Even if Blizzard is remiss in updating their patch notes, we can always rely on our good friend Boubouille at MMO-Champion to have the goods on new PTR pushes. He doesn't disappoint tonight. The following changes are straight from the data files, so there's always a possibility that they aren't actually implemented, although usually datamined changes do show up on the PTR. Let's see what we have:

• [Druid] Nurturing Instinct now increases healing done to you by 10/20% while in Cat form (not affected by AP), in addition to increasing healing done by you by 50/100% of your Agi. [reworded for clarity]
  
• [Mage] Arctic Reach now affects Ice Lance as well as Frostbolt and Blizzard. Edit: Maybe just a tooltip change?
  
• Priest:
  
• Mana Burn tooltip changed to read "Destroys" instead of "Drains;" unknown whether this makes an actual difference.
• Power Infusion now reduces the mana cost of all spells by 20%, as well as increasing the casting speed by 20%.


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I chuckled the first time I heard Watchkeeper Gargolmar yell out, "Heal me! Quickly!" in Hellfire Ramparts. It reminded me of some players in PvP who don't keep their AddOns in check, emoting '<insert annoying player name> calls out for healing!' every time their health precipitates into killing blow range. Here's a tip: if you want to be healed in PvP, don't ask for it. Unless it's an Arena team and you're communicating your every move to your teammates, don't use emotes, don't yell, and don't rant in chat about not getting heals. If you do that, your chances of getting a heal drops considerably. I'll confess that I sometimes deliberately ignore players who have that emote automated. I mean, at least get creative about it, right? If the emote went something like, "<insert dying player's name> is about to die! He pathetically grovels for help! Healing would help him get back into the fray!" healers might consider healing you. Maybe.

Healers don't have it easy. They are the unsung heroes of Battlegrounds. They are the silent partners in Arenas. They are the players in the background that help make things work. If DPS classes are the stars, healers are the supporting act. In fact, if a healer is doing his job right, he shouldn't attract any attention at all. Instead, the only thing you're supposed to see is an invincible force of destruction -- usually *cough* an MS Warrior -- mashing faces with impunity. The best healers are almost invisible, healing from the sidelines, letting their allies do the dirty work and racking up the killing blows. And when they do get noticed, some healers can be pretty resilient themselves, being almost as difficult to take down -- if not more -- than their charges. Here are a few rules to mull over when dealing with healers in PvP.

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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.

This has been a sad week for warlocks, ironic given that I was just celebrating the summoning changes two weeks ago. Life Tap - a class-defining spell for locks - has been overhauled on the PTR to return 15% mana for 15% health a few days ago. The Warlock community was incredulous at first - "No way, this will be rolled back like the drain mana change" - that quickly turned to dismay when Eyonix clarified how Improved Life Tap will work with respect to this change.

What's the big deal?

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Although it only went live a few days ago, Blizzard's Tuskarr page on their Wrath of the Lich King site has already been subtly updated. I don't have a copy of the old page, but it used to say something about being beset by Taunka and Murlocs. Here's what it says now:

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The shaping-up-to-be-über-sweet Patch 2.4 has a few more surprises stored in its files. Some folks were able to dig up the model for a unique-looking demon boss named Entropius. While no more raid bosses have been announced -- it's just M'uru and Kil'jaeden left to kill in Sunwell Plateau on the PTR -- there is much speculation as to the relationship between the formerly chained-up, payback-seeking M'uru and this so-called "Void God". Entered into the wowhead database as early as February 13, it looks like this anorexic voidwalker has more in common with the Dark Naaru than originally thought.

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Reader Roland (thanks!) pointed us to this weird WoW reference in the New York Times. In the wedding section of all places, there's a story about a couple that used World of Warcraft to play and have fun as a duo, and it's too damn bad that the NYT falls back into the old media idea that playing videogames as a couple isn't healthy.

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A new PTR Build is being applied to the PTRs, this post will be updated if something new appears.

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Rumors have been going around that Sylvanas Windrunner will be getting a makeover pretty soon. A poster from MMO Champion has allegedly dug up a new skin for the character in the code of Blizzard's World of Warcraft patch 2.4.

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This is an interesting idea, though I'm not quite sure it will work: An enterprising guild (that Kimberly from LJ is in) has put together a site called WoWDailies.com, which is basically a list of what daily quests are available on which realms for any given day. As an idea, it's a good one -- pull up the site, and you can see what daily quests are available (BG, fishing, cooking, and instances) on your realm that day.

