Because Blizzard loves you so much, the following realms will get a brief, exclusive maintenance period tomorrow morning, February 26 27, from 5:00 AM PST to about 6:15 AM PST:

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives is typically written by someone who is not Allie Robert. This week, she has Prowled onto John Patricelli's turf, Pounced him, and run off shouting, "Ha ha! I have your column and there's nothing you can do about it for the next un-talented 3 seconds!"

John's previously covered a number of the changes you can expect to see in the upcoming patch 2.4, but more recently we're heard of changes to the feral talent Nurturing Instinct. Currently the talent increases healing spells by up to 50% of your Strength. It's not such a bad bonus, but you'd be a rare feral indeed if you found a lot of leather gear with +Strength on it outside of the tier or arena sets. The vast majority of ferals continue to use specialized pieces like the Heavy Clefthoof set for bear tanking and mostly rogue gear for cat dps. Either way, the talent was of considerably less use than it might have been if more pieces like the Shadowprowler's Chestguard existed ingame (although the addition of badge gear has made it possible, albeit time-consuming, to get leather with "Druid stats"). Moreover, with the change to the Heart of the Wild talent in patch 2.3 (altering the full talent from a 20% increase to your Strength in cat form to a 10% increase to your AP in cat form), Strength became less important than ever. Take a tour through Emmerald's feral gear guide (updated to include 2.3 badge gear and - I hope - soon to be updated to include 2.4 badge gear) and you'll find that most of the best cat pieces are rogue leather with a ton of Agility.

[Expand 2 Paragraphs]

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

This week's build comes to you courtesy of reader James (who put this together anticipating the changes to the Fury tree coming in 2.4), so today I'm going to dissect his build. Fury heavy builds are quite strong and very popular for PvE encounters through the end game (the most famous perhaps being a variant of 17/44, sometimes called a RiP (Rogue in Plate), which is desirable for the high damage output).

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

At first glance, I didn't really think there was much out of the ordinary about a post made by one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, Neg. A number of raiding guilds have complained strenuously about the presence of easy-to-obtain epics in the game, but any post entitled, "Does Blizzard Hate Raiders?" is typically going to get a scoff and little else.

I had read the article shortly before zoning into Black Temple for the third time ever, and for the first time with the ingame sound on. My guild had recently killed both High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus, and while the Karabor Sewers portion of the instance is interesting to look at, it pales in comparison to what you'll see once you're offered a teleport to a different floor by a member of the Ashtongue Deathsworn. My guildies and I were really just there to farm Hearts of Darkness for resist gear and to explore a little bit, with nothing really important on our minds. Nevertheless, what we saw that night was beautiful. The floor you're ported to has a tiny, friendly area with the Ashtongue Quartermaster, but beyond that lie a number of sinister things. The ceiling is pillared by giant statues much like those that guard the portal into Outland, and rogues lurk in pairs seemingly all around you. Not infrequently you find yourself turning around to shouts on vent to see them rapidly killing off members of the raid; we finally hit upon the strategy of sending our own rogues off to sniff out the presence of danger while the raid itself was ringed and guarded on all sides by the tanks. Once another set of rogues was found, our hunters set up Flares to flush them out of hiding, marked them, and pulled carefully. You were only really safe if you were in the middle portion of the raid; wandering off to go explore on your own was unthinkable.

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

Once again, it's time to balance the server load a bit. Free character transfers are available on select North American realms, starting a few hours ago at 12:00 PM PST and going for one week, until Tuesday, March 4 at 12:00 PM PST. Here's the server list:

• Group A (PvP)
• From: Illidan, Mal'Ganis, Sargeras, Stormreaver, Tichondrius
• To: Vashj


[Expand 1 Lists]

