. So it seems likely that more people would click on him.
danny.stout723 Jan 30th 2012 12:03PM
My best guess, and it's just a guess, is that it's a client/server issue where someone is interacting with the corpse when the item is being auto-looted so it generates a hidden "that object is busy" error. As for Morchok, he's the only boss you defeat and go past instead of turning around or interacting with an NPC. So it seems likely that more people would click on him.