The powers that be at Blizzard are really going all out with the Spectral Safari stuff lately -- first Upper Deck announces a series of TCG contests at stores around the country, and then Blizzard announces an official screenshot contest, and now there's a meta contest for the TCG events.

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A new build (9.39mb) has been applied to PTRs.

More will be added in a few mins

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I like Nikol's writeup of her experiences marking targets in instances. There really is an art to laying down those icons in a group, and it requires quite a bit of knowledge to do right. You need to keep group makeup in mind, know the abilities of all the classes involved, pay attention to what individual members want to do and even how they're specced, and have a basic knowledge of the instance and how it works. There's so much that goes into it that it's basically an art in itself -- do you sheep the caster and take out the minions, or focus on the big bad first and then move on to trash? Do you have the group to interrupt and pull a caster to a trap, or do you need to get the mobs out of the way before the patrol comes through?

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With the PTRs up again, the biggest thing everyone was looking for was to see how Life Tap was adjusted. The reports are in, and it seems like not only was the change adjusted quite a bit, it's almost arguably a buff to the skill.

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It's been awhile since I've had the time to hop on the patch 2.4 PTR and a lot has changed with the Shattered Sun Offensive. Sun's Reach Harbor has been captured, bringing with it several new quests and conveniences to the Isle of Quel'danas. For one thing, the harbor building now acts as an inn, with a water/food vendor, a place to set your hearthstone, a mailbox, a poison vendor for rogues and, of course, the granting of rest experience. Of course, the main attraction of the new phase is undoubtedly going to be the four new quests, three of which are repeatable dailies.

Two of the new quests directly relate to the last new structure to be built on the isle, the Monument to the Fallen. One of them, "A Magnanimous Benefactor", is a non-repeatable quest, available at exalted reputation, that allows you to purchase the title "of the Shattered Sun" for 1,000 gold. The other quest, "A Charitable Donation", can be repeated every day and is probably the most simple and straightforward quest found in the game so far. In order to earn some quick reputation, you simply have to give 10 gold to the quest giver. I suppose Blizzard decided they need new gold sinks with the limit on daily quests being raised to 25 from 10. Regardless, this second quest is tied to the construction of a statue near the other buildings you've helped capture. The Monument to the Fallen, pictured above, has a statue of a Draenei on one side and a Blood Elf on the other to commemorate the unity of the Aldor and Scryers against Kael'thas.

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For the first time in a very long time , we are getting a brand-new non-transfer realm, open to create characters on and explore its untouched reaches. As a non-transfer realm, character transfers to it are disabled for six months. I believe this is the first such realm since Burning Crusade launched, though we did get a new transfer realm at the end of last month. The realm is called Cairne, and it's a PvE realm, in Central time, in the Emberstorm battlegroup. Reroll locusts, start your engines.

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Don't forget that we're asking for your guesses on when patch 2.4 will hit the live realms. To enter our contest, just head over to the original post (don't leave a comment on this post, because you can't) and leave a comment with your guess of when the patch will go live using the XX/XX date format (as in, 03/12 for a guess of March 12th).

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Every Wednesday, Elizabeth Wachowski or Chris Jahosky write Encrypted Text, a look into the shadowy world of rogues.

This week on Encrypted Text is the first part in a small mini-series of articles that should serve as a guide for any up and coming rogues looking to start raiding. I will cover a few of the more raid-friendly specs, talk about their strengths and weaknesses, the hit and expertise caps, and the type of gear you should be looking for.

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Just in case you couldn't wait to get your hands on one of those extremely gross real-life Mana Energy Potions we posted about a while back, now's your chance: ThinkGeek is selling them at a reasonable price (even though actually drinking them probably isn't reasonable at all). As mephron points out on WoW LJ, the nutritional stats are atrocious: B12 is definitely good for you, but putting 6667% of anything's daily allowance in your system just doesn't seem right.

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As time moves forward, so does WoW's built-in interface. Last patch we got some big additions in voice chat and guild banks (alright, that's not quite interface, but it's not quite gameplay either), as well as cursors and tracking for various types of objects and NPCs. There's not much in terms of interface news in patch 2.4, but Nethaera has just confirmed that a future patch will bring a big new feature: threat meters. (We first heard about this back at Blizzcon.)

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The public test realms have really been going offline a lot over the past week or so. Though it seems like they just came back up, and we don't even know what the current changes are, aside from a Shaman de-nerf, they're going down again, as of a few minutes ago (noon PST). Hortus merely says the downtime is "to apply a new build," and the patch notes still haven't been updated, so I can't tell you what's coming, although tipster Khanmora's guess that we may see the promised Life Tap modifications is one that I share. The downtime is expected to be between four and six hours.

