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The Queue: This is Bashiok's fault

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is recovering from the plague. No, not the Plague of Undeath, although that might be kind of cool in retrospect.

The above video is what I get when I ask CM's for video suggestions on Twitter. Thank you Bashiok. I ... think.

yoojine asked:

I hate, hate, hate leveling and questing. As a result, I've got a bunch of alts sitting at 85 and only my main at 90. What is the absolute fastest way to level my poor, neglected alts in Pandaland? Are there any xp buffs I should be aware of? Do heirlooms work at this level?

Well the XP required to level from 85-90 will be dropped a bit on Tuesday, so there's that to look forward to. Heirlooms, unfortunately, don't work. The Darkmoon Faire offers an XP buff if you go ride the carousel, but that's once a month. I'd suggest just taking your time, making sure you've got rested XP when you're leveling, and when you run out of rested, park that alt in an inn for a bit, and switch to another. Questing is one of the easiest ways to level, but if that's not your thing, you can always just queue up for mass dungeon runs, or even do some pet battling, if that sounds like fun. Good luck!

drorraz asked:

Q4tQ: What happens to Sahn Tidehunter in 5.3? (his lake is gone because of the horde digging)

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Filed under: The Queue

The Queue: Who do you call

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is recovering from the plague. No, not the Plague of Undeath, although that might be kind of cool in retrospect.

I used to watch this cartoon religiously when I was a kid. Earlier this week, I took a good look at it for what it was: A group of miniature wild animals living in a city park with t-shirts that somehow changed color and gave them the power to fight crime. ... man I don't even know. But the kangaroo in the video up there? You might recognize her voice -- that's Nancy Cartwright, who also does the voice for Bart Simpson.

@_Vsmit asked via Twitter:

In Naxx, why does Thaddeus yell that we're too late, and he must obey? Did I miss something somewhere?

Ooo, this is a good question. Thaddius was supposedly built from the flesh of women and children -- their souls are fused together inside of him. If you listen to the ambient noise when you're in Naxxramas, you can randomly hear the screams of these people crying for help. Once you've killed Thaddius, the screams stop.

Basically, the screaming is the souls of the damned bound inside of Thaddius, hoping you'll come to rescue them. That intro quote is telling you that you're too late to save them all -- that's also why he thanks you when he dies.

Gross, huh?

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Filed under: The Queue

The Queue: My World of Warcraft and 151 nations

The Queue My World of Warcraft and 151 nations
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

There's no end to the number of people who will tell you how to play this game. None. Even here, despite having a large audience of varying playstyles, we can let things slip through about the only way to do things.

You must raid to experience WoW, you must PvP, you must level your pets from 1-25 to be any sort of serious pet battler.

But you know what?

We're all full of a bunch of hot air. At the end of the day all we're able to do is give you what we think is the most fun way to enjoy WoW based on our experiences. The same goes for Ghostcrawler, Zarhym, Neth, Bashiok, etc... All they can do is tell you how they enjoy it, how they experience it. At the end of the day WoW is a highly personal experience, one that humanity hasn't had before. It's an entire virtual world, whose population would be the 91st largest country in the world (down from 74). Let that put the subscriber drop in perspective for you.

There are 151 real life nations that are smaller than WoW. And none of that matters, because it's your World of Warcraft. As in the rest of your life, make of it what you will.

Paul asked:

The latest scuttlebutt reported on the idea of a WoW film was that the project is in danger of being scrapped (yellow/red lighted) in the wake of the latest game news. It'll probably depend on what the future news is, but even the devs indicated they expect the population to continue declining over the next year; we'll probably never see a WoW film come to light.

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Filed under: The Queue

Your PvP Questions: Spell announcers, MMR and patch 5.3

Your PvP Questions
It's been a little while since I last did a PvP mailbag, and the emails have been piling up! So, if you have PvP questions, do drop me a line, I will do my best to respond to them, possibly in columns such as this one, or if I can fire off a quick email I will. Do note that I'm far from a PvP specialist in all the classes in WoW, and PvP questions which are class-specific would probably be better directed to the relevant class columnist.

Janrana wrote:

Hi Olivia, since reading about it a while back in one of your columns I've been a big fan of SpellAlerter, but it doesn't seem to have had any updates in a long while and is a bit broken for me. It doesn't seem to have all the spells any more and it also causes some errors to appear when it's on. Do you know of any alternative?

As it happens, I do! First and foremost SpellAlerter is alive and well... ish. It was updated for patch 5.1, but hasn't had any further updates since then. It still works at least fairly well, but I wouldn't rely on it completely. At least, it still allows you to set up custom alerts, so if there are spells it's missing you can add them in.

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Filed under: PvP, Blood Sport (Arena PvP)

Should you play a druid in WoW?

Should you play a druid in WoW
Just getting started in World of Warcraft and not sure what you want to do? Or maybe you've been playing for a while but aren't sure which class you like best. We're here to help by taking a look at what each class can do and leading you to the right one. Today, we're talking druids.