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We've covered Switchblade before (and even posted an impressions and interview about it), so odds are you've probably at least heard of the program, which allows you to play WoW and other PC games with a wired (or wireless with adapter) Xbox 360 controller. Blue Orb recently sent word that they updated the app to version 3.0, and along with the update came not only support for Guild Wars and Hellgate: London, but updates to the way WoW controls.

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Retribution Paladins and "Classic" hybrids rejoice. Even in the midst of all these recent nerfs, Blizzard is working on a few buffs. The latest news from the PTR via MMO Champion is that we can expect to see a few tweaks to Relics and Retribution Gear alike, mostly on the good side. Various pieces of Retribution Paladin focused gear, mostly from the heroic dungeon level, has had its spell damage removed and replaced with strength. Not great news for Shockadins, perhaps, but good for Retribution Paladins, whose talents and skills have been moved more to the side of shedding all spell damage for quite some time.

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Blizzard's bugs continue to confound. This was the sight on the PTR this weekend (Mania saw it too) -- miniature ogres and Taurens and oversized pets (including warlock and hunter pets and even some noncombat pets). We have no idea at all why Blizzard would be tweaking sizes (although this isn't the first time, and nor will it probably be the last that this happens), but whatever they're messing around with is weirding out the size factors all over the places.

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About three hours ago, Hortus announced that the patch 2.4 PTR would be going down for four to six hours to apply a new build. So they ought to be down for another one to three hours. In the mean time, we all get a break from beta-testing the patch to get some food, watch a movie, do some homework or -- let's be honest -- gripe about the patch.

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Two Ring to rule them all,
Two Ring to find them,

Two Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.

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I use a Mac as my production machine. I don't want to get this too much into a Mac v. PC war, so lets just leave it with this: I find I am more productive with my workflows in OS X, and I have the added bonus of not worrying too much about what nasties are included in my downloads. I've been drinking Apple Kool-Aid from a sippy cup for over 10 years, so for me playing WoW on the Mac isn't some life-altering decision. My PC is nothing more than a game/media conversion console. But this whole hacking thing is making me think seriously of playing WoW on the Mac full-time. Sure, I've had WoW sessions of a decent length on my Mac, but not complete PC abstinence. In full disclosure mode, I've worked in IT for over ten years, and many of those years with a dotted-line relationship helping out our Security group. So, I've got a decent understanding of How Not Do Stupid Things On Your PC.

Back in my EverQuest days, we had "hacking" problems, but usually those could be traced back to someone doing stupid with his or her account: they used a powerleveling service or gave their password to a brother or guildie who then did something bad. With WoW, though, it seems much more nefarious. Sure, you give your password away you don't have much of a leg to stand on; I'm not going to say anyone deserves anything, but you've got no moral right to get indignant. Am I just reacting to this with a "oh noes, the sky is falling!" paranoia. Maybe. But when you hear of guild websites getting hacked to install keyloggers, peripherals shipping with keyloggers/viruses installed, it's tough to blame the user. There are always two sides to every story, but I'm getting the feeling there are a lot more true innocents in this battle, including our own Amanda Dean.

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Community Manager Thundgot has announced on the Europe World of Warcraft forums that Blizzard will be implementing some changes regarding the durations of the paid transfer and name change cooldowns.

According to Thundgot's post, the cooldown for both paid transfers and name changes has been reduced from three months to one month.

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Life Tap is one of my favorite mechanics in the game. It's elegant, it's clever, and it's just plain fun; it's a big part of the reason a Warlock is my third-highest-level character (behind my two 70s). And it's really a defining part of the Warlock class, along with demons and soul shards. So when they nerfed it on the patch 2.4 PTR, I was mad, along with a lot of other people. I still am.

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Last week on WoW Rookie, I showed you the instances you might want to run in your first forty levels. This week, I'd like to tell you more about what to do when you get there. As you level up, playing your intended role becomes more and more important. There are three (or four depending on who you ask) main roles in an instance: tank, heals, damage (dps), and crowd control (cc). The typical instance team includes a tank, a healer, and three dps/cc characters. Read on for more about these specific roles. Tank
Your job is to get beaten upon by mean nasty monsters while keeping everyone else from getting hit. This role is usually played by a protection Warrior, protection Paladin, or a feral Druid. Tanks should be heavily armored. Their spells and abilities should be geared toward maintaining "threat" or "aggro."

