The Queue: All hail the banana slug
by Sarah Pine 
Sep 23rd 2013 at 3:00PM
The majestic banana slug, a giant yellow slug native to the redwood forests of northern California, also the celebrated mascot of UC Santa Cruz! I'm an alum of UC Berkeley myself, and often encountered banana slugs while trekking through woodland while on some project or other for my numerous environmental science classes. I never got tired of seeing them. They're pretty great.
Man. Now I'm all nostalgic for banana slugs.
RegulusX asked:
I stopped playing the game just before the end of Cataclysm, but have come back for 5.4. My question: how much time do people think we have before the next expansion? Wondering how much time I have to spend on alts and random things versus getting my main through all the MoP content.
The next expansion will likely be announced at BlizzCon in early November, which probably means that we're looking at a closed alpha in February at the earliest, with beta following a month or two later. Honestly, I'd be surprised if the next expansion dropped any earlier than July 2014, which is quite a ways away. Then again, I have heard rumors of a patch 5.5, so hopefully there won't be a crippling dry spell before we see some new content.
BradleyEvans asked:
Q4tQ and anyone else: If you had to pick 3 of the Warcraft books, which would you recommend? I just finished Jaina's story in Tides of War, and was looking for more lore type stuff.
The three WoW novels I'd recommend to a new Warcraft lore enthusiast are Rise of the Horde, The Last Guardian, and Of Blood and Honor. Those second two are available as part of the Warcraft Archive, which is also the only place you can get Of Blood and Honor.
I picked them because they are, in my opinion, some of the most enjoyable stories of all the WoW books, and also provide a lot of very pertinent historical information about Azeroth. Those three books, more than just about any others, will give a lot of context for understanding the histories of of Garrosh Hellscream and Varian Wrynn, two very important personalities right now.
BnDov3r asked:
Just out of curiosity, if the game would get a new class, what could it be? 1st, a few rules to it:
- uses Mail armor
- Hybrid class, Tank, Healing and DPS (ranged and/or melee, your pick)
- Hero Class, all races could roll one, would start at lv55, same as DKs.
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When teams queue into arenas their gear is tuned down to 496. With all of us getting gear that is 522 ilvl what happens to the Grievous stats?
As a few commenters pointed out, Grievous Gladiator gear is exempt from the stat scaling, and remains at ilevel 522 in PvP settings. All other gear is scaled down to 496 upon entering battlegrounds, rated battlegrounds, and arenas.