Hungry for more Snacky videos from Stone Falcon Productions? It is unfortunate that Snacky's Journal Episode 4, the latest in the popular machinima series from Blizzard's World of Warcraft, is taking more time to finish than most anticipated. To sweeten the wait, series creator Jun Falkenstein came up with a new trailer.

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Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.

Today's build has been sent in by a number of people now, so this week I'm taking a look at one of the more popular Arena Frost Mage builds -- 17/0/44. There are a number of variations of deep Frost builds, but this one goes far enough in the Arcane tree to grab the very useful and powerful Improved Counterspell. The Frost tree has been synonymous with survivability for a long time, so it's no wonder that it is so often seen in the Arena. As with other builds of this nature, it picks up talents that increase your damage output as well as those that boost your ability to stay alive. Frost allows you to kite your opponents, or hit them with reliable burst damage utilizing Shatter.

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We reached our 25th episode of the podcast this last Saturday, and it's all up right now for you to listen to over on WoW Radio's site. Turpster (who, I hear, has posted something on Massively today), Matthew Rossi, and I all sat down to talk about all the biggest stories in World of Warcraft over the past week, including, but not limited to:

• That wily companion cube (I promise, this is the last time we'll mention it)
• The lunacy on the PTR: not only the pilgrimage of level ones, but also the chaos caused by a tameable Brutallus
• Whether more dailies are good or bad
• How M'uru went missing
• And we answered a bunch of reader mail, including who our pick to direct the upcoming WoW movie would be, now that the writer's strike is settled.


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Blizzard has started to realize that travel (as in real life) can be boring in the game. On the Public Test Realm (PTR), they have put a few new ideas to good use when forcing players to travel long distances to get to new content.

I copied my character to the PVE test server (once it started working again), and began a flight to Quel'Danas from Ironforge. First off, I already had the flight path, which was refreshing to start with. The odd thing is that upon reaching the gates of Ironforge, the bird rocketed straight up vertically which panicked me a little until I realized that it was on purpose. All the sudden, welcome to a loading screen appeared. I was dropped on the far side of the Ghostlands gate and continued my flight all the way north to the new content at Quel'Danas. This shaved off several minutes flying time and provided an easy way to bridge an old flight path to a new one easily. A flight path spanning from the original content to the content now in the expansion (technically a patch is both and neither) is the type of crossover innovation I knew Blizzard was capable of doing.

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Think you and your friends are the best 3v3 PvP team in Blizzard's World of Warcraft? Well, you can go and prove it to the rest of the world at the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament. While registration for this event hasn't been opened yet, details on the tournament have been revealed meaning that you and your friends can start getting yourselves ready.

According to the announcement on the official World of Warcraft website, tournament registration is open to any active WoW account. Registration per account costs US 20.00 and grants access to the tournament realms for the duration of the six-week tourney.

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If you've ever been to the World of Warcraft's Serpentshrine Cavern in Coilfang Reservoir, you've probably met Leotheras the Blind. He's the blood elf demon hunter boss of that instance. If you have, then you probably know this quirk he has.

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A new page was released with more basic information about the tourny.
Check it out at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/index.xml

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As the release of Blizzard's World of Warcraft patch 2.4 draws near, more and more details about it have been revealed. One such announcement has drawn the ire of players, namely the 150 badges of honor required for certain items.

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We have moved our weekly features wrapup to Tuesday, since it seemed like a good idea at the time. So here's all of the weekly features from the past week (and a few days) here on WoW Insider, for your reading enjoyment.

Sunday Morning Funnies: Rogue stables
Laugh away with our weekly wrapup of WoW-related comics.

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Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. Btw, Kil'jaeden says hi! Ok, maybe not...

This is like the song that never ends. It goes on and on my friends. Who knew there was so much to say about casting faster? I swear this is the last week of it. I'll find something... anything... else to talk about next week. Just stick it out. You can do it!

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15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – both the renowned and the relatively anonymous. Know an interesting player you'd like to see profiled? E-mail us at 15minutesoffame AT wowinsider DOT com.

Sometimes, WoW feels like a sprint for the next hot instance, the next hot gear. Just look at the flurry of interest in the details of patch 2.4 -- and the content's not even on the live servers yet! But something odd is happening: Even while Blizzard is funneling players into end-game content with accelerated XP curves and more gear than ever that can be purchased with badges, plenty of players are picking their own paths. These "softcore" players play on their own terms: shorter raids, smaller raids, alternative character concepts ... WoW's definitely big enough to hold it all.

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If you're paying more than 3 gold for those Stacks of Netherweave, then it's mostly likely that you aren't getting a good deal off them. According to the latest survey taken from Massively via wowecon.com, they were able to tally the latest average prices for some of the hottest items on the World of Warcraft market.

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We have a huge visual update for the new 2.4 PTR for everyone to feast their eyes on. Featured today is a preview of all the new items tied in with the upcoming patch for Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

First off, here's a consolidated list of all the item changes players can expect to see once the new patch goes live:

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We all know patch 2.4 is going to center around a new zone in Azeroth, the Isle of Quel'Danas. But did you know there was a new Outlands area as well? I didn't either, until we got a tip from loyal reader Austin. This new area is called Razorthorn Rise, and apparently sits between Hellfire Peninsula and Terokkar Forest, just above Razorthorn Shelf. The tip says it's full of level 70 ravagers and flayers, and speculates that the ravagers would make good Hunter pets.

