Last week, Princess Huhuran faced off against her Ahn'Qiraj boss, C'thun. Unfortunately, the Old God was too much for his faithful lieutenant and she fell to his eye beam of death. There was some debate on whether she was too big to be swallowed (where she could actually damage him in what passes for his stomach.) But despite some well written comments in favor of Huhuran, the votes have decided that C'thun emerges the winner of this round.

The Final Four are now set to face off as we get closer to determining who is the baddest boss in all of WoW. Next week, Sapphiron, the skeletal frost wyrm enters the arena against Kel'Thuzad, the Archlich of the Plaugelands for an undead deathmatch (un-deathmatch? undeadmatch?). In two weeks, we'll have what is probably the most anticipated fight of the series: Illidan vs C'thun. And the week after that we'll have the final showdown to see which boss will reign supreme on Two Bosses Enter.

Lots of us purchase these nifty mice from the local computer store. Be they a fancy new Logitech mouse with a dozen keys placed strategically around the unit, or a slick new beauty from Apple, the mouse is a strategic part of your game play.

At least, it should be.

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About 3 months ago I got my first pet. His name is Max, and is a grey domestic short hair cat. He was a stray that was scratching at my apartment door on a very cold November evening. At the time it was decided that he was just going to stick around for the night, but he grew on us so quickly that we weren't able to let him go. He now is a happy member of my family, and just like the rest of them, he has to put up with me playing World of Warcraft.

Except, it's not really "putting up with" WoW, it's more like "intensely interested in what's going on." Max will often times spend the whole four hours of the night's raid spread across the desk staring at my computer screen. He'll react to the sounds, the bright flashes of light, and occasionally even other in game cats. When someone says "lol" and their character laughs, he'll jump and stare down the speaker the laugh came from.

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Welcome to another installment of Hybrid Theory, wherein columnist Alex Ziebart assures the world that he does not, in fact, hate Retribution Paladins. In fact, he raids with a Retribution Paladin. Really. He does. Pinky swear.

Let's face it, folks. A lot of raid leaders have very little idea what they're doing when they're brand new to the raiding thing. I was there once, too. Until you have some experience in the 25-man raids, you have very little idea how group synergy works or anything of that sort. As a hybrid, especially one specced in a tree other than your healing tree, this could cause you some issues when looking to break into raiding from the ground level, rather than filling a gap in an existing raid that generally knows what's what.

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I mean this in the 'talking' sense rather than the 'eating whale blubber' sense.

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For people who don't play the World of Warcraft or similar games, or do not spend much time on the internet at all, it's difficult to grasp the idea of bonds and friendships formed over the web. How can you be friends with someone you've never seen before? I can understand the inability to grasp such a thing, it's rarely easy to comprehend what you haven't seen or experienced yourself. To those who haven't had powerful friendships over the internet, it makes no sense how you can grow so close to someone you can't see, you can't touch.

Even through the supposed anonymity of the internet, the greatest of friendships can be formed. Bonds so powerful that you never want to let them go, and may change your life forever, for the better. Despite the distance, despite the inability to touch and feel, you can grow as close as family to these supposed anonymous people. These individuals are more than just "internet people." They're people. In the World of Warcraft, a video game, I have found people that have truly changed me. I would not be the person I am today without them.

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Welcome, my friends, to the second installment of Macro Anatomy. In this episode we'll be going over some basic macro commands and I'll introduce some simple macros for you to learn and play with.

Before we move ahead, I wanted to reiterate an important change to many macros since the release of Patch 2.3 for those of you who are already writing and using macros. The /stopcasting command is no longer necessary between instant-cast, non-GCD spells. An example would be the following macro:

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A little while back, the entire world of Azeroth and the Outlands were struck with an unexplainable plague of hearts and love sickness which happened some time around February 14. An excess of chocolates and other things sweet proliferated around that time and things like love and peace became the norm for the time being.

Nobody knows what caused this strange annual event. However, some World of Warcraft players took the time to carefully document this strange occurrence by taking some screenshots related to it.

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A few days ago, Blizzard announced several new changes for World of Warcraft's Patch 2.4, including an adjustment to the Mage's Icy Veins spell. According to the notes, the spell will no longer stack with Bloodlust, Heroism, or Power Infusion.

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First off, a Black War Elekk has been added in a recent PTR push! Rejoice PvPers, you now get a giant elephant mount. I know a few of my guild mates have been waiting for this, so I imagine it'll be a welcome addition, if a small one. I might get one for my Paladin, running around on the Charger is getting a bit boring and I honestly don't know what else would be appropriate.

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Yet another new build went up on the patch 2.4 PTRs last night, and it had a few class changes (as well as item changes; more on those later):

• [Shaman] Flametongue debuff changed to -25% healing, but stacks twice; duration is still 5 s
• [Priest] Mass Dispel will now affect up to 10 friendly and 10 enemy targets (source). Is it wrong that I've never used this in PvE?
• Bloodlust/Heroism will now stack with Icy Veins (source), but will still not stack with the new Power Infusion (source).


