The Queue: The Age of Fire and Gravel
by Matthew Rossi 
Mar 1st 2012 at 11:00AM
Ignatius Donnelly wrote both Atlantis, the Antediluvian World and Ragnarok, the Age of Fire and Gravel. He was a proponent of woman's suffrage and a passionate populist politician, serving in the United States Congress and as lieutenant governor of Minnesota. He wrote books speculating on the future (to him, anyway) and who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. He was a fascinating, inquisitive, and slightly cracked mind. He's one of my favorite people and a personal hero and inspiration. And yes, a lot of what he wrote was wrong at best and completely deranged at worst, but that's why I like him. He also came up with some awesome names for The Queue when you end up writing it.
Why do I bring this up? Because I don't watch TV.
MikeLive asked:
What? Zandalari will be in Pandaria? When did this come about?
Well, Mike, as several of our commenters answered you yesterday, it does appear that there will be some kind of Zandalar presence in Mists. As you can see on the map accompanying this page, there's a place named Zandalari Isle at the top of the Pandaria map from BlizzCon 2011. Whether that is the actual home of the Zandalar tribe or just a territory they're staking out in Pandaria is yet to be seen.
Nicoro asked:
So, with the the new areas a No fly zone. is there a likely event that there will be Better Training for Ground mounts?
At present, no such announcement has been made. I expect there will be something like Cold Weather Flying available at level 90 once we've gone through the various Pandaria zones on foot, much the same as we did the first time we leveled through most of Northrend. I doubt highly Blizzard will make a faster ground mount speed, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.
Revynn asked:
Should I be worried about the future of raid design now that the Raid Finder has been implemented?
You're always welcome to worry about raid design or anything else you like, but having done Raid Finder, normal 25 and heroic 25 in Dragon Soul now, I think I can safely say that raid design itself is not something Blizzard seems to skimp on now. I do agree that it does seem likely it'll keep the paradigm of two tanks, six healers and 17 DPSers for RF groups, but already in normal/heroic mode, you see pretty sophisticated mechanics on fights and people doing things well beyond the complexity of the RF version.
Now, I saw in the thread that developed from Revynn's original question some discussion of 10-man difficulty. Frankly, I'm biased and find 10-man easier than 25-man, so I don't think I can address your statement properly. Since you're at around where I am in progression (except on 10s, whereas I'm on 25s), I can only say that I find 25s to be suitably difficult. Perhaps the issue is that RF will limit how much 10-man design can really innovate? It's much easier to scale up from RF 25s to normal/heroic 25s, but then trying to also do normal/heroic 10s might be too many variables and 10s will suffer for it. I really couldn't say. It's definitely worth watching for, however.
You95 asked:
If you had to choose one thing that Blizzard could never ever remove from WoW (whether it be a zone, class, concept, etc.) what would it be?
Warriors.
pdusen asked:
What ever happened to WoW Archivist?
Alex Ziebart, the man mostly responsible for the feature, is now our editor-in-chief. As a result, he's ludicrously busy and thus, the column is somewhat on the back burner.
No one at all asked:
Why are you so handsome?
I read a lot of weird books. I also wrote one, if you'd like to buy a copy. (Well, I wrote it whether or not you want to buy a copy, really.) Ask me some time about Charles Fort and the super-Sargasso in the sky.
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!ADAM
Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
Gorelord Mar 1st 2012 11:04AM
Will there be more incentive provided to do fishing dailies in MoP? I sure hope so...
Lipstick Mar 1st 2012 11:18AM
I really wish they'd create level appropriate fishing bags for fishing dailies the same way they do with dungeon finder groups at lower levels, that way they could actually you know put worthwhile rewards in fishing bags again, since it wouldn't maker lower level players over powered.
eel5pe Mar 1st 2012 11:30AM
Yeah one of the things I really liked in the old fishing dailies was the 1 in 100 (or so) chance that you could get that statue worth 250 gold. It would be nice to see the lottery-style rewards come back.
Noyou Mar 1st 2012 11:37AM
I'm kind of confused as to what could make a low level anglers overpowered? There is the fish finder book, the hat, 2 poles, a strand crawler, and a handful of potions. The poles you can't use until 300 fishing level. None of which do anything really of major impact. Even the Dalaran fishing dailies don't have much to make anyone over powered. The occasional Wrath "epic" gem perhaps? Which you can't use until around level 60.
