We've already discussed the loot, but we now have official confirmation: It is badge gear, and the vendor is unlocked with the "Make Ready" quest from the smith herself after the Armory phase of the daily chain is unlocked. You're going to want to start saving up the badges now, though. the prices are as follows:

-150 badges for the two-handers, the crossbow and the one-handed caster weapons.
-105 badges for the main hand melee weapons.
-45 badges for the off-hand melee weapons.
-100 badges for chest and leg armor.
-75 badges for waist, belt, and foot armor.
-60 badges for the rings.

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Our awesome friends over at MMO Champion have discovered more about the new loot that have been previously uncovered, revealing the prices of Badge of Justice loot from the much-awaited Patch 2.4. Prices start at 45 Badges for off-hand frills, a moderate price jump from the 25 Badges of the original loot and 35 for the two new items from Patch 2.3. The as-of-yet-unnamed rings (creatively named "Sunwell Badge Loot - <insert class archetype here> Ring") cost 60 Badges while it takes 75 Badges to purchase belts or gloves. The high prices are a precedent set by Patch 2.3 with such items as the Amani Mask of Death or the Battlemaster trinkets (75 Badges).

Of course, with better gear comes a higher price, and some armor pieces go for a whopping 100 Badges. What's truly cool about the new Badge loot, however, is the availability of Main Hand (and Two-Handed) weapons, which top the price list at a staggering 150 Badges! The good news is, Badges of Justice are dropping everywhere now, with the patch notes stating that all raid bosses now drop Badges of Justice, including the 25-man ones, who drop 2.

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Relmstein has an interesting commentary up about crowd control in World of Warcraft, and how balancing it is imperative to get PvP done right. It used to be that fear was the main problem, but now that fear has been nerfed and balanced with so many other abilities, it's just crowd control in general that has become the main issue. Instead of Warlocks and Mages ruling the roost with Fear and Polymorph, almost every class has picked up their own little methods of stopping other players in their tracks momentarily.

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The 2008 Game Developers Conference is underway in San Francisco right now, and this means there should be quite a bit of gaming news and juicy bites to report on in the next few days. Blizzard's own Rob Pardo is there as a featured speaker, participating in a panel on the future of MMORPGs and giving a talk on Blizzard's approach to multiplayer gaming design. Hopefully that means we might even get a few pieces of new information about Warcraft and the expansion, or even beyond.

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The "Sunwell badge loot" posted 2 days ago are now available on US PvE PTRs and obviously, you can buy them for ... [item=29434] ! You can buy them from Smith Hauthaa in the rebuilt town on the Sunwell Isle.

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Friday afternoon, when I checked the PTR, only about thirty percent progress had been made on retaking the Sun's Reach Armory. Less than twenty four hours later, we were about ten percent into the next phase, retaking Sun's Reach Harbor. Either a lot of new testers hit the PTR due to the weekend and the new patch build or Blizz helped us along. Either way, here's a quick overview of the new content that's unlocked in this third phase of the Shattered Sun Offensive.

Once the Armory is retaken, it's filled with Shattered Sun guards, three new daily quests become available and several new vendors are spawned in the building. Dragonhawks, piloted by Kael's minions, circle the building, doing battle with the archers on the upper level. On the bottom floor, you'll find an ammo vendor, the only one I've been able to find on the Isle. Upstairs are several new "Exotic Gear Purveyors". This is where you'll find all the PvP gear available for Badges of Justice or T4/5/6 armor tokens.

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Sunwell Badge vendor (Smith Hauthaa) just spawned on us pve. You can check prices below.

Weapons:
One Handed - 105 Badges
Off-hands - 45
Two Handed / 1h caster - 150

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Once upon a time, titles were markers of PvP status. In the old PvP system (before patch 2.0), people who had attained a particular PvP rank had the option of showing it next to their name; I never got past "Captain," but it was fun all the same. With the new PvP system, though, the ability to gain these titles were removed from the game, though as I recall players retained the highest rank they had ever achieved as an optional title. Shortly following this development, Blizzard announced that they intended to expand the title system, giving them out to players for various achievements PvP and PvE alike.

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The great Mania (purveyor of Petopia) has created yet another extremely useful database, the practically-named Warcraft Mounts. Not only can you punch in your race, level, and riding skill, and get a list of all the mounts you can ride, but you can also search through the database, and browse the mounts (by category or all at once). And just like on Petopia, Mania has grabbed big photos of all the mounts and set up a nice stats page for each.

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There's a new chapter in the ongoing saga of Shaman disappointment with patch 2.4, and it's this: "1, 2, 3, 4... 6?" As you may have noticed in the patch notes, Call of Thunder (an Elemental Shaman talent that increases the crit strike chance of Lightning spells) had five ranks that gave 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, and 6% respectively. But patch 2.4 will bring it in line with standard arithmetic, and have rank five give 5% crit chance.

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Bits and pieces of Arena Season 4 have popped up on the PTR, and as previously speculated on MMO Champion, it looks like the gear will be named Brutal Gladiator. As expected, the armor pieces are recolored versions of the gear that drops in Sunwell Plateau. As the armor pieces are not class specific, what will happen is that for the first time in World of Warcraft Arena history, classes will have similar-looking armor. Warriors will share the same models are Paladins, Shamans can masquerade as Hunters, Rogues will look like Druids, and all clothies will look like they all went to the same tailors or yard sale.

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I'm so excited about this pet that it's getting silly. Last time on "Tiny Phoenix Obsession," we discovered that it's acquired as a drop from Kael'Thas, in his incarnation as the final boss of patch 2.4's 5-man Magister's Terrace, and speculated that it's probably a pretty rare drop. WOWDB has it at a 1% drop rate, apparently in both normal and heroic mode, although it doesn't say how many kills that's based on.