The threat/aggro metric determines how angry a monster (mob) is at you and determines how likely it is to attack you. The tank will use taunt and high threat/aggro abilities to keep mobs hitting them. Other players can pull threat/aggro by healing, doing large amounts of damage, or using high-threat abilities.

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Thanks to tipster Enaress, we have a short video of an amusing (albeit potentially annoying) exploit ingame that allows you to summon an unlimited number of noncombat pets. From the date on the video, it looks as if this has been live since at least patch 2.3.0,and a few of the commenters have successfully tried it for themselves. A note of warning: be careful if you do this, as dropping out of sync with Blizzard's servers can definitely be considered an exploit, and, at Blizzard's discretion, could get you banned from the game. Odds are a fix is already en route.

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Daniel Howell contributes 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.

The technology wonks in the BRK Copyright-Violation, Trademark-Theft, and Patent-Infringement Squad were let out of their cells and set loose upon several WoW addon developers' servers and code. The reports they've returned are staggering in number, detail, graphic violence, and lewdness. It would seem that, to be a WoW addon developer, one must have a brilliant mind, a single-mindedness of purpose, and a truly disturbing love of cheese and cheese-like products.

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European CM Thundgot announced today that the cooldown periods for both paid character transfer and paid character name changes have been reduced from three months to one month, effective immediately. The transfer cooldown was originally six months when the feature was introduced in June 2006, but was reduced to three in October 2006. In the intervening time, they've looked at server logs and so forth and come to the conclusion that moving it to one month would not have catastrophic consequences.

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Chrille just released another Fat Cow to his PvP series. Fat Cow V contains duels against hunters, warlocks, rogues, 2v2 with frostmages, 3v3 with priests and warriors, and world PvP, as well as some artsy scenes. I would link to a high-quality version, but Stage6 ruined Christmas.

[Via Warcraftmovies.com]

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

Once your guild purchases all the bank vaults you need, your bank will start accumulating gold without a clear purpose for how to spend it. As the donations and requests from members roll in, it's up to us as officers to decide. The author of this week's e-mail is concerned about the way his fellow officers are using the gold.

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Every day we put out a call for user submitted screenshots and every day since the beginning of the Lunar Festival, we've asked you to refrain from sending us the seen-there done-that Omen in Ogrimmar pics. So what do we get? Why, a Pitlord in Shattrath! The player who sent us this had no explanation for this event. Anyone care to explain?

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We all know that World of Warcraft's patch 2.4 is coming soon -- the only real question is when. And that, dear readers, is what we're asking you! Any time in the next week you can leave a comment on this post with your guess on when patch 2.4 will officially be released. When the patch comes out, we have four 60-day game time cards (worth approximately $30) to give to the readers who guessed correctly. (If more than four people guessed the correct date, we'll randomly choose four correct entries as winners. If no one guessed the correct date, we'll award prizes to those closest to the correct date.) All entries must be received before Monday, March 3rd at 9:00 AM EST, though we can't select winners until 2.4 has officially launched.

But Wait! There's more!

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Before I started playing Word of Warcraft, I hadn't played any other MMORPGS. As a matter of fact, I didn't even play video games regularly at all. I was always fascinated by hearing horror stories about the crazy things people did while playing Everquest. But I was also amazed by achievements and the vastness of the settings.

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You may have already heard that Magtheridon will be made easier in patch 2.4, but it looks like Blizzard's adding a few more goodies to make him more enticing to everyone. World of Raids has gotten news from a couple raid groups who have taken him down on the Test server, and it seems he's gotten a few other loot changes as well.

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Nothing really exciting today, mostly because PTRs were brought down for a large part of the weekend because of a huge exploit allowing players to have "unlimited" stats.

M'uru ... and Entropius ?
If you've been watching PTR raid progression closely, you probably know that the next boss to kill is M'uru. There isn't much progression on him for the moment, however there is something interesting in the game files : a boss named Entropius !

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Today is a pretty calm day, no new ptr build in sight, so we are gonna talk about some changes we forgot to mention in the last two weeks.

Felmyst v3 down: What's changed?

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