The World of Warcraft community has pounded it into our heads that the recent Life Tap change was pretty lame. Luckily, Hortus has let us know that there will be additional changes coming to Lifetap, as Eliah told us a bit earlier.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Eyonix seems to have taken quite a lot of coffee this morning and made a rare appearance on the Paladin boards by making a lot of posts on a couple of threads. The Blizzard CM, not to be confused with the eponymous Innkeeper in Stormspire, surprised the Paladin community by responding to some threads dealing with Protection Paladin weapons and Avenging Wrath. One thread asks for a decent Paladin tanking weapon, which is in short supply compared to the numerous Warrior tanking weapons which have Warrior-friendly mitigation and threat-generation stats. A Paladin tank benefits from a +spell damage weapon -- oddly enough one of the best Paladin tank weapons are the different Gladiator Gavels. Eyonix responds that the amount of spell damage a Paladin tank needs is directly proportional to the raid's DPS capability (in a nutshell, strong DPS needs higher +spell damage) -- which doesn't quite answer the request for more +spell damage tanking weapons, but it was nice to hear from Eyonix, anyway. As a bonus, Eyonix reveals that his Paladin tank is currently raiding SSC and TK with a *gasp* Continuum Blade.

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

It's Tuesday, which means it's time once again to roundup our weekly content and put it all in one post for you to enjoy on Maintenance Day. This week, we're doing things a little differently -- instead of listing all the weekly features of the past week, we're going to go reality-show style, and show you the top 10 weekly features of the past seven days, according to your reading habits. If you missed these the first time, don't make the same mistake again. Click through and check them out.

Know Your Lore: The story of the Burning Crusade
Elizabeth W lays out everything you need to know about the BC storyline before it ends at the Sunwell.

[Expand 6 Paragraphs]

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Many raiders and machinima fans will be disappointed to learn that Stage6, one of the best purveyors of high quality DivX videos, will be shutting down. Moo announced yesterday in his WoW Moviewatch the shut down will take place this Thursday. This is a big blow to not only the WoW community due to all the superb WoW videos hosted there, but also to the larger DivX community.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

While we're pretty sure quite a number of users found the tiny Taurens and giant pets in the World of Warcraft Public Test Realms funny, we knew it wasn't going to last. Well, the dreaded day has come and Blizzard has already come up with a fix for the "problem".

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

We've all wiped in an instance from time to time. It is significantly easier to keep going when a rezzer has a self-rez ability so the group doesn't have to waste time running back to the instance. Soulstone and Ancestral Spirit are wonderful things. The Druid's Rebirth spell can also be used occasionally to save the party the walk of shame back to the instance.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

This past Saturday the WoW Insider Show welcomed Amanda Dean and Adam Holisky on, as well as myself and Turpster, for the 26th episode of our podcast on WoW Radio. Despite some lackluster, if I may say so, email from readers (you can send us some better emails at theshow@wowinsider.com), we charged through and got a lot of good discussion done:

• We chatted about Amanda's hacked characters, and what a little name-dropping will get you from Blizzard (not much)
• We confronted whether all this new badge loot makes raiding worthless (surprise -- we decided it does not)
• We talked about all the new class changes on the PTR, with a special look at Shamans, and the Warlock change to Lifetap.
• We ran over what Rob Pardo said during the GDC Liveblog
• And finally, we wondered just what kind of player it takes to PuG with Adam


[View Remaining 1 Lists]

This just in: many players are unhappy with the Life Tap changes that have come on the PTR. But in all seriousness, Blizzard has evidently taken notice, and they promise that more changes are to come. Specifically, Hortus just posted the following in the test realm forums: "Some changes are going to be made to lifetap in an upcoming PTR build. Until that time I think we've got enough feedback." So now it's time to just sit tight and see what happens, I suppose. That doesn't mean we can't talk about it -- how would you deal with Life Tap to fill Blizz's goals of making it hurt more in PvP, while not totally breaking it for PvE?

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

One of the biggest advantages of playing a Warlock in Blizzard's World of Warcraft is having the underrated skill called Life Tap. This skill pretty much allows users to spam DOTs and Shadowbolts with abandon without having to worry about running out of mana.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

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. Sometimes healing can be a bit too serious, imo. Sure, it's your life or death, but come on... Let me have some fun, too.

"But the meters..." has long been the cry of dps who just aggro pulled a cleaving mob over top half the raid, the reason trash mobs are running loose, and why someone just died from a rather nasty curse. But the love of being numero uno isn't confined to those that pew pew. Not by a long shot.

