The Queue: Patches always drop when you're sleepy

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

So yeah, I was hoping to go to bed when patch 5.4 news dropped and I ended up being awake for hours working on posts about it. I may be ludicrously groggy right now. Anyway, best news of patch 5.4 is Titan's Grip for polearms wooo! There's other stuff ... proving grounds, flex raiding, virtual realms, something in Orgrimmar ... but all of that pales compared to the majesty of TG with polearms. Many warriors will now twirl our way to greatness.

Since none of you knew that 5.4 would drop on the PTR when you were commenting in yesterday's Queue, most of your questions won't be about it. That's okay, it happens. As a result, we're lucky that folks on Twitter never sleep.

@AlternativeChat asks on Twitter:
Chances of mail across Virtual Servers? So you can finally send Heirlooms?

It looks pretty good, considering you can join a guild across them, use a shared AH across them, and do dungeons and raids (and no word of limits on that) across them. I would be very surprised if you couldn't mail across them. We'll see, though. The patch notes don't say yet.

@EmberDione asks on Twitter:
What's going on with names on this virtual server thing? Do we have any idea?

From the patch notes: Players belonging to the same Virtual Realm will have a (#) symbol next to their name. I assume this means that if my warlock Pyrrhus and someone else's mage named Pyrrhus are on different servers in the same virtual realm, he'll be Pyrrhus# to me, and I'll be Pyrrhus# to him. Perhaps our realm names will be in there as well, like in a dungeon or raid finder group.

Puntable1 asks:
With raid fights becoming more and more complex, what do you think of allowing the raid leader to direct like a coach from the sidelines. Add an extra spot to the raid, and he could be there in "ghost form" and move around, use raid markers, chat, etc, but not use abilities or take damage.

Honestly I think it is unlikely, it breaks immersion and kind of reduces the 'field general' feeling of raid leadership. It seems to me that raids have responded to the increased complexity of raid fights by spreading the raid leadership about -- in my experience, there has been a raid leader and up to three or more helpers who mark, call out specific boss abilities, tell the raid when to use cooldowns, etc etc. I don't see them divorcing raid leadership from raiders.

@Bulidar asks on Twitter:
What are the Horde doing in that mining pit in the Vale of the Eternal Blossoms?

They are digging it up looking for anything that Garrosh and his Horde can use as a weapon, and if you run the Dark Heart of Pandaria you find out exactly what he found. It's not good for anybody who isn't him, let me assure you. It's probably not even good for him.

@RetroDragon asks on Twitter:
Clog Den, a refugee from Kun-Lai at Two Moons, has a bear companion. With no bears in Pandaria, where did the bear come from?

A wizard did it.

@nuggsftw asks on Twitter:
Where do you think the raid portal will be for t16 raid?

Based on the boss list for the raid, I suspect it may actually be in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, perhaps in the pit the Horde have dug, because there's clearly some consequences to that action.

@Mementh asks on Twitter:
Do you think virtual servers will fix the low pop realms and can people handle it?

Fix it? No, but it may ameliorate the situation. It'll be hard to really test it on the PTR, so it'll be tested most thoroughly by going live and it'll be during that first month or so of the patch that we'll see how well lower and higher pop realms are joined in the virtual realms. If done well, it could definitely ease the pain for players on extremely empty realms.

fbxxkl asks:
Whats the point of Isle of Giants? Are there dailies? Special mobs (besides oondasta)? Can anyone give me a link where Isle of Giants gets a roundup/review?

You can farm up dinosaur bones -- if you get 9999 of them you can turn them in for this sweet mount. Our own Anne Stickney answered your question in this post.

And that's the lot. Thanks for reading! I go sleep now, I hope. 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! Tags: featured, guide, qa, question-and-answer, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

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Breakfast Topic: Do you want more patches?

Looking back on the days of vanilla WoW, we had a lot of patches -- and I don't mean that as a figure of speech. Original WoW went to patch 1.12 before Burning Crusade hit the scene. Since then, we've seen fewer patches between expansions -- 4 patches during BC, 3 patches during Wrath, 3 patches during Cataclysm, and, to date, 3 patches during Mists. But with the speed at which Blizzard is rolling out new content lately, I think it's safe to say that we can expect Mists to beat the average number of patches before we get another expansion... but is that too many patches?

More frequent patches could mean we're hard-pressed to keep up with all the new shiny toys presented to us... or they could mean plenty of content to keep us busy and interested. But what do you think? Are patches coming too quickly these days? Or are they just frequent enough to keep you interested? Or are patches still arriving too slowly for your tastes?
Tags: arena, arena-guide, arena-strats, arena-tips, arenas, featured, guide, how-to-play-battlegrounds, how-to-pvp, patch, patches, pvp-guide, wow-arena, wow-arena-guide, wow-guide, wow-patches

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What new players need to know about WoW patches

If World of Warcraft had but one holiday, it would be Patch Day: the glorious Tuesday (or Wednesday) in which the WoW servers go down for maintenance but come back online brimming with new, unexplored content. If you're new to World of Warcraft, or MMOs in general, you may not entirely understand all the fuss the community makes over patches. So just what is a patch? Why are they so important? And how can you get your hands on one? We'll do our best to explain.

