Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.

With the current furore over patch 2.4, one may be hard-pressed to keep up with the latest news and developments, especially if you've got raid/ work/ school schedules to keep to and tax forms to struggle with. Ultimately, few of us really read through the patch notes line-by-line, often just skimming for parts that matter to us. As warlocks, we'd naturally be concerned with how patch 2.4 affects us - are we nerfed or buffed? Can warlocks ever not cause the world to end?

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The 2.4 PTR is up, which means it's time for everyone's favorite pastime: complaining about the patch notes. ZOMG, more badge loot and no attunement for Hyjal? Blizzard is caving in to casuals! Another difficult 25-man raid instances? Oh noes, the gear gap is back and Blizz only cares about raiders!

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This post by Catherine on WoW Ladies (about getting just the right spec for PvP and grinding) got me thinking about specs and their purpose in general. For a lot of classes, it's pretty much accepted at this point that you spec one way for leveling, another way for endgame, and a third way for PvP. While some classes can pull off all three with pretty much any spec (hunters and warlocks, ahem), other classes are much more confined (leveling as a resto shaman or prot warrior is possible, but I wouldn't want to do it any time soon).

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If Mr. Pinchy didn't revive the concept of fishing for you, sending you out with your rod, your bait and your bags, then maybe Chuck will.

Aikiwoce, after completing the new fishing daily quest on the PTRs, was awarded with Chuck's Bucket. What does this odd little bucket do?

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Here's a good question from Strykt on the forums: why does Karazhan still require attunement? Blizzard has already dropped attunements on SSC and TK, and patch 2.4 will bring the removal of attunements on BT and Hyjal. So why are we still being forced to get those key fragments and attune people to Karazhan?

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If you remember the Kalecgos video from a few days ago, and how massively loaded with spoilers it was, then you'll either damn me or appreciate this spate of Brutallus videos. They are also massively loaded with spoilers.

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As Oscar time gets closer, some of us gamers may start wishing for awards of our own. Mass Effect was at least as good as There Will Be Blood, right?

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When you first arrive at the new zone, the Isle of Quel'danas, in patch 2.4, you'll find a chaotic scene, even if there aren't hundreds of naked, level two Blood Elves running around getting slaughtered by level seventy creatures, as there are on the PTR. The Shattered Sun Offensive, the united group of Scryers and Aldor, have a small presence on the isle, consisting of a few tents and a boat, and they're combating a large group of demons and Blood Elves. As time goes on and more daily quests are completed, the new faction will gradually retake buildings on the isle, unlocking vendors, quest givers and a portal to Shattrath. Here's a quick run down of the quests and NPCs involved in the first phase of the offensive, which came to a close a couple of days ago on the US PvE PTR.

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Man-- as if Blizzard really needed something like this to happen. Shamans are already unhappy with patch 2.4, and in replying to a relatively well-written and well-founded thread on why that is, EU CM Tharfor drops this bomb:

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Every Wednesday, Chris Jahosky brings you another page of Tales from the Lion's Pride Inn, a WoW webcomic you'll find only on WoW Insider!

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From the European forums comes a pretty awesome leveling concept: Suppressor and Restrainer, two Draenei Hunters from the Hellfire(EU) realm, who since level 18 have leveled exclusively by 2-manning dungeons and turning in only dungeon-related quests. They attempt to run the entire dungeon, not skipping bosses. At the time of the linked post, they had made it to level 38 and were attempting to conquer Razorfen Downs. A Quick check of the Armory shows them in gear from Uldaman, so it sounds like they've shut down the Coldbringer and headed on. I'll be interested if they post an update, especially if they can bring down Archaedas.

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I love new mounts. When the Shattered Sun Offensive rewards from patch 2.4 were first posted, I combed through the listing searching for some sort of new faction mount reward, and was disappointed not to find any. There ought to be a new mount in this patch somewhere, right? So imagine my surprise when opened up Mania's Arcania and saw a picture of some elf riding a dragonhawk!

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In a thread on the General forums, Nethaera's spoken up to clarify a few issues in regards to the current patch and continued testing. She explains that with all of the major classes changes in 2.3.2, they wanted to see how they played out before adding more. However, they do in fact have more class changes planned for the current patch.

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It was previously mentioned that Blizzard will slowly be implementing progressive changes into the current 2.4.0 patch of World of Warcraft. However, many of the posters on the WoW forums have spoken up demanding that Blizzard show them the goods.