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So with the new badge gear vendor showing up on the 2.4 PTR, I know a lot of people who are getting a little bit of shell shock seeing just how many Badges of Justice they'll need to get that gear. At this point, I've got two words for them: Don't Panic. You'll have plenty of time. With 2.4 likely needing at least another month or so to go live, and then at least a few more weeks before most servers do enough dailies to unlock the vendor, I'm betting on somewhere around a good 10 weeks before we're even able to spend the badges we gather. In 10 weeks, you can gather a lot of badges starting right now, and add a few more badge gaining methods when 2.4 itself goes live.

Let's look at the options for collecting badges and see how much bang for your buck they give you after the jump. Hopefully, almost everyone can find themselves able to do at least one of them, and we can all look forward to fitting ourselves out when we finally make it to the Sun's Reach Armory.

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Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, sometimes known as the Big Bear Butt Blogger, launches into part 1 of a 2 part discussion on Bear Tanking Strategies.

I'm going to go over a lot of information related to how Bear Tanking works over the next two articles, because I am often asked about how all of the various elements of Threat management fit together.

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Poster Tamerland from The Scryers posted an interesting nugget to consider over at the Paladin forums today, stating unequivocally that the Alliance will be getting the Blood Elf-only Seal of Blood in Patch 2.4. Conversely, the Horde should be receiving Seal of Vengeance. What's the big deal, you ask? Well, Alliance Retribution Paladins have been crying for Seal of Blood because it has, with numerous calculations, proven to be the superior PvE DPS Seal. In light of the removal of spell damage in Retribution gear and the focus on Strength (and consequently Attack Power), this has become less of a debate and more of a simple fact. Furthermore, Seal of Blood inflicts damage on the Paladin, which is absolutely great as this is incredibly synergistic with Spiritual Attunement, allowing Ret Pallies to regenerate mana as they're healed. While Seal of Vengeance has been argued to be an excellent tanking seal, Horde Paladin tanks have coasted along fine with Seal of Righteousness.

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Snacky's Journal, the award-winning series by Stone Falcon Productions, may be coming to a close soon. Jun Falkenstein, the creator of the series, has taken on a job directing a sci-fi film. However, she released this teaser for Snacky 4 yesterday.

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Heartless Gamer sent in his (or hers) story of an intentional delay in dinging level 70 here. He says:

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This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.

Wrath of the Lich King could be very very sneaky
Is Wrath going to launch as early as Spring? Kyle Horner explores the possibilities.

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Player Kyprianos of the Icecrown server was in Serpentshrine Cavern with his guild Indecisive after their very first kill of Leotheras the Blind. After being forced to "face his inner demon" by the Blood Elf Demon Hunter, Kyp decided to take a breather in Leo's chair. But shouldn't there be two seats?

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Here's a little follow up to our report earlier that the UK bank Halifax is refusing to accept subscription payments for Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft.

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While it's unclear whether it's intentional or not, Blizzard has apparently slipped material meant for World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion in game patch 2.4. The new snippet that's in question is the male sprite for the Tuskarr, the humanoid walrus people you may recall meeting in the Warcraft III RTS. Here's a screenshot of the Tuskarr model in patch 2.4:

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As I was searching the AH yet again the other day, whining to myself about how high prices were getting on Elixirs of Major Agility, it occurred to me to wonder... If they're so high, why don't I just make them myself?

Actually, before the Burning Crusade -- or more specifically, daily quests -- came along, I generally would, or rather, I'd buy the herbs and find a friend to do the combines. Others besides me took it one step further and started an alt character specifically to have someone to gather herbs and make potions for them. But even without herbalism, if you watched the AH and herb prices for a bit, you could buy herbs when they were a bit on the cheap side and get yourself a stockpile of cheap elixirs, potions, and flasks.

Ever since daily quests, however, I've been a lot more lazy. I'll find myself at the Auction House less than an hour before raid time praying that someone has the potions I need for sale at a less than soul-gouging prices. I'll buy them at the soul-gouging prices anyway, of course, because I need them, and I have the extra money from dailies, but I wonder if I should go back to the old way of getting the herbs and stockpiling. It'd lead to fewer last minute buying sprees, at least.

So how do you do your consumables? Do you do the last minute buying spree, do you watch for good deals, or do you just do the herbalism and/or alchemy yourself?

"Blizzard" says your World of Warcraft account has been suspended...not. That, according to Symantec, is one of the latest phishing scams being conducted by unscrupulous parties seeking to clean out your WoW account.

In response to this, Symantec has issued a warning regarding this latest scam: an e-mail message is sent to WoW players informing them that their account has been temporarily suspended, and that they need to verify some details. That's when the phisher asks for their password via this page: http://wow-europe.good .eu/servicehttps3A2F2Fwwwwoweu

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With much news about the attunement issues that will be taking place when the Wrath of the Lich King comes along, it's causing much confusion among the avid and concerned players of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Blue poster Vaneras made an announcement to end the uncertainties being held by the gamers.

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According to reports from several players, Blizzard has upgraded World of Warcraft's Public Test Realms with a new unlockable badge gear vendor. This info was confirmed shortly after a recent report of the equally new Sunwell Badge Loot that was being tested on the PTRs in line with game patch 2.4.

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Merriam-Webster defines serendipity as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for." World of Warcraft player Kerr of Blizzard's Windrunner server recently experienced such a phenomenon upon fleeing from an outdoor raid dragon by the name of Lethon - only to stumble upon another dragon, albeit a dead one.

The place which served as the dead dragon's grave was located in the vicinity of the Emerald Dream Portal in the WoW Hinterlands area. From the very expression on the corpse's skull, it appears that the wyrm's death was quite an unpleasant one.

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