To go along with the set of free North American character transfers that started yesterday, Blizzard Europe has seen fit to open the following free character transfers:

• From: Al'Akir, Crushridge, Grim Batol, Outland, Stormscale
• To: Burning Blade, Laughing Skull


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In the interests of full coverage, we'll mention this one, but don't keep your hopes up: the latest build on the PTR has reverted the Nature's Swiftness and Elemental Mastery sharing a cooldown change, so Elemental Shamans will once again be able to crank out an instant Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt crit. Unfortunately, they shouldn't count on it, as lots of changes have gone back and forth on the PTR. It could be that the next time the PTR comes up with a new patch, this change will be right back in.

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Previously we've seen tiny ogres and diminutive Taurens loitering the world of Azeroth and the Outlands due to an unfortunate bug found in the latest World of Warcraft 2.4 PTR. Ever since these not-so-rare sightings were spotted, other strange mutations were also seen and have taken the interest of several other players.

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Blizzard QA Hortus has come out with an updated issues list for the World of Warcraft Public Test Realm. If you're running the PTR client, it would be advisable to go over this list so you don't end up wasting time reporting what the developers already know.

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In any successful World of Warcraft raid, you can bet that there is at least one member of the group keeping tabs on the threat generated by each character. While in the past, this was handled by third party mods, it seems that Blizzard plans on incorporating a threat meter in the default in-game user interface.

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Until now, the elusive Spectral Tiger Mount has been a steed for World of Warcraft Trading Card Game players only. The Spectral Tiger will be the grand prize of Blizzard's latest contest. The complete prize breakdown:

• Grand Prize Winner: "Spectral Tiger loot card" from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, and one World of Warcraft TCG Expansion, "March of the Legion," booster box.
• Second Prize: "Robotic Homing Chicken Loot Card," from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, and oneWorld of Warcraft TCG Expansion, "March of the Legion," booster box.
• Three Runner's Up WinnersWorld of Warcraft TCG Expansion, "March of the Legion," booster box.

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It's probably true that the best way to make money in the game is to farm primals, but sometimes you just can't stomach the idea of killing yet another elemental or -- given how busy most of the primal hot-spots are -- having to compete to kill them. It's in trying times like these that your thoughts turn to quieter pursuits like flower-picking, finishing some quests you left lying around, or at least taking your mindless slaughter act on the road.

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Regular Paladin columnist Elizabeth was crit by an insane amount of work at, well, work and her co-columnist Chris is away completing his own epic quest, so like those duplicitous Blood Elves, I'll be stealing the Light for this week and swinging it around. Since most of the stuff I write on the site concern the one thing I really like to do -- PvP -- I think I'll get into character and write about something that some people find taboo... Retribution PvP. After writing about a few rules on healing in PvP, let's indulge ourselves with a little retributive mayhem. Despite being the most ridiculed spec in the entire game, Retribution can be a lot of fun -- and painful for your opponents -- once you get some fundamentals down pat.

Step one: gear up
If you are at all interested in PvP as a Retribution Paladin, you must get geared up. There are no two ways about this. Unless you have the proper gear, you will simply not perform as well as similarly-geared classes and your PvP experience will be diminished greatly. Retribution is one of the most equipment-dependent specs in the game, and you will feel it in PvP. Chris has written an excellent starter guide for all aspiring Ret Pallies, which is an excellent read for learning about the perfect Retribution gear. In order to do some PvP, we'll then need to take the next step and go beyond what Chris suggested and aim much higher as far as at least one piece of equipment is concerned -- your weapon.

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Before Telemora went on to make his Warcraftmovies recommended The Luckiest, he created a little music video, We Will Rock You. He finished the film way back in March 2006, but it just reached over one million views on YouTube yesterday! The video is part music video, part battle, but all rock and roll.

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If we're allowed a quick reference to Chinese mythology, you can't talk about World of Warcraft's Suzaku without ever mentioning the equally stunning Byakko. Or in WoW terms, the Spectral Tiger.

This rare beast can only be attained from a special loot card from the Fires of Outland set of WoW TCG. Given that each of these cards sells for several hundred bucks, you can imagine that your prospect of ever spotting one of these beauties in-game will be very, very rare.

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Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers. This week features one of our "semi-alumni" bloggers, Krystalle. (She's the short one with the pink hair above -- the rest of the above folks would be some of her many guild-mates.)

What do you do for WoW Insider?
These days? Some back-end smacktalking helping out where you guys don't see it. I tend to float in and out giving a hand when things are quiet, and am bringing back both Reader UI and Reader WoWspace. Before I landed my current spot as one of the leads on Massively, I was a blogger here, Guild Leader & event coordinator for It Came from the Blog. I had a lot of great times with the WoW Insider readers both there and at Dragon*Con 2007, where I got to co-host several panels with Elizabeth Harper and several other great folks. (And for anyone curious, we're doing it again at Dragon*Con this year too!)

What's your main right now?
She's a L70 sword-specced Troll Rogue who I primarily just raid on these days. I also have a L42 Rogue that I'm bringing up, just to see how the other (dagger) side lives. Well, that and because I can't break away from the Rogues. I just love them too much.

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