Fortunately, Blizzard Poster Nethaera has addressed some of the concerns voiced out on the forums. She explained that with all the major class changes in 2.3.2, the developers wanted to see how they played out before adding any more to the new patch.

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Here's another one from the files of things we've desired/dreaded for years. In a post-DICE interview with Blizzard cofounder Frank Pearce, MTV learned that Blizzard is definitely thinking about making some kind of mobile WoW interface. He says it would probably just allow you to chat and monitor auctions and mail, without actually being able to buy and sell things. Still, I don't think I'm exaggerating much when I say hundreds of thousands of players would use an app like that. When last this was discussed here on WoW Insider, many of you were of the opinion that a mobile WoW would be yet another infringement on our already dwindling time for "real life," and that's a definite threat, but ultimately I think it's just as easy (or as hard) to exercise self-control on a cell phone as on a PC.

Other fun news from that interview:

• Players in Taiwan have the shortest wait time for tickets
• Blizz is working on a way to stream a trial version of WoW so people who want to try the game can be playing in 10 minutes. Is that even possible?
• Wrath "should feel at least as substantial as BC"
• The movie was delayed by the just-ended WGA strike, but the project is now running again and looking for directors. Pearce: "When we talk about the quality of our movie and the quality of the movie we want to see delivered, we're talking about the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. That's what we want to deliver, that kind of epic experience." Yeah, good luck with that.


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I stumbled across a new feature in patch 2.4 that I hadn't noticed in the PTR patch notes while snapping in and out of a nap on the horribly long flight that is Ironforge to Quel'Danas.

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Fighting in the arena is hands down my favorite thing to do in WoW these days. I do get very bored while I'm waiting for queues to pop. Since I usually do 2v2 and 3v3 battles I'm usually looking at wait times between five and ten minutes. Drysc stated that this occurs due to a limited number of instances that can be hosted at any given time, the problem will not likely be solved in the near future.

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Many of us, both in and outside of the United States, have been having serious connection issues with the game recently. Not only can we not connect to the game, but we can't even get on the main World of Warcraft website. This can be particularly infuriating because we can't go and find help. When I got dropped in the middle of Kael'Thas (the real fight, not the weeksauce one in Magisters' Terrace), I wanted to take my computer out to a field and yell obscenities at it about PC load letter.

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Even if you're new to World of Warcraft, you may have heard of the Public Test Realm or PTR. This area is where the developers try out new patches before releasing it on the actual live servers. While this is generally open to all users, some people have been having a hard time actually getting into the test servers.

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Yet another fun little tidbit slipped by unnoticed in the recent frenzy of 2.4 news, but no longer! Behold, a WoW Insider exclusive!

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Almost everyone has heard by now that once patch 2.4 drops, we will no longer have to guess at our honor gains. We will no longer have to wait in order to reap the rewards of our victories, and our honor will not diminish with each kill of a player.

Because of this, our knowledge of the honor calculation system as explained to us after patch 2.3 by Nethaera needs to be revised. Will we be gaining more honor, more quickly? Just how much of a potential is there to earn more?

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We've known for a while now that the Sunwell Plateau would start small, with more bosses being unlocked along the way until you could finally face down Kil'jaedan himself to prevent him from coming into this world. But with 2.4 out on the PTRs, the question becomes, how do you start unlocking the plateau?

The answer comes in a form of a drop off each of the bosses inside the instance: The Essence of Immortals. With this essence, the mages of the Shattered Sun Offensive are able to bring down the magical gates inside the Plateau, three in all, that block access to Kil'jaedan himself.

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This machinima is almost three years old, yet it still holds up today. Here Without You, by Dimoroc, doesn't have special effects, a flashy intro, or even any dialogue. It tells the story of a Forsaken and how they became that way. Using music and powerful scenes, he is able to convey emotion that I did not think possible of World of Warcraft.

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Player Ilithiel of the Serious Business guild on Argent Dawn thought this screenshot would be perfect for a spotlight considering the information coming out of Patch 2.4 on the PTR. His guild had just finished Phase 4 of the fight against Kael'thas Sunstrider, the final raid boss of The Eye in Tempest Keep. Kael'thas is seen here rising into the air to destroy the walls around him. Of course, that doesn't stop him from getting thrashed soundly by Ilithiel's guild.