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Theflamecrow on WoW LJ provides us with our quarterly reminder: it's probably time to update your video card's drivers, if you haven't done it in a while.

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Are you new to the game and would like to visit all the major cities of your faction? Or do you have a bunch of lowbie alts (like me) that are stranded near their starting area? If so, make use of the Lunar Festival to get your lowbies out and about.

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Dungeons, known as instances, are special zones where players group together to fight tougher monsters than the outside environment. They are called instances because each group who enters them is given a separate copy of the dungeon and will not interact with other players of either faction when inside. Higher quality loot is available in instances than the environment, in addition to excellent quest experience and rewards. Today's WoW Rookie gives you a guide to the dungeons may enter in your first forty levels or so.

Instances are known in most cases by their initials. Notable exceptions will be listed below. This guide also gives suggested levels for completing the dungeons. Entering at a lower level will usually prove difficult and, at times, painful. If you do an instance at a higher level than recommended will garner little experience and rewards that do not benefit your current level.

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Blizzard, the studio that brought us the Warcraft and StarCraft franchises, will be coming to this years Game Developers Conference with a bunch of events lined up for the five-day gathering in San Francisco.

Blizzard will be talking about more than just the two franchises that made their mark in video games, though. Aside from events centered on StarCraft and Warcraft, a lot of Blizzard's events will be focused on the future of MMOs in a broader sense.

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Quitting a guild that you've been with for a long time is usually a difficult experience, but it's much worse if you happen to be an officer. An officer giving up and leaving can be one of the most demoralizing events that a guild must endure. In many cases, it sends a message to the members that the leadership is fractured or impotent, and it's only going to get worse. Hence, the opportunities for drama are legion. This week, one reader shares her experience and asks how you can quit as an officer without stirring up too much trouble.

I read WoW Insider all the time, and never thought I'd actually send in anything, because I was so happy with my guild. We were a wonderful nice little social guild. We helped each other with instances, some of our higher up members (myself included) would run lower toons through instances when we weren't doing anything else. We were even starting to attempt to break into raiding.

I was excited to say the least. I was an officer, and I loved my guild quite a bit. I still love the members. I think they're all very smart, wonderful players. We had a raid set up. Simple, practice raid. Nothing to fancy schmancy. Zul'Gurub. On a Monday we'd all gotten together, and decided that it would be Saturday at 1pm. We're all looking forward to it. We are all excited about it. Then Saturday comes.
Some of us get on early. Some of us actually rescheduled things (simple things, not like our brother's wedding or anything) so that we could be there for a big guild milestone. [. . .]

Well, 2pm server time comes and goes, and still nothing. No notice, no message, nothing. [. . .] Not a big deal in and of itself, but I asked around a bit to figure out why it was postponed. Nobody knew. I couldn't believe that our guild leader had changed things at the last minute . . . again. This had happened so many times. He'd say to meet on X day at X time, and then when we'd show up - they were already running around and in the middle of whatever it was we were supposed to be doing, as a group. It made people feel left out, excluded, and a bit annoyed. [. . .]

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Back from a firewall and Dr.Pepper addiction-induced hiatus, Daniel Howell is back to contribute BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
It is with no small sense of happiness that BRK returns to WoW Insider. We're thrilled that the executive muckity-mucks haven't nuked our account here into oblivion and that the editorial staff are being so kind as to help get these columns published. Without them, we wouldn't be back.

As such, please direct all flames and hate email to their in-boxes, comprende? Sweet.

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DG Productions wants to remind you that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Unfortunately, they chose Good Charlotte as the soundtrack to motivate you. At this point, I'd rather be wallowing in my own self-pity than listen to that. It's a good thing that I'm happy!

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Player Kerr on the Windrunner server was farming mithril in the Hinterlands when he decided to go exploring by the Emerald Dream portal in the area. The outdoor raid dragon Lethon appeared and Kerr beat a quick retreat, but stumbled on this dragon graveyard. As Kerr put it: "I wonder who the [dead] dragon was?"

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Okay, let's be brutally frank here. Some gear looks bad. Some gear looks really really bad. Last night, as an example, Zul'Aman gave to me the present of the Battleworn Tuskguard. This is one heck of a tanking hat. Take a loot, it's really sweet for a 10 man instance drop.

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One of the biggest perks a World of Warcraft player can enjoy over at the Public Test Realm is getting first dibs on the new boss encounters.

Such was the case of the Vis Maior guild, which recently finished a run - a PTR world first, we add -  on the Sunwell Plateau's fourth boss encounter: The Eredar Twins.

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The 2.4 patch notes have been recently released for Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Changes will be taking place here and there. Apparently, there's one concerned player who doesn't like a specific change for the Elemental Shaman.

Chfsitingbul from the Draenor realm posted his thoughts regarding the change that happened to the Elemental Shaman's critical, from 6 to 5 .

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Apparently, the Druids aren't too happy with the way World of Warcraft's patch 2.4 will be affecting their Restoration-spec Arena and PvP sets. We're talking specifically about the tweak that had swapped the set's outdoor movement speed buff for a 0.25 second cutdown to the Healing Touch spell's cast time.

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Today's news has been posted early because of the season 4 part, it will be updated in a few hours.

Arena Season 4 Preview !
It looks like a few Season 4 items are now available on PTRs, maybe we'll get the rest of them very soon.

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Tired and annoyed with receiving too many fraudulent credit card transactions to pay for World of Warcraft subscription, major UK bank Halifax decided to stop honoring payments made to Blizzard Entertainment. Their decision to block Blizzard payments was discovered when a client, Brit Michael, complained that he couldn't pay for his WoW subscription through Halifax.

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