What is a WoW patch?
Did you know we're playing version 5 of World of Warcraft right now? It's true: Version 1.1 was World of Warcraft's launch client and every expansion since has bumped the version number up a full number, while each patch release is a decimal place. The original game went up to patch 1.12 (the 1.1 launch client and 11 patches after), Burning Crusade (2.0) had a scant 4 patches, Wrath of the Lich King (3.0) had 3, Cataclysm (4.0) had 3, and Mists of Pandaria (5.0) is about to see the release of its 3rd patch, patch 5.3. These days, patches are coming more quickly than ever and we have no idea how many patches to expect before the next expansion arrives.

Unlike patches you might be familiar with from other software or other (non MMO) games, which might fix bugs or address problems, WoW's patches add content -- sometimes a lot of it! You might see new skills, new quests, new zones, and new dungeons rolled out in a patch. The patches are best compared to downloadable content (DLC) that you might find for other games you play. However, in WoW if you want to keep playing, you have to download and install the latest patch in order to connect to the World of Warcraft servers -- they aren't optional parts of the game experience.

What's the difference between an expansion and a patch?
Expansions are big: patches are small. A patch might add a new zone, but an expansion will probably add a new continent. Think of patches as what you're paying your subscription fees for: in addition to keeping the servers running and the lights on at Blizzard HQ, you're also paying Blizzard for new content. Expansions are much larger chunks of content which have their own, additional fee for purchase.

Why all the fuss over patches?
Blizzard's patches for WoW include can include lots of gameplay changes -- and not every player will agree that all of them are good. Before a patch rolls out, players are eager for news of how their class will fare in the coming patch: will they be buffed? Will they be nerfed? Blizzard makes calls like this based on overall game balance rather than a particular player's wants, so with each patch you'll find a lot of discussion, speculation, cheering, and complaining. And since WoW players love to chat about their favorite pastime, you won't always find this stopping once the patch comes out. What is the PTR?
You've probably heard the term "PTR" tossed around in advance of a new WoW patch. The PTR is the Public Test Realm, where Blizzard releases early versions of patches for players to test out. How long content is on the PTR and when it arrives on the PTR is entirely up to Blizzard: when they have new content ready for players to see, they'll open the PTR and when the patch officially launches they'll close it again. Though a lot of pre-patch chatter is based off content on the PTR, nothing about a patch is for sure until Blizzard finalizes it for the live realms. The patch data up on the PTR can -- and usually does! -- change between its initial roll out on the PTR and its final release on the live servers.

For more on the PTR -- or if you want to do some play testing yourself -- check out Blizzard's PTR FAQ.

Just when is patch day?
Patches will always be applied during WoW's weekly maintenance, which is on Tuesday for North American and Australian realms and Wednesday for European realms. Smaller hotfixes, which fix bugs or other problems, are sometimes applied between patches and, if the problem the hotfix is addressing is serious enough, may go out at any time instead of waiting for maintenance.

Following Blizzard's philosophy of only releasing content when it's done, patches don't come out on any specific schedule. However, Blizzard usually gives a few days' warning before a new patch is expected to land. In the case of patch 5.3, they told us on Friday that the patch would be rolling out the following Tuesday and Wednesday. How do I get the new patch?
When you fire up World of Warcraft's launcher, one of the things it does before letting you in to the game is check to see if there's any patch data to download. If there is, it will start downloading it immediately -- usually, it will start before the patch's official release, downloading anything Blizzard has finalized so you won't have a huge download on patch day.

However, there will still be downloading on patch day: when you fire up the client, it will prevent you from logging in until the patch is downloaded. There's a certain amount of essential data it has to download and install before you can play (the download bar will appear red while it downloads necessary components). Once it's grabbed essential data, the bar will turn yellow and you can log in while it finishes downloading in the background: though you may not have a flawless gameplay experience. When it's completely finished downloading, the bar will appear green and you're good to go without any problems.

We typically find the downloader to work perfectly, but if you're having problems, check out Blizzard's patch troubleshooting information.

Now you know all you need to know to celebrate this week's patch day holiday! Just because you're a newbie doesn't mean you can't bring your A-game to World of Warcraft! Visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to everything you need to get started as a new player, from the seven things every newbie ought to know to how to get started as a healer or as a tank. Tags: featured, guide, how-to-play-wow, new-to-world-of-warcraft, noob-guide, patch, patch-5.3, patch-day, patches, ptr, rookie-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, world-of-warcraft-help, world-of-warcraft-noobs, world-of-warcraft-rookies, wow-guide, wow-help, wow-noob-guide, wow-noobs, wow-patch, wow-patch-5.3, wow-patch-day, wow-patches, wow-ptr, wow-to-play-world-of-warcraft

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