Druids harness the powers of nature to help their friends or harm their foes. They wield can wield magic to harm like a mage or heal like a priest and can shapeshift into animal forms to dive into melee fighting. Like the monk and paladin, druids are a hybrid class that can fill any role in the game they wish: if you play a druid, you have the flexibility to do whatever you please. But are you up to the task of wielding the raw elemental power of nature? We'll take a look at just what druids can do and try to decide if it's the right class for you.

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Filed under: Druid, WoW Rookie

Know Your Lore: Of Wolves and Mages

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

You probably don't know who Ur was, and even if you do, you don't know much about him because there's not much to know. We know the following - Ur was a mage who lived in Dalaran before the coming of the Scourge to the Eastern Kingdoms, who apparently died during the invasion Arthas led to retrieve the Book of Medivh so that Kel'Thuzad could use it to summon Archimonde the Defiler. It's possible that Ur, being a remarkably skilled and knowledgeable wizard, was one of the three archmages slain by Arthas while maintaining auras that protected Dalaran from the undead.

What's interesting about Ur isn't what he himself actually did, however, but what was done with the work he left behind. Ur was the author of two tomes (that we know of), The Book of Ur and Ur's Treatise on Shadow Magic. Ur's knowledge of other planes of existence was significant, if faulty - while in practical terms his understanding was great enough that it was possible for Archmage Arugal of Silverpine to use the Book of Ur to summon worgen forth from their prison in the Emerald Dream, it's notable that Ur didn't actually understand what the worgen really were, or what druid magic was - he simply saw the worgen as monsters from another world. Still, without Ur, it is unlikely that Arugal would have been able to bring forth the worgen he did.

Amazingly, despite knowing nothing of druidism and only having a hazy understanding of the worgen origin Ur's research allowed Arugal to pull Alpha Prime and other ancient members of the Druids of the Scythe to Azeroth. Considering it was Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage who placed Ralaar Fangfire and the other druids who'd helped create the Scythe of Elune under Daral'nir (the great tree in the Emerald Dream for which Tal'Doren is a mirror) in the first place, the fact that Arugal managed to draw them forth is astonishing. Yet manage it he did, with Ur's book.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Know your Lore

Reader UI of the Week: We've come a long way, baby

A little while back, I put out the call for UIs with a bit of history, a bit of evolution to them. I love seeing how my UI has evolved over the years, starting off with the basic Blizzard UI, until I realised that I could tinker with the overall scale, and then began adding unit frame addons, then action bar addons, castbar addons, and the whole thing got completely out of hand and escalated to the point where I started writing addon and UI columns for WoW Insider! And it's always interesting to see how others' UIs have developed, too.

Today, we're delving into the past and present of Alphabot's UI. He's sent over several pictures, of both his current UI and his UIs past. So here, in chronological order, are UI shots one, two, three, four and five, and his current UI out of combat, in combat, and with everything on -- in test mode, so to speak. Let's move into Alphabot's email.

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Filed under: Reader UI of the Week

Officers' Quarters: The new burnout

Item upgrade guy
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

Mists has delivered new content faster than any WoW expansion to date. The days of waiting six months, eight months, or more between major patches seem like a bad memory now. With patch 5.3 likely to drop in the next few weeks, that will mean we've had an average of one patch about every three months in the wake of 5.0.

In years past, officers had to steel their guild for long lulls, which always seemed to land in summertime. They had to make backup plans to account for long absences from players who just couldn't stand to run the same raid one more time. Guilds who couldn't find replacements sometimes found themselves closing shop instead.

In 2013, that age seems far behind us. However, the accelerated content has brought with it a new kind of burnout instead, and it's one that officers and raid leaders should keep in mind as we move deeper into Mists.

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Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Know Your Lore, Tinfoil Hat Edition: The Curse of Flesh

Know Your Lore, Tinfoil Hat Edition The Curse of Flesh
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.
Abedneum: Accessing. In the early stages of its development cycle Azeroth suffered infection by parasitic, necrophotic symbiotes. Designation: Old Gods. Old Gods rendered all systems, including Earthen defenseless in order to facilitate assimilation. This matrix destabilization has been termed the Curse of Flesh. Effects of destabilization increased over time.
Brann Bronzebeard yells: Old Gods eh? So they zapped the Earthen with this Curse of Flesh. And then what?
Kaddrak: Accessing. Creators arrived to extirpate symbiotic infection. Assessment revealed that Old God infestation had grown malignant. Excising parasites would result in loss of host--
The early days of Azeroth's creation are a puzzle that has yet to be completely solved. The issue of Azeroth's creation lies in the order of events as they've been presented; we have two very different orders of events depending on where you're looking for reference. In one, the Titans arrived on Azeroth to find the Old Gods, put the world in order, then left for parts unknown. In another, it's implied that the Titans arrived, put the world to order, and left. At some point after this, the Old Gods arrived and wreaked havoc, prompting the return of the Titans and the imprisonment of the Old Gods.

So ... which one is correct? Well, there's an interesting part in the middle of all of this that can be used to try and unravel that particular puzzle. It's called the Curse of Flesh, and its shaped far more of Azeroth as we know it today than you'd think.