Noyou Mar 1st 2012 11:40AM
@eel
They still have those in the Dalaran fishing ones. I just got the porcelain bell (100g) the other day.
Lipstick Mar 1st 2012 11:40AM
the rewards use to be worth money, which translated to money to burn on the AH I guess, or easy access for gold farmers... or something. I don't remember the official blue post, but there was some comment as to why the rewards in the bags changed so drastically from dalaran to the ones in major cities...
Noyou Mar 1st 2012 11:56AM
I think they are way too random to cause anyone to get rich off of. If they were worried about that not sure why they put Cata level drops in the junk boxes from pools off the shore on Darkmoon island. Those things have embersilk and cata level herbs/ore. Also a low level toon can make very decent gold just farming ore, herbs or skins. If that's why they changed the drops from the fishing loot bags, that seems silly to me.
Drakkenfyre Mar 1st 2012 12:35PM
The reason they scaled back the drops was this,
Level 70+: "Oh, an item worth 100g/250g, nice. Probably make up a repair bill or two, or pay for a few potions."
Level 10: "HOLY !@#$! 100G/250G!"
It was a little over-the-top for a low-level character. As the Dalaran ones required you to be at least level 70 to get them, the price was more appropriate for the level. It was a nice chunk of change. However, for 100g/250g for a level 10, it would be unbalanced, and would probably end up inflating markets a tiny bit as anyone could roll alts, level them to 10, and rotate thru them hoping to get the bag with the drop.
JattTheRogue Mar 1st 2012 6:55PM
@Drakkenfrye: In the amount of time it took to run the daily on 10 toons, you could easily make much more gold by simply farming or doing other things to make money than you would doing the fishing daily on the hopes of getting a 100/250g item. Pretty sure that's not going to inflate the economy.
Drakkenfyre Mar 1st 2012 8:58PM
Hence why I said a tiny bit.
It's less leveling a bunch of alts to 10, and more about being able to run them on any low-level alts you have. Multiply that by the entire server, and it might mess with it a tiny bit.
250g for a level 70+ is fine for an occasional surprise in a fishing daily. 250g for a level 10 is way the hell overboard.
Nina Katarina Mar 1st 2012 11:03AM
“We named him Dranosh. It means long-winded, er, Heart of Draenor in orcish…”
OK, so if Dranosh means “Heart of Draenor” I’m guessing that “Draenor” is the ‘Dran’ part, and ‘Heart’ is the ‘osh’ part. According to wowwiki, Grom’s full name, Grommash, means “Giant’s Heart”. I’m thinking that the ‘ash’ portion translates to ‘heart’.
So, what do we think “Garrosh” translates to? What is “Gar” in orcish?
Looking again at the wowwiki page, I see that there’s a wolf named “Gar’mak” in Agmar’s Hammer, whose name translates to “Anguish”. And there’s our favorite battle cry, “Lok’tar ogar!”, which translates to “Victory or Death”. “Lok’tar” on its own, used as a greeting, seems to translate to “Victory”.
So Garrosh translates to “Heart of Death”?
Malnore Mar 1st 2012 11:21AM
So Ash Ketchum would translate to heart of catching 'em all?
durandal Mar 1st 2012 11:23AM
Well, when we first met him in Nagrand, he didn't appear very deadly.
zfrazier929 Mar 1st 2012 11:24AM
I think it's "Heart of Garadar." Don't quote me on that, but it makes more sense considering his past.
Mr. Crow Mar 1st 2012 11:24AM
And here you have it folks: the beginnings of Orcish becoming a fully-fleshed out language, just like Klingon.
Nina Katarina Mar 1st 2012 11:26AM
When we first met him in Nagrand, Garrosh seemed to me like that sort of emo kid who dyes his hair black and constantly cuts himself while whining about how the world is so unfair. So yeah, the name sort of fits.
fudge Mar 1st 2012 11:27AM
Maybe, but you're probably overthinking this.
Taruun Mar 1st 2012 12:19PM
Wasn't the Garrosh short story titled "Heart of War"?
Jaq Mar 1st 2012 12:51PM
As far as I was concerned, Dranosh meant BONESTORMMMM!
The things you did to keep people interested during 25 man ICCs...
Angus Mar 1st 2012 2:59PM
Draenor means exiled. It is from the Draenei, the Exiled ones.
Orkish has a "word + osh" equal to "the heart of" + word. So yes. Heart of Death is probably right. Remember, his dad was Grom Hellscream. He's probably got a name that means something horrifying.