[Expand 6 Paragraphs]

The Phoenix mount in Blizzard's World of Warcraft is perhaps one of  the rarest modes of transportation one can get in the game. What makes getting this mount hard is the fact the it drops from Kael'thas, the last boss in Tempest Keep: The Eye.

Considering its rarity, very few have seen the Phoenix mount in action. Thankfully, Blizzard was nice enough to put up some screenshots of the said mount on the official World of Warcraft website.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

WoW Insider fan Morduk sent in a tip about an add-on that may tickle many of you. Align is a little gem for User Interface control freaks. What this add-on actually does is lay down a grid overlay on your UI, allowing you to align (hence, the name!) your add-ons and other UI elements into an orderly array.

I have to admit that at first I was skeptical about the value of such a thing, but I have seen the light. This program has a minimal memory footprint, is simple to use and makes my sometimes-cluttered UI look so, well, dress-right-dress. Being an old Army sergeant, I can immediately appreciate the control I have over my add-on placement. Many of you eyeball your UI into what looks like order, but Align can be the decisive element in your battle for a centered Totemus sphere.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Surprisingly, US CM Eyonix has dropped in on a thread titled "How many 70s do you have?" I'm surprised because I wouldn't think it would necessarily be in a CM's best interest for people to know what classes they play, as a common perception in the community is that if you don't have a level 70 <insert class here> you obviously know nothing about the class and should stop talking. Anyway, here's the four classes that the whelpling has gotten to the level cap (in the order he put them in):

• Shaman
• Priest
• Druid
• Paladin

Notice anything in common? Yes, that's all the healing classes. Of course, each of those classes has roles besides healing, so it's possible that he doesn't actually enjoy bumping the green bars back up, but I doubt it (though his Pally is apparently Prot). You heard it hear first: Eyonix likes to heal and probably reads our Raid Rx column. Or if not, he should. Bornakk, by the way, has three 70s of unknown class.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Pinkhair dug deep into the archives of WoW machinima to recommend this gem. Horde - Episode 1: "That's how we role!" is parody of popular movies from yesteryear. When a group of strangers are jailed for not roleplaying on Maelstrom, they are assigned an essay to identify themselves. What role will each of them fulfill?

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

While many players on the Public Test Realm and delving into the mysteries of Sunwell Terrace, Kadathwack of Cenarion Circle has been collecting Burning Blossoms. They are gathered during the Midsummer Fire Festival which, though not due until June, is currently on the PTR. He has turned in 350 Blossoms to acquire a new festival reward: the Brazier of Dancing flames. Worth the price?

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

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. The Game Developers Conference 08 coverage took up much of last week with many people comparing their efforts to WoW's success. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.

The Daily Grind: When will you be done with WoW?
Akela Talamasca wants know what is it that will end the WoW-affair?

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – both the renowned and the relatively anonymous.

In last month's Confessions of a Teenage Warlock, we saw a well spoken, capable, creative young man out representing for the legion of teenagers who play WoW without dragging everyone else on the server down to the level of Barrens chat. "He's nothing special!" cried some readers in the comments – and rightly so. Seldorm's not the youngest player, or the most uber player or even the most outspoken player. In fact, you might most accurately characterize Seldorm as the poster boy for "normal" WoW-playing teens who don't make little worgs of themselves online. (There are more of them than you think!)

[Expand 13 Paragraphs]

In Blizzard's World of Warcraft, bugs can seriously wreck havoc. Well, actually, they can be considered a good thing by others, but to many, it's just a simple no-no.

Apparently, Oom from the Draenor realm posted th bug she encountered when casting the Starfire spell. If you guys take a closer look at the screenshot provided in this article, Oom's spell was able to deal 837,896 Arcane damage to an opponent.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Welcome to the first edition of our new twice-monthly column, Pimp My Profile. Readers submit their Armory profile to us and every two weeks we pick one to review. We provide a Gear Check, Talent Tune Up, AddOn/Macro recommendations and more to help you reach your goals in the game.