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I already went over what's changed for the classes in the latest PTR build (not much); here's what's new in the items:

• Mats for the new Alchemist Stones have been reduced. Old mats were Alchemist Stone, 2 Nether Vortices, and 16 primals; new mats are reduced by 10 primals, i.e. Alchemist Stone, 2 Nether Vortices, and 6 primals. Which primal is required varies based on the stone in question: Assassin's = Shadow, Guardian's = Air, Sorcerer's = Fire, Redeemer's = Life.
• The Philosopher's Stone is now a trinket requiring level 35, and gives +5 to all stats.
• Jewelcrafters can get patterns for four new epic gem cuts (Reckless Pyrestone, Steady Seaspray Emerald, Quick Lionseye, Forceful Seaspray Emerald) both from the Shattered Sun Offensive at Revered and from the Scale of Sands (the Mount Hyjal faction) at Honored.
• The models have been changed for Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality, Crossbow of Relentless Strikes (pictured), Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality, Vanir's Left Fist of Savagery, Gavel of Naaru Blessings, Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents, Vengeful Gladiator's Pummeler, and Vengeful Gladiator's Bonecracker; see MMO-Champion for screenshots.


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Don't forget that our contest to guess the patch 2.4 release date ends Monday, so this weekend is your last chance to leave your guess for when the patch on the PTR will go on the live realms (in American date format: DD/MM) on our contest post (not on this post). We've got a ton of guesses so far, and definitely enough to cover all the days in between now and next year (although the patch is probably dropping sometime in March), so what we'll do is pick randomly from the people who guess on the correct day to give out the game cards. And if you are super bored this weekend and want to take all the data from that post and plot us a graph of where all the guesses land (so we can come up with fun stuff like an average guess), we could probably think of something nice to do for you too.

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It's that time of the month again, ladies and gents. It's the first of March, so the Consortium has a fresh round of gems to hand out! If you're new to level 70(or Outland in general), each month you can travel to Aeris Landing in Nagrand and receive a packet of gems. How many gems is dependent on your reputation with the Consortium.

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The Bitfilm Festival is currently taking machinima submissions until March 15th, 2008. Last year, Olibith took the top prize, with "I'm Only Sleeping". This year, with machinima more popular than ever, the competition is heating up.

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Here's some more World of Warcraft news for you, courtesy of Kisirani over on the PTR forums. Blizzard wants your help in testing a boss for the upcoming Midsummer Fire Festival, and they could really use your feedback, it seems.

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An anonymous player sent in this shot of an old Orc Warrior that he retired when he moved servers. After a life of battle in Azeroth, this adventurer was retired to an tavern in Ratchet to spend his retirement in his cups. And apparently bobbing for apples.

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PvP battle lovers will certainly get a kick out of this next bit of news we have for World of Warcraft. Blizzard recently announced that it has opened up the Arena Tournament Realm for testing on the PTRs. This will allow people to test the new Arena system they're trying out, which looks to be an all out battle for fame, glory, and a future cash prize.

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It's usually a good thing to have a lot of options available to you, especially if you're the type of World of Warcraft player who's interested in Arena Tournaments. If options are what you want, then Blizzard is offering you just that with a preview of weapons, armor, items, accessories and hunter pets you can choose from.

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If you've been wondering what new mount to try out in World of Warcraft, then you may want to hop on to Blizzard's Special Mounts page. See, the company has recently updated it with new screenshots of a mount that players may obtain as a loot reward from the WoW Trading Card Game.

Blizzard's screenshots of the Riding Turtle mount bring a different (and literal) meaning to the term "turtling." As you can see from the pictures below, the Riding Turtle is a cute mount to have, but it unfortunately only grants WoW players a very noticeable 0 increase in movement speed. It won't exactly get you rolling like the Lawgiver's mount will, but at least it's more kawaii than a Toyota.

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A new PTR build has been deployed on test servers, this post will be updated regularly.

Classes changes
Most of the classes changes introduced in this build are from the PTR notes update from yesterday's news. The only change is for shamans.
Quote from Blizzard staff Shaman

• Flametongue debuff now removes 25% of healing efficiency on the target for 5 seconds and stack up to two times. The duration remains 5 seconds.

Mechanics changes

• We've recently made a change for an upcoming 2.4 PTR update that will increase the amount of targets affected by Mass Dispel to a total of 10. (Source)
  
• Bloodlust/Heroism will, again, stack with Icy Veins. (Source)
  
• Bloodlust/Heroism will not stack with Power Infusion, however. (Source)
  
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This news will be updated in several minutes.

PTRs have been updated with a new build (23.2 mb), while waiting for the PTRs to come online, we noticed several new weapon models and colors in the game files.

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Well, this is an unexpected pleasure. A new public test realm just opened up, and it's an arena tournament server. This means you can go create level 70 characters there of whatever class you wish, and grab neat gear off the vendors, and go fight each other. That's about all you'll be able to do, because the PvE content on that realm has been disabled, as it will be on the actual tournament realms.

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