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
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The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 news






Reader Comments (Page 9 of 9)
Noyou Jan 30th 2012 6:48PM
I often wondered that myself in BGs. I always assumed people who capped things/defended towers etc. got more honor. I wish they kept the bonuses for winning/daily BGs out of it and only put out the total for the BG itself. Further- if they listed totals for capping/defending it might actually give people more incentive to do so, rather then fight out in the middle of the road/field etc. In fact, I think I will jump on the forum and express those thoughts.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/30/blizzard-forums-mvp-calls-fellow-pvpers-to-arms/#comments
D Jan 30th 2012 6:45PM
That one was probably not my first one of the day. Didn't think of that. However, that is just one example. It seems to be odd like that alot. Just wish I knew how it was all calculated for my OCD. Thanks
D Jan 30th 2012 7:03PM
@Noyou
Feel free to link that screenie over there and reference if you want.
Luke Jan 31st 2012 7:55AM
You would hope people completing objectives get more honor but sadly in many battlegrounds grinding kills is still the best way. Also to mention if those individuals are farming kills at flags they are getting even more honor. The latter is less likely however as most kill grinds take place mid field as they do in WSG or at graveyards and starter zones (behind the gates if we're speaking of Arathi).
D Jan 31st 2012 9:34AM
@Luke
Yea I thought of that, but in that BG I had the second highest (by 1) HK's.
(cutaia) Jan 30th 2012 4:19PM
"I'm going out on a limb here and say that what is really wrong with the internet is self important asshats that post long, meandering journals pining for their ex-girlfriends in red text on a black background. #yourpoorwife"
Haha...my comment about a stupid meme led you to Google me, spend the next 15 minutes browsing my website, then 3 hours later -- because you just couldn't get me out of your mind -- to come back just to make sure I knew you did so? You're super stable, dude.
jfofla Jan 30th 2012 4:29PM
I won loot off DS on my Mage, I did not leave the area, my bags were nowhere near full. Yet twice it gave the message my bags were full and left the loot on the boss.
Ez Jan 30th 2012 5:10PM
Send in a ticket. Also make a screenie of the chat window for proof. A GM will send it to you.
Duerma Jan 30th 2012 6:09PM
Here's 2 related Q4tQ (apologies if it's been asked before, and I hope it's not too late in the day):
1) What ilevel should I have to tank the new heroics and Raid finder? Saying "whenever you are able to queue up" is misleading because my DPS gear is quite a bit better and I'm able to queue with it sitting in my bag - and if you are able to queue, it doesn't tell you the min ilevel to compare with gear of a different spec.
2)How do I practice tanking if I don't have friends to run with? Now that they lumped all the instances together, I can't just queue for lower heroics that I know I outgear - I'm more likely to end up in one of the new ones that I'm not sure I can tank yet. Should I queue for non-heroics, or whore myself out to new 85s in Trade chat - "fast queue times if you let me practice with you!"
Thanks - I'm so scared of being THAT GUY who everyone kicks right away because I get squished too quickly and have no idea what I'm doing. >.
D Jan 30th 2012 7:23PM
The new ones are actually quite a bit easier to be honest. If you have done your research on your spec, reforged, gemmed and enchanted properly, you should be OK. I took my alt pally in at ~ilvl 355 and he was fine. Just let the group know your still new to it and they should be fine with it. If they aren't, oh well you don't want to play with people like that anyway. On that though, "whore"ing out in trade might not be a bad idea as long as the group knows what its all about.
Pyromelter Jan 30th 2012 8:03PM
Here is my question for the inner machinations of Wow Insider:
Why is there never any 1.5 star ranking on comments? You can have .5, 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0, but never any 1.5. It's like this on massively and joystiq too. Any reason why that is?
Robert Jan 30th 2012 8:25PM
Hi Alex,
Can you describe some of the people that work at WoWInsider? What are they like outside of their columns? Not people like Fox Van Allen, we all know what he's like, but maybe some of the more behind the scenes type people.
Fox Van Allen Jan 30th 2012 8:40PM
DO YOU NOW
DO YOU REALLY
Drahken Jan 30th 2012 9:11PM
@charlesbox
I run the older ones specifically for the treatise. Lately, I've been doing Vortex Pinnacle (first and last boss supposedly drop it), Lost City (first and third boss), and just the first boss of Grim Batol every day on two toons. That's 10 potential drops a day.
Luke Jan 30th 2012 10:53PM
Here's a behind the scenes question for the Queue.
Do the site moderators pay attention to the comment voting system? More specifically are the IPs associated with votes (up and down) monitored? Do the site administrators ever reset a comments status?
I ask this for a few reasons, I'll see posts on obscure articles shoot up to "blue" rather rapidly on posts that are a few days old. And some comments will go from being blacked out to visible within moments. It's all rather strange to watch.
On a different note when will the system be changed? It's annoying to have to highlight the text of down-rated comments just so I can see why it's been down-voted into oblivion, and I'm guessing anyone checking the site from a mobile phone will find this absolutely impossible. So the system itself seems in need of changing because it does get misused.
In many cases it seems as though differing opinions can be very quickly silenced because of this, whether those opinions are being expressed politely or not. The only time a comment should be blacked out is if it's an advertisement, completely off topic, factually wrong (provable by source) or some form of abuse.
If the comment system and the up and down voting is meant to be a means of expressing opinion on a comment then the fact that comments get blacked out seems counter intuitive and broken. Essentially a small amount of people can silence differing opinion while promoting their own.
Arrohon Jan 31st 2012 6:25AM
I personally can't even see comments on my phone. The comments section won't even appear on the mobile version, and it'll only let me visit the homepage as non-mobile. It makes reading The Queue a bit less entertaining on my crappy phone (I'm sure that it works on phones that don't have a half-assed browser... damn Sprint Incognito).
r.haynie442 Jan 30th 2012 11:10PM
Hmm... On the games thing, one obvious probability was omitted...
Cards.
the Darkmoon Faire pretty much establishes that cards exist-- in suits and rank. One can only suppose that non-magical versions of decks are out there, used for various card games.... most likely games such as (or similar to) Hearts, Whist, and the like. Poker is a more recent development, IIRC, and may not be there... but games similar to Old Maid and Go Fish probably are.
Ganrokh81 Jan 31st 2012 12:33AM
At Blizzcon, Metzen said that the term that best describes Pandaria is "Love of Life". If that's true, then why can't Pandaren be Druids?
Cbeefman Jan 31st 2012 9:21AM
quick question, hopefully i get this in before the next article is written
with the patch coming today, and the new "cross realm raids via realID" feature, does this mean we can now do FIRELANDS this way? All the notes say is "old raids" and "not dragon soul". Is FL considered "old" yet because that will help my guild not have to pug each week
drows24 Jan 31st 2012 10:25AM
Q4tQ:
Seem the latest patch was quite big (1.2 GB from what I saw).
What in the last patch justify that ?