For the inaugural column, I asked my long time friend Jon to submit his new Paladin for da pimpage. He had recently shelved his Warrior in favor or leveling a new Paladin to 70 to be the main tank for our casual group. Having played the class for only two months, he had a few questions and concerns. Here is what he had to say:

"I'm highly aware of needing to obtain the "uncrittable" defense numbers so far in order to get a defense anywhere near 490 I've found that I have to sacrifice too much spell damage which eats into my ability to hold agro. I abandoned a 63 warrior in favor of my Pally tank and the teary eyed joy that comes with being able generate lots of agro quickly on multiple mobs. Big spell damage is essential to my ability to tank for my trigger happy friends whose 5 man instance approach is more akin to "Who's Line Is It Anyway" rather than the production of Shakespeare most people reading this think their guild regularly produces."

[Expand 8 Paragraphs]

It's amazing to me exactly how hard instances can be. Not the mobs, but the group. We've all been in ugh-PUGs before. Some players don't understand how to use their class or play nicely in an instance. That's only on regular dungeons; heroics have their own set of potential disasters. Sometimes you just have to give up.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

It's Tuesday and that means maintenance. Realms are down, players are frolicking (read: bored), and everything seems somehow more like Tuesday. It is scheduled to last from 5:00 am PST to 11:00 am PST. If you're wondering what on Azeroth you are going to do doing downtime, while at work, or otherwise lazing about, here are a few suggestions.

Enter our latest contest! Guess the patch 2.4 release date for your chance to win!

Have you been feeling like a sad panda about the recent server downtimes and maintenance? You're not alone.

If you're curious about what might be new with patch 2.4, then check out our official and complete Guide to Patch 2.4. It's a round-up, and has links to anything you could possibly want to know.

The cooldowns for paid transfers and name changes have been reduced. Have you been weighing your options?

Check out who has "teh funneh" with this past week's Sunday Morning Funnies. In fact, if you're feeling adventurous, or insurmountably bored, try some past editions as well.

Read about the latest development in the saga of the Warlock Lifetap nerf.

What are you doing this week during maintenance? Are you reading up on the changes to your class or profession, and what that will mean to your PvP or raiding self? Have you been inventing the next WoW /dance? Or are you trying to get more work done than you do on other days of the week?

The legendary weapons in World of Warcraft pack some pretty good stats, but why stick with "good" when you can have "better"? Thus, Blizzard forum member Critiane offered this suggestion: have upgrade questions for legendary weapons - especially the staffs.

Reactions varied. Some WoW players shot the idea down, claiming that Blizzard had considered the idea before and eventually rejected it. Others conditionally supported the idea, but recommended modifications to the suggestion, such as having only certain legendary weapons as upgradable (E.g. Thunderfury) or being given a choice of how exactly to upgrade the armament..

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

As many a dude will tell you, there's nothing quite as frustrating as spotting some ugly blemish on your personal ride. More so when the said ride happens to be one of World of Warcraft's coveted swift (armored) netherdrake mounts.

Player Gundam reports over at the WoW forums that a graphics bug has been spotted under the netherdrake's left wing over on the Test Realms. While this doesn't seem to affect gameplay, we imagine more than one player with the same mount will find this "stain" most annoying.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

In MMORPGs, it's only natural that players would encounter bugs of different kinds. As for Faen from the Aggramar realm in World of Warcraft, he posted one of this concern regarding the game's current Fire Festival event.

In his post, Faen said that he rode his warrior out of Darnassus towards the inland. When he got out of the gates, he instantly got a buff from the Fire Festival, which gave him a 700 damage proc.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Warlock demonic pet Imps in the MMORPG World of Warcraft has been very problematic for Blizzard. It should be remembered that their stats were changed last February because they were performing better than expected only to be reverted a couple of weeks after.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

 

When the folks at Around Azeroth asked for unusual World of Warcraft screenshots, one unnamed player of Blizzard's MMORPG stepped up to the plate with the one you see above - apparently a picture of a Pit Lord in Shattrath.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

After confirming that the Tuskarrs will be gracing World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard now updated the official expansion website to give room to this kind-natured nomadic race.

Tuskarrs can usually be seen treading the southern coastlines of Northrend and are being guided by by the carved cyclopean statues. These emblems mark the race's seasonal fishing routines.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

The PTRs are being updated with a new build, and while waiting for the PTRs, we noticed several spell changes in the game files.

New PTR Build: Spell changes

[Expand 3 Paragraphs]