Today's Know Your Lore is a Tinfoil Hat edition, meaning the following is a look into what has gone before with pure speculation on what is to come as a result. These speculations are merely theories and shouldn't be taken as fact or official lore.

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Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

The Queue: No, seriously

The Queue No, seriously
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

I've been a pretty vocal critic of Diablo 3 in the past, and it still has its issues, but with the latest patch this game is insanely fun to play in Inferno. On Monster Power 1 or higher, the monster density is really high, especially in act 1, and it's an absolute blast to play through with others.

DanielHudson asked:

Still not following how Goblins can wield the Light. Wielders are supposed to be selfless from what I can tell. Goblins are the complete opposite, greedy little buggers.

You're probably thinking of paladins. Priests require discipline and force of will, not selflessness, to wield the light. Goblins are generally devoted to the almighty gold piece, so if the Light can help them get it, well, of course they'll use it. Light is money, friend!

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Filed under: The Queue

The Queue: The most adorable sound in the world

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) used to have a squeaky toy that made that exact noise.

I don't even know how it makes that sound. All I know is that it is the most adorable sound ever.

akionite asked:

Q4tQ: There's something I've always wondered when talk about subscription losses comes up. Does that count players who buy their game time on online store or with time cards? I shut down my renewing subscription a while ago since I just didn't like the idea of being automatically charged each month, and usually play on and off each month or when a new patch comes out.

It's pretty much anyone who has an active account with time on it. Doesn't matter if you use the prepaid cards to pay, or a credit card -- as long as it's an active account, it counts.

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Filed under: The Queue

The Queue: Mouse deer

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

"Wow, we're all so shocked that Mike posted a video of a tiny ungulate!" - No one.

Drindaar_Lightkeeper asked:

Do you think along with new models we could see greater customization options? Like a choice of noses, eyes, etc. Maybe even a choice of sub-race (wretched, broken, etc.) as long as it made sense lore wise? Or will the character creator remain the same with just a shinier models.

I don't want to be too cynical, but I think it would be best to go into this with the expectation that we'll just be getting newer, shinier models instead of sweeping customization changes and additions. Whatever we get will be lovely, I'm sure. Just maybe don't expect more.

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Filed under: The Queue

Newbie's guide to everything you need to know about weapons in World of Warcraft

Weapons play a huge role in World of Warcraft, even if you don't play a physical damage class that actively hits people with them. Beyond damage capacity, weapons buff your character's stats and heavily effect your character's looks. While it may seem like there's not much to weapons beyond wielding them -- and for the new player, sometimes wielding them is all you need to know. For experienced players looking for in-depth theory-crafting or number-crunching, this article isn't the place. But, for players just getting started, we'll take a close look at the weapons available, what their stats mean, and try to help you figure out what you should be wielding.

Weapon types
Weapons are broken into three basic types: one-handed weapons which can be wielded with a single hand, two-handed weapons which require two hands, and ranged weapons which also require two hands. You'll also find weapons labeled main hand or off hand, meaning that they can only be wielded in your main hand or off hand -- which comes into play with classes that can wield a different weapon in each hand (dual wielding).

You will also occasionally run into items labeled off hand without a weapon type. These items are typically equippable by any class in their off-hand slot. These can be anything from cosmetic items -- like flowers -- to items that buff stats for classes that can't dual wield but can use one-handed weapons. And, while they aren't quite weapons, shields are considered off-hand items as well.

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Filed under: WoW Rookie

Know Your Lore: Karazhan and why we went there


The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

So the other day on Twitter someone asked me "Why were we in Karazhan, anyway" and since it's a question I've been asked before, I thought I'd address it. The primary reason we went to Karazhan was to kill a whole lot of guilds that were trying to transition to 25 man raiding from the 40 man of Classic by forcing them to run a 10 man instance and two 25 man instances at the same time. Ha. I kid, because I'm still bitter.

The question can actually be answered in several ways. We went to Karazhan because the Kirin Tor were investigating the tower and asked Khadgar for help. They had noticed that, decades after Medivh's death, some new malevolent force was infesting the tower (and since it sits on a ley line nexus, that concerned them) and as we investigated we discover the horrible truth. The Burning Legion has infested Karazhan and seeks control over the powerful arcane secrets held within, and they must be stopped.

But why did Prince Malchezaar lead his Legion forces to Karazhan in the first place? Well, for that, we have to talk about Medivh.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Know your Lore

Reader UI of the Week: Remarkably minimal custom-made healing UI

There are several kinds of UI. Lately on Reader UI of the Week, we've looked at several that do specific jobs, that are functional, even those that fulfil particular requirements for specialized players. This week's UI is, instead, one that is supremely focused on form. That is not to say, of course, that Kait neglects the functional elements of the design, indeed, he does an excellent job of integrating the elements he needs to perform his role, whilst still making a supremely pretty UI.

Unlike our usual submitters, Kait has sent us a video of his UI in action, which you can see on the header, and watch on his YouTube channel along with videos of his other UIs. Kait has also sent in three pictures, one solo healing, one raid healing, and one of the custom designed talent pane. Let's get into Kait's email.

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Filed under: Reader UI of the Week

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