Yesterday I talked about how to increase your game play by using all those buttons on your mouse. Today, we'll take a quick look at some theories on how to use your keyboard more effectively. Next week I'll present my complete keyboard map for tanking, and give lots of examples of why I have things where I have them. But for now, let's look at some basics.

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All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening.

As with many other people, my first experience of roleplaying was with a "tabletop" roleplaying game in high school. The older kids introduced me to Vampire: The Masquerade, and although I wasn't enthralled by the whole "bloodsucking" thing, I quickly realized that the basic activity was lots of fun, and I ended up starting my own roleplaying group with Earthdawn, a more traditional (yet surprisingly original) fantasy setting. Those games were my some of my happiest memories from high school.

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I couldn't be more excited about Blizzard's official 3v3 tournament. The arena test realm is active and the accessible gear is available for potential challengers to ogle. The server is inhabited by only level 70 characters. There is absolutely no PvE content. Havick of Shattered Hand suggested that Blizzard should open permanent arena-only servers.

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Our guild alliance's resident science and technology geek (and I mean that in a good way) linked us a somewhat confusing article yesterday. Apparently, scientists have figured out a way to store and retrieve empty space. Of course, a question naturally comes to mind upon hearing about this: How soon until I can buy my own bag of holding?

But seriously, while I tend to be a bit of a pack rat in real life, I'm an even bigger pack rat in WoW. I still keep gear and quest rewards from 50 levels ago because they look cool. In addition, I play a Hunter (with a quiver), a Warlock (with a shard bag) and a Druid (with Cat Form, Bear Form, and healing gear on me at all times). As a result, I'm always on the lookout for ways to increase my bag space so I can fit in a little bit of loot once I'm stocked up on gear, consumables, reagents, and all the rest.

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Just a friendly reminder that today is the last day you can enter the "Guess the 2.4 patch date and win!" contest. The post will be locked at midnight eastern time tonight, and no more entries will be taken. So if you haven't done so yet, get your guess in!

On a whim yesterday Mike Schramm asked any adventurous reader to put together a graph of what the most popular dates were. Much to the delight of everyone, WoW Insider reader Ian did just that. He made a wonderful bar graph of the dates most users expect the patch to be released (take a look after the break for the graph Ian made). It's interesting to note that most of you don't agree with my mathematical analysis of March 25th, and instead decided that March 18th is the most likely date for the patch to go live. We'll just have to wait and see who's right . ;-)

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When I'm being completely honest with myself, I'm forced to admit that one of the things holding my alts back is that I get dissatisfied with their appearance. Whether it's the limited number of options you get at the character selection screen, or just an overwhelming and completely inexplicable preference for a single character model, I always find myself thinking at some point in an alt's 20's or 30's that I'd take them back to the drawing board if I could. I deleted a level 30 Night Elf Druid in no small part because she bore an uncanny resemblance to Cher, and I am very uncomfortable both with the idea of playing Cher and Cher being able to kill people with Moonfire spam. I'm pretty close to deleting a level 30 Draenei Mage for the same reason. Well, not because she looks like Cher, but something about her appearance just....bugs me.

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A new server was released earlier this week, and life on Cairne is fresh and unknown. It is amazing not to see any level 70's running around. When most of the population is below level 20, it is really odd actually having to find groups for Dead Mines instead of just having a 70 friend run you through.

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My favorite part of the Public Test Realm is pre-made characters and gear vendors. Not because it's "free epics" or anything like that, not because it's particularly anything out of my reach, but because I get a fun little preview of what my characters may look like down the road.

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In one of the most bizarre things I've seen happen to the World of Warcraft in my three years playing, the WoW Armory site today is pointing to a generic GoDaddy.com domain parking page. The screenshot above was taken at 1:08 p.m. CST on March 2nd, 2008. WoW Insider has received numerous reports of this. It seems to be a DNS related issue. The domain name wowarmory.com expire today, and it appears as if a registrant has grabbed the wowarmory.com domain name as soon as it expired.

DNS entries for blizzard.com and worldofwarcraft.com point to cerf.net, while the DNS servers for wowarmory.com are currently pointing to domaincontrol.com. While some of you might be seeing wowarmory.com work correctly, others are not. The ISPs of people who are seeing it work have not had their DNS records updated yet, however within the next 48 hours they will see wowarmoy.com go down as well; unless Blizzard fixes this before then (I am sure they are already aware, or becoming aware of it).

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Moo Money is off to Austin to cover the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference. Until she is done schmoozing the latest in Machinima talent, I'll be covering WoW Moviewatch for the next day or two. One of the first things I've found is this music video using "Cry Little Sister" from "The Lost Boys" soundtrack.

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Player Joten of the Frostwof server made it to level 40. The first thing he did was run to Darnassus to buy his first land mount and then took this beautiful picture of himself on it with the Night Elf city in the background. Congrats Joten!

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This morning, we have quite a few comics for you to peruse before you head out and start your day, including the February winner of Blizzard's Honorable Comic Contest. From poking a bit of fun at the election process to rooting out those terrorists, we've got you covered.

• A New Kind of Welfare from Action Trip.
• Infiltrating WoW from AppleGeeks. Thanks for the tip Nate! If you're sufficiently confused, you might want to be debriefed by Amanda Dean's article about the connection between WoW, the government, and terrorism.
  
• Fugitive by Dark Legacy Comics.
• First Flight from Shakes and Fidget.
• Tens of Dollars! by GU Comics.
• LFG #126.
• Be Right Back! over at Monkey Punchers.
• The Politics of WoW from The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf. Thanks to Revsix for the notification!
  
• The latest from Sock Puppet Asylum.
  
• More Dad adventures from Ding!
• /gquit from The Adventures of Messy Cow.
• Snoll's submission to the Honorable Comic Contest won for February!

Make the jump to submit your vote!

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With a new World of Warcraft PTR build comes new challenges, new treasures, and most especially, new SWEET RIDES. We've recently uncovered one of these new rides, and it's a big one: The Black War Elekk.

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Holy Shock on World of Warcraft's Public Test Realms has had a very tumultuous history. It was bugged with something fierce, as the ability used to do zero damage and healing. Now, it seems, a new problem has replaced the old one: Holy Shock won't restore the proper amount of mana when Illumination procs with it.

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The Engineering flying machine has been out for a while now, and it's been a pretty big hit. It's a nice classic piece of Warcraft tradition and lore and good unique reward for someone with enough gumption to craft what may seem like hundreds of Adamantite Rifles on their way to 375 Engineering.

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