As has been the case in years prior, if you didn't get into tonight's ticket queue within the first half of the first second of availability, you were out of luck. BlizzCon tickets have already sold out. If you didn't get lucky today, don't panic quite yet -- there's another round of ticket sales on Saturday, April 27 at 10 a.m. PDT.

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Filed under: BlizzCon

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

Why is the Queue late!? The sky is falling! What will I do at work!? I'm bored!

Sorry about that. Turns out time flies when you're making BlizzCon plans.

kurtsmith1983 asked:

Weird question if we do end up killing garrosh in next raid instead of just leaving him hurt and in prison. Will we get the achievment for slaying the warchief and have it count towards For the Alliance achievment cause i want my bear mount

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Filed under: The Queue

Blizzard community managers Nakatoir and Crithto have recently announced potential changes coming to Elemental, Aquatic, Critter, and Magic passive abilities in the Pet Battle system. The Pet Battle system is still relatively new compared to the 8-year-old World of Warcraft and very much in flux. As pets and their abilities are buffed and nerfed, the system as a whole needs to adjust to accommodate those changes.

The short version of these proposed changed are as follows:

• Elementals will lose their immunity to weather, instead taking reduced damage on their first round in play
• Critters will become completely immune to crowd control rather than reducing their duration to one round
• Magic pets cannot be dealt more than 35% of their health in one attack, changed from 40%
• Aquatic pets will reduce damage taken from Damage over Time effects by 50%, up from 25%

Crithto and Nakatoir's full posts can be found behind the cut below.

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Filed under: News items

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

Okay, that headline is a little misleading. Only Old Gods found within. The new have to wait their turn.

JoshMcGee asked:

Do you think there will ever be an "Old Gods" Expansion? Or is there lore too closely related to the Titans to have their own expansion away from the Titan one, or are we going to just keep getting one Old God per expansion until their story is up?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

Next week Thursday from 5:30-6:30 p.m. PDT, the World of Warcraft community team will be hosting a live Q&A session with Blizzard developers/designers Dave Kosak, Ion Hazzikostas, Brian Holinka, Cory Stockton, and Greg Street. The last time we saw one of these with a developer collective was back in October 2011. More recently, in December 2012, Blizzard Customer Support hosted a Q&A of their own.

The full details and job description of each of the developers involved can be found below.

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Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

In recent weeks, some questions have arisen in regards to our Weekly Podcast Roundup, posted each Monday afternoon. How do we screen podcasts? How do we choose who makes the list and who doesn't? I'm going to take a moment of your time to explain as best we can.

To get on our podcast roundup, all that you need to do is produce a World of Warcraft podcast and make us aware of it. You can either leave a comment with a link on the most recent roundup post, or contact us via our Contact Us page. If you publish a podcast within the dates indicated on the next roundup post, you should see yourself on the list.

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Filed under: WoW Insider Business

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

Today's Queue is not about opera. Rejoice.

Donald asked:

Alex, I was reading your post on what the Alliance is missing. As a Horde player, it felt like our faction could use similar things like more familiar faces questing etc. How would you feel if the horde got the same treatment?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

Yesterday, our own Anne Stickney posted an article here on WoW Insider asking -- and trying to explain -- what the Alliance is missing in its lore, story, and gameplay. In some aspects, I agreed. In others, I did not, as any person will. We all have our own opinions and preferences when it comes to gameplay. I've been playing Alliance since World of Warcraft launched, and I've spent nearly as long contemplating why the Alliance feels so flat compared to the Horde. As long as I have this soapbox to stand on, I'm going to use it.

Action and reaction

Anne brought up the topic of active vs. proactive stories. I'm glad she did, because Anne and I discussed it together before that article was written. I want to reiterate it, because I feel it's the most important issue at hand. This problem has been made obvious in Mists of Pandaria and Cataclysm before it: the Alliance doesn't seem to have a story of its own. The Alliance has been written as a reactive entity, not proactive. On the other hand, the Horde is almost entirely proactive. The Alliance's actions only happen in the context of the Horde, but the Horde forges its own path. Take Mists of Pandaria, for example. Why is the Alliance on Pandaria? Because the Horde got there first. Why is the Alliance bringing down Garrosh Hellscream? Because Vol'jin began his rebellion and we chose to aid him and follow his lead.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore

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

Why are they here? Nobody knows.

On second thought, maybe they're grummles.

@Skeptikk asked:

Read any news from Blizzard on the new spam in the calendar that players are seeing?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

Blizzard Entertainment was kind enough to send us the never-before-seen cover art of upcoming novel Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde by Michael A. Stackpole. It appears that not only will this novel focus on Vol'jin, but Chen Stormstout will play an integral role, too. The book's back cover reads:

Warchief Garrosh's assassins strike at Vol'jin, leaving him at death's door. But fate smiles on the wounded Darkspear leader when renowned brewmaster Chen Stormstout transports him to the safety of an isolated mountain monastery. There, Vol'jin wrestles with old hatreds smoldering between the Alliance and the Horde as he struggles to recover alongside a mysterious human soldier.

Yet this is only the beginning of Vol'jin's worries. Soon, he becomes embroiled in an invasion of Pandaria launched by the Zandalari, revered trolls driven by dreams of conquest and power. This ancient tribe offers Vol'jin a chance to seize the glory that is the birthright of all trolls... an offer made even more tempting after Garrosh's brazen treachery.

Amid these troubling events, Vol'jin is rocked by intense visions depicting his race's grand history. As he questions where his loyalties lie, he knows he must make a choice about his own destiny that could save his people or damn them to languish under Garrosh's heel.

Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde is currently slated for release July 2, 2013.

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Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria