J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton answered questions from fans about patch 4.03a and Cataclysm.

Best Buy hosted a developer chat last night with World of Warcraft Production Director J. Allen Brack and Game Director Tom Chilton, and the dynamic duo answered numerous questions regarding patch 4.0.3a and Cataclysm. Best Buy posted a transcript of the chat in its forums, which you can find after the jump.

The chat featured questions from a pool of approximately 500 players. What questions would you have asked Brack and Chilton?

Transcript for: 'World of Warcraft: Cataclysm', Thu Nov 18 6PM CST 2010

Dorothy-BBY: Welcome to our World of Warcraft: Cataclysm chat with Blizzard Developers Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack, as well as moderators Lylirra and Zarhym. Thank you all for joining us and the chat will start shortly. Sit back, and enjoy asking some questions about Blizzard's newest release! Game on!

Tacgnol: Will the heirloom items scale to 85?
JABrack: The current plan is to have heirloom items stop at level 80 at the moment. 

palondon: Right now, up to 50% of Ignite damage disappears due to the technical limitations of spells critting within certain timeframes. This has implications for Mage dps and the value of Mastery as a stat. Is overall damage being balanced to compensate and can we expect a solution in the near future?
TomChil: We're resolving that by rolling up any "lost" ignite damage into the next ignite that overwrote it

deathmane: Has Blizzard considered adding a "Tabards Tab" to the UI, so that tabard collectors can switch out tabards more effectively without having to take up bank and bag space? --Thanks! Deathunholy of Galakrond
JABrack: Hi. We have talked about adding a tabard tab. We've talked about doing a closet tab to handle it. It isn't something we are adding for Cataclysm though.

SenyoPanda: Will it be as long of a wait to fight Deathwing as it was for Lich King?
TomChil: Hopefully not, we definitely have a goal to get our content patches out more quickly than we have in the past without sacrificing quality of course, we plan for deathwing to be the most amazing encounter we've ever made! =]

Guest-124: Are there any plans to potentially add queueing to the rated battlegrounds instead of it having to be a pre-made raid team? I was really excited when I first heard about this feature, but after reading the FAQ i was a bit disappointed with that design.
TomChil: we're currently looking into the possibility of having players in the honor battleground queue be able to be called to action by groups that aren't quite full, but we're going to see how the current queue'ing works out first - that isn't something that would be available just yet 

Guest-85: Will you allow players to fill their quest log with say, 25 dailies, and then turn them in right after Midnight on December 7th to get a quick boost towards 85? This is how it worked in the beta, but some players are confused on whether it will work on Live. Thanks!
JABrack: Regarding 25 daily quests to turn in when the expansion goes live, this is something players have been able to do for the last 2 expansions and we aren't talking about changing it now.

Guest-224: Is Hit rating intended to tramp all other stats but Str for Fury till the 27% hardcap? Seems excessive
TomChil: generally speaking, we do balance hit rating to be the "best" stat until you're at the hit rating cap

Guest-96: I understand the decision from an economic perspective but I was wondering if the deveopers were disappointed in the decision to allow race changes immediately following the release of the expansion.
JABrack: Regarding allowing race/faction change on day one. Actually this wasn't an economic decision at all. This was a decision that the leadership team made. Our priority as a dev team is to allow players to play the game with their friends, the way they want too.  We also talked about the fact that this is a week one problem. So we made the decision not to restrict anything.

felixlevron: Will darnasus be re built to be a real tree or will it always look like a dead stump with trees at the top.
TomChil: ...but now that Deathwing is doing his thing it makes much more sense than it used to! ;]
Zarhym: Deathwing hates trees.

axelumog: A lot of players I know are trying to plan out what characters to roll for the new expansion, and the big question is: Will there be ANY new realms tagging along with the release of Cataclysm? Some point to low pop realms as a reason against, but surely with the redux'd 1-60 experience and the droves of returning players desiring clean slates, there has never been a better time for a fresh realm or two?
JABrack: We haven't decided exactly what the new realm decisions are yet, but we open new realms when there is player demand for them. One thing we can't do is plan all realms for day one. The goal is for realms to have good concurrency so everyone has a great game/matchmaking experience.

Guest-138: Could you comment on the plan for raids in cataclysm? If i remember it was said that there would be smaller raids in cata but more of them. Would that mean like two small raids per patch or more patches in total? 
TomChil: the idea is that we'll have more raid environments, but fewer bosses in each environment, but a similar total number of raid bosses overall... if that makes sense. =] So, for cataclysm launch we have the skywall environment, the twilight bastion environment, and blackwing descent versus having almost all the bosses in one environment like we did with naxrammas

Wikehaja: With the changes to the game environment itself, what new computer requirements will be optimal to run the game smoothly?
JABrack: One of the things that is really important to us is a great gaming experience regardless of your hardware. While the system requirements do go up over time, we do want the experience on slower machines to be great. We do this by trying to add a lot of graphical options to allow players to control the experience from "runs fast" all the way to "looks great".

Retro94: Will there be more than one Legendary weapon in Cata? Will there be a Caster DPS legendary? Any info or plans would be awesome =) Thanks!
TomChil: It's likely there will be more than one legendary weapon, although it's too early to say for sure. We do, however, have a plan to do a caster dps staff soon.

Guest-226: where did Uldum come from?
TomChil: Egypt ;]
JABrack: The idea with Uldum is that it has always been there, cloaked from the eyes of the players. The emergence of Deathwing has damaged some of the technology that kept it hidden. There is a story in the zone that explains this and what has been happening in the player absence.

MatthewRhino: With resource systems now broadened to include focus, rage, energy, and runic power as well as mana, and there being conditionals like enrages, holy power, combo points and runes, will classes that just use mana be getting similar treatment or remaining as they are?
TomChil: Really that decision is made on a class-by-class, talent tree-by-tree basis. If we feel like the talent spec in question needs a broader resource management then we do it, but we don't like to unnecessarily complicate a spec's resource management if it isn't absolutely necessary.

Guest-14: Is the Moonkin form for troll and worgen on the beta and ptr the final form or is it just a placeholder?
JABrack: Final!

Guest-12: Why is it that we are not able to use Archeaology before the exspansion? I thought it was really cool how you guys released Inscription last time and would love to have the opportunity to level it before the exspansion drops.
JABrack: Using archeology before the expansion was something we talked about, but ended up adding everything about the profession to the "post sundered" world. Thus, you won't be able to use archeology before the sundering happens.

The transcript is continued on the next page.