Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host today.

I still want the frog.

hystrico asked:

any word on recipes in MoP? Like, should I be stocking up on Chef's Awards?

I had an issue with the original removal of the limit on Chef's Awards because of just this question. Obviously we have no idea how the new recipes and stuff will work for new dailies and all that, but one of the reasons I liked the limit on how many awards you could store up was because it kept that currency artificially deflated. When Blizzard removed that limit, everyone stocked up on Chef's Awards, so how do you fairly price new recipes with that currency? Who do you design for -- the guy who saved up 2,000 Chef's Awards or the guy who didn't? Which is fair?

Personally, I'd like to see Blizzard reinstate the limit, making one currency for each profession's dailies and recipe purchases and simplifying the whole thing once and for all. Hoarding tokens isn't fun, just like hoarding points isn't fun. Well, it's kind of fun.

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I'm not kidding you guys. Seriously. I was doing archaeology the other day, flying around happily on the new Heart of the Aspects, listening to some music, when the most amazing thing happened. After solving for a Castle of Sand, I began my tol'vir archaeology ritual of pressing the solve button, closing my eyes, turning around and running out of the room. When I return, hopefully a rare tol'vir artifact will be waiting for me to obsess over.

This phenomenon known as the tol'vir rare find is an anomaly. Two quickly made their appearance for me, then vanished, forever leaving me to a storeroom full of Canopic Jars and Sketches of Desert Palaces. It's getting quite full in there. But not this faithful day. This day would be different.

Finally, the impossible happened -- another tol'vir rare. I'm freaking out, man. It's the monkey paw! And the worst part about this blessed miracle is that I can't go to sleep until I solve it.

Have you ever experienced the pain of the double-edged sword in World of Warcraft? Have you ever been the victim of something lucky that turned into an obsession?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

When it comes to information, Blizzard is pretty tight-lipped. The only things we know about the Mists of Pandaria pandaren racial mount is that it hasn't been decided on yet publicly. Internally, I would wager, there are thousands upon thousands of pandaren riding atop their noble steeds ... whatever steed that may be.

While we still don't know exactly what the pandaren mount is going to be, that has not stopped the internet from speculating. Malchome over at mmo-report.com thinks that the pandaren mount should be a keg cart pulled by some sort of mule or yak. Epic versions could be more intricate, much like the goblin trikes gain complexity as their quality increases. There is a wonderful little mock-up drawing of the keg cart in the post as well. I love the idea as a mount in general, not even just for pandaren, especially with the Brewfest connection.

Personally, I believe the pandaren mount is going to be some sort of frog or amphibian. We don't have many of those types of creatures as mounts in WoW, and it gives the artists a chance to do some really cool ornamental graphics on some sort of creature. There is a Chinese symbol for prosperity called the Chan Chu, a three-legged frog creature that carries a coin in its mouth, that could be adopted to be the pandaren mount. Giant Chan Chu frogs might share the land with the pandaren, much like the kodo beasts roam the plains of Mulgore with the tauren.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter.

While I was doing archaeology the other day (Is this seriously all I do anymore? What have I become?), pieces of my UI became apparently ... messy. I didn't like the feeling. Something felt off, weird, crazy, or ready to blow. While many people lauded archaeology addons, I only scoffed. Now, I feel like I might need one or two.

This week's reader submission is from Deadpool, a worgen hunter with a knack for stylish looks and stylish UIs. His setup is simple and has a decent amount of empty space and buffer room, which puts me in a happy place. I like relaxed UIs. More isn't always better, especially in a game like WoW where the most complex the task usually has a super-simple answer.

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Filed under: Add-Ons, Reader UI of the Week

Cross-realm RealID raiding has taken World of Warcraft by storm ever since the ability to enter old raids with RealID friends was introduced in patch 4.3.2. Fearing the end of server communities and the collapse of civilization, players were instead greeted with a quickly mobilizing mass of players on Twitter, Reddit, and other social media to form cross-server communities for raiding. Without server boundaries, these groups can recruit from a larger pool and have more time flexibility. BattleTags will make this all easier.

Over the last few weeks, many cross-realm raiding websites and resources have popped up. If you're looking to get into a cross-realm raid, here's a handy list of many places out there that are putting together old raids without the hindrance of those pesky servers.

• Twitterland Raiding http://twitterlandraiding.com/
• LFRaid.com www.lfraid.com
• Cross Raid www.cross-raid.com
• OpenRaid US http://www.openraid.us/
• OpenRaid EU http://www.openraid.eu/

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Filed under: Raiding, Cataclysm

In Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches, bosses, leaders, and powerful figures of World of Warcraft face off in the squared circle. Your vote determines who wins and claims the season title.

Archbishop Benedictus, just get out. Leave. I just checked the votes, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Murozond, the corrupted and tainted aspect of time and leader of the Infinite Dragonflight, utterly stomped Benedictus by over 2,100 votes. Was it because Benedictus was so unpopular or because of an emerging crowd favorite in Murozond? Only time will tell.