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Yesterday I was able to get my warrior copied over to the PTR. I proceeded to head up to the new 5 man instance, Magisters' Terrace, and see what it was all about. Its a pretty cool place over all. It feels a lot like the Blood Elf city, and has a couple cool encounters. Including Kalecgos!

Of course to get to the Terrace you first have to have your character copied over to the PTR. For a little while, Blizzard was letting new people through. But lately it seems that the PTR character copy queue is again backed up.

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It was only recently that players of Blizzard's World of Warcraft encountered one specific glitch with the game: they couldn't log in to the game itself. Good thing blue poster Bornak was there to address the concerns.

In his post, he was able to give an update on the status of the situation. He said, "We have resolved the issues affecting the specific realms and they are all currently available for play. We will continue to monitor them and resolve any issues that may occur."

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There seems to be something interesting currently happening in the World of Warcraft forums. Kaydeethree from the Medivh realm posted that she wanted some help despawning Brutallus.

In addition to her post, two screenshots were provided as well regarding her concern. If you care to look closely at the screens, one of the screenshots shows Brutallus, the pit lord boss of the Sunwell Plateau, as enslavable and the other revealing the fact the Brutallus has actually been enslaved.

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If you've never done arenas via LAN, you really might want to try it. Of course it's much easier to communicate when you're speaking to someone right next to you and can see their screen to get a different perspective on the battle. You can also learn fascinating information about their AddOns and how they interface with the game.

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Blizzard CM Bornakk announced that the following free character transfers will be available from Wednesday, February 13th at 12:00 p.m. PST until Wednesday, February 20th at 12:00 p.m. PST. Of course, these times are fully dependent on Blizzard reaching their transfer goals.

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In case you've forgotten, this week sees the commencing of World of Warcraft's Love is in the Air special event for 2008. This MMORPG's own spin on Valentine's day will be commemorated with two special events that aim to help spread (quite literally) the lovin' across Azeroth's major cities.

The first event you'll want to look out for is the Gift Exchange event that'll be taking place over at the cities of Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus, Thunder Bluff, Orgrimmar,  and Undercity. Players who take part in this event will first need to buy Perfume, Cologne, and Love Tokens from their local innkeeper.

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Bungie Studios' Halo 3 and Blizzard's World of Warcraft came out as two of the big winners in the recently held 6th Annual Visual Effects Society Awards. The two showed off some visual prowess not only within the game, but also outside it, in the form of One of Halo 3's advertisements.

Halo 3's Marcus Lehto, Jonty Barnes, Stephen Scott, and CJ Cowan took home an award for Outstanding Real Time Visuals in a Video Game. The Halo 3 "Believe" ad campaign, headed by Matthew Gratzner, Alan Scott, Seth Curlin, and Greg Boettcher also won an award for Outstanding Use of Models or Miniatures in a Broadcast Program or Commercial.

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Over on the World of Warcraft forums, players have noted something strange in the water they've been drinking recently. According to the players, they noticed that quick drinks didn't seem to replenish mana the way it used to.

Hortus dropped by the forums to tell people that this was actually an intended change to the drinking. As Hortus explains it,

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Here at Guildwatch, we talk a lot about drama, but we don't really talk enough about how to prevent drama from happening in the first place. So consider this a great tip: if you're ever in trouble with a guild officer, just make sure you have an embarrassing photo of them dancing naked in Stormwind. You know, like the one above. A little blackmail in all the right places will make sure you're always on the officers' good sides.

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Having trouble trying to make your way around in your overpopulated realm? Blizzard blue-texter Bornakk visited the World of Warcraft Forums earlier to announce that devs will be implementing another round of free character transfers for today, starting at 12:00 p.m. Here's the list of realms that will be open for this week's series of moves, and the realms where you can relocate to:

• Source A (PvP)
• Illidan
• Mal'Ganis
• Skullcrusher
• Smolderthorn
• Tichondrius
• Warsong


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Live, from Blizzard H.Q., it's Tuesday night!

The Blues (official Blizzard forum posters) have given us a few important late night news tidbits, including some new patch 2.4 news. However, they lack the comedy stylings of John Belushi in a bee suit:

• The World of Warcraft website at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ will be taken offline for about 90 minutes tonight, starting at midnight PST. There is no reason to suspect this will affect players in the game.
  
• On the PTR, Shattrath Flasks will soon work inside the Sunwell Plateau raid instance.
• Also on the PTR, the transporter to the Caverns of Time will soon require revered reputation instead of exalted.


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