This week's matchup features the final raid boss of this season, Hagara Stormbinder, going head-to-head against the Well of Eternity's Queen Azshara. This matchup seems like it will prove to be very interesting, as each encounters' mechanics are so robust and varied. Hagara's environmental attacks and movement will be a big factor when paired against Azshara's adds and puppermaster abilities. The ultimate decision, however, is up to you.

Who wins this week's battle on Two Bosses Enter?

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Filed under: Two Bosses Enter

Seven years is a long time to be alive in the video game world. When you talk about games you played for seven years, you usually talk about WoW, Mario Kart, Goldeneye 64, and EverQuest. One thing that I have always felt was missing from Blizzard that synced up with one of my fondest memories of the MMO genre was a yearly loyalty program with rewards for all players to partake in. We get this somewhat during the Winterveil holiday with each year's exclusive gift, but I'm talking about a totally different type of loyalty reward scheme.

One of my fondest memories of any MMO ever was receiving my Ultima Online veteran rewards after a few years of play. While I can't remember the specifics of the transactions, either I was gifted my loyalty rewards or I got to choose based on seniority (it's been a long time, holy moly), but I went home with some cool items. The coolest of the bunch was a black dye tub, an item that had unlimited uses and could change any dyeable clothing item the darkest shade of black in the game. These black dye tubs were very rare and made for great items to sell at high prices down the line when they slowly became more and more rare. Maybe if you're good, I'll tell you about the time that I stole a black dye tub in the middle of Vesper bank -- I hope the four of you who thought that was impressive are smiling to yourselves.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

I had a moment of pure nostalgia last night when I remembered what is quite possibly my favorite World of Warcraft memory of all time. Back when the game originally released (probably that very night, knowing us back in college), our adventurous little Horde band hit the Wailing Caverns, level-appropriate and everything. After killing approximately 9 billion Deviate Raptors and getting lost in the caverns for over an hour, we finally made it to the dreaded Wailing Caverns jump.

You know the jump. Right next to the waterfall about two floors up on the "right" side of the instance. It's easier to get to now that Wailing Caverns has essentially been cut in twain. You can still go to the jump and miserably fail like Gorgomite did.

Gorgomite has long since quit WoW, but he was my first guild master and good friend. We played Dark Age of Camelot together, and with the built-in guild community we created in other games, moved over to WoW. That fateful night, Gorgomite could not make it over the Wailing Caverns jump. Try as he might, he just couldn't make it. Lag? Maybe. Crappy laptop wouldn't let him jump at the right time? Most likely. We all laughed for a good 30 to 45 minutes figuring out how to get him over that jump. It was the best.

How many of you fell because of the Wailing Caverns jump? Be honest. I can tell who is lying.

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host today.

After complaining about archaeology never paying off and being a dumb, boring grind, I randomed three new rares, bringing me up to 19 out of 20 rares for my Professor title. Talk about a lucky change of fortune. This is where the trendy people would put something like #humblebrag, but we only put that in our tags.

Nobar asked:

Any idea if Blizzard ever will implement a native linux client? I know that we have workarounds but i'd prefer a native one.

It is unlikely that World of Warcraft will get a native Linux client release. The numbers are just not there, most likely, and the development time for such a project could potentially be astronomic. Commenter JKWood made the point that the new 64-bit WoW client works very well with Wine 1.4-rc4 for Linux in a WoW64 setup, so that sounds like something you might want to try if your Linux WoW install isn't performing as optimally as you'd like. Maybe we can draw some attention to the subject matter here and get a discussion going in the comments, and you might even want to try the official support forums.

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Filed under: The Queue

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Defense of the Ancients is a genre all unique to itself. Sure, the concepts are not brand new and the bulk of the original game was created using the Warcraft III World Editor, but the lasting appeal and standing reverence of the DotA genre continues today and shows no sign of slowing down. Part tower defense, part real-time strategy unit movement, this game type has experienced astounding growth all over the world over the last decade. As the genre grows, Defense of the Ancients-style games, or MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arenas), or ARTS (action real-time strategy), or... wait... what are we calling this genre?

My initial reaction to the entire naming fiasco was wonderfully summed up by Joystiq's own JC Fletcher: "Which giant company has the rights to the fan-created, community-promoted word 'Dota?'" He's right to be cynical -- justice will be meted out over a word that was born in the Blizzard maps community because of the actions of two super-huge gaming companies. That's not all there is to the story, however.

Therein lies the crux of the hot topic of the day -- Blizzard has finally thrown in its opposition of Valve's attempt to trademark the name Dota for its upcoming release of DOTA 2, a literal successor to the original DotA throne. The problem is that there are a whole bunch more facts, people, and anecdotes in this story than most people know.

I wrote a short post on the Dota trademark issue a few days ago that served as the basic of basics, what the news was about. Here's the short version: Valve is attempting to trademark a name that many gamers (and companies) consider to be a general term for the genre rather than the proper name for the game that spawned the genre. Hell, it could be both.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Lawbringer